‘The working classes must fight’: Communist League factory worker to stand in Manchester Central by-election
The Communist League candidate for November's Manchester Central by-election has launched his campaign – with the support of The Militant paper.
Peter Clifford lives in Moss Side and is a production worker in a food factory.
The 57-year-old has a long history of organising and joining support for ‘workers resisting government attacks’.
In the 1980s, he organised solidarity for the striking miners as well as engineering workers sitting in at Laurence Scott in Openshaw.
This year Clifford joined and brought fellow workers to the picket line of locked out workers at Mayr-Melnhof Packaging in Bootle.
Clifford said: “Like many others today I’m employed by an agency that can cut my hours and end my job at a moment’s notice.
“We need to fight so that nobody needs to be out of a job or forced to work under these conditions.”
If elected he plans to lobby for a massive programme of public works to put millions to work at union agreed pay rates to build housing, healthcare, transport and other needs of working people.
Clifford said that his main motivation for standing in the by-election was to provide an alternative against the mainstream political parties – Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party – who, he believes, are trying to tackle the economic crisis by ‘taking it out on working people’.
He added: “The only way out of the attacks on our living standards and rights is for the working class to fight and organize politically to advance.”
Clifford is not without his controversy, though. He is a supporter of Cuba’s socialist revolution, a campaign that has seen Cuban people’s civil liberties undermined and the unquestioned rule of a single political party.
He believes, however, it provides a ‘living example of a revolutionary struggle to overturn the rule of capital and the capacities of working people to lead this’.
During his campaign Clifford will call for the police involved in the March incident which led to Anthony Grainger’s death, who was shot by a police officer while sat in a car in Warrington, to be prosecuted.
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Hope Pete wins: glad to see
Hope Pete wins: glad to see him running. Will bring a fresh perspective from the labour and conservative politicians who are united in punishing the poor and the working classes for the sins of the rich bankers.
Joy
I like Ian Silvera's article
I like Ian Silvera's article about Communist League candidate Peter Clifford. I disagree however with the statement that the Cuban revolution “has seen Cuban people's civil liberties undermined and the unquestioned rule of a single political party”.
It’s Washington that has undermined the revolution in Cuba for the last 53 years:
From the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, to the repeated assassination attempts to kill Fidel Castro, to the economic embargo that prevents Cuba from trading with other countries.
As Fidel said, “no matter what our enemies may say, or how much they may lie and slander us, the history of the revolution is free of cases of physical abuse or torture” of prisoners or anyone else.
In sharp contrast to the treatment of Five Cuban revolutionaries who have been held in U.S. jails for 13 years for defending Cuba, and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, where they are subjected to torture and indignities everyday. And in sharp contrast to the way working people are treated here in the UK. The “unquestioned rule” that exists in Cuba is working class rule. This is what capitalist rulers the world over can’t stand.
The only way to get rid of dog-eat-dog capitalism and build human solidarity is to follow the example of the Cuban revolution where working people showed that it's possible and that we are capable.
Andrés Mendoza,
Supporter of Communist League election campaign.
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