A real pay rise, fully funded services

And a party to fight for it

Schools and hospitals crumbling. Young people without a future. Sick people without adequate care. Health workers and educators forced out under relentless stress, pressure and shrinking pay packets.

All consequences of over a decade of Tory rule.

Asked to give any examples of success, Tory politicians can only lie. Something that for them is as easy as breathing. They are hated, and for good reason.

The closer a general election gets, the greater the desire from most working-class people to be rid of them. But also, the more pressing the question: What can be expected from a Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer?

The answers from the Labour frontbench so far include: real-terms pay cuts for doctors and teachers, no more promise of free education, no rent controls, no free childcare, and scrapping the planned investment fund to tackle climate change.

All pledges made to the capitalist class to demonstrate Labour will govern in their interests and not those of working-class people.

For their part, the bosses are piling all the pressure they can on Starmer and his frontbenchers. Long lunches, trips to Davos and financial donations have been gratefully received.

As much as the Labour leadership might try to ignore the hundreds of thousands taking part in the strike wave, now over a year old and showing no sign of stopping, working-class pressure has to be applied on Labour by the trade unions.

Approaching a general election, what an effect the unions themselves backing candidates independently of Labour, to fight for real pay rises and fully funded services, would have. Such a list of union-backed candidates could include Jeremy Corbyn and others barred from standing, alongside trade unionists and campaigners.

Over 100,000 trade unionists will march through Durham at the annual Miners’ Gala on Saturday 8 July. Our class, the working class, needs its own mass party, not one that takes trade union money and backs the bosses’ side.

We need a new mass workers’ party, armed with a socialist programme to take the vast hoarded wealth off the capitalists, nationalise the banks and big business under democratic workers’ control and management, and provide us with decent pay, services, homes, and a future for all.