Campaign news

INTERVIEW: Michael Meacher

23rd March 2010

Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West & Royton, answers our questions. Along with other LRC supported candidates, Michael also refused to cross PCS picket lines into Parliament on Budget Day.

What three policies would you like to see in the 2010 Labour manifesto?

1. The recession should be tackled not with cuts in essential public spending, but by massive public investment in house-building, infrastructure and the de-carbonisation of the economy.
2. A clean break must be made with market fundamentalism – deregulation and privatisation. Public provision should be expanded – in health care, education, housing, pensions, energy and transport.  Royal Mail must remain wholly in the public sector.
3. In the face of huge and unacceptable growth of inequality, a big redistribution programme must swing resources away from the rich to provide sizeable increases in pensions, the minimum wage, the lowest benefit levels, and to fund job creation and improved public services.  Union rights must be restored – it is in economic crisis that workers are most in need of that protection.
What issues will you be campaigning on in Parliament if re-elected?
1. a new alternative economic strategy following the death of neo-liberalism
2. effective policies to deal with climate change
3. the implementation of parliamentary reforms so that the executive is properly held to account by parliament

What do you think has been Labour’s greatest achievement and its greatest mistake in Government?
Labour’s greatest achievement: the national minimum wage (albeit at much too low a level) and big increases in spending on health and education; and Labour’s greatest mistake: allying with George Bush and waging war on Iraq

What are the major local issues in Oldham?
public housing shortage, with a terrible lack of new builds and now to be exacerbated by the proposed transfer of housing stock, and extreme incompetence by the Lib Dem controlled council which has recently spent £5m on legal costs.

How can activists help you to win?
Offers to help with leafleting, canvassing etc always welcome – ring Peter Dean, the Agent, on 0161 626 5779 or 0161 628 9874