Left has failed to make any real gains in US and Britain

Two parties, two candidates with billions of dollars to spend share policies which are basically two sides of the same capitalist coin.

To explain the US voting system is rather like explaining the rules of cricket to them. Furthermore, millions of US people are denied the vote, and who can forget the shambles in Florida which allowed Bush the presidency?

All attempts to create a workers' party have been suppressed in the most brutal of ways. We have seen McCarthy and his post-war witch-hunts, the blacklisting of Paul Robeson whom I had the honour to meet in Britain when he finally won his passport back, the murder of leftists Joe Hill, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and the many more who were imprisoned, blacklisted and forced to seek refuge abroad.

I recommend looking up Eugene Debs, who stood five times as a socialist candidate in the early 1900s. The last time was from a prison cell.

I vowed many years ago not to visit the US until it was a democratic state. I fear that I shall not see it in my lifetime.

And in Britain, we essentially have a two-party system that preserves capitalism too.

We need to build a party that represents the working people of Britain, the 99 per cent who produce the wealth of our country.

Roy Ormond

Skipton