I WOULD like to thank everyone who voted for me and TUSC (Trades Unions and Socialist Coalition Against Cuts) to represent Lydney West in the recent district council elections.

TUSC candidates stood in 135 parliamentary seats and more than 600 council seats to put the case against austerity, cuts and privatisation.

TUSC has actively campaigned to keep the NHS public and stop the bedroom tax and other anti working class measures.

We have seen the longest and most severe wage squeeze since Victorian times. Despite Osborne's claims of economic recovery, average incomes remain two per cent below the pre-recession level.

We were told the cuts would reduce the deficit to £37 billion by 2015 but it now stands at well over £80 billion.

A blackened front page on Friday with just the headline: 'Condemned again – five more damned years' reflects what millions of us felt when we heard of the Tories unexpected majority, yet Cameron only has the backing of 24 per cent of the electorate.

No-one campaigning for TUSC in Gloucestershire expected a good vote. We knew many people would vote tactically, some reluctantly and that many others saw no point in voting at all.

Labour was a weak "lesser evil", its own record blemished, its councillors failing to fight the cuts and only five Labour MPs voting against Osborne's last round of cuts in January.   

Nonetheless it is incredible that Labour could not defeat the Tories.

I therefore thank those voters who supported us and call on them and others to join us in the fight back. The Tories have no mandate for the inevitable savage cuts so TUSC will continue its fight nationally and locally.

Now more than ever we need a new workers' party.

– Claude Mickleson, Lydney.