Before the general election, New Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems all pledged to make cuts ‘worse than Thatcher’! This was the choice working people were presented with on polling day. Not surprisingly, none of these wanna-be cutters was given a clear mandate, so we now have a ‘government of the losers’ in the form of the ConDem coalition.

The immediate priority for countless working class people across the country is to fight back against this ConDem government’s vicious austerity package. With £11m of cuts to welfare alone announced in their ‘emergency’ budget and more on the way, this is the fight of our lives.

On a local level it is Labour councils, as well as Liberal and Tory ones, which are wielding the axe. The excuse that they have to make some cuts locally because of budgets set by national government won’t wash! Trade unionists and community campaigners are demanding of Labour councils – ‘Don’t carry out these Tory cuts! Set a budget based on our communities needs, and we will campaign alongside you to get the funding for it.’

But in the face of such historic attacks, when Labour councillors prove they are not up for this fight, we cannot allow them to be a barrier to us organising a struggle. In the 2011 council elections, we would like to see the widest possible working-class challenge at the ballot box, with campaigners standing on a clear No Cuts platform. This could act as an important adjunct to the other work being organised by Anti-Cuts campaigns.

Break the link!

After 13 years of funding New Labour as they attacked us in government, members of the affiliated trade unions must feel like their part of a mafia protection racket in reverse; keep paying money and in exchange get knee-capped. Now in opposition, with a leadership contest taking place, they add insult to injury – UNITE, the Labour Party’s biggest financial backer, announces it supports Ed Milliband for leader. The very next day, Ed Milliband pledges that he will take no action to even slightly soften the anti-trade union laws, showing that he is no different from his brother David. How can he happily accept trade union's support without having any qualms about point-blank refusing to push issues important to trade unionists? More to the point, how can unions like UNITE or UNISON justify millions of pounds of their members money being handed over to this rotten party? They can’t!

There is currently no party with a national profile that pursues our interests; that’s willing to boldly state its against privatisation; against all cuts and closures; for trade union rights. Working people are denied a political voice! We need to break the link with New Labour and fight for a party that can give us that voice.

Campaign for a New Workers' Party

The Campaign for a New Workers’ Party (CNWP) was launched in 2006 by socialists, trade unionists, community campaigners and young people who’d had enough of the establishment parties and wanted to fight for a working class political voice. The CNWP now has over 4000 supporters signed up to it, including 40 members of trade union national executives as well as many rank and file activists and campaigners.

We are increasingly playing a role in pushing for the affiliated trade unions to break the link with the Labour Party and popularising the idea of a new, independent mass party for working people. At successive conferences of the CWU and UNISON, for example, CNWP supporters have brought motions to review the link with New Labour. While on the electoral front, many supporters of the CNWP were central to the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition; a modest step towards addressing the crisis of working class political representation, made more important because of the formal and personal involvement of some important sections of the trade union movement.

Our supporters are involved in many different struggles across the country; a new mass workers’ party would play an important role in linking up these struggles and giving new layers of working people the confidence to fight back.

Join Us!

A political voice is desperately needed for the millions of public sector workers battling against massive job cuts; for local communities trying to defend services; for anti-war and environmental campaigners. If you agree, you should join the CNWP and get active in fighting for just such a party. You can sign up as a supporter of the campaign on our website: http://www.cnwp.org.uk/Join.htm.

However, if you’d like to get more active, we’d urge you to join the campaign. There is a minimum membership of £5 per year. For this, we’ll keep you regularly up-to-date with how the campaign is developing through bulletins and newsletters, make sure all the latest campaign material is supplied to you and give you voting rights at national events and regional meetings. Email info@cnwp.org.uk for a form to join the campaign.

Join us in the fight for a party for the millions, not the millionaires!