Hannah Ponting, Liverpool Socialist Party
The official launch of Southport Community Independents was supported and attended by Jeremy Corbyn. Socialist Party members from Southport and Liverpool attended too.
Over 30 attendees bought the Socialist paper. We got a very receptive and friendly response when leafleting those attending.
We support the Southport Community Independents’s call for “education, healthcare, and peace at home and abroad”. We hope to organise for such demands nationally in a new mass workers’ party, with the backing of the trade unions. Trade union membership is over six million, making them the largest grassroots organisations in the country, with a huge potential for political mobilisation under socialist ideas.
In response to a written question regarding the need for a new mass workers’ party backed by the trade unions, Sean Halsall – the independent councillor who organised the event – echoed the importance of the trade unions in a new mass workers’ party, and emphasised the strength of trade union power.
When Jeremy Corbyn spoke, he rightfully condemned the far right’s scapegoating of marginalised communities, and expressed a clear anti-war stance, stating: “I don’t want conscripted soldiers from Ukraine killing conscripted soldiers from Russia”. We continue to encourage Corbyn to take steps towards helping to form a new mass workers’ party.
It is welcome that Jeremy Corbyn spoke. We now need now the trade unions and wider working class to have their own political voice. This is why Socialist Party members stand in elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), to provide a signpost to what is needed.
