The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee recently organised an open evening Zoom meeting to provide an opportunity to question the national TUSC officers  – TUSC chairperson Dave Nellist, the former socialist Labour MP (1983-1992), and the TUSC national agent, Clive Heemskerk – on the coalition’s thinking about the next general election.

Over 100 people logged in to what one of the TUSC individual members’ representatives on the steering committee, Pete McLaren, described as “in my view, an excellent meeting which gave TUSC members and supporters ample opportunity to discuss how we prepare the largest socialist challenge possible in the upcoming general election”. 

The TUSC Individual Members’ section is one of the component parts of the TUSC coalition with representation on the committee, along with the participating unions and socialist organisations, and individual leading trade unionists and anti-cuts councillors sitting in a personal capacity.  (You can follow the TUSC individual members on twitter at https://twitter.com/TUSCIndependent)  Pete’s full meeting report is available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/PMcL-meeting-report-23-06-12.pdf

Below we publish a transcript of the introduction made to the meeting by Clive Heemskerk, the TUSC national election agent.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has re-issued its Open Letter to the Green Party calling on them to declare that they will not stand a candidate in the Islington North parliamentary constituency if Jeremy Corbyn decides to contest the seat independently of the Labour Party at the next general election.

The letter was originally sent to the Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay in April, following the decision of the Labour Party’s national executive committee on March 28th that the party leader at the last general election would not be able to stand again as a Labour candidate. 

But with no response from the Green Party so far, and no indication that they would withdraw if Jeremy does decide to stand independently, the TUSC all-Britain steering committee has relaunched the Open Letter as an online petition to Carla and Adrian, which can be signed at https://chng.it/tKrLg8JN

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has pledged its full support to the Northern March for the NHS organised by Health Campaigns Together, Keep Our NHS Public and other health campaigners across Yorkshire and the North on Saturday July 1st.

This is part of a series of protests and other events that have been organised to both celebrate the NHS and step up the campaigning that will be necessary to ensure it can beat the threats to its survival from the Tories – and Sir Keir Starmer’s Tony Blair-style New Labour! 

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has organised an evening Zoom meeting on Monday June 12th to outline the coalition’s thinking about the next general election (meeting details below).

The national TUSC officers – TUSC chairperson Dave Nellist, the former socialist Labour MP (1983-1992), and the TUSC national election agent, Clive Heemskerk – will report on the plans discussed to date by the TUSC All-Britain Steering Committee, with plenty of time available to question them.

Some of the issues that will be considered are contained in the recent letter sent to radical campaign groups and socialist organisations to discuss their plans with TUSC for the next general election (see https://www.tusc.org.uk/19275/24-05-2023/tusc-makes-new-appeal-to-left-wing-groups-to-discuss-general-election-plans/). 

These include the idea of local constituency campaigns for a workers’ candidate – rather than necessarily an early selection of parliamentary candidates – including organising delegations of trade unionists, student organisations, social movement campaigners etc to the local Labour prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC), to see where they stand on the policies in Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos under Jeremy Corbyn.  A model letter to PPCs is available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/479.pdf.

But there will be other issues to look at too.  Such as how to use the May 2024 local elections as a ‘dry run’ for the general election (even if the general election is held on the same day, which wouldn’t be known until March).  Or the question of the ‘fair media coverage threshold’, which actually also applies for local elections too, the options on ballot paper descriptions, and so on. 

The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has announced that it will be standing in the by-election that is likely to take place in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West Westminster parliament constituency.

The by-election has yet to be formally declared with the current MP, Margaret Ferrier, facing an imminent vote in the House of Commons on whether to suspend her for 30 days following her conviction for breaking Covid regulations in September 2020 at the height of the pandemic.  If the suspension is upheld there will be a formal Recall Petition started in her constituency, open to Rutherglen and Hamilton West voters over a six-week period, which will force a by-election if ten per cent of the registered electors sign it. 

The procedure could be truncated and a by-election held earlier if Ferrier, elected as a Scottish National Party (SNP) MP in 2019 but now sitting as an independent, resigns.  It is also the case, if the petition is successful, that she will have the right to stand in the by-election, as the Tory MP Chris Davies did (unsuccessfully) in a previous recall by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire.

The SNP will be contesting the by-election, even if Ferrier stands again, and the Scottish Labour Party have selected their candidate, Michael Shanks.  The fact that Shanks had left the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but is now their chosen representative – after publically admitting at the time that he “just couldn’t vote Labour” in the 2019 European parliament elections – shows how firmly the neo-Blairites have the Labour Party in their grip.

The Scottish TUSC steering committee, which includes leading Scottish trade unionists in a personal capacity and affiliated delegates from the CWU Scotland No.2 and Highland AMAL postal branches, has selected Chris Sermanni as its candidate.

Chris is a resident of Cambuslang, one of the biggest population centres in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency.  He is also the Unison shop stewards convener for Glasgow City Council’s Social Work Department, playing a leading role in the successful 2015 Homeless Caseworkers strike.  He is a member of Socialist Party Scotland.

The North Yorkshire council by-election held last Thursday on May 25th was a significant rebuff to Sir Keir Starmer’s re-constitution of Labour as a revived Tony Blair-style New Labour party.

The by-election had been caused by the resignation of the sitting Labour councillor for the Eastfield division, Tony Randerson, who had quit as a Labour Party member and councillor in April in protest at the direction of Starmer’s leadership and the intervention of the national party to block local left-wingers as possible general election candidates for the Scarborough and Whitby parliamentary seat.

After feedback from local residents to his resignation Tony agreed to stand again in the by-election as a member of the newly-formed Social Justice Party, currently in the process of registering with the Electoral Commission. 

The result was a stunning victory, with Tony polling 499 votes (46.4%), ahead of the Liberal Democrat candidate with 281 votes, and with the Tories coming in fourth with just 69 votes (6.4%).  Labour’s vote fell from 703 in the last election in May 2022 to 169 (15.7%) this time.  There was one Independent, with 39 votes, and the Green Party, who polled 19 votes (1.8%).

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) All-Britain Steering Committee has made a new appeal to radical campaign groups and socialist organisations to seriously discuss their plans with TUSC for the next general election.

At its first meeting after the May council elections, in which TUSC co-ordinated by far the biggest, clearly-identified working class electoral challenge (see the report at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Results-Report.pdf), the steering committee agreed that preparations for the general election must be urgently stepped up.

Sir Keir Starmer is on course for Number Ten after the May 4th results but, at the same time, is evermore clear that he would lead a Tony Blair Mark II type government, completely committed to defending the interests of the ruling, capitalist establishment.  And while debates will take place at some union conferences this year on the need for an independent workers’ alternative at the ballot box – in motions promoted in the main by TUSC supporters – it is by no means guaranteed that practical steps will be taken in time for the general election.  A ‘Plan B’, for an alliance of trade unionists, socialists and working class community and social movement candidates reaching the ‘fair media coverage’ threshold, needs to be agreed as soon as possible.

Last October TUSC wrote to over twenty campaign groups and socialist organisations inviting them to join the discussion about the general election: from Enough is Enough, Don’t Pay UK, Just Stop Oil, The People’s Assembly, and Acorn; to socialist groups like the Breakthrough Party, the Socialist Labour Network (the ‘Labour-in-exile’ group), the Northern Independence Party, Left Unity, the People’s Alliance of the Left (PAL), International Socialist Alternative UK, the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Party of Britain, and the Socialist Workers Party.

But, as our latest letter published below says, “we make no apology for returning to this matter” six months or so later.  Now is the time to act ■

The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is hosting a meeting in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency on Wednesday 17th May to discuss how a workers’ election candidate can be put in place for the Westminster by-election that is likely to be held there in the coming months.

Speakers at the meeting will include Chris Sermanni, Cambuslang resident, Scottish TUSC and Unison trade unionist, and strikers from various trade union disputes.

Chris said: “The Tories’ pro-bosses policies worsened the pandemic and have created economic disaster, increases in poverty, inflation austerity and a cost-of-living crisis. The need for a workers’ election alternative has never been greater”.

“In effect, this likely local by-election could be seen as a national barometer on the Scottish National Party’s record on the cost-of-living crisis, independence and a range of other issues. But the neo-Blairite domination of the Labour Party means they offer no alternative either for the working class. The workers’ movement must intervene with a trade union-backed socialist candidate”.

The next meeting of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee will be held on Wednesday May 17th.

Available in the following link (http://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Draft-Results-Report.pdf) is a draft version of the report by the National Election Agent that will form the basis of the discussion at the committee of the TUSC performance in the English local elections that took place last Thursday, on May 4th.

This is a statistical report, continuing the series begun by TUSC in 2011, in the interests of transparency and an honest accounting of strengths and weaknesses, of publishing the detailed results of every candidate that appeared on the ballot paper under the coalition’s name. 

Political analysis of the campaign in its wider context will no doubt be produced by the component supporters of TUSC in the coming days and inform the discussion at the steering committee.  That is in the nature of TUSC as a coalition of different political forces united at bottom by their agreement to provide an umbrella for trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists of different organisations or none, to fight together at the ballot box against the establishment politicians. 

This report, however, is primarily a statistical digest of the campaign, on which a political analysis can be based.

On Thursday 27th April the former Labour MP Emma Dent Coad announced “after a great deal of soul-searching” that she was resigning from the Labour Party after nearly 40 years of membership.  Another Socialist Campaign Group MP who, in her time in the House of Commons from 2017-2019 was part of the small minority within the Parliamentary Labour Party who firmly supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, is no longer a party member.

Emma, a Kensington and Chelsea councillor since 2006, won the Kensington parliamentary seat in one of the upsets of the 2017 general election, overturning a Tory majority of 7,361 in a never-Labour-before seat to win by 20 votes, recording a 10.6% swing.  Days later the country was rocked by the Grenfell Tower fire in her constituency, which she denounced as an “entirely preventable tragedy” resulting from Tory policies locally and nationally and New Labour’s effective complicity with them.

Two years on, after a concerted media campaign to promote the former Tory minister turned Liberal Democrat Sam Gyimah as the main challenger to the Conservatives in Kensington, she narrowly lost the seat, by 150 votes.  Gyimah finished third and now serves on the board of Goldman Sachs International Bank – while last October, Emma Dent Coad, despite the backing of the Unite union, was excluded from the ‘long list’ of potential candidates to contest the seat once again.  Now she has resigned and we print below her statement, first published on the Labour Hub website at https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/04/27/not-welcome-here/

Candidates from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in this week’s English local elections are standing on a positive platform of using councils’ powers and resources to open up a new front in the battle against the cost-of-living crisis (see https://www.tusc.org.uk/18435/07-03-2023/tuscs-core-policy-platform-for-the-may-2023-local-elections/).  But a vote for TUSC, where there is the opportunity to do so in the elections on Thursday, is also a vote in solidarity with those like Emma Dent Coad who, in her words, “can no longer be complicit with the current trajectory” of Keir Starmer’s new New Labour party.

Candidates from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in next week’s English local elections will be adding their support to the ‘May Day weekend mega-strikes’ taking place from Thursday April 27th to Tuesday May 2nd.

This is the latest round of action by teachers, nurses and civil servants in the ongoing battle against the cost-of-living crisis – it could, however, potentially be the last set of strikes to be held before the government’s new anti-union Minimum Service Levels Bill comes into law, as it goes through its final stages in parliament.

The new law will allow Secretaries of State within six sectors – the health services; education; transport; fire and rescue; nuclear safety; and border staff – to make ‘minimum service regulations’ empowering employers to issue a ‘Work Notice’ to a trade union specifying which individuals they require to continue to work during a strike. 

If a union “fails to take reasonable steps” to ensure that its members identified in a Work Notice follow an instruction to work, it will lose its protection from liability and subsequent claims for damages.  An individual worker continuing to take part in a strike contrary to a Work Notice instruction will lose their current automatic protection from unfair dismissal.

This is a draconian attack on workers’ rights which must be resisted at every level – including by Labour-controlled public employers in local government education, transport and fire and rescue authorities, and the Welsh government.  The Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf promised the Scottish TUC Congress on April 17th that the Scottish government “will never issue or enforce a single work notice” under the new legislation.  So why not the Labour First Minister of Wales, the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, or the Labour ‘Metro-Mayors’ of Liverpool, Manchester, North Tyne, South Yorkshire, the West of England and West Yorkshire? 

Or the Labour council candidates standing in the local elections on May 4th? 

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) all-Britain steering committee today issued an Open Letter to the Green Party urging them to declare that they will not stand a candidate in the Islington North parliamentary constituency if Jeremy Corbyn decides to contest the seat independently of the Labour Party at the next general election.

The TUSC national chairperson Dave Nellist, a former Labour backbench colleague of Jeremy Corbyn from 1983-1992, said:

“It is clear that the move instigated by Sir Keir Starmer to debar Jeremy from standing again as a Labour candidate is not just about rejecting him as an individual but his radical policies too”.

“As the Open Letter from the TUSC steering committee to the Green Party co-leaders argues, in a situation where the Labour Party under Keir Starmer is not an alternative to the Tories but an alternative Tory Party, how other parties respond to a prospective independent candidacy by Jeremy Corbyn will say volumes about them too”.

“Jeremy has not stated his intentions yet regarding the next election but I hope he does decide to stand.  He would win wide support in his constituency and nationally too if he did so.  And if, as I hope, along with even just a couple of unions he was to initiate a new democratically-organised party in preparation for his stand, I would wager it would be the third largest in the country, with 100,000 members, within a week!”