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Hull & East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance (HEYSA) Is there a future for a Socialist Alliance in Hull? HEYSA to re-launch in 2004 as local affiliate of the August 2004. The Hull & East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance (HEYSA) suffered a crippling blow in January 2002 when the Socialist Workers’ Party, the largest of its constituent organisations, instructed all their members to walk out en-masse. The SWP did this because HEYSA declined to merge itself into the Socialist Alliance Party – a national organisation which the SWP effectively control and which does not allow local groups to affiliate to it, merely to merge themselves with it to become branches of the national organisation (and in 2004 this body was effectively dissolved by the SWP in favour of a new alliance called the Respect Unity Coalition). Since January 2002 HEYSA has not been entirely inactive. Along with the Socialist Party it actively supported a national campaign aimed at pressuring local MP and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to back a Private Member’s Bill to regulate rented properties in multiple occupation. Also, HEYSA members have been active in other activities, both locally and nationally. HEYSA also participated in the launch of Left Green Liaison - a loose grouping of organisations including Leeds Left Alliance, Tyneside Socialist Forum, Leicester Radical Alliance, Green Socialist Network (now part of the AGS) and various other leftist, and progressive environmentalist groups.In October 2002 HEYSA’s sister organisations in Leeds and the West Riding, the Left Alliance (which had also rejected attempts by the SWP to force it to merge into the SWP-controlled Socialist Alliance Party), decided to join together with the Green Socialist Network and form a new, national political organisation – the Alliance for Green Socialism (AGS). The AGS (like HEYSA) is not a political party. Membership is open to anyone who broadly accepts its socialist and environmentalist principles. It also accepts affiliation from organisations who support those principles but who wish to retain their own identity and independence. The AGS is registered with the Electoral Commission and is thus able to stand candidates (or authorise its affiliated groups to stand) in elections. AGS members include people who are members of political parties (varying from the Socialist Alliance Party to the Green Party) and does not try to exert strict discipline. Like HEYSA (and unlike the Socialist Alliance Party) it is a genuine alliance It is now proposed to re-launch HEYSA as an independent local Socialist Alliance affiliated to the AGS. Those who previously indicated support for HEYSA will be invited to join and participate in local and national campaigns based on Green Socialist principles. A re-launch meeting will be convened in the Summer of 2004 after the 10 June elections (in which the AGS is standing a slate for the European Parliamenet in Yorkshire) to which all former members and supporters will be invited. Those who wish to join HEYSA or offer their support will be welcome and they are also free to join, or not to join, the AGS – as they choose. To find out more about the AGS or the re-launch of HEYSA please e-mail heysa@bigfoot.com. The former HEYSA PO box address in Hull is no longer operative so please do not send anything there. A new local postal address will be posted on this website shortly – in the meantime anyone without e-mail can write to HEYSA or the AGS at NEA5794, Leeds LS7 3YY. Is the Hull incinerator rising from the grave? Distributing hundreds of thousands of phoney consultation surveys supposedly asking Hull residents their opinions on waste management may be a pretty wasteful use of resources (especially when it is done by paying outside contractors to carry out this sham exercise). However, this is precisely what Hull City Council's New Labour leaders stand accused of. The questionnaires purport to seek Hull residents' views on what should be done with the City's waste. However, anyone who knows the first thing about public consultation schemes only has to glance at the questionnaire to see that it is a bogus exercise. Asking multiple choice questions which are clearly designed to fit in with a formula by which the Council's preferred option miraculously emerges as the people's preference as well is a tried and tested trick of phoney or coerced consultation exercises - and Hull's Labour Council is well practiced in manipulative sham consultation exercises (remember the North Hull Estate vote which did so much to re-invigourate the then Tory government's attack on Municipal Housing back in the eighties?). It seems very likely to many observers that the Hull incinerator may be disinterred over the coming months (unless Cllr Daren - Mr Incinerator - Hale's public falling iut with New Labour council leader Colin Inglis throws a spanner in the works) and dusted down for a second attempt at forcing it onto an unwilling public. If this is the case then Hull & East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance and the Alliance for Green Socialism will be joining with other progressive and environmentalist organisations to fight it off again. Zombie incinerators - no way Watch this space.....
For more information contact Hull & East Yorkshire Socialist Alliance e-mail us at heysa@bigfoot.com To view information about HEYSA policies or a copy of our rules go to http://members.tripod.co.uk/HEYSA/index-1.html
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