The standout headline in the Workers Party Assembly Election Manifesto is that, on the morning after polling day, the priorities for people across Northern Ireland will be the Cost of Living, the Health Service, Housing. Education, Low Pay and the Environment – NOT a Border Poll, the Protocol, Flags, Culture Wars or who the First Minister is.

The Party’s uncompromisingly socialist manifesto sets out the political, social and economic priorities for working class people and highlights the repeated failures of successive Stormont Executives and of the five main parties.

The manifesto calls for a root and branch reform of the Assembly structures including a move away from mandatory co-alition, the abolition of community designation and the reform of the Petition of Concern, as pre-requisites for the start of the new Assembly.

The Party also calls for the introduction of a a range of measures deliberately ignored since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, including a Bill of Rights, an Integrated and Secular Education system, an Anti-Poverty Strategy, a viable Economic Plan and a Job Creation Strategy.  

In a joint statement marking the manifesto launch the Party’s six Assembly candidates said ,

“What difference will it make to a family facing a daily dilemma of heat or eat, who the First Minster is? What difference will it make to people living in chronic poverty, poor housing, or even no housing?

What difference will it make to young mothers desperately wanting to work but not being able to find or afford childcare?

What difference will a Border Poll make – win, lose or draw –   to a young student unable to go to university, a teenager unable to secure an apprenticeship or a family with no heat and little food? Absolutely none!

Thousands of people – many of them with jobs– are  living on or below the poverty line.

Low-pay and precarious employment, the dismantling of work-place rights, the privatisation of public assets and restrictions on trade union freedom, compound and intensify those problems. Children go hungry, homes go unheated.

The other parties want this election to be a sectarian headcount. They want it to be about the Protocol and a Border Poll. Of course they do, because it shifts attention away from what really matters in our lives

In this election the Workers Party is prioritising, unapologetically, these issues and presenting the socialist alternative to misery, poverty, social exclusion and second class citizenship.

WORKERS PARTY ASSEMBLY ELECTION MANIFESTO 2022

Click the link for the Workers Party Assembly Election Manifesto 2022