Peter Clifford campaigning at Durham Miners' Gala last month

On 18 February this year 150 workers, members of Unite union, arrived for work at Mayr-Melnhof Packaging (MMP) in Bootle to find the gates shut. Previous one-day protest strikes against the way redundancies were being implemented were a step too far for MMP's owners, so they locked the workers out, eventually closing the factory for good.

Brutal moves like this by the employers are going to increase as their economic crisis, rooted in the global contraction of capitalist production and trade, deepens. They are forced to attack workers to gain a competitive edge in their sharpening battle against each other – nationally and internationally – in the hope of boosting falling profit rates.

This picture will not be altered either by the outcome of November's election in Manchester Central or the next general election.

The MMP workers though, instead of walking away, fought back. For three months they mounted a 24 hour picket at the factory gate.

I joined them on the picket line several times along with other workers from Manchester to bring solidarity. They told a familiar story:

We thought our jobs were safe, we've worked here for twenty or more years and suddenly- no future.



This instability, faced by millions, I know well as a factory worker employed by an agency who can sack me and my fellow workers at a moment's notice.

What we found on meeting the MMP workers was important: their heads were not hung low. On the contrary their spirits were high. As they started to fight and organise to win support, they found a greater unity and strength amongst themselves and made allies they had never expected.

On 18 August I'll travel with family members of Manchester man Anthony Grainger to join a march in Birmingham organised by families of victims of police brutality. Anthony was killed on 3 March by Greater Manchester Police, in an operation involving 16 armed officers. He was unarmed, yet we believe that the police effectively acted as judge and jury.

Peter Clifford speaking at a meeting on the Grainger case last month. To his left is Grainger's cousin Wesley Ahmed.

His family, like the MMP workers, never imagined that they would be in such a situation. They too faced the choice to accept it or fight. In campaigning they have learned some of the realities of which class interests the police and courts serve. And, like many others who refuse to bend and choose to take a stand, they are learning not what they can't do, but what, together, they can do.

The Communist League election campaign is about standing with workers like these who are resisting attacks from the bosses and their government. Why? Because the power of working people to organise and to fight counts more than an election result.

How for example in the 1960s were black rights won in the United States? Wasn't it through the mass actions of millions of working people, not the benevolence of the Kennedys. Or here in the UK, wasn't the winning of health care provision after World War Two a concession in the face of rising unrest by workers wanting a better life, as the future Lord Hailsham warned in 1943:

If you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.



The Communist League election campaign will be about this, meeting with workers considering how to resist attacks from the bosses and their government. Through struggle we can win some concessions, but the rule of capital means that what we gain is constantly threatened. And so we'll be discussing how workers must forge a revolutionary movement that can take political power out of their hands. We'll discuss how workers acting together, along that road, have the power to deal a blow to the competition for jobs that sets us against each other, if we fight for a government-funded public works programme to provide work for millions. Not some cheap-labour scheme, but paid at union agreed rates, building homes, hospitals, and other social needs.

We'll discuss what we can learn from Cuba's socialist revolution and the gains they fight to defend today. There, working people learned as they fought together how to begin to organise society according to human solidarity. It remains a living alternative to the failed 'entitlement' state socialism of Labour. It shows how real social solidarity and gains are won through revolutionary struggle not by looking to a big government that claims to look after you.

To get on this road, instead of looking to parties that make promises but end up protecting the rule of capital, the challenge working people face is to look to ourselves, unite, fight more effectively and chart a course toward political action. As this crisis inevitably forces more people like the MMP workers and Grainger family to fight, so we're sure more workers will see the need to break politically from all the parties that defend the rule of capital and organise our own party and political programme that fights for our interests. The Communist League election campaign in Manchester Central will be about a small step in that direction.

Peter Clifford is the Communist League candidate for the Manchester Central by-election on 15 November

The Guardian Northerner is keen to run posts from all candidates in the by-election, and other contributions are very welcome. Please email us at northerner@guardian.co.uk.

You can read Kate Hudson of Respect's post here and Loz Kaye of the Pirate Party's here.