by Nancy Taaffe, Waltham Forest Socialist Party
Waltham Forest Socialist Party members attended the latest event organised by Your Party supporters in the Walthamstow constituency on 23 October. The first meeting had 90 people packed into a small room, showing the initial enthusiasm for the founding of a new party.
The latest public meeting was held on Priory Court, a big council estate which, regardless of the gentrification of Walthamstow, is still home to many working-class people. This meeting was a lot smaller than the inaugural one, comprising mostly known activists. Unfortunately, no one attended from the estate.
Socialist Party members proposed and got agreed a no-cuts motion for the May elections. This motion, moved by Linda Taaffe, and backed by the local organising group of Your Party, recognised the huge opportunity for Your Party supporters to be elected as councillors, given the discontent in the borough over the council making £23 million of cuts in this financial year. The motion included a call for an open People’s Budget conference in the new year to put forward policies based on the needs of our communities, not austerity.
In the discussion, a former defender of the local Labour leadership moved an amendment. This would have subordinated the Your Party campaign to the demands of the ‘Coalition for a Fairer Waltham Forest’, a group of local charities and activist organisations.
While we welcome the demands of those campaigners as part of a discussion about a People’s Budget, we felt that Your Party had to come forward with its proposals to stand on a no-cuts programme, drawing in those from other political forces that agree with a no-cuts approach in deeds as well as words.
In the end it was agreed to take the amendment as a separate motion, and both were carried, but socialists and workers in and around Your Party will need to struggle for a fighting, no-cuts slate in the council elections next May.