Oppose the EDL’s racism in Leicester on the 4th February

23/01/2012 Drew Walton No comments

The ‘English Defence League’ (EDL) is threatening to visit Leicester on Saturday February 4th. The last time they came, in October 2010, they attacked shoppers and smashed city centre shops. They also broke away from Police control and attempted to march on Highfields, an area with a large Muslim population.

The only thing that stopped them was a mass mobilisation of local people including up to 2,000 Asian youth. Socialist Party members and other anti racists stood side by side with the local youth defending their area. At the same time anti-racist protesters who joined the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) rally against the EDL were kettled in by Police.

The EDL are a racist organisation that claims to only oppose “Muslim extremism”. In reality their actions on such demonstrations as this prove otherwise. They use Muslims as a scapegoat, but try to win support amongst people who are looking for someone to blame for the problems they face: Unemployment, poor services and attacks on living standards. They aim to divide working class people and must be opposed with a political answer. However because they bring their racist thugs on these ‘protests’- the issue of physical defence is necessarily raised.

A counter demonstration has been called by trade unions and UAF, which will be well supported. However, there is concern that people do not want a repeat of last time when the UAF were kettled but the EDL were allowed to attack people. There is also a desire in the local communities for self defence. The Socialist Party supports the right of self defence of communities, and believes that a mobilisation will be needed in Highfields and St Mathews on the day. Ideally we need enough people mobilised to defend these areas and to prevent the EDL rampaging through the city centre on the day.

At the time of writing, the exact details are unclear. Last time there was a ban on marches, with the EDL and UAF being allowed ‘static rallies’. In addition last time there was a massive campaign by the Police, the council and religious leaders and others to persuade people not to join the counter protests. It is not yet certain whether the same will happen again.

We will be doing our best to get a turnout on the 4th, at the same time we will be raising socialist answers on the problems people face to cut across the EDLs attempt to divide Leicester. For jobs, homes and services not racism!

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Come along to our first meeting of 2011

04/01/2012 Drew Walton No comments

Steve Score will be reporting from our National Committee meeting in December for our first meeting of 2011. What are the prospects for building the Socialist Party, as we move into another year of struggle in 2012?

Tuesday 10th January, 7.30pm
Turkey Cafe, Granby St, Leicester

All welcome.

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Fight until we win!

16/12/2011 Drew Walton No comments

This is taken from the National Shop Stewards Network site – it is vitally important that this is spread as widely as possible in a short time, so please feel free to circulate to anyone you feel may be supportive. After the magnificent strikes and demonstrations up and down the country on November 30th, we cannot back down and let the government off the hook. They have given almost nothing away in terms of concessions, yet some leaders of trade unions and the tops of the TUC – notably Brendan Barber and Dave Prentis, are preparing to wave the white flag already.

The TUC’s Public Sector Liaison Group (PSLG) has met for the first time since the magnificent 30 November public sector strike.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, argued that trade unions should sign up to the government’s latest agreement on pensions, which would then allow Francis Maude to announce before Christmas that the dispute has been settled.

This was met with outrage by many of the public sector trade unions present. Not one of the central demands of public sector workers has been met. All public sector workers are still being told to work longer, pay more and get less. The teaching unions NUT and NASUWT reported that they had been offered no serious concessions by the government, as did the civil servants’ union PCS, the Fire Brigades Union and representatives of workers in the NHS. In local government, the only concession is to delay the attacks on pensions until 2014, provided that local government unions promise to accept the pain without a fight when it comes.

Yet Dave Prentis – general secretary for Unison – the biggest union in health and local government – argued for accepting this rotten deal. Hundreds of thousands of Unison members who struck on 30 November will not agree.

30 November showed the potential power of the working class in Britain. We can force this weak, divided government to retreat, but only if the action is stepped up. The leadership of the TUC and Unison supported N30 because of the pressure of rank and file trade unionists – now we need to do the same again. PCS demanded that the meeting name the day for the next day of national coordinated strike action. In Scotland, Unison delegates have already unanimously proposed 25 January as the day of the next strike.

We all – public and private sector workers alike – need to pile on the pressure for the date of the next strike to be set before Christmas, and to take place in January.

Sign the petition here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pensions_strike_january/

PCS Left Unity is organising an open meeting at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London on Saturday 7 January to demand further action on pensions. This meeting will be open to all reps in any union that took action on N30 and is to put pressure on union leaderships to name a further strike day.

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5th December – Public meeting – Fight till we win!

02/12/2011 Drew Walton No comments
Socialist Party public meeting – Leicester University, 7.30pm, Tuesday
5th December. (Venue TBC, but likely to be Ken Edwards Building).

On Wednesday around 3 million public service workers went on strike – the biggest day of action since 1926. In Leicester around 5000 trade unionists marched in one of the biggest rallies in the city for decades. We need to turn this into a movement to defeat not just the Tory / Lib Dem cuts but also to put forward a socialist alternative.

What programme does the Socialist Party put forward to stop attacks on pay and conditions? How can we put pressure on the leadership of trade unions to escalate the action if the government do not back down? What alternative do we pose to the argument that the cuts are a necessary evil and how can we stop the cuts?

We say that cuts are not necessary and that there is the wealth in society to provide a decent pension and well-paid employment for all, if the wealth were controlled by the vast majority of the population. Ordinary people did not cause the economic crisis, so they should not have to pay for it. We need a mass campaign and a mass political party to put across the ideas of socialism, rather than put up with the lesser evilism of New Labour and the Tories. Milliband does not support the strikers, so why should we support Labour? We argue that we need build working-class political representation.

Come along to the meeting and join in the discussion.

cuts, Public Sector Strike, trade unions

Support striking public sector workers on November 30th

22/11/2011 Drew Walton No comments

Anger at the government’s attacks on pensions and public sector cuts have led to trade unions voting for the largest co-ordinated strike action in Britain since the general strike of 1926. 3-4 million public sector workers will be striking. We are not going to work until we are 68, or put up with cuts to vital services.

Unions on strike include UNISON, UNITE, GMB, the teachers’ unions and civil service unions. The National Shop Stewards Network has played an important role in lobbying the TUC to call for the public sector general strike in the first place.

Leicester Socialist Party will be supporting striking workers by offering solidarity on local picket lines from 7am and joining in the march and rally from High St to the Athena (assemble 11am outside the Orange Tree on Wednesday 30th). We will be marching in the Leicestershire Against The Cuts contingent.

Get involved

There is a joint trade union public meeting on 22nd November at the Adult Education Centre, Wellington St, 7.30pm.

Our usual branch meeting has been postponed to Wednesday 23rd November at the Turkey Café, Granby St, 7.30pm and the following Tuesday (29th November, 7.30pm) there will be an organising meeting to plan action on the 30th.

Leicestershire Against The Cuts are hosting an interactive meeting on Saturday 10th December to discuss the way forward for the campaign after November 30th. This will be held at the Adult Education Centre, Wellington St from 11am.

All welcome.

cuts, Public Sector Strike, trade unions

Jarrow March – still fighting for jobs 75 years on

05/10/2011 Drew Walton No comments

Leicester Socialist Party is proud to be supporting the Jarrow marchers on their 300-mile trek from the North East to London, to highlight that, with 1,000,000 young people unemployed, tuition fees trebling and EMA axed, many of Britain’s young people face a future on the dole queue. It shows the disastrous nature of the capitalist system, that after 75 years, working people are still fighting for what should be a right – an education and a decent job.

See our calendar or download our leaflet for some dates within the region of public meetings and demonstrations in support of the Youth Fight For Jobs campaign.

Nottingham 15th October – regional demo

Loughborough 16th

Leicester 17th – march to Clocktower (assemble at Abbey Park, 5pm)

For more details – see the Jarrow march blog

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We cannot work for nothing. Fully fund the NHS!

28/09/2011 Drew Walton No comments

SOCIALIST PARTY PUBLIC MEETING

TUESDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER, 7:30PM, F BAR, 95 WALNUT ST, LE2 7LA

The Chief Executive of UHL has threatened that staff will not be paid in August and September, if current spending rates continue at Leicester’s hospitals. Already, 200 staff have not been paid for overtime this month. Staff have been asked to take unpaid leave or reduce their hours.

The Socialist Party totally condemns this action and is calling a public meeting to launch a campaign to demand that staff receive their full pay.

Management are saying that not keeping to financial plans would have ‘terminal consequences’ for the hospital’s application to become a Foundation Trust. Instead of putting patient care first they are prioritising finances. It is dangerous to expect ‘efficiency savings’ to make up the shortfall when wards are already chronically under staffed.

Foundation Trusts will force hospitals to compete with each other rather than co-operate to provide the best care. They mean that hospitals could go bankrupt. In Leicester, UHL Trust has to make budget cuts, year on year over the next 5 years amounting to £158m, due to spending cuts from the government.

These cuts could be stopped, if UNISON, the main union in the NHS, had a fighting leadership, combined with industrial action by the other public sector unions. The Socialist Party calls for a 24-hour public sector general strike.

The Tories were lying when they said that they would not cut the NHS. Jobs will have to be slashed as a result. Yet the process of privatisation, encouraging hospitals to become Foundation Trusts began under Labour. All three main parties are in hock to the interests of big business – ordinary people need to build their own party to represent their interests.

The money is there to fully fund our public services. The government bailed out our banks with over £1 trillion. The economic crisis was caused by the rich and big business, not public sector workers. The money exists to pay for jobs, education and healthcare for all but it is the hands of tiny minority.

The Socialist Party is against all cuts in public services. We demand:

  • Staff to be guaranteed pay in accordance with their contracts, including overtime and enhancements.
  • Services should be properly funded and wards staffed to meet patient need, not financial profit.
  • For an all-members meeting of the trade unions to be held urgently to discuss action, including industrial action, to defeat these attacks.
  • No cuts to jobs and services.
  • No to Foundation Trusts and privatisation. For a fully publicly-funded, democratically run NHS.

The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers’ International which operates in 40 countries across the world. We need an international fightback against a rotten capitalist system, which will always seek to erode past gains made by working people, such as the NHS and the welfare state.

Read more about how the NHS could be transformed, with a socialist programme.

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NO TO NHS CUTS, DEFEND JOBS AND SERVICES – Lobby the UHL AGM!

16/09/2011 Becci Heagney No comments

Thousands of hospital staff in Leicester working at UHL have received offers of voluntary redundancy, on worse terms and conditions than they would receive under the national NHS agreement. Staff in the hospitals are not being replaced. This is in a drive towards privatisation of the NHS, with hospitals being forced to make cuts in order to get Foundation Trust Status. We say no to privatisation and cuts to the NHS.

Meet at Leicester Tigers Ground, Welford road at 9.30am on Saturday, near the Leicester Royal Infirmary, to do a stall against NHS cuts.

This is to coincide with University Hospitals Leicester’s (UHL) annual general meeting, taking place at 11.30am in the staff restaurant in the Balmoral Building.

Bring a placard and make your voice heard!

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Aftermath of riots: where do we go from here?

07/09/2011 Becci Heagney No comments

A Question Time style debate has been organised in Leicester to discuss the causes of the riots and what demands communities that are affected by cuts, job losses and police brutality and racism put forward.

Please come along to this important event to put across your views and hear what the communities have to say.

The event has been organised by people in the Highfields community. The panellists are still to be confirmed but one will be from the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign.

9th September
5.30pm
Highfields Community Centre
96 Melbourne Road, LE2 0DS

All welcome.

Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=183183818422120

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Leicester Pride – The Beginnings

03/09/2011 Drew Walton No comments

In 2000, the first Leicester Pride event (then called the Mardi Gras) was threatened by the far-right National Front and BNP. The organisers cancelled the event because of threats of violence.

Yet a varied group of people, including Socialist Party members, other political activists and the LGBT community in Leicester, established a campaign “Unity Against Prejudice. On 29 July 2000, despite further threats of violence and a National Front mobilisation attempting to block its route, the Pride event still took place.

This fore-runner of today’s Leicester Pride has been forgotten by most. But its beginnings should be celebrated.

The far-right BNP and EDL still threaten to divide our society. We still need to educate and organise against hatred and prejudice.

A sustained and poisonous campaign attempted to link gay men to paedophilia, included the setting up of a group “the silent majority”, which attempted to get the Mardi Gras banned. Letters appeared in the Leicester Mercury, and a petition was taken to the council. The organisers of this campaign were neo-nazis, and used it to try to build their far-right groups.

A Socialist Students meeting at the university discussed LGBT rights. It was attended by people with a number of political stances and they all agreed to the idea of a public meeting in the city centre to discuss putting on an event anyway. We would not stand for any event being cancelled because of threats by the far right. If they could attack Pride then they could do the same to trade union demos and cultural events, such as the Mela or Caribbean Carnival.

Building the campaign

70 people attended the initial meeting and agreed to set up the UAP campaign as well as organising a march from the City Centre to an event on Abbey Park where the original Mardi Gras was to be held.

Unity against prejudice (photo courtesy of Outrage)

Our Aims

We agreed that the march had two aims:

To enable people to celebrate LGBT lifestyles

To build unity of gay, straight, black and white and all groups of ordinary people against all forms of prejudice.

We built a broad movement, which involved communities, students unions, trades unions etc.

Standing up to far-right threats

During the campaign we were repeatedly threatened by the far right, and many obstacles had to be overcome, but the event went ahead with great success. 400 people marched through the city centre to the festival at Abbey Park. 70 far right protesters turned up but were unable to stop our well stewarded event.

The following year, a Pride event took place without hitch and has become an accepted and established event in Leicester.

Fight for your rights

Today homophobic crime and prejudice still exist in society;  the gains that have been made by the working class, will always be under threat in a capitalist society. Campaigning against all forms of prejudice, whether it be homophobia, racism, sexism or on grounds of disability etc. must continue.

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