Hyde Park & Headingley Socialist

No1. Winter 2012 - Hand delivered across Headingley and Hyde Park by volunteers

Socialists Choose Iain for 2012

Iain has been involved in several campaigns in Leeds over the past year to save our vital public services, including the Leeds Crisis Centre in Headingley. Iain said, All the other parties seem content to blame each other for the cuts, rather than do anything to fight for the Iain Dalton will be the Socialist services we require. Whether Partys candidate in Headingley elected or not, I will aim to be a this May after being voted for by voice for working people in local residents. Iain will stand as Headingley and will work and part of the Trade Unionists and help build the campaigns of Socialist coalition alongside other those fighting the 3-party anti-cuts candidates across Leeds. austerity consensus.

Anti-Cuts
Unlike all the other candidates in the upcoming elections in Headingley ward, Iain will vote against all cuts to our vital public services and fight for the resources we need.

Campaigner
Iain was one of the main organisers of recreation of the Jarrow Crusade last autumn to highlight the tragic numbers of young people unemployed at present. He is also an active member of USDAW (shop workers trade union)

Experience
Iain has worked as an assistant to former Huddersfield Socialist Party councillor Dr. Jackie Grunsell, assisting both with campaigning activities but also taking up the day to day problems of residents in the ward Jackie represented.

NHS Under Threat

The Health and Social Care Bill, working its way through parliament right now, is possibly the biggest threat to our NHS since its creation. The current Con-Dem government is trying to sneak through the privatisation of the NHS under the guising of reforming it. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour agree that the market can run our public services efficiently but weve seen time and again the devastating effect of handing these services over to private companies who only care about making profit. In Leeds weve already started the see the attacks on vital NHS services: the shocking attack of the Childrens Heart Unit, plans to reform the mental health service causing chaos across Leeds & the refusal to hire new staff on hospital wards causing tremendous waiting times and much lower quality of care! The Socialist Party believes these reforms are unnecessary and has been actively campaigning in Leeds against them: helping to organise protest marches and activities with Keep Our NHS Public & lobbying local MP, Greg Mulholland, to vote against the bill in parliament successfully!

Socialist Party and Keep Our NHS Public campaigning in Headingley

Find out more: Visit www.leedssocialistparty.wordpress.com Follow us on twitter @leedsp, find us on facebook as Leeds Socialists Come to a meetingTuesdays, 7.30pm @ the Packhorse, 208 Woodhouse Ln Contact us - e-mail leedssp@hotmail.co.uk or ring/text 07809839793

Young People Deserve a Future

We Say: Bring Back EMA

Whilst job prospects for young people are diminishing, they are being increasingly priced out of furthering their educational aspirations. Young people and their families are being forced to make stark choices as to whether they want to study in poverty, with many instead choosing not to apply for higher education. Those that do will enter their working life saddled with crushing debt, all to pay for a crisis not of their making. The massive government cuts in education, the raising of tuition fees to 9,000 a year, and the scrapping of Educational Maintenance Allowance, all of which the Socialist Party has been at the forefront of the campaign against, will hit the young people hard. Without the EMA, many teenagers cannot afford to support themselves in Further Education. Compromising the life chances of our present and future generations is a price of government austerity that is simply not worth paying. We will continue in our fight to defend the right of everybody to receive a good education, and build a unite youth against education cuts, poverty and joblessness.

We can fight back against these vicious cuts, which, and press local councils to reinstate the EMA, as has already been enacted in two The recent Jarrow march for jobs in Leeds. It called London boroughs. for the restoration of EMA as part of its campaign

Mass Campaign Needed to Fight Austerity

Britain is experiencing its harshest programme of austerity since the 1920s. In October 2010, the Con-Dem governments Comprehensive Spending Review announced an eye watering 81 billion of cuts. This has manifested itself in wholesale butchery of public sector jobs and services across the country. Last year, Leeds City Council passed a budget containing tens of millions of pounds worth of cuts in services. The reduction in their budget was imposed by central government. However, the council was led by Labour and despite the partys vocal opposition to how far and fast the government was cutting, they refused to put up any fight against these cuts, claiming they had no choice but to set legal budgets. Ordinary working people havent taken these attacks lying down. This was most clearly manifested on 30th November 2011, when up to 2 million public sector workers downed tools to defend their pensions from attack. The day before, the government made its autumn statement, in which it announced a further round of savage attacks. The amount of public sector jobs now forecast to be lost is 710000 over 5 years, up from the 410000 originally announced. The governments claim that the private sector will create the necessary jobs to grow the economy and absorb public sector job losses is proving laughable. The last employment figures released (from November 2011January 2012) showed that while 67000 jobs had been lost in the public sector, only 5000 had been created in the private sector. This year, councils is planning further cuts in services. We need a political alternative to these cuts, with councillors prepared to vote against all cuts, linked up with a mass movement of council workers, service users and others to defend our public services.

Find out more: Visit www.leedssocialistparty.wordpress.com Follow us on twitter @leedsp, find us on facebook as Leeds Socialists Come to a meetingTuesdays, 7.30pm @ the Packhorse, 208 Woodhouse Ln Contact us - e-mail leedssp@hotmail.co.uk or ring/text 07809839793