United Left Alliance to field at least 18 candidates in general election

LEFT CANDIDATES:THE RECENTLY formed United Left Alliance is to field at least 18 candidates in the general election, organisers said yesterday.

The group has also written to polling organisations asking that they include the United Left Alliance in any future opinion polls on political support.

Candidates include six sitting councillors from Cork North Central, Dún Laoghaire, Dublin South Central, Dublin West and Dublin North, as well as Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins and a candidate selected by disaffected former members of the Labour Party in Laois-Offaly.

Eight of the candidates are Socialist Party members, eight are People Before Profit members and one is from the Workers and Unemployed Action Group. The Laois-Offaly group has yet to decide what it will be called.

Almost all have pledged to draw only the average industrial wage should they be elected.

The organisation is hoping that both the candidates’ party and their affiliation to the alliance will be contained on election ballot papers, and are taking legal advice on whether or not this will be possible.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Mr Higgins said the organisation, set up last November, was rapidly expanding.

It was possible their numbers would increase in the run-up to the election, but even if they did not it would be the first time “there was such a wide representation of principled left candidates presented to the electorate”, he said.

“The very positive response to the launch of the ULA throughout the country indicates a real thirst for a radical alternative to the establishment parties and particularly to Fine Gael and Labour,” he said.

Mr Higgins said it was entirely reasonable to request that the United Left Alliance be included in future polls as a recent Red C poll had registered 15 per cent for independents, within which the left parties were included.

People Before Profit councillor Richard Boyd Barrett said it was clear Fine Gael and Labour had “no intention of reversing the damage done by Fianna Fáil and their golden circle friends”.

Raymond Fitzpatrick, a member of the breakaway Labour Party group in Laois-Offaly, said his former party was “quite undemocratic”.

He claimed it had removed the rank-and-file members from any decision-making.

It had developed an “inner circle” and was only selecting “sycophants”.