Your chance to make a difference

Liz Davies, Grassroots Alliance candidate for the NEC, sets out her reasons for running for Labour's ruling executive.

Recent outbursts from Millbank suggest that the Grassroots Alliance campaign for the NEC is viewed seriously and with alarm by the Party leadership. This confirms the feedback that the candidates have had at meetings up and down the country. We have all addressed many meetings of Party members, encouraging members to vote and trying to persuade them to vote for us.

At those meetings, the coming together of the centre and the left in the Grassroots Alliance has been greeted with approval and even relief. At long last, there is a clear alternative to the Blairites. We have found at those meetings that the beliefs shared by the Grassroots Alliance candidates and spelled out in our joint statement have struck a chord with Party members.

We are united by our commitments to protect the rights of Party members and to the redistribution of wealth and power from rich to poor. We share a burning commitment to social justice.

Had we been on the NEC last year, we would have opposed the cut in lone parent benefit and the introduction of tuition fees. We intend to campaign for a realistic level for the minimum wage and an end to the 40% threshold for trade union recognition. We will be defending the public sector and arguing that public sector workers should receive a decent, long awaited pay rise.

We oppose further privatisation, especially the growth of Private Finance Initiatives for health, education and local government.

We will stand up for pensioners' rights to a decent standard of living. I personally believe that pensions should again be index-linked to earnings, a formula which ensures that pensioners share in economic growth.

We stand for democracy, transparency and openness within the Party. Consultation should not be an exercise in rubber stamping the views of the leadership. We will work to ensure that members have the opportunity to amend policy documents and that their views are listened to and respected.

We stand for the right of Party members to select their own candidates for public office, be it for local government, for Westminster, the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. In London, Party members should have the right to determine, through an OMOV ballot, their candidate for Mayor, without the prior screening of candidates by Millbank.

We promise to keep a watchful eye on all attempts to use Party discipline to stifle dissent. Party members have the right to speak their minds and to disagree with the leadership without fear of disciplinary action.

Even within the self-imposed fetters of our pledge not to raise income tax, we can take steps to redirect resources. Corporation tax could be increased, rather than cut twice, as it has been since 1st May 1997. Money could be raised for local government by an increase in the top level banding for Council Tax. The ceiling on National Insurance contributions could be lifted. Cuts could be made in defence spending. Dividends can be taxed. And the revenue raised can be poured into revitalising the public sector and protecting and improving universal welfare benefits.

I believe Labour's foreign policy should be ethical in more than name. We should not be exporting arms to Indonesia, Nigeria or other oppressive regimes. I deeply regret that Labour did not, on the first day in office, restore welfare benefits to asylum seekers. Spending billions on new aircraft carriers is obscene and unjustifiable. As a start, we should adopt a plan to reduce military spending to the levels of other European countries.

I was asked at one meeting why there is no mention of peace in the Grassroots Alliance policy statement. The Alliance is a broad and healthy one and there is a diversity of views among the candidates. Its strength is that we all retain the freedom to speak our own minds, while coming together on basic socialist principles.

Speaking for myself, I remain a committed unilateralist. Events in south Asia have shown the continuing danger posed by nuclear weapons, and I can see no justification for Britain retaining an expensive and dangerous nuclear armoury.

Finally, I am deeply distressed at our Government's alacrity in supporting Bill Clinton's wholly unjustified Cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan. A Labour Britain should be a friend to the poorer countries, and speak with a genuinely independent voice in world affairs.

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