Our manifesto, People Before Profit , adopted for the 2001 general election, constitutes the current agreed platform of the Alliance.

IN 1997 millions of people voted Labour in the hope of a real change.

They believed that "things could only get better."

But four years of Tony Blair's government have seen New Labour drawing ever further away from the needs and concerns of its working class supporters. Blair's team has rushed headlong into the arms of big business, and there has been a seamless continuity in the Thatcherite policies of privatisation, deregulation and squeezing public services - the very policies voters thought they were bringing to an end in 1997.

The gap between rich and poor has widened. Privatisation is being pushed into areas that even Thatcher considered sacrosanct. While corporate profits soar, pensioners have been ripped off, students robbed, asylum seekers victimised, and health workers, teachers and other public sector staff underpaid - all because New Labour is opposed to taxing big business and the rich, and prefers to hob-nob with millionaires rather than listen to working people. Tony Blair's New Labour Party is no longer accountable to the labour movement, and as a result working class voters have been effectively disenfranchised.

Tony Blair has already made it clear that the next Labour government will be even more pro big business than the last.

He has stated that in a second term he wants more cuts in taxes on the rich and big business, even tougher rules to press gang the unemployed into low paid jobs, more privatisation and "reorganisation" in public services, including health and education. He intends to privatise air traffic control and the London Underground, and is inviting private profiteers into our hospitals, schools and prisons, as well as a wide variety of other government agencies.

He aims to restrict even further our democratic rights and our access to justice, and to step up the hounding of asylum seekers. He says the answer to our education crisis is to promote selection and classes in "entrepreneurship" - presumably sponsored by large corporattions - in state schools.

New Labour's move to the right has created a vacuum on the left of British politics. There is now a dangerous consensus among the major parties around the "neo-liberal" policies of privatisation and deregulation. This consensus excludes millions of people - and a wide range of vital ideas. We have already seen its impact in the high levels of abstention in recent elections, especially in Labour's traditional "core" areas. The turnout in the coming general election threatens to be the lowest for generations. We believe democracy has to be about more than the choice between Tony Blair and William Hague.

By standing candidates in 100 constituencies in England and Wales, and in partnership with the Scottish Socialist Party, which is standing in all 72 seats in Scotland, we are mounting the biggest left wing electoral challenge to Labour in modern times. During the campaign we will speak out for the people who are voiceless and disenfranchised. We will offer new hope to all those who have been let down, ignored and attacked by New Labour. Instead of voting for a "lesser evil," in 2001 working people will be able to vote for a party that represents and fights for their interests.

By voting Socialist Alliance you can send a clear warning to New Labour's leaders. You can help make sure that politicians and the media know that there are substantial numbers of people who are fed up with the big business consensus and want an alternative. The larger the vote for the Socialist Alliance, the greater the pressure on the next government to listen to working people.

The Socialist Alliance is not just about elections. We will help build and support the day to day struggles of working people in defence of jobs, living standards, trade union organisation, health, education and welfare, democratic and human rights, and against racism, national chauvinism, and the exploitation of the Third World by big business and the banks.

We appeal to all those who have been left out and let down by New Labour - working class people and their families, trades unionists, council tenants, pensioners, young people, black and ethnic minority people, lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, environmentalists, peace activists, campaigners for social justice and even Labour Party members themselves - to join together to build the widest possible support for a socialist alternative to New Labour.

The Socialist Alliance is:

• An INTERNATIONALIST alliance, founded on the principle of solidarity with all those resisting inequality and injustice across the world.
• A DEMOCRATIC alliance, which is proud of its efforts to unite socialists from many different traditions while allowing free debate and discussion within its ranks. The alliance is controlled from the bottom upwards through its local groups and grassroots members, and the involvement of its supporting organisations, rather than from the top down like Tony Blair's Labour Party.
• A PROGRESSIVE alliance, dedicated to social equality without compromise, and which fights against all forms of discrimination and oppression - against racism, homophobia and bigotry.
• A CAMPAIGNING alliance, which fights for immediate reforms and improvements in the lives of ordinary people even while arguing the need for more radical socialist policies.
• An ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS alliance, which fights for an end to the destruction of our natural environment and the squandering of the earth's vital resources by a wealthy elite.
• A SOCIALIST alliance, which believes that it is necessary to replace the current system of exploitation, oppression and inequality with a new economic and social system based on common ownership. Capitalism is neither invincible nor permanent. We see the fight for socialism in this country as part of a global movement to build a socialist world, in which the working people whose labour creates the wealth in society collectively own and control that wealth, and plan our economy to meet the needs of the many rather than sustain the privileges of a few.

Our policies and our campaign will highlight the need for a new type of government, one that acts in the interests of workers, not bosses. We need a government that supports, encourages and is rooted in the organisations and struggles of working people. We need a government that builds a partnership with labour, not capital. We need a government committed to genuine democracy, not rule by a self-serving elite. We need a government that puts people before profit.

Our Priority Policies for the General Election

OUR candidates offer a working class alternative. If elected they will be workers' MPs on a worker's wage. For them, representing working people is a privilege, not a route to a personal fortune!

We propose an emergency plan to meet the demands and needs of workers and the jobless, and to defend and extend democracy:

• Stop privatisation - renationalise the railways.
• Tax the rich and big business to rebuild the welfare state.
• For the right to work - 35-hour week now.
• Defend asylum seekers.
• End discrimination - against racism, sexism and homophobia.
• A fully funded NHS and an end to privatisation and cuts.
• Raise pensions and restore the link with earnings.
• Stop the sell-off of council homes - for an end to homelessness.
• Fully funded comprehensive education - no selection.
• Repeal the anti trade union laws - strengthen rights at work.
• Raise the minimum wage to �7.40 an hour - the European Union Decency Threshold.
• Save the planet - we want tough action on pollution and food safety.
• Scrap student tuition fees - free high quality education for all.
• Stop the onslaught on civil rights.
• Cancel Third World debt.

Privatisation and Public Ownership

NEW Labour has refused to renationalise the industries and utilities sold off by the Tories, and has pushed privatisation into new areas. Rather than bring the railways back into public ownership, it has pumped ever larger subsidies into the pockets of the private owners who have made such a mess of the industry. Now it also plans to privatise air traffic control and the London Tube. It is also extending privatisation in various forms into many of our core public services:

• In the NHS: with �7 billion of hospital building projects to be funded through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), privatisation of long term care of the elderly, and even privatisation of medical treatment (through the "concordat" with private hospitals).
• In education: with private management of schools and education authorities, private sector involvement in school funding, and PFI projects for school building.
• In housing: Labour privatised more council houses in its first three years than the Tories did in their last ten. In its second term it plans to push through wholesale "estate transfers" to private organisations on a huge scale.
• In local government: Labour-controlled authorities have privatised housing benefit, street cleansing, rent and council tax collection, estate management, and a variety of other essential local services.

The Socialist Alliance believes that public services should be publicly owned, publicly funded and democratically controlled by those who work in and use them.

We say:

• Renationalise the railways.
• Oppose all forms of privatisation.
• Stop the Private Finance Initiative and the so-called Public-Private Partnership.
• Stop the sell-off of council housing.
• Renationalise the privatised utilities.
• Bring all agencies administering benefits and delivering care services into public ownership.
• Extend public ownership to include other key sections of the economy, including the major transport, construction and manufacturing industries, as well as banking and financial institutions.

Our Right to Work

MINISTERS have sat on their hands while major manufacturers - BMW, Ford, Vauxhall, Corus, as well as several textile giants - have announced hefty job losses, often tearing up agreements with their workforce. Even as Labour boasts of record employment levels, more and more people are losing secure full time jobs and re-entering the workforce as casual or part time employees. With an economic slowdown on its way, Blair and Brown have already signalled that they intend to step up US-style "workfare" measures, which dragoon unemployed people into doing public sector jobs for benefit level payments.

The Socialist Alliance does not accept that people's jobs should be at the mercy of multinational corporations or the whims of the stock market. Nor does it make sense for some British workers to work the longest hours in Europe while others are excluded completely from the labour force. Our policies offer a real alternative:

• Full employment - the guaranteed right of all to work.
• A 35-hour week without loss of pay.
• Scrap the Jobseeker's Allowance and "Welfare to Work", and restore Unemployment Benefit.
• Quality job training schemes at union rates of pay.
• Open the books of industry, banks and the City to scrutiny by trade unions and the wider public to show where the money has gone, and who profits from closures and mass sackings.
• Take all companies threatening closure and redundancies into public ownership, managed by those who work in them and democratically accountable to working people as a whole.

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