Miliband to bury Labour

Socialist Party contests Coventry ward

Lenny Shail

Ed Miliband plans to re-write the Labour Party's 93 year old founding principles and aims, suggesting that Tony Blair didn't go far enough 17 years ago when he attacked the party's 'clause IV', which had committed Labour to a programme of mass nationalisation.

The changes that will get rid of principles such as "to organise and maintain in parliament and in the country a political Labour party", set out the party's desire to continue to loosen its ties with the trade union movement and to weaken further its pretence to represent working class people. Instead it desires to be a "force for social justice".

In reality Labour has been wholly a party for big business and capitalism for many years. Its 13 years in government were 13 years of job losses, attacks on workers' conditions and privatisation of parts of the NHS and other public services.

Labour's time in opposition under the leadership of Miliband has not altered its big business and capitalist ethics. Labour's leaders, nationally and locally, subscribe to a cuts agenda on jobs and public services and attacks on the trade unions.

Miliband publicly denounced the 750,000 public sector workers who were forced to take strike action on 30 June against the blatant robbery of their pensions by the Con-Dem government.

By-election

In Coventry's Lower Stoke ward, the effects of over 30 years of attacks and neglect by Tory and New Labour governments and councils alike are plain to see. In the ward sits the derelict 'desert' that up until 2008 was one of Coventry's last car factories. Nearby there is an empty building that was a council 'One Stop Shop' service until a few months ago.

They serve as a warning of a future of even higher unemployment, cuts in services, pay and conditions if the Con-Dems and Coventry's Labour-led council are allowed to continue to carry out their vicious attacks on ordinary people.

This is why Socialist Party member Rob McArdle, a postal worker who lives in the ward, will be standing as a 'Socialist Alternative' candidate in the Lower Stoke council by-election on 6 October.

Rob is the only candidate standing against all cuts to jobs, services and conditions and against privatisation. Instead, he will, if elected, work alongside Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist in demanding more jobs, homes and better services and conditions for workers and the people of Lower Stoke and Coventry itself.

Coventry: Socialist campaigner Dave Nellist narrowly loses

May 2012 local election reports

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Coventry rally: Campaigning against Labour's 'cuts-friendly bubble'

Coventry Socialist Party election rally

Come and hear TUSC candidates standing in your area

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Socialist Party:

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