The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) warmly welcomes the decisive re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour Party leader.

Ex-MP Dave Nellist, a former Labour backbench colleague of Jeremy Corbyn and now the chair of TUSC, said:

"Jeremy's impressive victory over a concerted effort to take Labour back to the Blair days will give heart to socialists inside and outside the Labour Party.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is appealing for solidarity with Ibrahim Avcil, who we have learnt has been detained while on holiday in Turkey.

Ibrahim Avcil stood as a TUSC candidate in the 2014 local elections in the North London borough of Haringey. Showing the respect in which he was held in the local community he came in second only behind Labour, polling 14% of the vote in his ward. Now we have to convey that strength of support to the Turkish authorities in protest at his detention.

Published below is a statement by the Solidarity with Ibrahim Avcil Campaign, which gives more details. Letters of protest should be sent to the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs, using the link on their website at http://www.mfa.gov.tr/contact-us.en.mfa

Merseyside Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) have organised a public meeting on Saturday 3rd September to launch a campaign for a socialist Mersey Metro Mayor.

TUSC argues that the newly-created position, to be elected next May, could be a powerful platform to stand up for Merseyside and build a mass anti-austerity struggle that could take on and defeat the Tory government.

The launch of the TUSC campaign follows the recent announcement that members of the Labour Party in Merseyside and Halton voted to select the Liverpool Walton MP Steve Rotheram as Labour's Metro Mayor candidate, over the two right-wing candidates, the current mayor of Liverpool city, Joe Anderson, and the Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger.

In June, hundreds of residents living in the Washdyke estate flats in Immingham were shocked to find out that Shoreline, the housing association that North East Lincolnshire council has outsourced social housing to, had drawn up plans to empty and later demolish their town centre homes in a two-phase project.

With the 'consultation' period ending later this month, two Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) public meetings have been held to help organise a campaign, each attended by over 30 Washdyke residents.

Chairing the first meeting, the Immingham TUSC candidate in May's local elections, Dave Mitchell, stressed that TUSC wanted to ensure that residents, no matter what their personal preference for or against demolition, should receive personal assurances from Shoreline that the financial package would be without strings and residents would not be re-housed outside of their preferred area.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) responded to the letter published this week from over 500 Labour councillors backing Owen Smith's leadership challenge by calling on them to 'fight the Tories not Jeremy Corbyn' and actually carry out an anti-austerity policy.

Dave Nellist, TUSC's national chair and a former backbench Labour colleague of Jeremy Corbyn, and a Coventry councillor for 14 years, slammed the anti-Corbyn councillors for sabotaging the Labour leader's anti-austerity message by meekly passing on Tory government cuts to local council jobs and services - and now having the cheek to say they are backing Smith in order to 'stop the damage being done to our communities'!

"Over 11,000 workers are losing their jobs as a result of the collapse of BHS, which MPs have rightly denounced as 'the unacceptable face of capitalism'", said Dave. "But Labour councillors across the country will this year alone sack three times as many workers because they refuse to stand up to the Tories' austerity agenda.

TUSC EU Campaign Report

Last week the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee held its first meeting after the EU referendum. The committee discussed a report from the national agent, Clive Heemskerk, on TUSC's EU campaign and political developments in the aftermath of the Leave victory.

Meeting a day after the Labour Party NEC had put in place the timetable for a new leadership election, the steering committee agreed with the argument made in the TUSC report that the challenge to Jeremy Corbyn was "intrinsically linked to the capitalist establishment's attempt to regroup politically after the blow they suffered from the EU referendum result".

Jeremy Corbyn has correctly made the call that 'negotiations on Britain's relationship with the EU cannot be left in Tory hands'. But as the TUSC report argues "the capitalist establishment is saying - and this includes their supporters in the Labour Party - that 'negotiations on Britain's relationship with the EU cannot be left in Jeremy Corbyn's hands'". This is an important reason why they are so determined to unseat him and why they moved when they did.

The organisers of last weekend's Durham Miners' Gala made headlines by withdrawing platform invitations for the annual 'big meeting' to all Labour MPs who have joined the coup against Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Jeremy himself spoke to great applause to one of the largest trade union gatherings in Europe, organised by the Durham Miners' Association.

Three years ago the late Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT and a co-founder of TUSC, gave a rousing speech at the Gala (see video below), calling for "an alternative party of Labour" after the then Labour leader Ed Miliband had launched a new attack on trade union influence within the party.

In his speech Bob refers to "good friends in the Labour Party like John McDonnell", now the shadow chancellor, and of course Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader changed the political situation compared to when Bob was speaking in 2013. But now a coup is underway to unseat Jeremy, showing that the distinction Bob made between those who fight for socialism within the Labour Party and those who defend capitalism and its policies - and the choice that places before the trade unions - is more pertinent than ever.

Last week's conference of the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) workers union - its annual general meeting (AGM), which took place from 26th-30th June - gave resounding support to Jeremy Corbyn in his battle with the Blairite majority of the parliamentary Labour Party.

The AGM welcomed the result of the EU referendum and called for an early general election to dump not just David Cameron but the whole Tory government, arguing that Labour should set the agenda for exit from the EU on the basis of a fight against austerity and privatisation.

Related to this was a general debate on the union's political strategy. The AGM overwhelmingly agreed to continue participating in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), including maintaining the RMT's representation on the TUSC national steering committee.

The Southampton rebel anti-cuts councillors, Don Thomas and Keith Morrell, have denounced the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn by the Parliamentary Labour Party, which has now been backed by hundreds of Blairite Labour councillors across the country.

Don and Keith (who sits on the TUSC national steering committee) had welcomed Jeremy's leadership victory last September, in an article printed in the local Southampton Echo. After the Southampton Test Labour MP Alan Whitehead joined the coup by resigning from his position as shadow Energy and Climate Change Minister last week, they sent the following statement to the Echo:

"The overwhelming majority of Labour MPs did not vote for Jeremy Corbyn and made it clear from the very beginning that they were not prepared to respect the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for him and wanted a new kind of anti-austerity Labour Party.

Dave Nellist, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition national chair and former backbench colleague of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, was interviewed on Thursday (30th June) on the Jon Gaunt radio show.

Arguing that the pro-big business wing of the Labour Party had been planning their move for some time - only delaying until the EU referendum was out the way - Dave urges Jeremy to stand firm against the plotters in defence of the anti-austerity policies that got him elected last summer.

You can hear the interview by clicking on https://audioboom.com/boos/4766415-dave-nellist-from-the-tusc-defends-corbyn

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition's National Election Agent, Clive Heemskerk, was interviewed on RT News on the Friday evening (24 June) after the EU referendum, discussing the impact of the result on workers and the trade union movement.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) today hailed the 'massive vote of no confidence' in the Tory government expressed by Thursday's EU vote and called for the labour and trade union movement to follow this up by demanding an immediate general election.

TUSC, which has been the sixth-biggest presence on ballot papers in elections for the last four years, campaigned for a leave vote in yesterday's poll.

Dave Nellist, the former Labour MP who is now the chair of TUSC, said: "TUSC opposes the EU as an 'Employers Union', implementing Thatcherism on a continental scale, and we welcome the decisive rejection of it in the referendum.