The Communist Party works with its allies to promote the "Left-Wing Programme", part of an Alternative Economic and Political Strategy to open the road to socialism.
Key policies of the Left-Wing Programme are to:
• Redistribute wealth from the rich and big business to working people and their families with a wealth tax, higher corporation tax, cuts in VAT and higher pensions and social benefits.
• Set the national minimum wage at half median male earnings rising to two-thirds, with no exemptions, and enforce equal pay through compulsory pay audits.
• Immediately restore the link between the state retirement pension and earnings at its original value and introduce a second state pension which includes contributions from employers and the state.
• Halt all forms of privatisation and invest in public services and their staff, with a massive programme in particular to build more council and sheltered housing.
• Integrate all religious, private, trust and city academy schools into a unified secular education system under democratic local control.
• Protect and develop manufacturing industry through public investment, measures against the export of jobs and capital, and expanding fair trade with People's China and other developing countries.
• Restore public ownership in the energy and transport sectors – including the electricity, gas, coal, water and railway industries – so that we can plan to meet future needs by developing clean coal technology and tidal, solar and offshore wind power.
• Match public subsidies to failing private companies with a public shareholding and take banking and key industries such as pharmaceuticals and armaments into democratic public ownership.
• Cut military spending to average European levels, switch military R&D and production to meeting social needs and scrap plans to replace Trident with a new nuclear weapons system.
• Oppose all steps towards a military, monopoly capitalist United States of Europe including an EU constitution, the EU services directive and EU labour law reform.
• Repeal all anti-trade union, anti-democratic and racist immigration laws with full employment rights and trade union participation for migrant workers.
• Strengthen the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and restore powers and resources to local government.
• Abolish the House of Lords, break up the media monopolies, scrap plans for ID cards and bring the police and intelligence services under democratic control.
• Cancel all Third World debt, promote genuine trade-and-aid policies and oppose the GATS plan to privatise public services across the world.
For a more detailed look at the CPB, it's history, theory and policies, please take a look at the official party programme, "Britain's Road to Socialism" (see below).
