Roger Nettleship – Fight for an Anti-War Government

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Roger Nettleship – Fight for an Anti-War Government

Fight for an Anti-War Government Candidate 2010 General Election Page

Roger Nettleship is standing as a “Fight for an Anti-War Government” candidate in the general election in the constituency of South Shields. He released the following statement on April 3, 2010.

I am standing in South Shields as a worker politician candidate who has lived and worked in South Tyneside for 30 years both as an activist in the Unemployed Workers Union in the 1980s and as a union activist in the health service over the last 20 years. I have also been active in the anti-war movement from before the invasion of Afghanistan nine years ago and I am presently convenor of the Tyneside Stop the War Coalition.

I am standing for an anti-war government against David Miliband who voted for war against Iraq and is now the responsible foreign office minister who is promoted as a possible next leader of New Labour which is continuing the occupation of Afghanistan and a government that threatens more war. I am also standing against all the pro-war Westminster big parties which act as a cartel against the people. My candidacy in South Shields has the support of the South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition which is also supporting Shirley Ford (Green Party), another genuine anti-war candidate, and we form an anti-war bloc against the pro-war stand of the big parties.

The pro-war stand of these big parties is very dangerous for the people when this pro-war alliance with the US is causing the death and injury of so many people around the world as well as the British soldiers sent there as part of occupational forces. We want the troops home now, no troops on foreign soil and an end of the militarisation of the economy and the £130 billion that is being spent on Trident. In the modern world, people must be empowered to make the decisions on all the important things that affect their lives. Candidates should be selected by the people and not by the big parties which now constitute themselves as a dangerous elected dictatorship with no, or little, opposition to their wars even when the majority of people oppose them. So people should vote for the alternative for those candidates like myself and Shirley Ford who are trying to break the big party dictate and their pro-war alliance. We must do this to stop having to watch our youth continually being recruited for war instead of being given full employment to build a bright future for themselves. People should have direct control over major foreign policy decisions so that they can withdraw Britain from the aggressive military and pro-war alliances with the US, NATO, Israel and others. They should be able to mandate an anti-war government that resolves conflicts through peaceful means giving prominence to finding political solutions according to international law. And just as with most countries in the world, this would mean that we would have no troops on foreign soil.

This big party system is also in the service of big business and financiers that are wrecking the economy with their destruction of manufacturing and their cuts and privatisation of our public services. The aim of the economy should be to invest in those who live and work in it, and in what they produce and the services they provide. But the big parties all agree that the aim of the economy is to furnish the rich with even further profits and bonuses. Their big lie in this “debate” is to present the wages of the workers, the pensions of the elderly, the education of the youth, the benefits of the unemployed and the health care of the people as a cost and a burden to society which has to be curtailed, whilst they present those that cause the real cost and burden to society, the rich in big business and the city, as the “wealth creators”. Far from being the cost, it is the working class and people who are the producers of all wealth and services in society. In this town, because of the destruction of the manufacturing base over decades by the Conservative and New Labour governments, the local authority and the health services are left as the largest employers in the town. But now even these public services and our District hospital are continually threatened trying to make ends meet and hundreds of needed jobs have gone. Let us re-establish with public investment an all-round self-reliant economy that meets our needs. Let us end monopoly right over the economy and establish public right. Let us decide.

An anti-war government would stand against the racism of the British state and its media, of its inhuman treatment of migrants under the big lie that immigration and immigrants are the problem. Immigration is not the problem; it is the system that pays the rich that is the problem causing poverty, lack of social housing, and so on. This media does not talk about the huge emigration from Britain as a “problem” for other countries, or the millions of refugees caused by the Anglo-US “war on terror”. No-one is illegal and this immigration racism must be ended immediately. The brutal targeting of Muslims in the “war on terror”, caught by the government's policies of imprisonment without trial and complicity in torture, must be ended immediately, and the rights of all upheld simply because we are all human.

The Fight for an Anti-War Government candidate 2010 General Election Page is to be found at:
http://www.northeaststopwar.org.uk/election2010/

Roger Nettleship’s Election Communication can also be accessed here: