All Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates pledge to refuse to implement Tory cuts in the council chambers, to use councils’ powers to set no-cuts, needs-based budgets, and build mass campaigns to win back the resources taken from communities by over a decade of austerity.
In 260 local election contests, and in Leicester and Mansfield where TUSC candidates are standing for mayor, workers and young people have a chance to vote for a 100% anti-austerity socialist candidate. Socialist Party members are taking part in these campaigns alongside other trade unionists, community campaigners, students and more.
Find the TUSC core polices and the full list of TUSC candidates at www.tusc.org.uk. See if you can vote for one of the 260 candidates, and find a local election challenge which you can help take part in.
Why I’m standing: For those angry at the council’s inactions
Anthony Bracuti, Leeds Socialist Party
Over the last 13 years of the Tories in power in Westminster, Leeds city council’s Labour majority has acted as Tories in red ties. In that time we’ve had school funding pulled, cuts to road maintenance, questionable housing developments, rubbish piling high, rat epidemics, closing of public swimming pools, and any other number of cost-cutting measures imposed by a Labour council at the request of a Tory government.
We’ve also had a Labour council ignore the concerns of unions as taxi ranks get destroyed, bin workers get their wages slashed, and other council workers have their working conditions stripped away.
I’m a student at the University of Leeds and a member of the University and Colleges Union (UCU). The word on the street in my council ward is anger. Anger at the Tories for abusing the state for the benefit of their pals. Anger at the Labour Party for providing no resistance whatsoever. Anger at the landlords that charge through the nose, while providing squalor to live in, at the waste piling up in our streets, and the rats. Anger at the unwanted roadblocks and the pothole-ridden roads. And anger at the council for not dealing with these issues. And yet council tax goes up again!
My friends, neighbours, and colleagues are angry. I’m angry. That’s why I go out onto the pickets, both of my own union, and others in the area.
And that’s why I’ve decided to run against the incumbent Labour councillor in Leeds. With enough well-placed and well-directed anger, maybe we can make a difference.
I’m a striking teacher and I’m standing for TUSC
Alex Moore, District Secretary Plymouth National Education Union (NEU) (personal capacity)
I am a teacher and Secretary of Plymouth NEU. We have been striking for a fully funded inflation-proof pay rise because we know school budgets are so stretched after over a decade of underfunding.
Here in Plymouth, both Tory and Labour administrations have passed on £110 million of cuts to local services since 2014. This year alone, Plymouth schools face cuts of £4.5 million (about £150 per child). Special Needs (SEND) places and Teaching Assistants are often the first to be cut. Parents of SEND children are furious that there are not enough places.
We need councillors who will lead a fight to fully fund children’s services and we need more than just words. Plymouth Council has £124 million held in reserves. Some of this could be used to stop cuts immediately while mobilising our community in a mass campaign to win the funding we need for future generations.
Every child deserves a place in a nursery. Every child deserves a free school meal. Every child deserves a place in a school that meets their needs.
Why I’m standing: there is a working-class alternative
Joelle Donaldson, Leeds Socialist Party and RMT member
It has been a difficult period for workers, students and young people. Since 2008, successive governments have dragged people through crisis after crisis, each time taking more from the underprivileged in society. The system we live under is failing and this is forcing the bosses to ramp up their war on the masses. As a worker on the railway and RMT member, I have witnessed the forefront of these attacks as billionaire bosses desperately seek to defeat working-class solidarity. And those who have already been cut to the bone – junior doctors, nurses, care workers, civil service workers, bus drivers and many others – are being told to endure yet another pay cut. As if 15 years of stagnant wages and cuts to public services weren’t already enough.
In this position there is not much to be done but to fight back. The working class is demonstrating its ability to fight and win improvements on pay and conditions, which has sparked fear in the capitalists. But it is my belief in the ability of the working class to secure good housing, childcare, health services and so much more that I am standing as a Socialist Party member as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist (TUSC). The Labour Party is no longer a party of the working class, instead choosing to position itself as a more competent and less regressive version of the Tories.
I feel that to simply reverse the damage done by the Tories would be too small an ambition, yet this is not even close to what is being offered by Labour. We must go further if we are to meet the coming environmental and economic challenges. My aim in standing is to help build a new democratic vehicle for workers to assert their rights to fair living conditions and a future defined by peace instead of catastrophe.
