Palestine Solidarity Campaign have asked candidates standing in the general election to give a 150-word statement saying how they would use the MP position to help stop the war in Gaza. Here Dave Nellist, Trade Unionist and Socialist Party candidate in Coventry East and former Militant-supporting MP, replies:
“I would use the position of MP and the platform it gives to support the campaign for the end of Israel’s war on Palestine and its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
I believe trade unions in Britain need to step up their involvement in the movement to end the war by mobilising more members to attend mass demos and calling for workers’ sanctions to block the flow of arms and supplies from Britain to the Israeli military.
Major firms in the defence industry should be publicly owned and democratically planned to develop alternative, socially useful production to replace production for war.
Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak both back imperialism in the Middle East and the bosses here in Britain. I believe in workers’ unity between ordinary Palestinians and ordinary Israelis and socialism to secure a permanent end to national conflict and oppression with guaranteed rights for all.”
