I was always "Socialist minded" from my late
teens. I took part in CND marches. I had worked with the homeless in London
aged 19 so had seen the results of capitalism at the sharp end. I used to get
mad every time I saw Maggie Thatcher on the telly but then kick myself for
doing nothing!
Rob Windsor, Socialist Party councillor, Coventry
The biggest push towards joining a party was when I saw the
contrast between policing at a CND mass trespass at the Trident base in
Scotland, then under construction, and that used at the Wapping dispute over
the sacking of 5,000 printers.
The former was low key, the latter the most brutal I had
ever seen. I remember a horse charge and saw this mounted police officer peel
an old guy off some railings with a long riot shield. Then a "snatch
squad" of about six with short truncheons beat him to within an inch of
his life.
It was then that I realised that a class war was going on
and the lengths that the privileged would go to defend their interests. I
became a Militant supporter (the forerunner of the Socialist Party) in 1987
after the successful campaign to get Dave Nellist, then a Labour MP, re-elected
to Parliament.
Militant
Of all the groups on the Left, Militant was the most
serious and disciplined. When something was fully discussed and decided, it got
done. Within two years, I was playing a leading role in building the anti-poll
tax campaign that beat Thatcher and her tax.
I am now one of three Socialist Party councillors in
Coventry. Whilst there are only three of us we strive to show an alternative
way of organising society in everything we do.
We have played a full part in the mass anti-war movement
and set up a special council meeting to discuss the war, one of the few
councils in Western Europe to do so.
A lot of our work involves fighting for people who the
anti-war movement hasn’t touched – but the cost of the war certainly has! Every
day we battle for funding for areas where local people are told that they can’t
have even a few thousand quid for improvements – yet the £6.5 billion cost of
war is made to seem like small change!
Fighting for people
We have fought housing privatisation and the break up of
working class communities so that developers can profit from land deals. We got
the council to oppose top-up fees. We saved council jobs, and through our
determination to oppose at all costs, forced the council to put an extra £1
million into adult social services.
We work on individual issues and community campaigns every
day of the week. Even one of Blair’s favourite think-tanks recognised us as
good local representatives.
But we are not like this because we are nice individuals or
specially gifted.
It is because we are members of a party with firm ideas
about transforming society so that working people own and control the wealth
created; a party that doesn’t allow its representatives to have lavish
lifestyles way above those that we represent. We’re there to improve the lives
of working people – not our bank balances.
The Socialist Party doesn’t stop at just complaining about
capitalist society but strives every day to change it. In trades unions, in
local areas, in mass campaigns like the anti-war movement, amongst the workers
and youth. It is well worth joining.
