Join the socialists
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge
Cameron can’t rely on Tory voters alone to win the EU referendum. Only 24% of the electorate backed his party in the general election and most of them aren’t in favour of staying in the EU. So he wrote an article in the Mirror newspaper in a bid to link his Remain campaign to the issues that concern working class people.
“We’re fighting for jobs,” he writes. But his governments have brought the austerity axe down on one million public sector workers! As one letter to the Mirror the following day asked, “is he a liar or a fool, or does he think we are all fools?” We say: No cuts!
Posh boy Cameron has consistently proved that he is in power to represent the bosses and the bankers.
It was only when the Tata steel workers, taking up the slogan of the Socialist Party, demanded nationalisation to save the steel industry that the Tories even began to contemplate partial nationalisation. We call for 100% nationalisation of the steel industry under democratic working class control.
Cameron writes that it’s the “poorest and the most vulnerable” who are hit hardest by economic recession. But a third of the population were thrust into poverty between 2011 and 2014 under his watch. Among the one million people forced to seek support from food banks it’s cuts to benefits that have been the major factor in this Cameron-made epidemic of desperation. We say: Tories out!
However, the Brexiteers are competing with Cameron in the ‘Hypocrisy Olympics’. Iain Duncan Smith, former work and pensions minister, has described the EU as a force for ‘social injustice’. It is – but so is he. Or has he forgotten introducing the ‘bedroom tax’? His tenure was one of unrelenting attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable.
The Socialist Party campaigns for an exit from the Employers’ Union. In or out of the EU, working class people have to fight to defend our jobs, homes and services. But as another Mirror letter says: “A Brexit victory gets rid of Cameron and Osborne in one fell swoop. That really would see Britain stronger, safer and better off.”
The Socialist Party is fighting for a Leave vote in the EU referendum but our campaign has nothing in common with right-wingers like Ukip’s Farage and Boris Johnson’s Tories. We seek to build an independent socialist campaign for withdrawal, based on solidarity with working class people across Europe.
In fact our starting point is always to develop a strategy that defends working class people and fights to end the capitalist profit system, which creates poverty, inequality and exploitation.
That’s why we always seek to unite the working class around a socialist programme and in action. Working class struggle is the only motor of improvements for the majority – not the EU.
In or out of the EU, as long as capitalism exists, we fight on – and we fight for socialism. A socialist society is needed, through planning the use of the world’s enormous wealth and resources, to provide decent jobs, homes and services for everyone which neither the EU nor the Tories can or will.
For example, in Europe there are an estimated eleven million empty homes – enough for all the homeless and the refugees seeking shelter. But capitalism, blindly driven by profit and the ‘free market’, is incapable of providing homes or the basics of a decent and dignified life for the majority.
If you agree with the ideas that you read in this paper, please join us in the fight for socialism.
- socialistparty.org.uk/join
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TUSC 20 city tour
- Socialist case against the EU
- Bristol: Tuesday 31 May, 7.30pm at YHA Youth Hostel, 14 Narrow Quay, BS1 4QA
- Cardiff: Thursday 9 June, 7.30pm at Angel Hotel, Castle Street, CF10 1SZ
- Derby: Wednesday 18 May, 7.30pm at Derby Quad, Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, DE1 3AS
- Gateshead: Wednesday 25 May, 7.30pm, Gateshead Railway Club, 15 Wellington Street, NE8 2AJ
- Leeds: Tuesday 7 June, 7pm at Dennison Hall WMC, Pinfold Lane, Armley, LS12 3LL
- Leicester: Thursday 19 May, 7pm at Secular Hall, 75 Humberstone Gate, City Centre, LE1 1WB
- Liverpool: Tuesday 14 June, 7.30pm at Casa, 29 Hope Street, L1 9BQ
- London: Thursday 2 June, 7.30pm at Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square, W1T 6AQ
- Salford: Tuesday 7 June, 7pm at Royal Oak, Barton Lane, Eccles, M30 0EN
- Sheffield: Tuesday 21 June, 7.30pm at Central United Reform Church, Chapel Walk, Norfolk Street, S1 2JB
- Warrington: Wednesday 15 June at 7pm, Kings Head, 40 Winwick Street, WA2 7TU
- York: Monday 20 June, 7.30pm at New York Club, 22-26 Blossom Street, YO24 1AJ
- Details tbc for Birmingham (1 June), Coventry (2 June), Southampton (7 June), Stoke (16 June) and other cities see www.tusc.org.uk/events