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Telephone: 07725 735255 |
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I failed in my attempts to form a Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance (GMDSA) before the election. Despite this, I intended to stand as an Independent Socialist candidate in the Manchester Withington constituency in the general election (that will take place on Thursday the 5th of May), but failed to get nominated in time. Nevertheless, I have handed out and will continue to hand out copies of my manifesto (which you can download or read on-line by clicking here), promoting the GMDSA. I am additionally handing out an A4 leaflet with the first page of my manifesto on one side and details of the Revolutionary Platform of the SSP plus information on torture and protests against the G8 in Scotland in July on the other (which you can read by clicking here), mainly in Glasgow.
I think I delayed getting ten people to nominate me until too late due to subconsciously realising that it was better not to become an MP, due to believing primarily in revolution from below and having a lot of other projects (particularly my future revolutionary socialist band Galaxia), and realising that it was far more important for me to help the SSP get good votes (and possibly at least one MP) in Glasgow – putting the interests of the working class as a whole before my own interests.
In any case, the leaflets were printed with the text at the bottom of the first page missing – saying that they are on recycled paper (which is annoying) but critically specifying who they are printed and published by, so if I had been nominated and distributed them I would have broken electoral law. Since I adjusted the gaps between paragraphs to put page numbers at the bottom of all subsequent pages, and none of them were affected, it is clear that somebody deleted the text to sabotage my election campaign.
You can read my manifesto on-line or download it. For details, click here.
Current New Labour Minister Keith Bradley made his career campaigning against the closure of Withington Hospital which was threatened with closure by the Tories, with the Labour-led Save Withington Hospital campaign. However, Labour later realised that they may actually be in favour of closing hospitals, so they closed that campaign down. Therefore, my former revolutionary socialist organisation (then Militant Labour, now the Socialist Party) set up the Hands Off Withington Hospital campaign, which was so successful that we kept the hospital open long enough so that New Labour closed it down with Bradley's support. I was heavily involved in the Hands Off Withington Hospital, so exposing Bradley on this issue is one of the main points in my election manifesto, along with the fact that the Private Finance Initiative used for new buildings at Wythenshawe Hospital is all about transferring money to private companies. For more information about this issue and some others that I will be campaigning on if I am a candidate, see my report on the Budget.
The front page of my election manifesto features the issue that I have campaigned on most in recent years: Iraq.