It's a shame that in an article of over 1,600 words Owen Jones couldn't bring himself to seriously discuss the political projects that Bob Crow was actually involved in ('Don't mourn. Organise', 15 March). But perhaps that fits a narrative Owen wishes to promote, that there is no future for any electoral politics outside Labour. Bob, however, saw the creation of a new political voice for working people, rooted in the organisations and communities of the working class, as an essential aspect of the struggle against austerity.

For the past four years we had worked together building the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), in a project officially backed by the RMT itself. TUSC will stand hundreds of anti-austerity candidates in this May's local elections in the biggest left-of-Labour challenge since the second world war.

Despite a number of approaches, Tony Benn didn't agree with an electoral challenge to Labour (though he did appear in the 2009 electoral broadcast for No2EU).

I think he should have left the Labour party, which had so clearly left him, but unfortunately he disagreed. In his latter years Tony was more a prisoner in New Labour, reduced to smuggling out notes through the bars. The socialist policies he stood for were killed off by successive Labour leaders from Neil Kinnock onwards, but they still exist in new projects, like TUSC and No2EU, co-founded by Bob Crow.

Dave Nellist

National chair, TUSC

• I admire Owen Jones's optimism about the state of the British left, but cannot share his positive prognosis. After a week that saw the demise of two giants of the labour movement, Bob Crow and Tony Benn, and the hefty clobbering of another, the Co-op, it is hard to see how the left can regroup and fight the seeping market forces and individualism overwhelming this so-called progressive liberal democracy.

All three were/are bastions of core labour principles – solidarity, working people's rights and collective action. As the vultures descend on the Co-op, the attack on it by a senior Labour party figure (Co-op shambles exposed, 15 March) only underlines the schism within the movement.

For post-Thatcher generations, a skeletal welfare state, zero-hours contracts and dwindling trade union membership are becoming the norm. Where is the vision, the leadership, the passionate Benn-esque oratory promoting the values of social justice, fairness and respect for human rights? Let's heed Benn's chosen epitaph, "he encouraged us", before the right twists it into another nail in the coffin of the left.

Clare Woodford

Manchester