Firstly, I'm not from Liverpool - and while I have a few tenuous links with the city, I'm not going to pretend to anyone that I'm not a Londoner.

However, I'm from East London; I left school as a teenager with no A-Levels; I have had to scrape by on £2.35 an hour (before the minimum wage existed) and the Labour movement is in my bones.

My father was a Mirror Group printer and FoC at the Sporting Life; his father was a printer and FoC at The People in around 1929; my great grandfather, a carpenter, was a member of the Labour Party a hundred years ago and my gran, a child at the time, used to tell us that her father came home from a Labour Party meeting one day excited that a young lawyer called Attlee had joined the branch. I help people publish websites for a living which is as close as I'll ever get to being a printer myself.

You can thank my parents for this, but I learned about socialism and solidarity more often than I went to sunday school - and my mother hoped I'd grow up to be a preacher. This is why I'm active in the party today and why I was motivated to set up this website.

For me, being an MP is not the aim; it's just a means to an end. My aims are born of a frustration that we still haven't built a fair society.

I am frustrated that the minimum wage is set at a level that affords poverty, not dignity; that a man or woman who works full-time for any employer should be valued so low. I am frustrated that a 16 to 21 year old attracts a miserly percentage of even that poor wage. As far as I am concerned, anyone on or near the minimum wage receives an assault on their self-esteem when they receive their pay-slip and that isn't good for an individual or for any community where low wages and unemployment are common.

I'm frustrated that the political elite perpetuates itself so blatantly, when there is no need for a political elite. How is it that a Cabinet half-full of Oxford or Cambridge alumni attracts little comment, yet if there were no Oxbridge graduates after a reshuffle, it would be major news? Why, in a supposedly open democracy, is a government of barristers more acceptable than a government dominated by any other form of public servant? Yet any move toward democratic reform is resisted. I refuse to accept that Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge hold monopoly of the talent in this country.

I'm frustrated that there is any perceived difference between environmentalists and socialists. Environmental sustainability is a socialist imperative because when resources become scarce, it is the people we stand for who will lose out first.

I want to be a force for Labour Party unity. I grew up in Thatcher's 80s. My father, a man who had worked from the age of 14, was made redundant and my mother was falsely arrested by a corrupt and politicised police force. But in the 80s, Thatcher was rarely popular, we just failed to provide a unified and credible opposition and that happened because we didn't show each other enough respect as comrades. Too often we stopped listening to each other and descended into name calling.

But I like to call Labour members comrades - not because I think you're all, deep down, yearning to nationalise Britain's major industries - but because whether I like you or dislike you, whether I know you or not, that card in your pocket says that we stand together for those who can't stand for themselves. And when we don't stand together, I know there's no-one else who will stand for the vulnerable, the weak and the poor.

But Liverpool West Derby - what do I have to offer that constituency? I don't know if there are any West Derby CLP members who read or maybe write on this site, but if there are I'd like to ask you:

Who's going to go out every week and talk to those kids whose only experience of self-respect comes from carrying a knife or being in a gang?

Who's going to get teachers and headteachers, school governors, parents and LEA officers into a room and work out with them how the local schools can instill discipline and ambition into their pupils?

Who's going to challenge, convince or cajole local employers and new businesses to take a lead in developing an economy that nurtures people's talents rather than exploiting the lowest paid workers they can find?

Who's going to raise funds from any source that can be found to help the youth offending teams and offender management service to offer more support and rehabilitation and training to people who can't always see a way out of a destructive lifestyle?

Who's going to take the time to go to the nurses and the street-cleaners and the doctors, dentists and housing officers, the firefighters, council administrators, the voluntary workers and carers and everyone else that delivers public services - just to say thank you; just to remind them that they are appreciated - and to ask them what a Labour government can do to make their jobs easier or more effective?

I'll do these things because this is my ambition - not simply to be an MP.

And if I'm blessed enough to be selected as the West Derby candidate and a voter approaches me and says they don't think they can vote for me because they don't believe in socialism, I'll say, "It's OK, you'll be alright - because socialism believes in you".

Alex Hilton
alexhilton@gmail.com
07985 384 859
0151 324 1997