The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is standing 273 candidates across 69 local authorities in Thursday’s council elections.
In addition there are over 40 other candidates standing to the left of Sir Keir Starmer’s Tony Blair-style New Labour Party who are also on the ballot paper on May 5th. The full list is available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/471.pdf.
The candidates standing on behalf of TUSC are made up of 229 council candidates contesting seats in 55 local authorities in England (plus three mayoral candidacies); 16 candidates standing as Scottish TUSC in nine authorities in Scotland; and 25 candidates in five authorities in Wales.
Electoral unity
There are also a further 42 left-of-Labour candidates who are standing in May’s elections. There may be others but these are the candidates that TUSC is aware of.
They include candidates from left-wing parties which TUSC has been in discussions with since last year, to see if they wished to participate in the TUSC coalition or to at least avoid electoral clashes where possible (see https://www.tusc.org.uk/17590/20-12-2021/tusc-appeals-for-widest-possible-anti-austerity-socialist-unity-for-may-elections).
The parties concerned are the Breakthrough Party and the Northern Independence Party (part of the People’s Alliance of the Left – PAL); the Communist Party of Britain; the Workers Party of Britain (which has now taken up observer status on the TUSC all-Britain steering committee); and the Scottish Socialist Party.
In addition there are some former left-wing Labour Party members who have also been in discussions with local constituent organisations of TUSC but who decided, on this occasion, to stand on the ballot paper as Independents.
Policies
The core policy pledges signed up to by every candidate appearing on the ballot paper as TUSC, the TUSC local elections policy platform, can be found at https://www.tusc.org.uk/17627/22-02-2022/tuscs-core-policy-platform-for-the-may-2022-local-elections. It should be noted that these are a minimum commitment, not a maximum, and the individual candidates and the organisations participating within TUSC that they may be members of, have the right to also campaign on additional policies and issues as they wish, which are published in their own election material.
But the bottom line is that somebody who is unwilling to pledge that if they are elected they will go into the town hall and vote against cuts, closures, privatisation and other austerity politics cannot be a TUSC council candidate. None of the establishment parties require that commitment from their candidates but TUSC does.
The policies that the other left-of-Labour candidates and parties listed are standing on can be found on their respective websites, social media accounts or local campaign publications.
On Thursday, where you can, vote for a fight back against the Tories – and Starmer’s Tory-lite New Labour!
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Results reporting
Individual results will be published on social media as they come in; and a full report of the campaign, with the detailed results of every TUSC candidate, will be prepared for the next TUSC all-Britain steering committee meeting on Wednesday May 11th.
This will then be posted here and on the Candidates Page as a public record – as has been TUSC practice every year since 2011.