It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the passing of Joe Simpson, the deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA) and a firm friend of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) over many years.

Determined to take the fight against the ban on prison officers’ right to strike onto the political plane, and resist prison cuts and privatisation plans too, Joe stood as a TUSC candidate in the 2012 Greater London Assembly elections and joined the TUSC all-Britain steering committee in the same year, sitting in a personal capacity.  He also stood as a TUSC parliamentary candidate in the 2015 general election.

Joe was an implacable opponent of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ and its policies defending the interests of the capitalists against the working class – policies continued under Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband – but saw the possibilities of change in a socialist direction under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.  In the same spirit, the TUSC steering committee as a whole agreed to recalibrate our electoral activity during this period, not contesting either the 2017 or 2019 general elections.

But with Starmer’s ascent to the leadership in 2020 and the revival of ‘New Labour’ in its new guise, Joe enthusiastically agreed to speak at the conference to relaunch TUSC in February 2021, held on zoom during the Covid pandemic.  

The loss of his voice in defence of working class interests is a painful blow to us all but others will have to come forward to pick up the banner. ■

The TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist adds: "Joe was a true giant of the workers' movement, a man of immense strength both physically and in his convictions.  His dedication to militant trade unionism and socialist change was unwavering.  He inspired all who knew him.  It was a privilege to work alongside him, both locally and nationally.  His loss will be deeply felt within the trade union and socialist movement".

The September meeting of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee discussed the latest developments regarding ‘the Collective’ network, planning for the next round of scheduled statutory elections that will take place in May 2025, and two upcoming council by-elections in Coventry and Dundee which TUSC will contest, including the TUSC chairperson Dave Nellist fighting his old council seat in Coventry’s St Michaels ward.

For the item on TUSC’s discussions with the Collective, a network of ‘those on the left who seek to build the foundations for a new political party’ including important figures from Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader, the steering committee had before it a briefing document (at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/TUSC-Briefing-on-the-Collective.pdf) produced by the TUSC national agent, Clive Heemskerk. 

This gave a report of the discussions of the Collective attended by TUSC from before the general election which have developed further with the production in August of a draft strategy document by the core group, entitled Beyond GE24: Rebuilding a Mass Socialist Movement as a Foundation for a New Left Political Party. 

This is still very much an early draft before publication – and so only a summary has been given in the TUSC briefing – and what degree of support there is for its proposals is still to be determined.  That obviously affects how viable or not it is to form a new party to a set timetable in early 2025.  Or whether, as the TUSC representatives argued, a systematic campaign to establish the need for a new party in the trade unions, alongside continuing local community struggles and ongoing social movements, is more likely to achieve our shared goal. 

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has published its annual directory of the statutory elections for the year ahead, this time the English local council elections scheduled to be held on Thursday 1st May 2025 (available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Elections-2025-directory.pdf).  These contests will be the first big electoral test of the Starmer Labour government and its ‘tough choices’ Austerity 2.0 agenda.

The dire financial situation facing councils and the vital local public services that they provide made it onto the pre-election ‘shit-list’ prepared by Starmer’s advisors of the early problems that an incoming government would have to deal with. 

The first meeting since July 4th of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee was dominated, naturally enough, by a discussion on the outcome of an historic general election and what it could mean for the prospects of a revival of mass working class political representation in the period to come.

The meeting debated the draft review of the election – The 2024 General Election Fact File –prepared by the TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk, which listed the TUSC results and those of the anti-war, anti-austerity independents, the Workers Party of Britain and other lefts, in the context of the broader trends revealed by the election. 

With detailed statistics illuminating the shallow levels of support for the new government; the growing alienation from the political institutions of capitalism since the 1990s; and the historic shift away from Labour by workers and others from a Muslim background as a portent of future movements to come, the report asks: is there any “stable social base for the coming second age of austerity, privatisation, war and climate crisis retreats that the Starmer government will attempt to impose on us?”  And what opportunities does that create to build a new, mass workers party that can unite all sections of our class?

That the July 4th general election was an historic moment is now a commonplace in media commentary.  But what exactly is ‘historic’ about it is being consciously blurred.

Now the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is publishing a statistical review of the election – The 2024 General Election Fact File – a draft report prepared by the TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk for the first post-election meeting of the TUSC all-Britain steering committee taking place on July 17th.

Including the TUSC candidates’ results, after discussion at the steering committee it will be published on the website’s Candidates Page as a public record – as has been TUSC practice for every election we have stood candidates in since 2011.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – TUSC for short – is standing forty candidates in the general election on Thursday 4th July.

Here is our easy-read Manifesto designed for learning-disabled or English-Second-Language (ESOL) voters.

Just click: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kCiHzXS7OisTBlIzY73As1DWC-m0sVWWj_t-Q1eV27k/edit?usp=sharing

You can find more information about voting from Mencap by clicking

https://www.mencap.org.uk/help-and-advice/all-about-voting

The Tories are heading for an historic defeat on Thursday July 4th and no trade unionist, anti-war on Gaza demonstrator, working class community campaigner, climate protester, or socialist activist will be sorry to see them go.

But it is also true that none of those voices will find representation in the Sir Keir Starmer-led Tony Blair-style New Labour government that is set to enter Downing Street on July 5th.

That is why the most important vote that can be cast on Thursday – where it is possible to do so – is for those candidates who could play a part in building a new mass working class political opposition to the new occupants of Number Ten.

And with Jeremy Corbyn standing as an Independent in Islington North, leading a band of anti-war and anti-austerity candidates including those from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the Workers Party of Britain, and others, there will be the option in many constituencies to do just that. 

The full list of TUSC candidates standing is available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/TUSC-candidates-on-July-4.pdf.

Other candidates

It is true that the challenge to the mainstream capitalist establishment parties has not been as widespread and organised as it could have been... 

Announcing the final list of Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) general election candidates after nominations had officially closed on June 7th, we wrote that they ranged “on the one hand, from the veteran socialist ex-Labour MP Dave Nellist… to probably the youngest candidate on the ballot anywhere in July, the 18-year-old college student Adam Gillman, contesting Reading Central, who is a member of Socialist Students, one of the different organisations that are part of TUSC”.

It was right, it turns out, that we said ‘probably the youngest’.  Since the 2006 law change allowing 18-year olds to stand for parliament, the youngest person to contest a UK parliamentary election had been a Bernadette Sayburn, who was 19 years and 8 months old when she stood as the Green Party candidate in the Cardiff South & Penarth constituency in the 2015 general election.  Adam was born on April 6th 2006 – which will make him 18 years and 88 days old on July 4th – and was set to break that record.

But then the BBC published an online article entitled, Meet five of the youngest election candidates (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2qqy2760z7o), which introduced the 18-year old Pedro Da Conceicao.  Citing his mother, an NHS nurse, as an influence on his politics and his call for “more investment in public services”, Pedro is standing as an independent in Ealing Southall.  He was born on April 9th 2006 – three days after Adam! – and we wish him well in his campaign.

In the great scheme of things, of course, it is not important who exactly is the youngest candidate. Far more significant is whether the present economic and political system of capitalism that we live under can offer any young people a future and what the alternative should be.

Keir Starmer’s comments about Bangladeshis during The Sun readers’ Question the Leaders event this week have been condemned by the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate Momtaz Khanom, standing for the coalition in the South East England seat of Folkestone & Hythe.

During the discussion at the Sun event on deportations Starmer said: “I’ll make sure that we’ve got planes going off – not to Rwanda, that’s an expensive gimmick – they will go back to the countries where people come from”.  And then, in the same segment: “At the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed, because they’re not being processed”. 

The deputy leader of the Tower Hamlets council Labour group Sabina Akhtar has now resigned in protest, asking why Bangladesh was singled out by Starmer.  Meanwhile the left-wing Labour MP Apsana Begum, who survived attempts by local Starmer supporters to stop her standing for re-election in East London’s Poplar & Limehouse constituency, has called it “totally unacceptable for politicians for any party to use dog whistle racism against Bangladeshis or any other migrant community”.

In response, Momtaz says: “I am a candidate for TUSC in Folkestone & Hythe and as a member of the Bangladeshi community, I say to all political parties and their candidates, stop blaming migrants for the crisis in Britain – a crisis of privatisation, low pay and housing shortages, created by the ruthless profit-hungry capitalist system”. 

“Hardworking Bangladeshi people who live in Britain contribute to the communities in which we live.  TUSC is fighting for a mass united struggle – of all working-class people – for fully funded public services, NHS and decent jobs and housing for all.  It is not exploited workers who gain from this ‘race to the bottom’, it’s the bosses!” 

“We are fighting for a socialist world where wealth and resources can be harnessed to meet the needs of the majority through democratic workers’ control and planning”.  ■

TUSC is contesting forty seats in the general election, as part of a wider list of anti-war and anti-austerity candidates taking on the establishment parties – headed by Jeremy Corbyn standing as an independent against Labour in Islington North.  The full list of TUSC candidates can be found at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/TUSC-candidates-on-July-4.pdf

As the general election enters its final few days the forty Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates standing across Britain on July 4th are fighting to keep opposition to the war on the Palestinians a key election issue.

In Chorley constituency in North West England a former member of the National Union of Teachers’ national executive committee, Martin Powell-Davies, is conducting a vigorous campaign against the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle. 

The Speaker, who is being supported by all the ‘mainstream’ parties in this election, is notorious for his role in February when he blocked an SNP Commons motion condemning the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people” from being debated in order to avoid embarrassment to Labour’s frontbench.  Martin is determined to make sure that’s not forgotten.

One of the few time-specified promises in Sir Keir Starmer’s 136-page manifesto unveiled on June 13th appears to be the commitment to “introducing legislation within 100 days” drawing from what it calls ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’. 

But a reading of that document, published on May 24th, shows it full of talk of ‘reviews’, “comprehensive consultations” with businesses, and references to many areas “of the New Deal [that] will take longer to implement” than others.  Never mind the substance of what’s actually in it.  The whole thing more than justifies the comment of the Unite general secretary Sharon Graham that it “has more holes in it than Swiss cheese”.  And that workers will have to fight every inch of the way for any gains they get.

That fight must include establishing their own mass political vehicle, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) chairperson Dave Nellist will be arguing, alongside an official speaker from Unite, from the platform at the conference of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) on Saturday 22nd June. 

When the Labour government does present its Employment Rights Bill, its Procurement Bill, and the other non-primary legislative instruments and reviews in the New Deal plan, Dave will say, it will be vital that union pressure to ‘fill the holes’ has its own independent political arm.

The NSSN conference will, as usual, be giving a platform to leaders and rank and file reps from unions involved in industrial disputes to build support and solidarity for their action, including a Port Talbot Tata Steel Unite shop steward Jason Wyatt. 

But this year, with the conference being held just days before the general election, the event has also been opened up to debate what needs to be done politically – on polling day but even more importantly in the battles that will follow.  Speakers have been confirmed from Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project, the Green Party, and TUSC, with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain also invited. 

But significantly no Labour spokesperson has agreed to attend – a foreshadowing of how the battlelines will shape up after the coming Tory rout on July 4th.

Nominations have closed and it is now confirmed that there will be 40 candidates standing on behalf of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) on July 4th. 

TUSC is a coalition of trade unionists, anti-war protestors, community activists, environmental campaigners – and socialists from different organisations or none – who unite to contest elections around pro-working class, anti-austerity policies.  Our general election platform (at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/TUSC-2024-general-election-core-policies.pdf) is not a full programme for government but rather summarises the minimum policies which voters should know that all TUSC candidates support.

Our goal in standing is to contribute to the process of rebuilding mass political representation for the working class that could seriously challenge for government in the future – not presenting ourselves as the finished product.  But by not leaving the establishment politicians unchallenged, we hope to help develop the self-confidence of the working class that it is an alternative power to the capitalist rulers of society – and that it has the capacity to create and build its own democratic mass workers’ party to realise that power politically.