Fight back at the ballot box

Your financial support is vital

Ken Douglas, Socialist Party national treasurer

The Socialist Party is asking all those who support building an electoral alternative, a voice for the working class based on the 99% and not the super-rich 1%, to donate to our election appeal.

The message of May Day, of international workers’ day through the centuries, is of the necessity for workers and poor people to organise themselves independently of the capitalists and their big business politicians, basing themselves and their struggle on socialist ideas, with the aim of changing society.

That is why the Socialist Party is helping to build the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which stands on the threshold of an historic achievement – standing the greatest number of left-of-Labour candidates for 60 years.

In the council elections in England, 561 ordinary working class people – socialists, trade unionists, community activists, students – are taking that historic step. People like Aidan O’Toole in Nuneaton, “proud to say that I will be standing as a TUSC candidate and doing my bit to bring in a fair society for all.”

The three main capitalist parties – the Con-Dem millionaires, with Miliband’s Labour as their poodle – are trying to turn back time.

They want to drag our conditions back to the 19th century with zero-hour ‘take it or leave it’ contracts, demonising the unemployed and turning working people into beggars and decent housing into a luxury.

Meanwhile, five super-rich families in Britain own as much wealth as 20% of the population; millionaire politicians lounge in their mansions while council house tenants are driven into debt for the ‘crime’ of having a ‘spare bedroom’.

So it’s time for the working class to rediscover the lessons of the past, the struggle for socialism and an independent political party; like Jason Fawley from Doncaster: “I was on my own with no one to turn to. But on the picket line I met like-minded people with a conscience who are also disgusted by the political elite and their business interests. So I joined the Socialist Party and decided to fight back by putting myself forward as a TUSC candidate.”

We urgently need to raise £15,000 to help finance our election campaigns and also to give international support to our co-thinkers in the new Workers And Socialist Party (WASP) in South Africa, contesting the general election there.

Every pound counts so please think about making a donation – you can do so via the Election Appeal button on our website www.socialistparty.org.uk or by phoning 020 8988 8777.