photo Paul Mattsson

photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, Socialist Party national organiser

Where working class women and men defend their rights, it’s where you’ll find the Socialist Party.

We bring solidarity and support – but the Socialist Party also aims to discuss a socialist strategy to end Tory austerity with campaigners.

Look at the housing crisis. In evidence submitted to a parliamentary inquiry on rising homelessness, the east London borough of Waltham Forest identified the main factors for the increase as low pay and high rents. Yet its Labour-run council courts developers at the expense of affordable homes and implements Tory cuts.

The Socialist Party fights for a £10 an hour minimum wage, rent control and a programme of building council housing. These demands have been prominent in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’s no-cuts stand in elections, which we are a key part of.

We fight within trade unions and communities for a mass united working class struggle to win. Against social cleansing we raise the slogan of organised united resistance, ‘we won’t move’.

Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership with an anti-austerity programme. Yet the new Labour London mayor Sadiq Khan recently told the BBC he does not favour rent controls in the capital.

There is a civil war in the Labour Party. Corbyn and the anti-austerity members are on one side. Those, like Khan, who do not want to see Labour become a party that stands for the 99% and taking wealth off the 1%, are on the other.

We want a party that stands for the working class – so we say what is required: a fightback against the Blairites. For example, we argue for Labour to be opened up in a democratic and federal way to the anti-austerity forces outside the party to help take on the Blairites.

Some readers may be thinking about what party to join, or whether to join a political organisation at all.

We would urge you to read some of our articles on how an anti-austerity Corbyn government can be achieved (see socialistparty.org.uk), and the campaigning work we are involved in that helps to build a movement towards achieving it.

Then join us.

Join the Socialist Party!