Socialist Party’s first North Wales District meeting

Picture: The Stilletoes performing at the Youth Fight for Jobs gig

On Sunday the 21st of June the Socialist Party’s first North Wales District meeting was held in Rhyl, a demonstration of the growing support for the party in the area as several people who do not have a local meeting to attend, came to their first party meeting. The meeting was opened by Keith Pattenden discussing the recent gains of the BNP in local and European elections and what could be done in Wales to campaign against their racist poison. He examined the reasons for their rise in votes and members over the last decade particularly looking at New Labour’s abandonment of the working class. We discussed how people without a viable alternative of a progressive party can turn in frustration to the BNP to express their anger. However, an important point was made that in this years Euro Elections the BNP vote actually dropped and they won MEPs only because many working class people didn’t vote! This showed how a new workers party is the only way to win over those people who feel utterly disillusioned with the main three parties and give them a positive place to put their vote.

The second session on building the Socialist Party in North Wales was introduced by Bangor Socialist Party branch secretary Iain Dalton. The branch in North Wales has expanded massively over the last half year with members now in several towns in Gwynedd as well as in Rhyl and Wrexham with mnay contacts even further afield, there has also been an influx of sixth form and college students over the last few months too. We reviewed our activities over the last few months from the protest against the onslaught in Gaza we organised to our recent activity around the Youth Fight For Jobs campaign, particularly emphasising the need to link this campaign with trade unionists locally. The importance of our Students Societies was highlighted too, owing too the NUS’s current unwillingness to campaign for students shown by their acceptance of fees and lack of support for UCU lecturers action against cuts was mentioned, particularly at Bangor University where cuts of 10% across all departments are being discussed.

In the week since the meeting we’ve already begun putting our plans into action with a fantastic Youth Fight for Jobs fundraising gig held near Bangor which raised over £100 as well as excellent stalls in Bangor and Colwyn Bay against the privatisation of Royal Mail where we sold record number of papers at both. We are also holding our first party meeting in Wrexham this week, which will hopefully be the beginning of a new branch building on the activity in the town over the last few months.