by Andrew Murray
Political reporter
THE Communist Party of Britain is mounting its most widespread general election challenge since the 1980s, the party said on Monday night.
Launching its election manifesto for workers’ rights, public ownership, peace and a free Palestine, the party will fight at least 14 seats across England, Scotland and Wales.
Securing the backing of a range of labour movement figures, party general secretary Rob Griffiths will contest the historic constituency of Blaenau Gwent in south Wales, once represented by Nye Bevan and then Michael Foot.
Mr Griffiths slammed British conduct in the Middle East, saying that “British armed forces are going into action not to defend and rescue the massacred people of Gaza but to defend Israel and bomb one of the poorest countries on Earth, Yemen.”
He also pointed to Britain’s role in the Ukraine conflict, working to “keep the war going and escalate it.”
“Why is Britain constantly drawn into these conflicts?” he asked. “We have to bring this to an end” and challenge the “war psychosis” being whipped up in the media.
Lorraine Douglas, who will contest South-West Norfolk against former premier Liz Truss, said that “the mark of a civilisation is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, and Britian is descending into barbarism.”
Deriding her opponent as “lettuce Liz” in recollection of a premiership famously outlasted by a lettuce, she dubbed her portentous book a “love letter to unfettered capitalism.”
Union official and CPB executive member Helen O’Connor highlighted the state of public services, warning that privatisation has meant they are “hollowed out to the point where they can not function,” pledging that the party would campaign for a socialist alternative.
Clydebank candidate and young Communist Nathan Hennebry took on the demonisation of migrants, pointing out that “asylum-seekers are displaced as a direct result of British foreign policy creating instability around the world.”
Party national organiser Judith Carzola outlined the communist campaign plans, including “red weekends,” and stressed the importance of building the party to ensure “a new direction for the working-class movement and the left.”
The party’s manifesto includes ending austerity and the “creeping privatisation of the NHS,” taking key utilities into public ownership, abolishing the House of Lords, a mass council-house-building programme, withdrawal from Nato and solidarity with the Palestinian people.
