In the twenty fourth of our video interview series #CanaryCandidates, we meet Tony Wilson – standing in Oldham against Labour’s Jim McMahon
Tony Wilson is a trade unionist who is standing at the general election as an independent socialist candidate in Oldham West. As he told the Canary:
I’m an activist, basically. So I believe if I got elected MP, I would be there to amplify the movement on the streets. I wouldn’t be separate from the movement on the streets.
He’s standing against the Labour Party’s Jim McMahon in the constituency partly because:
McMahon basically put his career first when it came to the vote on the ceasefire in November [2023]
And having spoken to “hundreds and hundreds” of voters, he said:
Lots of people in Oldham who would’ve voted Labour five years ago are not gonna vote Labour now. I mean, the collective punishment quote of Starmer that he supports Israel withholding water, food, electricity, and medicine to two million Gazans is clearly collective punishment and a war crime.
And I think his statements… and Sunak’s as well – they’ve given a green light to the genocide, haven’t they? And it’s just a totally morally bankrupt position, morally repugnant.
On the doorsteps, only one person claimed they’d vote for Labour ‘like they always had’. But in general, Wilson insisted:
I’ve had… very little enthusiasm for Labour.
And in his opinion:
Labour could be in for a shock in Oldham West. I’m not saying they’re gonna get beaten, but they could be down thousands and thousands of votes compared to 5 years ago.
Tony Wilson: Starmer’s authoritarian Labour is “a lost cause”
Tony Wilson lamented that:
I think it’s a lost cause, Labour… It was always banging your head against a brick wall. I was part of that Labour link as an NEC member for a year or two, that was like three or four years ago, and I never thought the union leadership was seriously trying to influence Starmer. I think probably Unite were a bit more serious… But I think it’s a massive uphill battle.
He believes that a Labour government would have tensions with trade unions “practically from Day 1”. And he has little faith in the party’s approach to workers’ rights:
There’s not a lot of it to start off with, to be honest, but what there is there they want to water down… Starmer seems to be an authoritarian character to me. If you look at the way he runs the Labour Party by diktat, it’s quite a lot of insecurity there, isn’t it? ‘My Labour Party. My changed Labour Party.’ He will run the country in the same way, an authoritarian way.
Speaking of authoritarianism, he mentioned that Starmer is likely to “clamp down” on protest movements just like “he’s clamped down on Labour Party democracy”. He spoke in particular of the Labour leadership parachuting controversial right-winger Luke Akehurst into North Durham, which he called “just total corruption”.
‘The best chance in decades we’ve had to build a new left-wing movement’
As an MP, Tony Wilson said:
I would listen more. I wouldn’t turn down invitations to meetings to meet people. I would seek to open an office in the Oldham town centre, to be more accessible… The problem with the main, failed, establishment parties now is they’ve got the party whips, corporate lobbyists, corporate donors, so they can’t be their own people anymore.
They can’t be responsive. That’s why being an independent is important to me. It’s about being responsive to the needs and the commands of the communities.
And he has real faith that a new left-wing movement could soon be in the making, insisting:
If we got a bunch of MPs in there, it’s the basis for something building going forward. And I don’t think Starmer’s government would last 5 years. I think it… would be in crisis two years in, or even 18 months in. Obviously the big danger is the far right try to capitalise on the undoubted discontent there will be with a Starmer government.
But we need to build a radical left as like an alternative pole. And I think it’s probably the best chance we’ve had, that, for decades… The fact we’ve got these… independent socialists coming through now even before Starmer gets elected is quite remarkable I think.
For more on Wilson’s comments see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Watch and read all our #CanaryCandidates interviews here.
Featured image via the Canary
