New front in war of the roses

John Metcalfe sounds like the archetypal bedrock Labour Party supporter - a train driver, member of Aslef, supporter of his local football team, a Carlisle family man with a son serving in the British army in Afghanistan.

And for many years the archetypal bedrock Labour Party supporter is exactly what he was.

He joined the party in 1979 aged 16 and became a Labour councillor for Denton Holme, rising to council deputy leader for three years and effectively took charge for 18 months when his superior became ill.

Metcalfe contested the Tory stronghold Penrith & Borders in the 1992 general election and became mayor of his home city in 1997-8. Yet he left the Labour Party in 1999.

"Why did I leave? In 1997, what people voted for is not what they got.

"The sense of relief in getting rid of the Tories was overwhelming. We didn't raise our hopes too high. We knew it was new Labour, but we were promised a publicly owned and operated rail network. What we've got is a million miles away from that.

"There's been a thousand broken promises. There was the immediate handover of control of interest rates to the Bank of England and we were told that we had to operate Tory budget plans for five years."

Metcalfe was not a member of any political organisation until 2008 when he joined the Communist Party of Britain (CPB).

"I was still analysing things, but you want to share your politics with other people," he says.

"It's no use sitting on the couch to grump and groan at the TV. This country is drifting politically, sleepwalking into the death of politics.

"I joined the Communist Party because it has the most fundamental socialist programme. It has a history that other left parties don't. It has stood the test of time.

"I knew a couple of local party members and I was in tune with what the party stands for and I feel comfortable in it. That was the problem with Labour. I no longer felt comfortable in it."

His involvement with the CPB led to him standing as a candidate for No2EU - Yes to Democracy in last year's European election, bringing together a coalition of local left-wing parties and trade unionists in a lively campaign.

"We analysed what had happened in the north-west region and, if the whole region had seen the same result as Carlisle, Nick Griffin wouldn't be an MEP now," he says.

"During the Euros, we campaigned vigorously in the city centre. Beforehand, the BNP had been out at weekends peddling their stuff. The main parties did nothing in the city centre. Labour did nothing. It let Griffin in. It promised a door-to-door campaign, but it never happened.

"Their local activists were a bit intimidatory at first, whispering obscene stuff in your ear. We had a choice of backing down or driving them out."

In the end, the BNP abandoned their stall and resorted to taking pictures of the No2EU people. They also complained to the police about being abused.

"We were calling them fascists and nazis and they didn't like it, but local people did, congratulating us and complaining that for three to four weeks the only party campaigning in our city centre had been the BNP.

"We have a moral and political duty to challenge them directly. We must confront their people, expose them and drive them from our city."

The coalition that had backed the No2EU list held local discussions in recent months over what to do in the general election.

Long-standing Carlisle MP Eric Martlew is standing down and Labour has chosen council group leader Mike Boaden as its candidate, a man who recently said on local television that his political hero was Tony Blair.

"We're not hostile to Labour," Metcalfe stresses. "There are many good Labour MPs, but many others seem to have been created in a Millbank factory."

And he points out that Carlisle Labour has backed policies that it once would never have supported, such as handing over local council housing without a fight to the private sector.

Coalition supporters felt that, with a restricted choice of right-wing Blairite, Tory, Lib Dem, far-right BNP and even the Greens putting up a former right-wing Labour councillor, the left in the city had to do something.

Rail union RMT had provided the backbone of No2EU, so it was logical that it should co-ordinate the general election response.

Metcalfe gave a presentation to the local RMT branch and was approved unanimously as the Carlisle Trade Union and Socialist candidate. This decision was then agreed by the union's political and national executive committees.

In discussions to draw up an election manifesto Returning Politics to the People - available from vote4johnm@hotmail.co.uk - local people raised many issues appropriate to local as well as national politics and these are included in it.

People complained that city and county politics was stagnant, with unholy alliances the norm. Carlisle City Council is run by a Tory-Lib Dem coalition, while Cumbria County Council has a Labour-Tory partnership.

"We decided to broaden the campaign to put up as full a slate as possible from various left organisations, backgrounds and trade unions to contest city council elections, which will probably be on the same day as the general election," he reveals.

"This is not a one-off campaign for the general election, although that will be the main focus."

Carlisle, like many previously rock-solid Labour areas, has suffered a running down of traditional industrial jobs, as a result of which youngsters have been pointed towards higher education.

But because of spending cutbacks a planned extension to the University of Cumbria on Carlisle's riverside has been cancelled, setting back development in the city.

"Peter Mandelson has already announced a cut of £900 million for the higher education budget, leading to a cap on student numbers," Metcalfe notes.

"Young people were told to seek higher education. Now this door is being slammed in their faces. I see the danger of another lost generation, just like the 1980s as a result of Thatcher's cuts."

Metcalfe counterposes the harmful cuts to public services against expenditure of vast amounts of money on things he says we don't need.

"We don't need a replacement for Trident and we don't need another war in Afghanistan after the war in Iraq. I speak from the heart as I have a son serving in Helmand province," he says.

Manchester and north-west England RMT executive council member Craig Johnston, who is part of the team behind Metcalfe, is another former Labour activist and coincidentally, also served as mayor of Carlisle.

"I was a Labour Party member for 21 years. I joined in 1979 aged 15 because I was frightened of what Margaret Thatcher would do to this country.

"Everything I feared and worse has happened since she was elected and new Labour has totally embraced a Thatcherite agenda.

"Any commitment that Labour had to far-reaching socialist change has been jettisoned."

Johnston was a Labour councillor for Belle Vue ward for 11-12 years. He left in 2000 but still canvassed for Labour in elections because he always believed that the Tories would be worse.

"But Labour has now gone so far to the right, with its promises of massive cuts in public expenditure, its maintenance of Tory anti-union laws, its embrace of the European Union privatisation agenda.

"Since 1997, I've been voting against the Conservatives, but it's time that I made my vote count by voting for what I actually want not what I don't want," he emphasises.

Fellow Metcalfe supporter Tony Brown, who is Cumbria CPB chairman, says that the coalition behind the candidate is the logical culmination of months of people on the left working together, starting off with Carlisle Against Racism and the No2EU campaign.

"We found that we could pool our resources very effectively and it's a better use of our talents."

Brown takes issue with suggestions that the Communist Party identity could be lost in a coalition, insisting that the manifesto describes Metcalfe as a CPB member.

"The people that we work with clearly know that he is a CPB member. There are Socialist Party members working in the organisation and a number of trade union activists.

"We have been able to mobilise people who haven't been politically active because of the vacuum left by the major political parties and their lack of class politics."