31.01.2002
Campaign priorities
Teesside SA decided upon some of its campaigning priorities for the forthcoming mayoral election. We must use our newsletter Teesside Worker to build up a base of support in selected estates and workplaces, and amongst activists and sympathetic individuals. The newsletter has to be self-financing. Obviously if we had a Socialist Alliance paper that would be more effective than local newsletters. However, in the absence of a national SA paper we have to make do. The question of a Defend Council Housing initiative, organised by local SWP comrade Geoff Kerr-Morgan, led to some debate on how we approach this event. We are on friendly terms with the campaigners, so we all agreed that it would not be wise to organise a clumsy, 'pack them in' intervention. We will send along our SA candidate, Jeff Fowler, comrade Kerr-Morgan - who had helped set the campaign up - and another comrade Martyn Hudson, who has a degree of local campaigning knowledge. Our objective is to express solidarity with the DCH campaign and to encourage its own self-activity, but also to integrate this important fight into the SA movement. Then there is the thorny issue of an election platform. Comrades from divergent stances - SWP, CPGB and some of the independent comrades (the majority on Teesside) - will be encouraged to use the pre-election period to actually discuss politics. Lawrie Coombs
Worker