Nationwide day of action in support of striking Care UK workers
Doncaster Care UK workers on strike, March 2014
Posted: 23 April 2014
Anti-cuts candidates standing in the local elections in May are protesting outside Care UK offices in support of striking workers in Doncaster on Thursday. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) will be lobbying Ed Miliband's office in Doncaster as well as holding solidarity protests across the country.
Nurses and care workers at Care UK in Doncaster have taken 20 days of strike action against proposed 35% pay cuts. Care UK took over the service last year, which was previously run by the NHS, and has now torn up the TUPE transfer agreement. Workers are facing pay cuts of £300-£700 a month as well as cuts in holiday and sickness entitlements and enhanced payments for unsociable hours. New staff are being employed on £6.50 an hour.
The workers, members of the trade union Unison, have voted unanimously for a further two week strike next month.
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Over 550 candidates in place - with days to go before nominations close
Posted: 17 April 2014
The candidate count for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition's challenge in May's local elections has now reached 554, with just a week to go before nominations close. Whatever the final tally is - and the official nomination process is full of pitfalls designed to intimidate working class people from participating in 'politics' - it has been a massive achievement to put such a challenge in place.
And it is a real coalition that has been assembled to make sure the establishment parties don't have it all their own way - of trade unionists, community campaigners, and members of different socialist organisations.
The number of RMT members standing as TUSC council candidates has now reached 54, from the union's assistant general secretary through to regional council officers, branch secretaries, industrial reps and workplace activists.
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Pat James, 1930-2014: Tony Benn’s agent who became a TUSC supporter
Posted: 14 April 2014
Today sees the funeral of lifelong Bristol socialist Pat James, who sadly passed away on March 16th at the age of 83.
Pat was one of nine children and was born in the working class community of Easton, Bristol. Her hatred of the capitalist system developed at an early age. She joined the Co-operative youth club which helped form her socialist ideas.
She became very active in the Labour Party and was a staunch supporter of the Labour Party Young Socialists. She was a formidable organiser and at one point became Tony Benn's election agent during the period when he was an MP for Bristol South East.
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New candidates take TUSC within sight of BBC's 'fair coverage' threshold
Posted: 11 April 2014
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee has approved a further thirty candidates to stand under the TUSC umbrella in the local council elections taking place on May 22nd.
This brings the total figure up to 506 - with the number of councils with TUSC candidates also increasing, from 80 last week to 85 now. Most importantly, with more applications arriving even since the latest approvals broke the 500 barrier, TUSC is now less than a hundred candidates short of reaching the BBC's threshold for 'fair media coverage' in the official election period.
The full list of the candidates so far, presented in a regional breakdown and including the latest applications agreed, can be found at www.tusc.org.uk/txt/294.pdf.
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TUSC candidate count reaches 476, with two weeks to go before nominations close
Posted: 8 April 2014
The number of candidates standing under the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) umbrella in May's local council elections has reached 476, after the TUSC national steering committee approved the latest batch of applications.
These candidates are contesting seats in 80 local authorities - so at least half the councils with elections in May will see a challenge to the austerity consensus of the establishment parties.
A full list of the candidates so far, broken down into regions and including the latest applications agreed, can be found at www.tusc.org.uk/txt/293.pdf.
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Low turnouts in council by-elections, but there is support for TUSC
Posted: 4 April 2014
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has contested two town council by-elections in as many weeks which were marked mainly by the low voter turnout - but which also saw, in that context, decent TUSC scores.
Labour won the March 27th by-election in the South Yorkshire town of Maltby, with 48% of the vote. But just 17% of the 1,800-strong electorate went to the polls. The TUSC candidate, Unison member Gavin Roberts, won a 13% share.
But 17% was almost twice the turnout - at 9.6%! - in the Lydney West by-election on April 2nd, in the Forest of Dean. The seat was won there by the Tories with the TUSC candidate Claude Mickleson, a former treasurer of the National Pensioners Convention, picking up a 21% share of the 138 people who voted.
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TUSC election challenge reaches 349 candidates and counting
Posted: 27 March 2014
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) local election challenge has now reached 349 candidates, after another 98 applications to stand under the TUSC umbrella in May's local elections were approved this week by the national steering committee.
The number of councils where TUSC candidates will be fighting seats has now risen to 69, out of the 160 councils with elections in May. There are currently ten councils where TUSC will be standing in at least ten seats, and in Coventry and Portsmouth every seat will be contested, with nine RMT members coming forward as candidates in the later.
A full list of the candidates approved so far, broken down into regions and including this week's applications, can be found at www.tusc.org.uk/txt/289.pdf.
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An appeal to anti-austerity campaigners - help us build the most effective possible local elections challenge
Posted: 26 March 2014
Over 350 people have now put themselves forward to stand as anti-austerity candidates under the common banner of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the local elections on May 22nd.
Congratulations are due to everyone who has been prepared to take such a stand. So far at least 69 councils, out of the 160 with local elections this year, will see a challenge to the establishment parties, and UKIP too.
Fighting these elections is important. Evidence emerges daily of how councils - Labour, Tory, and Lib Dem alike - are acting as local agents of the austerity agenda.
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Hackney & Islington TUSC film showing: The Battle of Orgreave
Posted: 24 March 2014
The Hackney and Islington Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is holding a showing of the film, The Battle of Orgreave, this Saturday. The police assault at Orgreave, which took place 30 years ago this June, was one of the most violent confrontations in the 1984-85 miners' strike.
Jeremy Deller, the 2004 Turner Prize winner, will introduce the film and there will be a post-film discussion on the theme: Fighting then! Fighting against cuts! Fighting for justice!
Panel guests include: Voice of Youth, a Daymer representative, Mike Simons (working on a film called "Still the enemy within") and Judy Beishon, Hackney TUSC candidate. The event will be chaired by Lesley Woodburn, Islington TUSC candidate.
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TUSC's local elections challenge grows - with candidates now in sixty councils
Posted: 19 March 2014
Another forty applications have been approved this week by the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee to be TUSC candidates in May's local elections.
This takes to 251 the number of candidates - so far - joining the TUSC challenge to the pro-austerity consensus of the establishment parties. This is already the biggest trade union and socialist based left of Labour electoral challenge in local elections since the immediate aftermath of world war two.
Candidates will be fighting seats in sixty out of the 160 councils with elections in May - already an impressive spread, and with five weeks left before nominations close. A full list of the candidates approved so far, broken down into regions and including this week's applications, can be found at http://www.tusc.org.uk/txt/284.pdf.
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Dave Nellist remembers Tony Benn
Posted: 14 March 2014
TUSC national chairperson, Dave Nellist, a Labour MP from 1983-1992, has issued the following tribute to Tony Benn, who so sadly passed away today.
"It is enormously saddening to mark the passing today of Tony Benn, a friend of forty years. He was a towering socialist.
"I first worked with Tony on the 1975 Common Market referendum; hundreds filled the Police Assembly Hall in Coventry to hear him speak, with hundreds more outside. He spoke for me at a 1987 general election rally, and hundreds came again to hear him in Coventry's Methodist Central Hall; as they did five years ago when he came back to do one of his 'fireside chats'.
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Bob Crow, TUSC steering committee member, 2010-14, in his own words
Posted: 12 March 2014
Bob Crow was a co-founder of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) from its very beginning in the run-up to the 2010 general election.
He sat on the TUSC national steering committee, initially in a personal capacity but, after the decision of the 2012 annual conference of the RMT transport workers union to be officially represented within TUSC, as one of the union's official nominees.
Yet obituaries in the mainstream media have completely ignored his role in TUSC, with the BBC's website typical in stating that "Mr Crow was not a member of any political party when he died".
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Rebel councillors join tributes to Bob Crow
Posted: 11 March 2014
The 'rebel two' Southampton city councillors Keith Morrell and Don Thomas have issued the following statement to the local media, joining the tributes being made to Bob Crow.
"News of the death of Bob Crow came as a huge shock to us, as it would have done to so many people who knew and respected him.
"As the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) he fought tirelessly for his members and for working people in Britain and across the world.
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TUSC chair Dave Nellist pays tribute to Bob Crow
Bob Crow speaking at TUSC's 2012 London Assembly election campaign launch, photo Paul Mattsson
Posted: 11 March 2014
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition supporters will be shocked and saddened to hear that RMT union general secretary Bob Crow has died.
TUSC national chair Dave Nellist said: "Bob Crow was an inspirational union leader who tenaciously defended his members' jobs, pay and conditions - head and shoulders above most other union leaders.
"Bob also recognised, well before most other union leaders, that the overlapping austerity agenda of the big parties meant working people have to start again and build anew.
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TUSC causes stir at Labour rules change conference
Coverage of TUSC at Labour Party special conference on BBC website: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26381922
Posted: 5 March 2014
Members of the Newham Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) organised a successful protest outside the Labour Party special conference on Saturday 1st March in opposition to the Collins Review proposals being voted on inside the Excel centre in east London.
Protesters had their mouths gagged and held placards saying, "Don't let Labour silence trade unions". A picture of Ed Miliband walking past one of these placards was featured on the BBC website.
The conference was held in Newham, the borough where trade unionist Keir Hardie was originally elected as a West Ham South MP in 1892 before he went on to become the first Labour Party leader.
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Second Maltby councillor for TUSC
Posted: 28 February 2014
Almost a year to the day after the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate Joe Robinson won a Town Council seat in the ex-mining town of Maltby, in South Yorkshire (see http://www.tusc.org.uk/press080313.php), TUSC has won a second seat, this time in Maltby East.
Joe won his seat with 60% of the vote against his only other opponent, an 'independent' without description on the ballot paper, but was in reality the Labour candidate whom the ruling Labour group on Maltby town council had tried to co-opt when the Maltby North ward vacancy arose.
This time, TUSC candidate Shaun Barratt, a member of the USDAW shopworkers union, was the only person to hand in nomination papers by today's deadline, and was therefore elected unopposed, in a ward where previously Labour had held four out of the five seats. Other than a different version of the Con-Dem's austerity agenda, Labour has nothing to offer workers - this time, not even a candidate!
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