The Youth wing of the Irish Labour Party has today voted in favour of standing candidates in local elections in the North.
As Labour Youth prepared for its first conference in Belfast in over a decade, chairman Patrick Nulty said members would be backing a bid later this year by the Northern Ireland Labour Forum to persuade the party to field candidates north of the border in 2009.
"We believe everybody on the island and in all communities in Northern Ireland should be given the chance to vote for a genuine left-wing party," he said. "They should be able to vote for a party which will prioritise quality public services, quality housing, affordable healthcare, good education, a decent environment and opposition to the war in Iraq." (UTV)
The head of the Northern Ireland Labour Forum, former Newtownabbey councillor Mark Langhammer, is set to put forward the proposal at the Irish Labour Party conference in November. It remains to been seen how much support the idea has in the wider party,but Labour has already gone significantly further than either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael in creating a Northern organisation.
As the UTV article points, out if Labour does run candidates in the North, it would have implications for a number of other parties, some of which are being chewed over at politics.ie.
Leave a Reply