Fund our services, not their wars

Socialist Party National Committee member and Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition national chairperson Dave Nellist will run in a by-election in St Michael’s ward, Coventry, on 10 October.

When Dave was a socialist MP, he refused to take an MP’s huge salary. Instead, he took the same wage as a local skilled factory worker – living on a worker’s wage. This sharply contrasts with today’s Labour leaders, who accept tens of thousands of pounds of clothes and holidays from wealthy donors.

Labour’s latest cuts are provoking an angry response on the doorsteps. It’s common to hear people complain that we are paying more and more for less and less.

Lights are now switched off in Coventry at night, making streets less safe – yet the council is locked into a 25-year, £250 million private finance scheme, still paying for switched-off lights.

Gas and electricity prices have increased again, yet most pensioners’ winter fuel allowances have been scrapped. Benefit caps remain, and Keir Starmer suspended the local Labour MP because she opposed them.

And now, as part of £20 million in cuts this year, Labour in Coventry, supported by the two Green councillors, will close four local libraries and replace them with smaller units with fewer books, computers, and staff. Keir Starmer’s son used a posh apartment in Covent Garden, allegedly worth £18 million, to revise for his GCSEs, while working-class youth in Coventry will be squeezed in like battery hens to do their studying.

Dave Nellist says: “No major party in Britain defends working people against austerity and fights for a socialist foreign policy based on international working-class solidarity. We must build a new party that will. However, to have a firm base, that new party needs to be rooted in the organisations and communities of the working class.”

Dave promises that if re-elected as a city councillor he would use the platform to campaign to end Israel’s war on Palestine and Lebanon and to end the council’s pension scheme being invested in war. “I would fight to end all arms sales to Israel and help build links between the ordinary people of Palestine, Lebanon and Israel”, he says.

Dave has previously represented the same ward as a Labour MP and Socialist Party city councillor for 24 years. He is the most principled and experienced challenger to Labour in this ward.

If you can help our campaign or want to see our election leaflets, go to linktr.ee/Dave4StMichaels

Coventry Socialist Party