Two hundred and forty candidates have been approved to stand on behalf of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in May’s local elections after the latest meeting of the TUSC all-Britain steering committee on March 13th. 

The candidates will be contesting four constituency seats for the Greater London Authority, the directly-elected Salford city mayor, and council wards in 44 first or second-tier local authorities – just over 40% of the 105 local councils with elections this year.

And there’s still time for more trade unionists, anti-cuts community campaigners, stop the war on Gaza protesters, and socialists from different parties or none, to join what will be the biggest working class left-of-Labour challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s Tory-lite New Labour party in May.   

The final steering committee meeting to approve candidate applications will take place just before Easter, with completed application forms needing to be received by the TUSC National Election Agent – Clive Heemskerk, at [email protected] – by Saturday 23rd March in order to be placed on the agenda.

The application form to be a TUSC council candidate can be downloaded at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2024-Application-form-Cllr.docx (if you are having difficulty opening this link, try copying it into your browser). 

There is also available an explanatory TUSC Guide for Election Candidates and Agents on the resources page, at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/TUSC-Guide-for-Candidates-Agents-2024.pdf and a list of the 105 councils where there are elections in May at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2024-Elections-Directory.pdf. 

The TUSC core policies for the local elections, the minimum policy commitments expected from TUSC candidates, can be found at https://www.tusc.org.uk/20023/13-01-2024/tuscs-core-policy-platform-for-the-may-2024-local-elections-2/. 

The March 13th TUSC steering committee, meeting just two weeks after the Rochdale by-election, discussed a number of other important matters too, including a report on their future plans from a representative of the Workers Party of Britain, who attend committee meetings as observers.  Further reports on the decisions made will be published here soon. 

But in the meantime, the full list of council candidates agreed so far can be found at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Candidates-list-to-24-03-13.pdf