Waltham Forest, London: How dare they

This is going to be a hard fight. How dare the Labour council build blocks in the middle of Priory Court estate, on the grass that kids play basketball and where people can sit on hot days.

On 16 February, the Socialist Party knocked doors on Priory Court to oppose this. We gave our leaflet out – calling socialists to replace the London mayor and assembly when they’re up for election in May – and sold the Socialist.

The Socialist Party fought the mass stock transfer of council estates to arms-length companies in the 1990s and 2000s.

We told the Labour council it was a betrayal. These homes were hived off on mass under a Blairite Labour government and a mixture of Lib Dem and Labour councils.

We call for them all to be brought back to the council, massively invested in and democratically run by the working class.

  • No to the ‘infills’ building on every scrap of public space
  • No to Sadiq Khan’s gentrification London Plan
  • Socialists into City Hall
Nancy Taaffe
Selling the Socialist in Leicester, 13.2.20, photo by Leicester Socialist Party

Selling the Socialist in Leicester, 13.2.20, photo by Leicester Socialist Party   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Leicester: From dawn till dusk

We were out from dawn till dusk spreading socialist ideas on 13 February. At 8am we were leafletting city council employees and service users.

We are building for a lobby of the Labour council’s budget-setting meeting on 19 Feb. We followed this up with a tour of the city’s workplaces.

We covered 18 workplaces. We handed out leaflets for both the lobby and a Socialist Party public meeting discussing the role of trade unions.

Being bold pays off, we went in to ask for union members to give our leaflets to. The security guards take our material every time.

In the afternoon the latest edition of the Socialist was delivered, hot off the press. We took it to the Royal Mail depot.

We gave solidarity to the Communication Workers Union (CWU) in their dispute against redundancy plans. We invited them to speak at our meeting.

Finally we ended up at De Montfort University. We had a Socialist Students stall and meeting, building support for the University and College Union (UCU) strike (see pages 6-7).

This will be the first strike De Montfort UCU has taken in years. Both students and union reps were at our meeting.

The students made plans to promote support for the strike. UCU invited everyone to a placard-making session.

Socialists aim to link workers and students together in action.

Leicester Socialist Party meeting – Fighting austerity and anti-trade union laws: What it the role of trade unions today? Saturday 22 February, 2pm, Brite Centre, Braunstone Avenue, Leicester LE3 1LE.

Tessa Warrington

This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 19 February 2020 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.