WeeklyWorker

27.03.1997

Socialist minimum

To date the Brent branch of the SLP has still received no communication from the NEC and is therefore continuing with its election campaign. Stan Keable, SLP parliamentary candidate for Brent East, here challenges ‘Red’ Ken in the local press

New Labour no longer pretends to be socialist. Although half the trade unions in Britain are still affiliated to it, Blair’s party no longer even pays lip service to the needs of the working class.

Yet it seems Brian Butterworth’s ‘fighting socialist alternative’ Socialist Workers Party and Tom Durkin’s so called Communist Party of Britain (the Morning Star’s party) will be lining up with multi-millionaire Murdoch’s scab rag, The Sun, and the bosses’ own Financial Times to call for a New Labour vote.

But in Brent East, will ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone be different from Blair? Does he stand for the workers, against the system? Does he deserve the votes of socialists - and communists like myself? I will ask him, through your columns, if he will publicly endorse the following minimum election platform for workers’ rights and democracy:

In my view this set of demands is the least that is necessary in order to take sides with workers against the system and the state which oppresses them. No candidate who refuses to back this platform deserves workers’ votes. Which side are you on, Ken?

Stan Keable also issued this press release in response to the Maze prisoners’ escape attempt:

“Congratulations to the Belfast H-Block tunnellers! It is good to see the spirit of freedom is not broken in the Maze prison.

These ‘terrorists’ are national liberation fighters. Freedom does not come easy. Democratic rights have to be won in struggle. The people of Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not just entitled to their democratic right of national self-determination - they are also entitled to fight for it by whatever means they choose.

Irish prisoners of war are ‘guilty’ of fighting the same British imperialist state which oppresses British workers. All the dirty tricks used against the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-5 were first tested out against the people of the Six Counties. Before we can build socialism, we must overthrow the British state. Workers must take the side of Irish freedom fighters. The British state criminalises them - British workers must fight for their freedom”.