I BECAME a member of the Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.

The fully costed manifesto calling for a large increase in public investment funded by taxes on corporations and top-earners was not only realisable but necessary for the stability of the country and for the future for the next generation.

Having spent years of my life as an NHS nurse, witnessing the impact of untrammelled cuts and privatisation, the Labour Party was finally moving in a direction I could support.

Years of salary cuts and deliberate attempts to deskill and drive out the experienced NHS workforce had only increased the suffering of NHS patients and families.

It was time to get behind a party that offered hope to the working class. The determination of Jeremy Corbyn and his team, in the face of the fiercest attacks, proved to me that they were serious about embarking on the difficult work of properly representing our class.

After all the Labour Party is our party, forged in the fires of the trade union struggles that gave us the workplace rights some still enjoy today.

We now face another crisis of capitalism as the profiteers cash in on the global pandemic and further wars. In one of the richest nations in the world, working-class people are being plunged into unprecedented levels of poverty and suffering.

The fundamental human need to have nutritious food, or any food at all, is being seriously undermined by the capitalist class.

It is a matter of the deepest concern that only recently Labour peers were whipped by the party leadership to abstain in a vote on free school lunches for the poorest children.

This shows real contempt for our class and a disturbing willingness to put this country on the fast track to utter barbarism.

We are told by some in the party that we should be ambitious for the future and demand more that just the basics for survival. Everyone wants more choice, more power and more freedom, but a lack of ambition is not the problem here — it’s the attacks on the basic need to survive that are holding people back from their aspirations.

A disconnect between the Labour Party tops and those who are struggling to feed their families has developed and accelerated at an alarming pace since the defeat of the Corbyn-led Labour Party.

Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer are openly supporting NHS privatisation in a period when working-class people will be more likely to fall ill and be reliant on the NHS.

The private companies and their methods in driving down pay, terms and conditions for workers and quality of service have been exposed time and time again.

It is simply staggering that Labour is turning a blind eye as it continues to push the false narrative that the private sector can offer solutions to the growing NHS crisis, when no-one believes the Tory lie that public is bad and private is good.

Working-class people should expect Labour to oppose the vicious policies of this Tory government and have a credible manifesto of its own.

In the 1980s Neil Kinnock sneered: “There is no point in having principles without power” — and this was answered perfectly by Arthur Scargill, who said: “There is no point having power without principles.”

This is not a debating point. New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown privatised more than Margaret Thatcher and John Major together.

Electability is important, but for workers, real political representation must be based on taking on the profiteers and not doing their dirty work for them.

Unions are left standing alone to battle the onslaught of attacks against wages, terms conditions and public services.

The order that Labour MPs should not support striking workers shows without doubt that the party has lurched too far to the right. This is unacceptable.

There can be no compromise on the core issues of supporting workers in struggle or opposing cuts and privatisation.

Signals are being given about the future direction of the party that simply cannot be ignored, including the attacks on the right to food and the unfettered acceptance of privatisation.

None of these developments are OK and it would be a dereliction of our duty to members to remain silent.

If the Labour Party is not prepared to rethink strategy and to fully and completely represent our class interests then the unions will have to think seriously about this.  

Simply seeking to win on any political platform is not enough because the working class is entitled to everything good the world has to offer — and this includes effective political representation.

Follow Helen O’Connor on Twitter @HelenOConnorNHS.