Devizes Labour Party select Chris Watts as their Parliamentary candidate for 2015

In a unanimous vote on Saturday (November 9), the Devizes constituency Labour Party selected Chris Watts as their Parliamentary candidate for the 2015 General Election.

He told the meeting in Devizes that he was worried the Prime Minister’s promise of a referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017 and the furore surrounding Tory backbenchers’ attempts to have it earlier, was scaring off inward investment for important industries – like Swindon’s vital Honda plant.

Chris Watts is 46 years-old, married with three children.  He has lived in Swindon for most of his life – his parents moved to Wiltshire from Northern Ireland when he was two years old.

He has worked in IT for twenty-five years – and has had his own IT consultancy firm for ten years.  So he knows from experience all about the problems faced by small businesses and believes the present Government’s policies towards them are half-hearted.

He is a lay member of the GMB trade union and is President of its Wiltshire and Swindon Branch.  He has responsibility for 2,200 employees.

He joined the Labour Party after the 2010 General Election and has been an active member of the party in Swindon.  He recently led the successful campaign to stop the Conservative run Swindon Council transferring its council houses to a housing association.

He told Marlborough News Online that he looks forward to campaigning in Wiltshire.  In a recent local election campaign in south Swindon he tripled the Labour vote coming to within a hundred votes of the winning Lib-Dem:  “And that was in a ward I was told I was just a paper candidate.”

Faced with his campaigning – over the period of the campaign his team delivered 25,000 leaflets – the Conservatives took fright and asked their supporters to vote Lib-Dem.  

Chris Watts represented the Labour Party in a Question Time at St John’s Academy last April.  Appearing with him were Claire Perry MP and the former Lib-Dem candidate, Fiona Hornby – whether he will face them both as candidates in 2015 remains unclear.

One of the first issues Chris Watts will be campaigning on is the adoption of the living wage, reversing the recent dilution of employees’ rights and the abolition of zero hours contracts: “The tax payers are picking up the tab for zero hours contracts.”

“On the economy the Party must have a coherent message on how we’re going to steer the country back into prosperity for all.”

He will also be campaigning on the NHS and takes his cue from the creation of the NHS: “We were brave in 1945 when our economic circumstances were worse than now.  We should be able to reverse the Health and Social Care Act to return to a service that’s free for all and not open to profiteering.”

He knows from experience that people who work in the NHS have a vocation to help people: “You cannot be in a vocational service, putting in extra hours, if you think you’re just lining peoples’ pockets.”

More widely, he is worried that so many public services are now subject to the demands of shareholders: “Dividends and profits for shareholders do not mix with public services.”

However his first target is the European Elections – which come round on the last Thursday in May 2014.  He thinks it’s extremely important as regards rural policies that there is a Labour MEP in the South West: “Our first task is to get the Labour vote out in the European elections.”

NOTE: In the 2010 General Election the Labour Party candidate came third behind Claire Perry (Conservative) and Fiona Hornby (Liberal Democrat).  The result showed the Labour Party had taken 10 per cent of the vote compared to Claire Perry’s 55 per cent.