MEMBERS of the public packed out the People’s History Museum in Salford, Greater Manchester, at the weekend to hear a string of speakers lambast the European Union as a capitalist club.

Speakers aligned with the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and a Labour MP united to share the platform. The meeting was organised by the Lexit campaign, which is pressing for EU withdrawal from a left standpoint. Blackley and Broughton Labour MP Graham Stringer said: “The voice of the left has been almost kept out of the debate.”

He said Labour minister Barbara Castle had warned in the referendum of 1975 that joining the then EEC would eventually damage the NHS, and that 40 years later she had been proved right.