socialist environmental alliance header

Statements by Our Candidates in the 2005 Elections

Eamonn McCann, SEA candidate for Foyle and for Waterside Rural

Address to Socialist Environmental Alliance election workers at SEA ofice in Guildhall Square, Derry, following the close of campaigning, at 10pm Wednesday May 4th

Wednesday, 4th May 2005

All the indications are that a large majority of the electorate is going to vote tomorrow for parties out to advance the position of one or other of "the two communities" in relation to the other.

We recognise the historical reasons and pressures which lead people take this view.

But we take heart from the fact that the SEA has been confirmed during this campaign as the only clear alternative to an approach based on community. Our task now is to build on this platform for the future. We will strive all day tomorrow to win as big a vote as possible to strengthen us in meeting this challenge.

Our perspective does not ignore the issues arising from the communal division. On the contrary, it provides a way of confronting these issues, in a way which doesn't sharpen the division but brings together the people on both sides who are being left behind.

As soon as the dust has cleared, we will resume our efforts to build a mass campaign of non-payment of water charges and in defence of our public services. We will be supporting the strikes planned in the education service for May 15th in opposition to the vicious cuts which would see jobs lost and standards lowered.

We will continue to work with rail unions and others for massive new investment in our rail service, to preserve jobs, protect the environment and create a modern publicly-owned transport system. We will again take the lead in exposing the role of big business and weak local government in allowing evictions at Eglinton to facilitate the Ryanair runway.

We will be active in backing all groups of workers who take action to defend jobs and conditions.

We will continue to expose and campaign against State injustice, irrespective of the community background of those affected. We will give people in beleagured communities a radical alternative to paramilitarism as a way forward.

We will be forthrightly anti-war and anti-capitalist in everything we do.

We will continue to work with others towards unity on the Left, so as to bring these politics more effectively to the huge numbers across the North who would welcome a real radical alternative if it appeared more viable.

Whatever the final figures, we assure everyone that we won't be going away.





SEA Logo