Swansea disability campaigner to head Senedd party list

The Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has announced its candidates for the Senedd elections.

In Gŵyr Abertawe, the lead candidate is Ben Golightly, a member of the Socialist Party and one of the elected coordinators for Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru.

Ben says his driving force in standing for election is “Fighting the UK government disability cuts - and the Welsh Labour MPs voting for them and designing them. We need a Welsh Government that stands up for us - not a first minister who says ‘it’s up to MPs’.”

“But the challenge for me is not to be pigeon-holed as just a disabled activist, but to fight this election on a rounded-out programme for the working-class as a whole.”

One important issue for Ben is providing a positive alternative to Reform UK. He says that stopping ‘lesser evilism’ isn’t enough. “People are right to complain about the lack of affordable housing, healthcare, services, and the cost of living. Reform UK argues about who should be first in the queue – but the problem is the queue itself, the rationing of services. While we squabble over our place in the line, big business gets away with looting our public services.

“Without a socialist alternative on offer, things will only get worse, and working-class people could grow more divided and pay the price for the bosses’ crisis. We need trade unions to boldly confront the issues and build a new workers’ party to cut across racism and division.”

Joining Ben on the TUSC party list for Swansea & Gower is Mark Evans, a long-standing Unison trade unionist, Socialist Party member, and Secretary of Swansea & District Trades Council.

Mark played an important role in winning TUC Cymru, which represents 400,000 workers in Wales, to the position of calling on councils to adopt legal needs-led budgets to defend council workers, service users, and residents, from cuts and council tax rises.

Ben concluded: “Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist candidates will be the only option on the ballot paper supporting policies like those, and the only candidates with the track record to back it up.”

All Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates have pledged that, if elected, they would forgo the full £76,380 Senedd member salary, and take home only a worker’s wage.

The coalition is also standing three candidates in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf.

Pub worker to head Cardiff election campaign

 The Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has announced its candidates for the Senedd elections.

In Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf, one candidate is John Williams, a young hospitality worker, LGBT+ activist, Socialist Party member, and chair of the Cardiff general branch of Unite the union.

He says “I know that a lot of people in my industry think that politics isn’t for them, that the establishment parties aren’t offering anything different to help with our living conditions. But we need people like us in the Senedd, elected to fight for our class.”

“I’m standing because workers need guaranteed hours with no loss of pay, and flexible hours - decided by the workers not by the bosses. I’ve been involved in campaigns to make sure that hospitality workers keep all their tips - it’s disgraceful that the UK Labour government has retreated on that.”

Prior to the 2024 general election, Labour had pledged to give workers control over how tips would be allocated, but dropped the proposals in office - a move the general secretary of John’s union slammed as “insulting.”

And it’s not just UK Labour, John says. “Look at the health workers at Cwm Taf Morgannwg, taking their fight for fair pay to Labour at the Senedd, or the recent struggle of Cardiff bin workers against bullying culture and union busting behaviour by a Labour council.”

John is joined on the party list by Helen Perriam, a nurse at Llandough Hospital, and Dave Bartlett, secretary of Cardiff Trades Union Council.

Helen says she has “seen first hand what Labour and Tory cuts and privatisation have done to our NHS” and “will stand up in the Senedd to fight every cut and speak up passionately for more resources to allow nurses and health workers to provide the services we need.”

Dave helped lead the campaign that saved health facilities at Cardiff Royal Infirmary.

He says that “campaigning in our communities isn’t enough, we need a voice for the working class in the Senedd. It is time for the trade unions to end the funding of Labour and to form a mass new workers’ party instead.”

All Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates have pledged that, if elected, they would forgo the full £76,380 Senedd member salary, and take home only a worker’s wage.

The coalition is also standing two candidates in Gŵyr Abertawe.

END

References for claims made:

Labour climbdown on fair tips
https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2026/january/unite-labour-climbdown-on-fair-tips-will-hurt-hospitality-workers

Health visitors march to the Senedd
https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2026/march/health-visitors-crank-up-pressure-on-cwm-taf-health-board-with-eight-more-weeks-of-strikes

Cardiff bin workers

https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2022/march/cardiff-council-workers-vote-for-strike-action-over-toxic-bullying-culture-within-waste-services-department

Welsh Socialist election campaign launched

The Socialist Party has announced today that it will be standing in the 2026 Senedd elections under the banner of the Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).

The party says that its candidates are proven campaigners in their workplaces and communities, and that it is standing to make the case for trade unions to take the lead in forming a new workers party to address what it calls “the crisis in working-class political representation.”

It says its key policies are “for democratic public ownership; a future for young people without debt, war or climate disaster; and a united fight for jobs, homes and services to combat racism and division."

In Gŵyr Abertawe, the lead candidate is Ben Golightly, one of the elected coordinators for Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru, a high profile campaign fighting disability cuts.

Joining him on the TUSC party list for Swansea & Gower is Mark Evans, a long-standing Unison trade unionist, and Secretary of Swansea & District Trades Council.  Mark has been a consistent campaigner against local government job cuts, council tax increases, and cuts to services.

The party is also standing three candidates in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf.

John Williams is a hospitality worker, LGBT+ activist, and chair of the Cardiff general branch of Unite the union.

He says he is “proud to have supported striking workers across Cardiff and South Wales, including ambulance staff, nurses, and bin workers. I’m proud also to have stood shoulder to shoulder with reps facing anti-union tactics from Cardiff Council, and of my work bringing trade union solidarity to Trans Day of Remembrance and Trans Pride.”

Helen Perriam is a nurse at Llandough Hospital. She is a Unison member and trade union campaigner.

She says she has “seen first hand what Labour and Tory cuts and privatisation have done to our NHS” and “will stand up in the Senedd to fight every cut and speak up passionately for more resources to allow nurses and health workers to provide the services we need.”

Dave Bartlett is secretary of Cardiff Trades Union Council and a leader in the campaign that saved health facilities at Cardiff Royal Infirmary.

He says that “campaigning in our communities isn’t enough, we need a voice for the working class in the Senedd. It is time for the trade unions to end the funding of Labour and to form a mass new workers’ party instead.”

All Welsh Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates have pledged that, if elected, they would forgo the full £76,380 Senedd member salary, and take home only a worker’s wage.

The coalition is also standing nearly 200 candidates in the English council elections.

Open letter to 'Your Party' from TUSC Cymru

Dear Maria

I am writing to you on behalf of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in Wales.

Firstly, let me congratulate you on your election to the Central Executive Committee of Your Party, representing Wales.

TUSC is an alliance of socialist groupings and individuals that aims to provide a socialist option for voters at elections. For many years, we have campaigned for the formation of a new mass workers party based on the trade unions, and we welcomed the formation of YP from the start. In fact, before YP had registered its name with the electoral commission, we offered to hand over TUSC’s registration to YP, should they wish to use it.

In Wales, our supporters have consistently advocated that YP stands as widely as possible in the Senedd election. It is now clear that YP has not chosen that path. We believe that is a missed opportunity, both to challenge the pro-capitalist parties with a socialist alternative, and to build the public profile of YP.

We believe that standing as an independent will do nothing to build the socialist alternative that is sorely needed.

We note that the YP proto branches in both Cardiff and Swansea voted in principle to stand in the Senedd election but did not receive the necessary support. In the circumstances, TUSC has taken the decision to stand where our limited resources allow, and to date we have selected candidates to stand in two constituencies, namely Gwyr Abertawe and Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf. Ideally, we would like to stand in more seats.

We are here making an offer to any member of YP who wishes to stand for the Senedd to approach us with a view to either joining the TUSC list for Gŵyr Abertawe or Caredydd Ffynnon Taf, or to stand in another seat under the TUSC description.

All TUSC candidates must agree to a set of core policies but are free to develop a fuller manifesto in their own area. This is because TUSC is a coalition, not a political party, and there is scope for variation beyond the core policy platform. The core policies, which we believe are consistent with YP policies and values are shown in the annex.

Even at this late stage, we are prepared to stand down if YP chooses to stand in a constituency that we have targeted.

May we wish you and YP the very best in your future endeavours.

Dave Warren

(Secretary TUSC Cymru)

8/3/26

email: info@tusc.org.uk

ANNEX

TUSC Cymru Core Policies for the 2026 Senedd election.

• Refuse to vote for any cuts to jobs, public services, benefits and workers’ terms and conditions and demand that the Welsh Government uses its reserves and borrowing powers to ensure no cuts in public services

• Campaign for the end of anti-union laws

• For public ownership and against privatisation of all public services including public transport - bring all services in-house

• For a mass council house building programme – for rent controls and end to evictions

• Campaign for a £15 an hour minimum wage with no exemptions and a ban on zero hour contracts and casualisation of employment - for implementation in all services funded by the Senedd including public procurement

• For free education – scrap tuition fees

• For united working-class struggle against racism and all forms of oppression

• Socialist change to prevent climate change

• For the right of national self-determination for Wales

Vaughan Gething loses confidence vote - No confidence in Welsh Labour to fight for the working class

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition are standing two candidates in Wales 

Gareth Bromhall, Swansea Socialist Party

Welsh Labour leader Vaughan Gething, who took up the position just three months ago, lost a vote of no confidence after two Labour Members of the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament), both critics of his leadership, were absent. At the centre of the controversy is a £200,000 donation to his leadership campaign from a businessman twice prosecuted for environmental offences. Even the Labour Party wouldn’t accept the leftovers his campaign leadership bid didn’t use.

The vote was a completely symbolic move, with no constitutional consequences, so Gething refuses to stand down. After 25 years of Welsh Labour in power, many working-class people in Wales will be thinking: “We didn’t have confidence in you either!”

Our NHS is on its knees. Decades of underfunding and mismanagement have meant that waiting lists are longer, ambulances spend more time parked up at A&Es than on the road getting to patients, and dental provision has completely collapsed.

Public services have been cut to the bone. The Welsh government has handed down without resistance Tory cuts year after year and Labour councils have slashed services. Social care provision, or lack thereof, is a massive contributor to the NHS crisis. Schools are cutting support staff and non-statutory provisions as they struggle to balance budgets.

Save our steel!

Thousands of jobs at Tata Steel in Port Talbot and the downstream plants, and tens of thousands more in the local community, are at risk as the company continue their wrecking programme of redundancies and closures, destroying a key industry and the communities that support it.

Labour has fallen short of calling for what’s needed to save the people’s livelihoods. Their promised £3 billion and support for the Community Union-backed plan would still see hundreds of jobs lost. And Tata have dismissed these plans outright.

Gething and Starmer should pledge to nationalise the steel industry – taking public ownership of a key strategic industry and preserving good, well-paid, skilled work and maintaining virgin steel manufacturing in the UK.

It’s likely that Labour will win in Wales, not due to enthusiasm but because of hatred for the Tories and a desperation for change.

However, there is an alternative – the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition are standing two candidates in Wales – John Williams, a young hospitality worker and union activist in Cardiff East, and myself, an Ambulance Service worker and Trades Council Secretary, in Swansea West.

We are standing to pose the need for a new party of the working class – trade-union backed, with a socialist programme, bringing together anti-war activists, trade unionists and community campaigners with those who see the need for an alternative and want to bring about the socialist transformation of society.

Originally via https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/126015/12-06-2024/vaughan-gething-loses-confidence-vote/

Grangetown needs socialist councillors

 

By Joe Fathallah, TUSC candidate for Grangetown

I’m standing as a candidate in the Cardiff Council elections on May 5^th, in Grangetown ward, for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Grangetown has 44% of children growing up in poverty, and this is in no small part due to the actions of the council in passing on vicious cuts to our communities. 

Council leader Huw Thomas recently announced that Cardiff is aiming to participate in UNICEF’s ‘Child Friendly Cities’ initiative, but this is a sick joke when held up against the reality faced by working-class children. Grangetown Playcentre, locally known as the adventure playground, was effectively closed by the Labour-controlled council. The centre’s funding was cut, and it was transferred into ‘community control’, but this was a death sentence. A facility like this needs professionally trained staff working full time, and it wasn’t long before the centre ceased to function.

This was despite a heroic campaign conducted by young people, parents, and youth workers, and supported by campaign group Cardiff Against the Cuts. We held a mass protest stopping traffic outside the centre, and marched on and occupied County Hall, gaining significant attention and media coverage. The council pressed ahead with the cuts, and there are no longer any facilities like this for children in Grangetown. 

In 2014, the same council had presented a proposal to build a school on the site of Channel View leisure centre, another vital community facility. There was, and is, a genuine need and demand for Welsh-medium education in this part of the city, and we fully supported the building of the school – but not on top of the leisure centre! The council themselves presented alternative siting options in their public meetings on the issue, but it was clear to everyone in attendance that there was a preference for this site. The council officers claimed that the public would be able to use the leisure facilities at the school! There would have been huge issues with this, including child protection, and clashing with PE lessons, school team matches, and so on. A campaign to save the leisure centre, in which I played a leading role, was successful in causing the council to back off, showing the need to community organisation to fight cuts. The council clearly tried to play off those who used the leisure centre against those parents who wanted the new school. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided in the fight against austerity. 

Other facilities cut over the years have included the old Grangetown Library, which was sold off and converted into flats. It was replaced by the ‘Grangetown Hub’, but this doesn’t have all the same facilities, and it was clear that this was motivated by the land sale. Working-class communities such as Grangetown have been targeted in this way because the Labour councillors (as well and Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats when they were previously in coalition) have proved totally incapable of standing up and fighting against Tory austerity, and have instead passed cuts budgets year after year, resulting in the loss of vital jobs and facilities. 

Vote TUSC in the election on May 5^th! All TUSC candidates pledge to fight against austerity in deeds not just in words. If elected, instead of voting through cuts budgets, I would draw up in collaboration with local communities, an alternative budget based on the real needs of the city. This would involve, in the first instance, dipping into the council’s £120 million reserves to plug the funding gaps. This could buy time to launch a real fightback against the Tories in Westminster, involving council workers and trade unions, service users, and communities, to win the funding we need for the jobs and services we need. 

Welsh Labour Won't Give Us Rent Control

John Williams, Cardiff West Socialist Party and TUSC candidate for Plasnewydd ward in Cardiff

Rents are out of control. The average rent for a property in Britain has risen to £969 a month, according to Zoopla. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the average rent has increased by £62 a month. Wales has seen the third-highest increase – 9.8% in the last year. There are over 1,000 empty properties in Cardiff alone, and more than 4,000 homeless people.

Socialist Party Wales supports any genuine attempt to tackle homelessness, and guaranteed fair rents for all. In the Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru agreement last year, after the Welsh Senedd elections, both parties announced a commitment to the principle of rent control. They cautiously posed: “The role a system of fair rents could have in making the private rental market attractive for local people on local incomes”.

However, there are no firm or clear proposals. Landlord organisations are already applying pressure, and the Welsh government is giving landlords time to come up with a strategy to oppose them.

Legislation

Welsh Labour Senedd members had the chance to show that they were serious in fighting for rent control and to tackle homelessness, by voting in favour of a Plaid Cymru motion to develop legislation for fair rents. The majority abstained. Welsh Labour deputy climate minister Lee Water said: “Labour had abstained because [rent control] is already covered by the budget agreement with Plaid”.

But in the detailed draft budget narrative document sent out by the Welsh government, we’ve seen nothing of the sort. What we have seen though, is the £3.5 million private sector leasing scheme aimed at tackling homelessness.

The scheme offers landlords grants and interest-free loans of up to £10,000. It gives councils the power to run a property, including any repairs, and, in return, the landlord gets guaranteed rent, but only 90% of the local housing allowance rent.

Currently, a puny amount of 24 properties in the whole of Wales are signed up to the scheme. The scheme only works if property owners want to give up income, which clearly they don’t want to do!

During lockdown, for a period, the Welsh government wiped out street homelessness by putting people up in hotel rooms, proof it was always possible to do so. However, it has not been prepared to fight for the funding for this to continue. What’s missing is the political will.

Like local authorities, the Welsh government could pass a needs-based budget, defying Tory imposed austerity. The Senedd could back up Welsh local authorities, overwhelmingly Labour-led, to take the same approach. In doing so, a fighting Welsh government could mobilise the support of the Welsh working class and demand the required funding from Westminster.

This is the approach the Socialist Party in Wales will be campaigning for when our members stand as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in local council elections on 5 May.

Rent control

• Cardiff City Council already licences landlords; all local authorities could do the same. Fair rent, secure tenancies, safety and decent conditions, as agreed by elected committees of tenants and trade union representatives, could be made a requirement of a licence.
• Tenants should have the right to rent tribunals, overseen by these committees, to challenge rent levels and unsafe conditions.

Empty homes

• Councils must use their powers to compulsorily purchase property left empty; to be brought back into council housing stock – to be rented at social rents on secure tenancies.

Council homes

• A mass building programme of eco-friendly affordable council homes to tackle the housing crisis, under the democratic control of working-class communities, to prevent overcrowding and to ensure the provision of all necessary services including green spaces.