OUR RECORD
Britain is a rich country, the fifth largest economy in the world. When the bosses says they have to close wards at Whipps Cross or that a library has to close, what they mean is that they are not prepared to spend their profits on services that improve the lives of the working class. Our politics fight for every local resource, big or small and to defend and hold onto the gains made by previous generations.
But it doesn’t all go the bosses’ way! Waltham Forest Socialist Party members organised one of the first demonstrations against the poll tax, then in Militant Labour. That was a mass struggle which was based on working class people and won.
Save our NHS
The Socialist Party initiated the ‘Save our NHS’ campaign which organised the first protest march to save Whipps Cross in 2006. And we’ve campaigned relentlessly since then at Whipps Cross and across the borough. Socialist Party member, Len Hockey is well known for leading and winning disputes at that hospital. In 2006 workers at the hospital won an important pay rise for domestics and porters.
No to war, terror and racism
The Socialist Party campaigned against war and occupation in Iraq. We assisted International Socialist Resistance (ISR) in organising a walkout of school and college students so young people could make their voices heard. When war was announced in 2003 Nancy Taaffe, a library worker and Unison rep, walked out of her workplace and joined 3,000 young people to protest against carnage that would unfold across the Middle East. She was later disciplined and reprimanded.
For education for all
We campaigned at schools and colleges all over the borough against the introduction of tuition fees and top-up fees and continue to support Socialist Students societies and the Campaign to Defeat Fees. We were involved in the campaign against the privatisation of education services to EduAction and continue to campaign against library cuts and closures.
Nancy Taaffe in Unison has spoken out against the selling-off and closure of public buildings to private profiteers and corporate interests. Look at the land at the top of the market, the cinema, Leyton Municipal offices, Chingford Municipal offices, the assembly hall, Lloyd Park theatre and Ross Wyld Hall. All these buildings housed services that belonged to the people. We opposed the big project and the selling-off of these buildings and the land grab of the property developers.
Last year we saw a magnificent campaign by the supporters of the William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum against cuts, reduction in opening hours and a corporate agenda to commercialise the service. We support the Re-open James Street Library Group who successfully organised a family fun and protest day before Christmas.
Socialist Party members in libraries held a stall outside Walthamstow Library when they re-opened it (with less books) and closed James Street whilst they thought nobody was looking. We made a film of our protest and it is on our website.
For public services and decent working conditions
When postal workers went on strike we supported them 100%. We brought early morning solidarity to the picket lines but also promoted their struggle amongst working-class people in the borough on our stalls in the town square. In 2004 we organised a demonstration against council tax rises and council cuts. In 2007 we were part of the victorious campaign of school catering workers. The council was forced to abandon its plans to abolish all school meals in the borough when they faced the confident campaign of school catering workers, trade unionists, parents, teachers and socialists.
The start of 2008 has seen the bin workers showing their strength in anger against the ‘single status agreement’ which will mean pay cuts and job cuts at the council. Socialist Party members in Unison, NUT and Unite unions have campaigned for this action to be built upon. After years of failing to pay women equally, Waltham Forest council claims to be implementing ’single status’ – equal pay – but instead they are stealing from some groups of workers – to pay other groups. We demand equal pay for all and a living minimum wage. No to job cuts, pay cuts or cuts in services.
We need to bring all of these campaigns together. Unity is strength!
What we think should be done and what we would do
NO CUTS!
NO PRIVATISATION!
BUILD A FIGHTBACK TO DEFEND OUR JOBS AND SERVICES!
If a group of socialists got elected our representatives would stand on a worker’s wage. This one principal means that our representatives would not financially remove themselves from the conditions and experience of the people they represent. None of this granting themselves 30% pay increases and then closing a library which only costs £70,000 a year to keep open. All of the main three parties are swathed in sleaze, paying family members to do nothing, claiming for mortgages that don’t exist, not to mention cash for honours and all the rest.
Millions have been cut from local government over the years under Tories and New Labour. This year central government is proposing an increase of 1% while inflation is over 4%. That means we’re getting a cut! We would challenge central government to give Waltham Forest the money that has been stolen from us. This would mean mobilising local people, like we did on school meals, and setting a budget that is weighed in favour of the working class. We would say, stop spending money on the war, stop giving tax cuts to big business (many of whom pay less tax than their cleaners) and bailing out corrupt big share holders and spend the money on us and the services we use.
People in Waltham Forest should have a say in how their services are run and where the money is spent. With a plan for using the money where it is needed we could re-open James Street library; we could build a park at the top of the market (or some other community facility) and re-open the theatres and assembly and public halls for hire that have been closed or privatised by this council. We would immediately take back the privatised Ascham homes into public democratic control and demand the right to build council homes. We would reverse the privatisation of council homes. We would recruit more staff for our arts and library provision and re-open all the youth clubs with the full quota of youth workers. It seems like a dream but this is what our fore-mothers and -fathers fought for and won in many respects after the last war.
The money is there!
It is not a lack of wealth that has resulted in years of cuts. According to Forbes magazine there were 946 billionaires in the world in 2007, and their total wealth was an incredible $3.5 trillion. Britain is home to 54 of those billionaires. If they paid even the measly 40% tax that New Labour asks for £50 billion would have found its way into the states coffers. Instead they paid just £14.7 million in tax. Needless to say no action has been taken against them. Even the miniscule attempts to tax rich non-doms was dropped by Brown and his Darling chancellor. Their policies, like all the mainstream parties, are dictated by the interests of the big corporations that dominate the British economy.
Big business in the 21st century is driven more completely than ever by the short-term desire for the maximum possible profits – so for them public services can never be too paltry, or wages too low – because the less we have, the more profits they make.
So while the government has no problem spending money (for example, Trident II is predicted to cost £76 billion and current costs for the invasion and occupation of Iraq are running at £5 million a day) it does everything it can to resist spending money on improving our living conditions – because it is not in the interests of big business. They found over £50 billion to shore up Northern Rock and tell young people they have to get into enormous debt to get an education.
This is the brutal logic of the system we live under, capitalism.
As you can see, we don’t accept that logic. We stand for socialism, a society planned for human need and not private greed. The Socialist Party is fighting for every possible improvement in working-class people’s lives, but we recognise that under this profit-hungry capitalist system, we will always face a constant struggle to defend our living conditions. That is why we are fighting for socialist change.
We don’t want the kind of regimes that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which, while they were based on a planned economy, were completely undemocratic.
Socialism can only work with the fullest democracy. We want real socialism – a democratic society and economy run to meet the needs of all instead of the profits of a few. Based on co-operation and equality, socialism would lay the basis for an end to poverty and all forms of discrimination and oppression. Join the Socialist Party.
If you look around and are fed-up with the careerist politicians and the constant betrayals, join us. If you look around and are horrified by the poverty, inequality and exploitation that ravage humanity, join us. If you look around and see an uncertain future with threats to our planet from big business and big farming, join us. If you look around and think there must be something better, get active, get organised, get socialist!
Join Waltham Forest Socialist Party
Don’t just take our word – check out our record
What happened in Liverpool?
In the 1980s Liverpool councillors, led by members of the Militant (the precursor of the Socialist Party), refused to make cuts in jobs and services or to raise the rates beyond a certain level. Instead they demanded back several years’ worth of under-funding from the Thatcher regime. In addition to this, they improved services by developing 17 new community comprehensive schools, nursery schools, sports centres and parks.
Most of all, they built over 5,000 new council homes and created thousands of jobs. They also won some £60 million in extra funds from Thatcher’s government through their fight.
Liverpool could have, alongside the striking miners, beaten Thatcher but the political bankruptcy of the Labour leadership at the time led to that council, along with Lambeth council in London becoming isolated. Eventually 47 councillors were surcharged hundreds of thousands of pounds and undemocratically removed from office.
We need a mass working class party to stand up to the bosses
But the Labour Party has clearly shown through privatisation, cuts and war that it is no longer a party of the working class. That’s why we say the trade unions affiliated to New Labour need to break the link – not one more penny to the party that has been riding roughshod over our public services. But we don’t want non-political trade unionism; working-class people need a political voice. Currently there is no party on a mass scale that can offer that voice. The big three – New Labour, Liberal and Tory – all support the same privatisation policies for our health and other services. We call for the creation of a new party of a totally different character to the bosses’ parties – a mass party that stands on the side of workers, not the bosses. Along with other socialists, we launched the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party in 2006. See www.cnwp.org.uk for more information and to get involved.
The Socialist Party is part of a socialist international organisation called the Committee for a Workers’ International. We have members in over forty countries around the world from Brazil to Belgium, Sweden to Sri Lanka, the US, Nigeria and Venezuela. We believe that the struggle to change the world has to be international.
