"Militant" stands 330 candidates under the TUSC banner in local elections

The Socialist Party one of the three remaining fragments of the old Militant Tendency has announced that it will be standing 330 candidates* in the various local, devolved and London Assembly elections including a couple of Mayoral positions including Liverpool. In this they are assisted by the RMT trade union and have picked up Chris Williamson's micro outfit "Resist" plus a few ex-Labour Party members.

This intervention is much weaker than in the past as the Socialist Party had a major split before the pandemic losing perhaps some 400 members plus the bast bulk of their version of the Fourth International though Peter Taffe managed to hang n to the CWI's money much to the chagrin of his former allies around the world.

The SP also managed to lose the bulk of it's experienced and well placed trade unionists inside the PCS union who now organise around Socialist Voice and remain cheerleaders for Mark Serwotka. The remains of Militant's supporters have rallied around Marion Lloyd who failed in her challenge against the leadership though remains on the unions NEC

The new breakaway group Socialist Alternative is barely able to publish a regular newspaper and the other grouping Socialist Appeal remains buried in Labour  operating against party rules with sme 400 plus supporters and a fortnightly paper.

The TUSC state that:

Candidates now agreed include an executive council member of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU); four members of UNISON's national executive; two members of the UNISON Local Government Service Group Executive, plus the secretary of Glasgow Unison, the branch which led the magnificent equal pay strike in 2018; a former member of the RMT transport workers' national executive; leaders of the 'NHS workers say no' campaign and two of the original McStrikers.

And along with a number of former Labour councillors standing as TUSC, we now have two TUSC candidates who were previously general election candidates for Labour in December 2019, just 14 months ago.

The TUSC candidate for Gloucestershire County Council, Alan McKenzie in Cirencester Park, previously Labour's parliamentary candidate for The Cotswolds, has been joined by James Osben, standing for TUSC for a seat on Devon County Council, who was Labour's candidate for Newton Abbot constituency in both 2017 and 2019.

James's campaign increased Labour's vote in 2017 to 11,689, it highest ever in the constituency. Explaining his decision to stand under the TUSC umbrella, James said: "I can't support the Labour Party under its current leadership. I am not willing to sacrifice my values and principles to try and fit in with the neo-liberal establishment".

The TUSC has also decided to back Thelma Walker of the Northern Incidence Party in the Hartlepool by-election. In the London Assembly elections they will be competing against the Communist Party for the hard core far left vote.

It seems that Corbyn's departure has returned so many of his supporters and opportunistic followers to the fringes of political life. These candidates will get the derisory votes they deserve and show their true political nature that of an unpalatable extremism that never had any place in a democratic party. Communists and Trotskyists only care about ideology not actual people as the history of their murderous movements has shown. 

_____________________________

*Full list of TUSC Candidates can be found here: www.tusc.org.uk/txt