West Yorkshire councillors Jakob Williamson and Stan Bates spoke to the Canary ahead of a regional Your Party rally on 8 October. They told us about the issues their constituents are facing, and how they hope Your Party will help to deal with them. They also urged people organising Your Party to pull together and ‘leave their egos at the door’.

Williamson and Bates parted ways with the Labour Party earlier this year. And in August, they formed a ‘Unity’ group on Wakefield Council along with fellow councillor Peter Girt. In a statement, they announced their intention to participate in Your Party’s efforts to build a new left party:

‘The enthusiasm is there. We just need unity and focus.’

In a recent Your Party meeting locally, Williamson said there was “a lot of optimism about a new party launching”:

We’re enthusiastic. And people are just wanting the party to get set up, and so people can crack on, leafleting, canvassing

Speaking about his hopes for the party, he added:

I’m not joining something that’s a carbon copy of the Labour Party structures.

He called for the new party to be “a nimbler organisation and a little bit more streamlined”, with less internal discussion and more focus on being “a campaigning force”:

That time we used to spend in the Labour Party having arguments with the same people could be spent engaging with the local community

Bates agreed, opposing “echo chambers and talking shops” where “good ideas just went to die”. And while “there’ll be hiccups” with setting up a new party, he said:

I think we’ll get there. Because there’s just massive support for it.

Williamson added that he didn’t really care about what had been going on behind the scenes, stressing:

everybody just needs to pull together and make it work now… If we’re gonna let egos or whatever else get in the way of this historic chance to set up an alternative, then those who are leading on it have failed us, basically… Leave the egos, leave the factionalism, at the door. I don’t care about it. Let’s just pull together, and let’s just get on.

The project is bigger than every individual, he insisted:

If we let this fail, … we’re letting millions of people across the country – who desperately need a new political vehicle to improve their lives – down. And to be honest, if people let this fail, it’d be unforgivable… I’d never forgive them for it at all.

Council housing is a key issue to hammer home

What local people care most about, Williamson stressed, are “economic issues”. A new party needs to address those and, on top of that:

affordable housing has to be a cornerstone

Bates said that building council housing worked well in the past, and the economic argument makes perfect sense. It creates employment, stimulates the economy, and houses people. “That’s my top priority,” he insisted, and Williamson agreed. Bates remembered how, when he was younger:

I came out of the army. I got a council house. No problem… I got a mortgage from Wakefield Council. No deposit. And I bought my house under that scheme. We need to bring things like that back… There was plenty of council housing, and even the lowest-paid worker could afford to live

Times have changed thanks to increasing privatisation and worsening workers’ rights, he pointed out, but:

There’s no economic argument for what we’re doing, unless you want to make the billionaires even richer. That’s the only motive behind it, innit?

And he reminded us that even the Tories didn’t mess with nationalisation until Margaret Thatcher came along. It was a moderate, mainstream reality. But now, media and political elites ridiculously treat public ownership as “extreme hard-left policies”.

Williamson added that how we argue for change matters too, saying:

we need to speak the language… of ordinary people, and just address the real issues. There’s a lot of distractions at the minute, whether it’s with the flags and stuff like that. We just need to focus on the core priorities – cost of living, people needing a roof over their head.

Sort public transport out

Bates asserted that:

Public transport’s a big issue around here as well. The buses are atrocious.

He worked “for the bus companies” in the past before full privatisation. And he said that, while it wasn’t perfect:

It was just far better, more reliable, cheap fares

Williamson added that:

municipal bus ownership needs to be a factor in the new party as well. We should be owning these services, providing public services owned by local authorities, democratically controlled, so passengers and workers have an input into that. That’s the only way we’re going to improve things.

That would help to sort out the problem of “poor wages, poor conditions, such as poor pensions and working time”.

And the issue of privatisation feeds into other issues the council deals with too.

The problem is austerity, privatisation, and lack of accountability

Speaking about the council, Williamson stressed:

we have no real influence, because we’ve outsourced everything… Wakefield’s outsourced a lot of services which don’t always make sense… it goes to the heart of democracy, really

He lamented that:

I think Wakefield’s lost about 50% of its grant funding from central government over the last 15 years

Apart from saying we need to “look at how councils can raise money themselves”, he also called out the wastage of money via private contracts. He said:

we seem to have a bit of an ‘outsourcing by default’ sort of mindset in the council.

With one contract he’d looked at, he explained:

nobody had done any detailed financial work, any impact assessments, any full options appraisal, no cost-benefit analysis, just nothing at all. So the question is, how do you know this is the right decision for the council?

And he added:

There’s definitely some element of wasted money.

Bates, meanwhile, slammed the lack of scrutiny from councillors, many of whom “don’t want to put any effort into this”. He said:

It’s a massive problem. It’s the culture that’s developed over the years… Nobody asks awkward questions

Your Party needs to “put wealth and power back into the hands of ordinary people”

Both Bates and Williamson argued against careerism in politics. Williamson insisted in particular that the new party should be “more rigorous in who they’re selecting” as candidates. These should be real trade unionists and:

people who’ve been active in the community, whether it’s running food banks, whether it’s running a local kids’ nursery group or whether it’s a litter-picking group or something like that. We need people who’ve proven themselves in wanting to deliver for the local community.

He said the party should also campaign for “mandatory recognition of trade unions” in the workplace, adding:

we need a party that, at its heart, is going to seek to radically transform society and put wealth and power back into the hands of ordinary people, and away from the millionaires and billionaires. That’s what I’m looking for in this new party.

Bates is on the same page, and stressed that the “core values” need to be investment in sorting out “council houses, public transport, utilities”, because that “just makes economic sense”.

By Ed Sykes

From Canary via this RSS feed