IN the East of England on May 4 voters in Felixstowe East and Felixstowe West, Felixstowe Coastal, Kempston in Bedford, Sopwell in St Albans and Abbeygate and district in Bury St Edmunds will have the chance to vote communist.

If you are intending to vote communist in these wards, do not forget to take along your ID. We have elections at town, county and district levels and we are contesting in seven wards.

The election comes at a time of a hike in council tax rises, the ending of transport fare subsidies and an acceleration in the selloff and privatisation of council services.

Our local party branches have been preparing for a year for this election, raising thousands of pounds — elections cost serious money these days if they are to be fought properly — and we have leafleted 35,000 homes at least once.

The election campaign will be followed up with full support for the Red Festival in Cambridge on the May 27, sponsored by the Morning Star, StrikeMap and Cambridge Trades Council, bringing together nationally known speakers with local union, women’s movement and community activists.

Our candidates and their teams have been competing on their pedometers to see who does the most campaigning and we have held successful street stalls in each election area.

Our candidates include a local postal worker and strike leader, an engineering health and safety officer, a recently retired dockworker and well-known figure in the Felixstowe dock strike, a probation officer and a construction worker. Two are trades council secretaries and are well used to planning campaigns.

So it has been relatively seamless to embrace the opportunity to make the case for solidarity with local strikers, to retain jobs and services in the public sector and for higher pay to combat the cost-of-capitalism crisis.

In each of the local branches our election campaigns have won new members and it has been such a lift to walk the streets and see our posters displayed in windows in flats and houses.

The campaigners have given priority to opposing the outsourcing and privatisation of council services and the need to take the transport system into public ownership — some major towns no longer have transport connections to cities and there are villages which have been completely cut loose and left to fend for themselves.

We are arguing for innovation in transport, including the use of guided bus systems.

We are making the case for support for the Charter for Women programme of the National Assembly of Women — women are often left to face the burden of reduced services and a squeeze on income. In some rural areas, support has all but collapsed.

The communists are the only party campaigning for the abolition of council tax and its replacement with a local progressive tax on the ownership of land, wealth, property and income based clearly on an ability to pay.

This is allied to the party policy for a central wealth tax. The combination of both would lead to a revolution in local government financing as the latter includes a major redistributive element and would end the many scam schemes that allow local Conservative-run councils to access grants.

Equally, we have been the only party to make the case for a programme of council housebuilding, and the restoration of public construction works through direct labour organisations, with councils sharing equipment and skilled personnel.

Our party is arguing for the council takeover of unused high street properties owned by speculators and their use for local co-operatives, farmers’ markets and community services.

We have been on NEU picket lines in solidarity and are making the case in our manifesto for restoring the relationship between schools and education services with local authorities.

Restoring this vital link allows communities and teachers to work together to plan and provide high-quality schools and educational opportunities for local pupils.

We call for a free, publicly owned NHS and the reincorporation of dental, eye and hearing services.

We are proud to include among our candidates, two leading figures from the Toothless in England campaign, which has become the main community campaign across England fighting for the restoration of dental services in the NHS.

When services collapsed in Suffolk, it was the Toothless campaigners who raised funds and worked across the community to provide mobile dental services through Dentaid, which saw many hundreds of people treated who had been in desperate need.

Uppermost in our campaign is the case for a radical shake-up in local government.

In England, the Communist Party is proposing a major review of the structures of local government, which seem to grow in number and complexity by the week as they diminish in effectiveness.

We propose the establishment of dynamic, directly elected and accountable regional assemblies with tax-raising powers.

They will have a remit of investing in quality jobs for young people and be charged with breaking the monopoly on local transport services by profit-greedy bus companies.

A regional assembly will develop long-term plans to deal with coastal and soil erosion, the promotion of co-operative farming and food processing, the establishment of manufacturing centres focused on the machinery and systems that can deliver renewable energy and the regeneration of our towns and villages.

If you see candidates Markus Keaney, Mark Jones, Darren Turner, Mark Ewington and Hagar Babbington on the campaign trail, take a leaflet and a few minutes to chat to them — and on Thursday, give them your vote.

Phil Katz is East of England district secretary of the Communist Party of Britain — www.communistparty.org.uk.