Our demands

Contents

Jobs and work

  • A range of policies to achieve full employment, including the introduction of a maximum 35-hour week without loss of pay, a massive increase in public spending in healthcare, housing, education, childcare, leisure and community facilities.
  • Implementing the trade union demand for a £5 an hour minimum wage as a step towards £7.50 an hour or £300 a week minimum income (based on the European Decency Threshold). No exemptions. For an annual increase in the minimum wage, linked to average earnings.
  • For the right to decent benefits, training or a job without compulsion.
  • Employment protection rights for all from day one of employment.
  • Scrapping the anti-trade union laws. Trade unions to be democratically controlled by their members. Full-time officials should be regularly elected and receive the wage of an average worker.
  • Abolish big-business secrets. Open the books. Let the workers know where all the massive profits, tax rebates and subsidies have gone. No transfers of jobs or production without the agreement of the workers.
  • All factories and plant threatened with closure to be brought into public ownership and used for socially-useful production, with compensation only on the basis of proven need.

Public services

  • No to the fat cats. Renationalise the privatised utilities under democratic working-class control.
  • An immediate £50 a week increase in the pension as a step towards a living pension for all pensioners. Annual increases to be linked to average earnings.
  • Free, good-quality education from the nursery to university. A living grant for all students. Abolish the fees now!
  • Rebuild the National Health Service, free at the point of use and under democratic control.
  • Decent housing with affordable rents. End the housing crisis.
  • Major investment into a cheap, accessible, integrated public transport system that meets the needs of the people and the environment.

The environment and food

  • A socialist plan for energy production, designed to guarantee cheap and safe energy for all whilst protecting the environment. Such a plan should be worked out by representatives from workers in the energy sector, scientists, community and environmental organisations. The aim would be to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with massive investment into renewable energy – such as wind, solar and geothermal (extracting heat from the earth’s interior) – sources.
  • Agribusiness, including the pharmaceutical companies, to be taken into public ownership. For a food processing and retail industry under workers’ control to ensure that standards are set by consumers, farm workers and small farmers.

Rights

  • The scrapping of the Asylum and Immigration Act and all other racist laws.
  • Defend abortion rights. For a woman’s right to choose when and whether to have children.
  • An end to police harassment. For the abolition of the Criminal Justice Act. Scrap Jack Straw’s so-called ‘Terrorism’ Act. No curtailment of jury trials.
  • An end to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality, disability and all forms of prejudice.

International and the military

  • Abolish third world debt. For the neo-colonial countries to refuse to pay.
  • Abolish the IMF and the World Bank.
  • Scrap all nuclear weapons. For an immediate and drastic cut in military spending worldwide. A global campaign against chemical and biological weapons.
  • Total opposition to Nato. No to a European army.

Fight for socialist change

  • For a socialist confederation of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
  • For solidarity of the European working class. Oppose the bosses’ European Union. No to the euro. For a socialist Europe.
  • Take into public ownership the top 150 companies, banks and building societies that dominate the economy, under democratic working-class control and management. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need.
  • Campaign to form a new mass party of the working class.
  • An end to the rule of profit. For a socialist plan of production. For a socialist society and economy run to meet the needs of all whilst protecting our environment.