Socialist Party

The Socialist Party fights for socialist change – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also fight, in our day-to-day campaigning, for every possible improvement for working-class people. As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international. The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers International’ (CWI), a democratic, socialist international that organises in over 40 countries.

The Socialist Party campaign on many issues, the Party’s demands include the following.

Work & Income

• Trade union struggle to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour without exemptions as an immediate step towards £10 an hour. For an annual increase in the minimum wage linked to average earnings.
• All workers, including part-timers, temps, casual and migrant workers to have trade union rates of pay, employment protection, and sickness and holiday rights from day one of employment.
• An immediate 50% increase in the state retirement pension, as a step towards a living pension. Reinstate the link with average earnings now.
• Reject ‘Welfare to Work’. For the right to decent benefits, education, training, or a job, without compulsion.
• Scrap the anti-trade union laws! For fighting trade unions, democratically controlled by their members. Full-time union officials to be regularly elected and receive no more than a worker’s wage.
• A maximum 35-hour week with no loss of pay.

Public Services

• No to privatisation and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Renationalise all privatised utilities and services, with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need.
• Fully fund all services and run them under accountable, democratic committees that include representatives of service workers and users.
• Free, publicly run, good quality education, available to all at any age. Abolish university tuition fees now and introduce a living grant. No to academies!
• A socialist NHS to provide for everyone’s health needs – free at the point of use and under democratic control. Kick out private contractors!
• Keep council housing publicly-owned. For a massive building programme of publicly-owned housing, on an environmentally sustainable basis, to provide good quality homes with low rents.

Environment

• Major research and investment into replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and into ending the problems of early obsolescence and unrecycled waste.
• Public ownership of the energy generating industries. No to nuclear power. No to Trident.
• A democratically planned, low fare, publicly-owned transport system, as part of an overall plan against environmental pollution.

Rights

• Oppose discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, sexuality, age, and all other forms of prejudice.
• Repeal all laws that trample over civil liberties. For the right to protest! End police harassment.
• Defend abortion rights. For a woman’s right to choose when and whether to have children.
• For the right to asylum. No to racist immigration laws.

New Workers’ Party

• For a new mass workers’ party drawing together workers, young people and activists from workplace, community, environmental and anti-war campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big business parties.
• Trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party now and aid the building of a new workers’ party!

Socialism & Internationalism

• No to imperialist wars and occupations. Withdraw the troops immediately from Iraq and Afghanistan!
• Tax the super-rich! For a socialist government to take into public ownership the top 150 companies and banks that dominate the British economy, and run them under democratic working-class control and management. Compensation to be paid only on the basis of proven need.
• A democratic socialist plan of production based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people, and in a way that safeguards the environment
• No to the bosses’ neo-liberal European Union! For a socialist Europe and a socialist world!