In the twenty third of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Adam Gillman – standing in Reading against Labour’s Matt Rodda
Adam Gillman is one of the youngest candidates standing in the 2024 general election. He also has a very clear vision of what needs to happen to move the country forwards. Standing against the Labour Party’s Matt Rodda in Reading Central, Gillman is sick of the lies and careerism of Keir Starmer’s party. And regarding Rodda, he said:
He was very opportunistic in the way he rode Corbyn’s popularity. He said to people, ‘oh I’m pro-Corbyn’ in 2017 and 2019… Now, he’s voting party line with Keir Starmer… He’s just betrayed everyone in Reading… He’s all in it for his career.
He added that Rodda “has taken people’s votes for granted” and has “just completely gone 180 now that Starmer’s in power”.
We need a new mass movement
Adam Gillman strongly believes that a new mass movement is necessary to replace Labour:
Most young people are quite disillusioned with politics… A lot of them don’t care about politics because… they’ve been let down by the establishment parties… But they want hope. And the thing is, if there is a true alternative, a mass alternative that everyone can vote for, then people would rally behind that.
And it would stop the rise of right-wing populism, like what’s happening with Reform and Farage… Loads of young people, loads of workers would join it, and it would have a real impact.
Speaking about why he’s not hopeful about Starmer’s Labour getting into power, he said:
I don’t like how they lie about most of their policies. Keir Starmer pledged to abolish tuition fees, many other policies for public ownership, that sort of thing. He’s U-turned on all of that. And it’s absolutely outrageous. The worst thing about this new ‘changed’ Labour Party is the fact that it’s just the Tory party!
They will win a massive majority on July 4th, because people don’t like the Tories. But I think that Labour government will be exposed very quickly and I think the trade union leaders will be pressured to form this new party.
Adam Gillman: we need “an anti-war, anti-cuts socialist alternative”
Adam Gillman argued that:
We need councillors and MPs that will fight back against these cuts… Because these cuts, they affect people… If there’s cuts to the NHS, that means people die.
And he insisted:
What I’m offering is an anti-war, anti-cuts socialist alternative in this election. If elected, I’ll take the wage of a skilled worker and put the rest back into the movement, into the trade unions…
He also strongly supports nationalisation as an alternative to endless capitalist destruction of the environment:
We see a lot of people, a lot of young people, really sad about their future, feeling quite scared about their future with the environment. They’re seeing the climate catastrophe happening now. But the point is, capitalism doesn’t offer a solution. It’s a profit system…
We can’t trust the oil companies to be slightly nicer and all of a sudden be more environmentally friendly… What we need to do is nationalise these big corporations… under democratic workers’ control and management, with democratic job reallocation to more environmentally friendly, sustainable jobs. Imagine what we could use these skills for.
People want an alternative. If we don’t build it, Farage and co. could fill the vacuum.
Adam Gillman’s view of a new mass movement would be of a:
mass party that’s democratic and lets all socialists in… against cuts to public services, against… war, for public ownership of at least rail, mail and energy… If it’s democratic, workers and young people would have a say in how this party is run, and it could go very far in fighting for working-class people.
And while it’s easy for the mainstream media to focus on the establishment parties and ignore left-wing voices right now, he stressed, unity would make it much harder for the media to ignore them. A new mass party, he argued, would “have enough resources to get onto the mainstream media all the time”. In short:
If we have a mass workers’ party, then the media can’t ignore them, can they?
Speaking about the urgency of building this new movement, he insisted:
If there isn’t an alternative formed soon, then Farage and Reform will gain popularity and people will rightfully look for an alternative, but they’ll go to the wrong place.
For more on Gillman’s comments see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
Featured image via the Canary
