Call for a New Anti Capitalist Party

Over 100 people joined the Facebook group calling for a New Anticapitalist Party last night, just a few hours after it was created. As a result, plently more people signed up to the Call and told us why they think we need to form a new working class party. If you have a Facebook account you can join it too. And don’t forget to invite all your friends to do the same!

This country needs a mass organisation to oppose the onslaught of mindless capitalism, promote socialism, and to carry sufficient weight to oppose the three main parties.  It would be good to link up with the French party, NPA.

LR, a hospital admin worker and Unison member

Our union has paid millions to Labour but all we’ve got in return is cuts and privatisation, which is why we’re on strike.  Why pay all that money to get kicked in the teeth?   If we were putting it to a party that fought to unite the unions in struggle, that organised the unemployed, working class community and radical youth alongside us, then we’d have something that would really give our strike a boost and help us win, besides linking our struggles to the fight for Socialism.  Let’s build a new party of the working class!

Andy – Leeds Postie and CWU rep

The harrowing edl protests last saturday demonstrate the need for something to look forward to, and seeing a realizable plan is extremely exciting. The particularly appealing aspect of this call is the idea of having strong roots in the community. I believe the disillusionment of Britain is largely due to the alienation of our communities. I look forward to getting involved.

Jo Eckersley – Bar worker in Liverpool

Workers from Vestas in the Isle of Wight where wind turbine workers occupied their factory.

Striking postal workers in London at Nine Elms, Mandela Way, Kentish Town, Peckham and other offices.

Bin workers in Leeds on indefinite strike – people at the heart of the resistance – are adding their names to the Call.

Workers from Tower Hamlets College, who struck for four weeks and saved 13 jobs.

Hundreds of signatures have been collected, including members from across the trade unions, and reps from Unison, Unite, PCS, GMB, RMT and CWU.

Marchers in Liverpool, demanding action against job cuts from the TUC, signed up in their scores. Students at the recent Stop the War Conference added fresh support. Rapper MC Lowkey gave his voice to the Call.

Dozens more signed up at the demonstration outside the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Activists from the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, Workers Power, Socialist Resistance, the Alliance for Workers Liberty and the youth group REVOLUTION have also signed up.

You can too.

• If you think New Labour is for the bosses, not the workers
• If you think Labour’s given £1.5 trillion to banks and is trying to make workers pay the price
• If you think our unions should stop paying millions to fund Brown’s bosses’ party
• If you think it’s time for the socialist organisations and the fighting unions to unite in a new party

Then you should sign the Call for a New Anticapitalist Party today.

MC LOWKEY – adds his name to the Call
The poet and revolutionary rapper Lowkey signed the Call for a New Anticapitalist Party at the Student Stop the War Conference in September.

Lowkey has built up huge following for his militant rap including Long Live Palestine, Tears to Laughter, Revolution and Bars for my Brother. He is particularly popular among young antiwar protesters who turned out in force to show solidarity with Gaza last winter.

He won last year’s Big Chill Poetry Slam and also fronts supergroup Mongrel with members of Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles and Reverend and the Makers.

Lowkey electrified the Conference with a speech attacking New Labour’s bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He made an impassioned appeal for solidarity with the Palestinians and for struggle against the warmongers, quoting the American abolitionist and former slave Frederic Douglass:

“Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want oceans without the awful roar of its many waters.”

Why pay for Labour?
The trade unions have handed £35 million to Labour since 1997. What did we get for it?

• The worst anti-union laws in Europe – not repealed
• Mass unemployment – jobs not protected
• Banking losses bailed out to tune of £1.5 trillion
• £2 billion to be cut from schools
• Billions spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

No wonder postal workers, who are fighting this government over pensions, pay and conditions, are sick of propping up Labour. The London Division of the postal workers union CWU has voted by a huge majority – 98 per cent – to stop funding Brown and his party.

Tories
Labour are awful, but no-one should forget how bad the Tories are. Half of Tory MPs support tax breaks for the middle classes as a first step towards private healthcare.

David Cameron wants to save £600 million by cutting benefits for half a million of the worst off people in the country. He wants to slice 20 per cent from Incapacity Benefit, and make unemployed people work for their dole: cheap labour for the bosses and starvation for people too sick to work.

Liberal Democrats
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg says Britain needs “savage cuts” – he’s the same as Brown and Cameron. In local councils all over Britain Lib Dems have carried out the same vicious cuts as the other parties.

Greens
The Greens try to make out they are for workers, but they’re a middle class party that doesn’t take a clear stand when workers are forced to take action. In the London Assembly earlier this year Tory mayor Boris Johnson put down a motion condemning tube workers for striking over pay and jobs – the Greens couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the workers and against the Mayor.

The BNP
Don’t believe a word of their lies – this is a Nazi party through and through. Some misguided people might be voting for them because of racism or because they seem to be standing up to the corrupt main parties. All the more reason to build a new party that can fight these Nazis head on. A new anticapitalist party would rally anger with the politicians in a positive direction, against the bankers and bosses, not against black people and foreigners, like the BNP wants.

“We all know that Labour will promise a lot but in the end they’ll still do the same thing. I don’t think they’re deluding anyone”

“It’s time for a change. We’ve been going along for a few years now with Labour, and a lot of people recognise that you need an alternative. It won’t be easy to achieve, but many people realise that none of the main parties will do anything for you.”