I am asking you to give me your number one preference on May 5th.
I believe that the people of Foyle - and across the North - need a new voice at Stormont, advancing a positive vision for the future, not the negative politics of the past.
Most people believed that the Agreement would mean a better life for all and secure the future of the coming generation. But there is more anxiety now about what is to come than there was at the time of the last Assembly poll. We deserve better.
I want to replace uncertainty with confidence. I will argue that there is an alternative to the benefit cuts, job losses and withdrawal of services that are coming down the road from the Cuts Coalition at Stormont. People Before Profit wants more spending on public provision, not less. The money is there - the total waste on projects like the nuclear sub Trident, the £120 billion a year in tax dodged by banks, big businesses and super-rich individuals. (Barclays Bank, for example - earning $11.6 billion profits, but paying under one percent tax. You’d pay 30 times that on the average wage.)
If the rich were made to pay their fair share, there would be no budget deficit. Same as in the South. This is the argument to be made in the Assembly: that we should be adding our voice to the millions marching and targeting the tax frauds across the water and south of the border - not tamely relaying the Treasury austerity measures.
All across these islands, the people at the bottom are being punished for the crimes against society perpetrated by the people at the top. It’s not good enough.
We need a new jobs strategy, centred not on lower taxes to lure private business but on creating employment through public initiative - a crash programme of social housing, investment in green industries, renewing our rail network etc.
We need a Derry University appropriate to a city of our size. This ambition is being stymied not just by the inertia and spite of the past but by the current funding crisis in higher and further education. The fight for a proper university has to be connected to the broader fight against the cuts.
I have been a trade union activist for more than 40 years: every chance I get I will raise the issue of the anti-union laws brought in by Thatcher in the 1980s, devolved to Stormont in the 1990s, and now implemented by the Assembly and Executive. Not once in the last four years has the issue been mentioned in the Assembly.
People Before Profit will base its strategy not only on working in the Assembly but on organising at grass roots level. We will use what clout and credibility comes with membership of the Assembly to give heart and strength to those in working-class communities and in workplaces to organise to fight their own corner. Change for the better will come from the bottom up, not the top down.
We will offer an alternative to those left behind in either community who are tempted to turn to paramilitary groups to deal with anti-social behaviour or advance any other cause. We will speak out against the foreign wars launched on a false prospectus which cost tens of billions that could be used for the betterment of the people.
We will emphasise what people across the North – of all religions and none – have in common, not what divides us. At Stormont, I would designate myself not as Nationalist or Unionist but as Other.
More of the same shouldn’t be good enough.
Eamonn McCann
Most people believed that the Agreement would mean a better life for all and secure the future of the coming generation. But there is more anxiety now about what is to come than there was at the time of the last Assembly poll. We deserve better.
I want to replace uncertainty with confidence. I will argue that there is an alternative to the benefit cuts, job losses and withdrawal of services that are coming down the road from the Cuts Coalition at Stormont. People Before Profit wants more spending on public provision, not less. The money is there - the total waste on projects like the nuclear sub Trident, the £120 billion a year in tax dodged by banks, big businesses and super-rich individuals. (Barclays Bank, for example - earning $11.6 billion profits, but paying under one percent tax. You’d pay 30 times that on the average wage.)
If the rich were made to pay their fair share, there would be no budget deficit. Same as in the South. This is the argument to be made in the Assembly: that we should be adding our voice to the millions marching and targeting the tax frauds across the water and south of the border - not tamely relaying the Treasury austerity measures.
All across these islands, the people at the bottom are being punished for the crimes against society perpetrated by the people at the top. It’s not good enough.
We need a new jobs strategy, centred not on lower taxes to lure private business but on creating employment through public initiative - a crash programme of social housing, investment in green industries, renewing our rail network etc.
We need a Derry University appropriate to a city of our size. This ambition is being stymied not just by the inertia and spite of the past but by the current funding crisis in higher and further education. The fight for a proper university has to be connected to the broader fight against the cuts.
I have been a trade union activist for more than 40 years: every chance I get I will raise the issue of the anti-union laws brought in by Thatcher in the 1980s, devolved to Stormont in the 1990s, and now implemented by the Assembly and Executive. Not once in the last four years has the issue been mentioned in the Assembly.
People Before Profit will base its strategy not only on working in the Assembly but on organising at grass roots level. We will use what clout and credibility comes with membership of the Assembly to give heart and strength to those in working-class communities and in workplaces to organise to fight their own corner. Change for the better will come from the bottom up, not the top down.
We will offer an alternative to those left behind in either community who are tempted to turn to paramilitary groups to deal with anti-social behaviour or advance any other cause. We will speak out against the foreign wars launched on a false prospectus which cost tens of billions that could be used for the betterment of the people.
We will emphasise what people across the North – of all religions and none – have in common, not what divides us. At Stormont, I would designate myself not as Nationalist or Unionist but as Other.
More of the same shouldn’t be good enough.
Eamonn McCann
