While Labour support collapses what’s the alternative for the Left vote in #LocalElections2021

Many of our readers have stated they cannot vote for ‘Sir Keir Starmer’s New Labour‘ and have asked, rather than spoil their ballots is there an alternative Left vote?

This is where the new parties, the independents and those with a passion to serve their communities enter the race.

Of course, there are quite a few independents standing and many are in fact former Labour members that have recently been suspended by the Labour Party.

There are of course many Labour candidates that deserve your vote no matter what your opinion of the national party and its present course under Sir Keir Starmer. We don’t advocate our readers vote for any particular representatives. Always vote for the best person to represent you and your community.

However, there are many other Left-wingers standing too, socialist, Communist Workers Party members and over 330 TUSC candidates up and down the country, all participating in the local elections, Not to mention NIP and their whippet biting chunks out of Labour in the Hartlepool by-election.

Here is a list of some of the main candidates for today and a brief of what they stand for.

WORKERS PARTY GB

The Workers Party are fielding 27 candidates in the Local elections.

The Workers Party believes that the present economic crisis, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, has demonstrated that it is the working class who keep Britain ticking. They are a viable left-wing alternative that has made much ground over the last few years. Read more…

All Workers Party candidates stand for the principles enshrined in their ten-point programme. In the local elections in England and Wales, their candidates are also standing on the following programme, confirming the definite steps they will take to alleviate the distress of the British working class.

The Workers Party of Britain candidates, standing for election right across Britain in May, are some of the most normal people you will ever meet. But have the desire to help build better communities while fighting for a more equal and prosperous sociaty.

If elected to office, their members will struggle in their communities for:

1. Local opportunities to rebuild British industry and infrastructure and protect local businesses, jobs, services and our natural environment.
2. No increase in council tax until local authorities have lobbied and won from national government a policy of a Corona Tax of 5% on the wealth of those individuals with fortunes in excess of £10 million.
   Such a tax on the richest members of our society has the potential to generate more than £17bn in tax revenue from just 4,500 multimillionaires – more than enough revenue to protect jobs and services.
3. Decent, affordable, secure housing for all, the protection of social housing stock and the rights of tenants and small landlords in the face of aggressive monopolistic groupings.
4. Free school meals for all children at local authority schools and academies, paid for from the cash reserves built up since 2010 by local authorities, which now sit on billions of pounds’ worth of ringfenced reserves.
5. Protection of local healthcare services, including the provision of all necessary support services for the disabled and the elderly, with full support to enable families to look after their elderly, including nursing homes and sheltered accommodation for those in need of them, so that all workers are able to live full, dignified and meaningful lives.
6. Free travel for children on buses throughout Britain. Whilst children in London have benefitted from such a scheme for many years, the bus companies in most cities and towns, as well as in rural areas, hold a virtual monopoly on public transport.
   Free travel on buses will provide children with access to education, work, cultural and social opportunities, as well as alleviating some of the excessive burden upon parents’ incomes. Additionally, such a measure will help to reduce the emissions from cars on the roads. Many concessionary schemes are already part funded through taxpayers’ money, and full funding of such schemes will benefit local economies rather than hindering them. Rather than allowing the scheme in London to be abolished, we want to see it in place across Britain.

ALL FOR UNITY

With 56 candidates dotted across Scotland, the All For Unity Party, founded by the former Labour MP George Galloway, All for Unity will be running in the Scottish Holyrood Elections.

The party supports the union and hopes “to put an end to SNP rule and IndyRef2”

It wants to create a cross-party Government of National Unity with Scottish Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MSPs after the election.

They are urging people to vote for them on the regional list. Read more…

CPB: Communist Party

The CPB plans its biggest electoral campaign since the 1980s, it is fielding 16 candidates in both the Greater London Assembly and around England. Read more…

The Party has promised to campaign for working class, popular and socialist policies aimed at organising youth to fight for a future, including:

• Opposition to cuts – investing in public services and sustainable jobs in manufacturing.
• Implementing a Zero-Covid strategy.
• Restoring power to education authorities.
• Ending privatisation in the NHS, making the case for a pay rise for NHS workers and restoring publicly-provided social and elderly care.
• A concerted programme of investment in home-building – led by local councils.
• Investment in public transport – taking services back into accountable public ownership.
• The need for powers and resources to be devolved to national governments and the English regions; and
• asserting ‘progressive federalism’, to build working class unity at national and local government level, equipped with radical powers to redistribute wealth.

Scotland: CPB

Scotland’s CPB are running three bright young articulate Canadettes

Matthew Waddell, Daniel Lambe, Johnnie Hunter, all with a strong sense of working class values and the right attitude to help build a strong community Read more…

Scotland’s Communists are calling for:

• A real living wage for all workers of at least £10.32 per hour.
• A ban on zero hours and non-permanent contracts, day one employment rights and rights to equal treatment with permanent and full-time workers.
• A new government-backed apprenticeship system focused on real skills and real jobs with a real living wage and day one trade union and employment rights.
• A statutory right to an apprenticeship or a two-year work placement for all school leavers up to the age of 25, with a real living wage.
• An increase to the state pension entitlement.
• A real end to austerity; investment in jobs and public services.
• Cutting income tax on the lowest earners.
• A cut to VAT on essential goods and services.
• The replacement of council tax with local income, wealth, land and property taxes based clearly on the ability to pay.
• A Green New Deal and investment in useful infrastructure such as warm, well-insulated buildings and renewable energy.
• 100,000 new municipally-owned council houses to be built within the next 5 years, with a minimum supply of 20,000 new council houses per year afterwards.
• An immediate 30% reduction in all private sector rents across the board.
• We fully endorse the proposals of the Living Rent Tenant’s Manifesto and are calling for a new system of rent control.
• Amend the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1987 to provide homeless households immediate cash grants where local authorities fail to provide temporary accommodation.
• A new law placing a legal duty on the owners of long-term empty homes (including second homes) to i) make them available for secure tenants at an affordable rent or ii) sell them at an affordable price, with new compulsory purchase powers for local authorities to increase council and social housing stock.
• A fairer social security framework to replace Universal Credit.
• Fixed price public transport network cards with capped affordable prices, providing unlimited access to the local and national rail, bus and city transport networks.
• Nationalisation of rail and intercity bus services and local authority control of urban and rural bus services.
• Improved public transport links for rural and islands communities to enable people to live, work and study in their communities.
• The replacement of student loans with a guaranteed bursary for all students.

NIP: Northern Independence Party

Of course, there’s Hartlepool NIP are going for glory and fielding Thelma Walker former a Labour Party MP. NIP has made a big impact on social media the big question is can that huge following they have obtained be translated into votes.

With a recent poll putting them in third place in the Hartlepool by-election, the Northern Independence Party (NIP) is likely still some way from sending an MP to Westminster.

But having launched during the pandemic and with those limitations on organising, the party has found a credible candidate and hastily pulled together a working campaign.

This former Labour Yorkshire MP standing for the new Northern Independence Party against her old colleagues in a key by-election hopes her bid will send a message about the ‘managed neglect’ of the North.

The Northern Independence Party is a democratic socialist party, who are committed to uplifting the voices of our members. We were founded in 2020 to combat the injustice of the north/south divide. We stand opposed to all forms of ideology based on hatred and bigotry. Read more…

• To build a better, fairer and freer North for all.
• To campaign for a referendum on the independence of the North, to be decided by the people of the North.
• A green industrial rebirth.

TUSC: Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

TUSC is running a whopping 330 candidates. Their message is clear, it’s a fightback on Austerity and a campaign to fight the Tories against their continued attacks on the working class.

TUSC is contesting three regional lists and three constituencies in the Scottish parliament elections on May 6th; all five regional lists for the Welsh Senedd contest; the all-London list for the Greater London Authority assembly and three GLA constituencies; the city Mayoral contests in Bristol and Liverpool; and 285 council seats in 90 local authorities.

A complete list of TUSC candidates is available on https://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/442.pdf

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, NOT PRIVATE PROFIT

• Stop all privatisation, including the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Bring privatised public services, industries and utilities back into public ownership under democratic control, with compensation only on the basis of proven need.
• No to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and all secret austerity treaties.

NO CUTS – FOR QUALITY PUBLIC SERVICES

• Re-nationalise all rail, bus and ferry services to build an integrated, low-pollution public transport system. Take Royal Mail back into public ownership to guarantee our postal services. Bring prisons, probation, and all other parts of the justice system back into the public sector.
• For a high-quality, free National Health Service under democratic public ownership and control.
• Stop council estate sell-offs and build high-standard, eco-friendly, affordable council housing.
• No to academies and ‘free schools’. Good, free education for all, under democratic local authority control; student grants not fees.

JOBS, NOT HANDOUTS TO THE BANKERS AND BILLIONAIRES

• Bring banks and finance institutions into genuine public ownership under democratic control, instead of giving huge handouts to the very capitalists who caused the crisis.
• Tax the rich. For progressive tax on rich corporations and individuals and an end to tax avoidance.
• For massive investment in environmental projects.

EMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNION RIGHTS

• Repeal the anti-trade union laws, reverse attacks on facility time and the right to collect subs by check-off for trade unions, particularly in the public-sector.
• Support the TUC’s demand to increase the minimum wage to £10 an hour, and for it then to rise in line with inflation or wages, whichever is higher.
• Scrap zero hour contracts. Guaranteed hours and full employment rights for all. Cut the working week to 35 hours with no loss of pay.
• Invest to create and protect jobs, including for young people.
• Solidarity with workers taking action to defend jobs, conditions, pensions, public services and trade unions. Reinstate full trade union rights to prison officers.

PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT – STOP GLOBAL WARMING

• Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – otherwise climate change, caused by capitalism, will destroy us.
• Invest in publicly-owned and controlled renewable energy. Oppose fracking.
• Move to sustainable, low-pollution industry and farming – stop the pollution that is destroying our environment. No to profit-driven GM technology.
• Produce for need, not profit, and design goods for reuse and recycling.

DECENT PENSIONS AND BENEFITS

• Abolish the bedroom tax.
• Reverse cuts to benefits; for living benefits; end child poverty. Scrap benefit sanctions.
• Restore the pre-Thatcher real value of pensions. Reverse the increases imposed on the state retirement age, creating jobs for younger people.

STOP THE ATTACKS ON DISABLED PEOPLE

• Promote inclusive policies to enable disabled people to participate in, and have equal access to, education, employment, housing, transport and welfare provision.
• Support measures to ensure disabled people receive a level of income according to needs. Equal pay for equal work.

DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND JUSTICE

• Welcome diversity and oppose racism, fascism and discrimination. Defend the right to asylum, repeal the 2014 Immigration Act and all racist immigration controls.
• Ensure women have genuinely equal rights and pay.
• Full equality for LGBT people.
• Defend our liberties and make police and security democratically accountable.
• For the right to vote at 16.

SOLIDARITY NOT WAR

• No to imperialist wars and occupations!
• Justice for the Palestinians, lift the siege of Gaza, recognise the state of Palestine.
• No more spending on a new generation of nuclear weapons, huge aircraft carriers or irrelevant eurofighters – convert arms spending into socially useful products and services.
• An independent foreign policy, based on international solidarity – no more being a US poodle, no moves towards a capitalist, militarist United States of Europe. No to austerity and anti-working class policies, whether from the EU or Britain.

SOCIALISM

• For a democratic socialist society run in the interests of people, not millionaires. For bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment.

Remember today no matter what:

KEEP LEFT

#LocalElections2021 #HartlepoolByElection