With less than a week to go in the Eastleigh by-election, promoted by the resignation of ConDem criminal Chris Huhne, transport union RMT today blasted a deliberate media blackout of working class candidate Darren Procter, a member of the union’s executive and the candidate of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC).

While the press have been busy boosting the egos and profile of the establishment candidates – a Lib-Dem grandee and council boss, a Palinesque pro-privatisation Tory and a Labour media luvvie - Daz Procter, a ship worker who lives in the real world of cuts to services and attacks on living conditions, has been carefully ignored by the circus that has descended on the Eastleigh seat.

Despite the organised blackout, Darren and his supporters have been taking the message direct to the people with teams of leafleters hitting the housing estates and workplaces and with a series of public

meetings and events driving the message home that there is an alternative to the failed and bankrupt policies of the political elite which are being presented yet again by the media as the only electoral option.

The TUSC programme that Daz is standing for includes:

• United resistance to all cuts
• Defence of jobs and services
• Save the NHS
• Renationalise the railways
• Building for a 24 hour general strike

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“RMT stands shoulder to shoulder with our colleague Daz Procter as he fights to inject some real working class politics into the sterile media circus of the Eastleigh by-election.

“It’s scandalous that yet again the press are only interested in the same old tired party hacks from the same old failed political parties that created the current financial mess and whose culture of self-serving led to this by-election being called in the first place.

“We hope that those voters who gave Boris Johnson, Clegg, Cameron and Miliband such short-shrift on their fleeting visits to Eastleigh take a long, hard look at the ballot paper and give their support to the only serious anti-cuts and pro-public services candidate in this election, Darren Procter.”