Ben Stevenson: working people should not carry the burden of a global recession created in The City and on Wall Street
The Croydon North by-election will certainly have national importance, at least as far as the Communist party is concerned, after they have has chosen their national secretary, Ben Stevenson, to stand as their candidate.
Stevenson, 28, has lived in Croydon for nearly eight years. When he stood for election in Croydon North in 2010, the first Communist candidate in the constituency, Stevenson polled 160 votes.
He believes that two years of ConDem coalition and Tory-run Croydon Council cuts will bring more people to his views in the forthcoming by-election, on November 29, called following the death of Malcolm Wicks.
“We’ve had two years of coalition cuts to jobs, pensions and public services which has only further weakened Britain’s economy,” Stevenson said. “And worse is to come as 80 per cent of the cuts planned have yet to take effect.
“Working people are sick of slimy professional politicians who are more interested in toadying up to the super-rich and spivs in the city, and feathering their own nests, rather than representing the interests of those people they were elected to serve.” Inside Croydon has no idea to whom he might be referring. Not at all.
“I stood in 2010 to make the argument, that whatever government was formed it would be working people who would be forced to shoulder the burden of the capitalist economic crisis,” Stevenson said.
“But even we couldn’t have predicted the scale of corruption, greed and double-speak of this coalition government, who are clearly using the crisis as cover to destroy the NHS and the other gains made since 1945 through the welfare state.”
Stevenson, who is active in the Croydon Trades Union movement, says that his platform, as well as an opposition to cuts, will also include investment in manufacturing, green industries and housebuilding, and the renationalisation of the rail network and energy companies.
Stevenson says that he will “challenge the collective amnesia that exists in Westminster – as it does in nearly every centre of power in Europe – and remind them that this economic crisis wasn’t caused by public sector workers, unemployed young people or the millions of pensioners condemned to poverty.”
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