Days before the outrageous decision of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) to bar Jeremy Corbyn from standing for the party again, 19 Leicester councillors were informed that they too were no longer eligible to stand as Labour candidates, in this case in the upcoming local elections on May 4th.

Another councillor, Gary O’Donnell, had already left Labour after voting against the cuts budget proposed by the city’s right-wing Labour mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, and a huge hike in district heating charges on a number of estates. 

Not all of the 19 councillors now excluded by the national Labour Party have by any means adopted the same anti-austerity stance, even within the Labour Group of councillors.  Old scores between different groups of right-wingers are also being settled in this purge.  But what is clear is that, in the name of allegedly ‘cleaning up the party’, even the mildest left-wing dissenting voices have now been silenced.

In this situation the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee has offered a hand of solidarity to the debarred councillors, sending them a letter following our meeting on March 22nd.  In particular, as the letter explains, offering them a way to overcome the problem they faced, if they still wished to stand in May’s election, of how best they could describe their position on the ballot paper.

The full text of the letter is published below:

To: The Leicester Labour councillors debarred from standing by the national party in May’s local elections

Dear comrades,

The highly undemocratic decision to remove you, council candidates selected by the local party in Leicester, just weeks before the elections, and impose new nationally-chosen candidates, is a new low by the top-down ‘New Blairites’ who are now running the party under Keir Starmer’s leadership.  We understand that, with just over two weeks before the deadline to stand in this year’s local elections, twenty of you have been told that you have been removed as Labour candidates.

In this outrageous situation, we are writing on behalf of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) All-Britain Steering Committee to offer what assistance we can.  You will, of course, be discussing the way forward among yourselves and we were very pleased to hear that a number of you have publicly stated that you will be contesting the elections regardless. 

Councillors can play a very important role in defending their communities and fighting against austerity.  It can be guaranteed that councillors imposed by Sir Keir Starmer will not take this approach, but will instead meekly succumb to the pressure from Tory central government to inflict more misery on the people of Leicester. That a number of you have already taken the decision to stand, we hope on a clear programme of opposing austerity and cuts to services, is to be commended.

We also recognise that those of you who do take this step will be discussing what description and emblem identifier will appear next to your names on the ballot paper.  As you will know, with the election six weeks away, it is too late to register a new party, electoral name or ballot paper emblem with the Electoral Commission for May 4th.  Of course, it is still possible to stand under the description ‘Independent’, but there are many drawbacks to this.

Firstly, it does mean appearing with no emblem, on a ballot paper that in three-seat wards will have a dozen or more names including, no doubt, others appearing as ‘Independent’.  And, of course, ‘Independent’ does not provide any political description of a candidate or give any indication of where they stand, for example, on the new austerity agenda facing local government.

The Independent Group in the Local Government Association claim that there are currently approximately 2,300 ‘independent’ or ‘local party’ councillors – not far behind the Liberal Democrats – leading 30 or so councils in England and Wales.  However, the ‘independent’ description covers a huge variety of political views, with not a few being former UKIPers or Brexit Party members. 

TUSC offers a means to overcome the problem of how to differentiate genuinely independent candidates fighting for working class people and their communities from the many right-wing so-called ‘independents’. 

TUSC is a coalition which was initially founded in 2010 with the involvement of the late Bob Crow, then general secretary of the RMT transport workers’ union, to fight for steps towards a new vehicle to politically represent the working class, which had been abandoned by Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’.  It is so constituted that independent community campaigners, trade unionists, and socialists can stand in elections against pro-austerity establishment politicians and be clearly identified as such, with a number of electoral descriptions and emblems available to use on the ballot paper.  The descriptions include, ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Candidate’ and ‘Trade Unionists and Socialists against Cuts’, as well as the ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’ name.

To make use of this TUSC ‘umbrella’ in the forthcoming local elections there is just one requirement: that candidates agree to our core anti-cuts policies for these elections, ‘For a Socialist Response to the Cost of Living Crisis’. The policies are outlined here: https://www.tusc.org.uk/18435/07-03-2023/tuscs-core-policy-platform-for-the-may-2023-local-elections/. They focus in particular on fighting for emergency measures to ensure that no one is hungry, homeless or cold.

If you are in agreement with these basic socialist policies we would like to propose offering you the use of our electoral descriptions and emblems.  Making use of this offer would leave you completely free to produce your own campaign material without any constraints from the TUSC steering committee, as is the case for all candidates who stand using a TUSC description.  So far we know of over 260 who are planning to do so on 4th May.

While making use of our registration with the Electoral Commission for the May 4th election would not require getting involved with TUSC in any other way, you would of course be welcome to do so.  We know that some of you have been in discussion with local TUSC activists (and we have included our prospective Mayoral candidate Steve Score in this mailing).  Nationally the TUSC steering committee involves constituent organisations, plus members of trade union national executives including Unison, the NEU, NAPO, BFAWU, POA, UCU and Unite, and individual socialists.  When there have been supportive councillors in first or second tier authorities – as there was at one stage from Leicester, but also at different times in Southampton, Preston, Hull, Harrow, Walsall and Warrington – they have also had representation on the all-Britain committee, which operates on a consensus basis (see How TUSC Functions at https://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/482.pdf).

We look forward to discussing further with you.

Yours in solidarity,

Dave Nellist

TUSC National Chairperson

Former Labour MP 1983-1992

Clive Heemskerk

TUSC National Election Agent