JOHN Phillpott's article headlined "Trumpet sounds for all real socialists" (Evening News, September 9) raises some important issues.

The Socialist Party contends that New Labour is fundamentally different from the Labour Party of old. New Labour openly supports big business - listen to any speech by Gordon Brown.

Trade unionists who try to defend their interests are labelled wreckers.

So working class people are currently left without political representation.

Socialists need to seek to fill this gap but it will take time, money and effort to establish a socialist alternative.

Mr Phillpott refers to "limitless economic immigration plus state supervision".

We point out that those who can move from war-torn, poverty-stricken areas to richer, more stable areas will do so and attempts to stop them have largely failed.

As to state supervision, I will only remind ex-comrade Phillpott of the idea of Lenin that the state would wither away under socialism.

Mr Phillpott says nationalisation is outdated. We think it is very up-to-date for the rail industry and the energy sector where the public, at the moment, gets the worst of both worlds, paying out endless subsidies without any accountability.

EU bosses' club

It appears that in the case of the private British Energy, they recently paid out £50m in profits and are to get £410m from the taxpayer.

Do the opponents of public ownership simply intend to continue bailing out bosses who fail?

Turning to the issue of Europe, along with other socialists, I voted against joining the then Common Market. The European Union is a bosses' club, where they work out how to exploit us on a wider scale.

Workers throughout Europe face the same problems of low pay, attacks on working conditions, threats to pensions and destruction of our environment.

Workers across Europe will need to come together to address these problems and overcome the attempts of the employers to play one group of workers off against another, their age-old policy of divide and rule.

Mr Phillpott seems to think there are some closet socialists still in New Labour locally. I don't know.

If there are, they have already swallowed the end of any socialist policies, the end of party democracy, the end of party democracy, the end of the socialist Clause Four.

They will soon see their party leading a war against Iraq for the purpose of maintaining the oil supplies and prestige of the United States.

Will they swallow that?

P McNALLY,

Welland, Malvern,

Worcestershire.