BREAKING: Socialist Dave Nellist withdraws from general election in Coventry to back Corbyn - The Coventry Observer

BREAKING: Socialist Dave Nellist withdraws from general election in Coventry to back Corbyn

Coventry Editorial 9th May, 2017 Updated: 9th May, 2017   0

SOCIALIST stalwart and former Coventry MP Dave Nellist has withdrawn from the general election – and is urging supporters in the city to back Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister.

The former Labour MP – who once shared an office in Parliament with a young Tony Blair – was expelled from the ‘modernising’ party under Neil Kinnock in the early 1990s for his connections with the left-wing socialist so-called Militant Tendency.

He has since stood in general elections for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which he chairs, and was a Socialist city councillor until 2012.

His prolific candidacy – he has stood in eight general elections, six of them against Labour – makes his name a notable absence from ballot papers this time round.




He announced today he has withdrawn from standing for Coventry North West on June 8.

Mr Nellist, a Westminster colleague of Mr Corbyn in the 1980s and now a member of the Socialist Party, said today: “I support Jeremy’s anti-austerity policies of higher wages, free university education, crash housebuilding programme, public ownership of the railways – and 4 more bank holidays! I want to see him elected Prime Minister on June 8th.


“That won’t stop me continuing to oppose Labour’s local council programme of storing up tens of millions of pounds of reserves whilst libraries, nursery provision and youth clubs are underfunded and threatened with closure.

“But we have a chance on June 8th to send Jeremy to No. 10 and we can’t do that if Coventry sends Tory MPs to Westminster.”

In an open letter being distributed among Labour Party members, Coventry Socialist Party says: “Thousands of people regularly vote for us across the city at each election because they trust us to provide a socialist alternative to the mainstream parties.

“In this election we support the positive reforms being put forward by Jeremy – including an increase in taxes on the rich, increasing the minimum wage to £10 an hour, the repeal of the anti-trade union laws etc.

“We’ll be throwing ourselves into doing everything we can to get rid of this Tory government and making the arguments in favour of electing Jeremy Corbyn with socialist policies.”

TUSC stood 135 parliamentary candidates in 2015. Its national steering committee meets on May 10 in London and is expected to endorse no candidates at the June general election.

The Socialist Party is holding a public meeting at Coventry’s Methodist Central Hall on Wednesday, May 10 at 7:30 pm to further explain its stance.

The speaker will be Hannah Sell, Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Party, who was a former member of the Labour Party National Executive in 1988/89.

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