COMMUNISTS are standing in the May council elections with a programme, “Communities fit for working-class people,” that offers a way out of constant capitalist crisis, with a renewed sense of purpose and determination.

Thousands of print copies are now being circulated on high streets, online and through letter boxes, backed up by a series of podcasts on housing, education, combatting crime and rebuilding communities, facing up to inflation and “levelling up.”

As one would expect, the Communist Party puts forward the case for socialism, but there is something very interesting happening in the way this is articulated. As a result of its growth since its centenary in 2020, the party has attracted a new generation of members, with backgrounds in community and trade union activism, and with knowledge of how the basics of socialism can be argued for, at local level.

It is here, at community level, in free journals and on citizen internet radio, that we are starting to break the ban on media coverage. Though in one instance a candidate was impeded from standing by their employer.

Getting rooted in local communities results also from the work of an important gathering of party activists in the Progressive Federalism Commission. Comrades are brought together in commissions to hot-house ideas and advise the executive on developments in policy. They also influence what is happening on the ground.

The Progressive Federalism Commission argues: “Return powers to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments so they can rebuild communities. Elect regional assemblies in England to do the same. But workers and families are stronger when we all pull together and put pressure on Westminster.”

The Communist Party has been an advocate of parliaments for Wales and Scotland since the early 1930s, but this has since been extended to support for regional assemblies in England, an English parliament and a British federal parliament based on single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies. These local bodies would have “full economic, legislative and financial powers necessary to protect and develop the economic, social and cultural interests of their peoples.”

Our manifesto looks at the problems facing communities in the context of the NHS. According to the manifesto, the NHS is widely popular and considered a “taste of socialism.” It is free, planned and inspirational. Imagine if these benchmarks were used for ownership and provision of food, gas, electricity, housing, social care, education, the internet and buses and trains?

Our election manifesto states we are campaigning to:

“Move ownership and control downwards to local communities. Give councils the funds to invest and create jobs. Reverse the centralisation, outsourcing and privatisation. Tax the super-rich!

“Invest massively in council housing —‘social housing.’ A new home now costs £270,000+ on average! We need homes for young people, not a rigged property market.

“Support unions fighting for proper pay, employment rights from Day 1, job security and training for the future, in any job a council funds or approves. End precarious work, age discrimination, poverty pay and zero-hours contracts.

“Invest in free council-run leisure, culture and sport, libraries, sports fields, pools, venues, gardens, youth clubs, gyms — these all make communities. Stop closing them. Stop rationing them by price. Let’s get out more! And let’s make our streets safe.

“Make schools secular and under elected local authority control. Listen to the teaching profession. Make it an education system not a market. Make our schools safe and a place for all to learn.

“Councils must own and run local buses and city transport networks. All integrated with a publicly owned national rail system. Connectedness makes communities.

“Learn the lessons of Covid. Key workers and carers are the front line. Local services are critical. So many lives lost due to Conservative unpreparedness, cronyism and reliance on the private sector!”

The main challenge for our campaign is to gather together local activists and supporters to get the vote out, but it is way more than that. Our local campaigns seek allies and alliances, organising on vital issues like stopping war, giving local authority ownership of systems of transport and against food poverty. We want campaigns that last beyond May 5.

In Edinburgh we lead the way, campaigning for safe use of drugs, in Manchester for a freeze of rent rises, using empty buildings for housing and for councils to advance with large scale building of homes.

In St Albans in Hertfordshire, Mark Ewington is campaigning to replace the council tax with local income, wealth, land and property taxes based clearly on the ability to pay. As it is, the council tax is stacked against the poorer in our community.

For the Communist Party, every day is election day so we are looking for legacy campaigns that rebuild local labour movements, which in some areas have collapsed and to refocus them on local, winnable issues. All this at a time when in some areas, Labour has abandoned the fight.

In Edinburgh Richard Shillcock has a daunting task of reaching into 18,000 homesteads in Leith Walk ward. Shillcock is being supported by a series of days of action with supporters coming en masse to join in.

“Edinburgh councillors tell us Edinburgh has earned the title Living Wage City,” he says. “The Scottish Living Wage is a minimum of £9.90 per hour for 18+ year olds. Are they having a laugh? A friend’s daughter was sacked from her hairdressing job on the last day of her apprenticeship. She was then asked for £600+ back ‘to pay for her training.’ The following Monday, another apprentice was taken on.”

“Edinburgh needs an end to drug deaths. One goal — within our grasp — is a Safe Consumption Facility in Edinburgh. Scottish drug deaths are more than three times anywhere in Europe. But drug deaths are just a symptom. Poor housing. Broken communities. Fractured education. No opportunities. Poverty. That’s the bigger picture we have to change.”

In Sheffield, Carrie Hedderwick is standing in Shiregreen and Brightside ward. Hedderwick is a well-known member of Sheffield trades council. Out of 28 wards, the ward is the sixth most deprived in the city. It has upwards of 8,000 households in an area that used to be a communist stronghold of steel and engineering works. A former British Gas works site is now the base for an Amazon warehouse — how the economy has changed. It was the birthplace of Communist Party founding members JT Murphy and George Fletcher.

Hedderwick is campaigning on jobs: “A third of the local population is unemployed; an expansion of council apprenticeships leading to secure work, council house building and strict control of the private rented sector.

“We want to see a sixth-form college established as there’s insufficient provision for the 16-18 year olds and for affordable and reliable transport and health services.”

As part of the campaign, the party is inaugurating new branches in Burnley on May 1 and Suffolk on April 26.

Dan Ross is standing in Besses, in the town of Whitefield, a suburb of Bury. It is an area consisting of primarily two residential estates of largely social housing and rented properties. Recently the local MP Christian Wakeford defected from Conservative to Labour.

The area has few jobs available and these are in the service sector. It’s a historic area, which contains the headstones of two people murdered by soldiers at Peterloo and an International Brigade volunteer. Ross is very much at home in the area and has been a campaigning public figure for some years.

In south London Stewart McGill, co-author of the recent Communist Party pamphlet on energy policy, is on his home turf in Blackheath Westcombe. McGill is well known for his opposition to the building of the Silvertown Tunnel. He works as a Krav Maga instructor.

McGill, who has helped raise his family in the area, says “we have to sort out the housing situation in Greenwich. All the issues are down here. New homes are being built but no locals can afford them.

“The local council needs a massive shift of thinking and resources. It has to insist that private developments provide sufficient homes at locally affordable prices. And it has to build council homes.

“We need an ‘all-in’ integrated approach to crime in the area, starting with council co-ordination of services, but also provision of well-resourced youth centres of community focus.”

The age of our candidates is noticeably younger than in the past. In north London, Robin Talbot, chair of the Young Communist League, is contesting the Arsenal Ward in Islington.

According to Talbot, “It’s a diverse inner-London community based on key transportation hubs to Central London, with the Emirates Stadium and a small university in the south. An area with a strong community feeling and independent high street shops.”

The Communist Party has a growing member base in the area, who often distribute leaflets and sell the Morning Star. Comrades are supporting his campaign on “the big issues of living standards under threat, debt, equality and safety as the area has a high crime rate. Investment in the community and rebuilding it with a programme of job creation especially for local youth, is our number one issue.”

The party has responded quickly to feedback from voters who have been encouraged to believe that Russia is still socialist and therefore the Communist Party supports Putin.

Our literature and podcast make clear that communists opposed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine from the first hour: “Putin and his cronies are opposed to socialism and communism. They stole what belonged to the Russian people. We say: stop the war, start the peace.”

The Communist Party is the party the rich cannot buy. We are standing for a society which can take the road to socialism. We stand for peace. We stand for sustainable development. We stand for workers, for those struggling to raise families, for students, for pensioners and for local communities.

States the manifesto, “We are a Communist Party made up of people like you. We organise and campaign for people like you. With your vote, Communists will represent you, your community, your class, on the council.”

On May 5 we call for electors to vote left and where possible, to put a communist on your local council. They will fight tooth and nail for you.