‘I BELIEVE that young people and working class people are being treated very badly by the capitalist system,’ Workers Revolutionary Party candidate Jonty Leff, said in addressing the election hustings for Walthamstow, called by the Trades Council.
The hustings took place on Tuesday evening at St. Mary’s Girls’ School in Walthamstow Central and seven of the eight candidates standing in Walthamstow addressed the meeting.
Leff continued: ‘Youth are being forced into a lifetime of debt through the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees or forced into apprenticeship schemes where they are paid £3.20 an hour with no job at the end of them, that’s not an apprenticeship.
‘Or forced into “workfare” schemes through the job centre where they work like a slave. Or forced onto these hated zero-hours contracts.
‘So we are absolutely clear about these issues. University fees must be abolished in their entirety and free education must be re-established.
‘Zero-hours contracts must be banned and youth given proper jobs with decent pay.
‘Youth have absolutely no future under this system.
‘All the parties say that they are for balancing the books, paying off the deficit and in that sense the cuts have just begun.
‘If this is what it is like now, what will it be like after another £30 billion cuts?
‘And why should we pay for the banking crash? In 2007-2008 the banks crashed and they poured £1.4 trillion of our tax money in to keep them afloat.
‘The NHS budget is £96 billion so that money which they pumped into Northern Rock, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS was enough money to run the NHS for fourteen and a half years.
‘For eight years they have been making us pay for the banking crisis, closing down our hospitals, our fire stations, our libraries and our GP surgeries.
‘Working class families are being evicted from their council homes to make way for private investors and property speculators.
‘At Sweets Way estate in Barnet they evicted entire families and scattered their possessions on the floor and dumped them in the council bins.
‘You cannot reform the banks. There is no reforming of this system. The source of the problem is that this system is rotten from top to bottem.
‘That is why to me the issue is crystal clear, it is capitalism that has to go!
‘So we want to go forward to socialism.
‘The working class must change society and take the whole of humanity forwards.’
• Former Remploy worker Pat Sullivan joined the Vote Scott Dore WRP campaign in Ealing Central and Acton yesterday.
He said: ‘I was a Remploy worker for 29 years. There were more than 100 of us doing packing and assembling. We had a strong work ethic and wanted to be independent.
‘They closed the Acton factory a year or two ago and most of my colleagues are unemployed now and will be for the rest of their lives. We feel betrayed. The trade unions should have ensured that Remploy continued.
‘There needs to be a general strike.
‘I’m voting for Scott Dore because I agree with all the policies.’
In Acton, student Caroline Chuna said: ‘I have joined the WRP to fight against the closure of our hospital.’
