Workers' Liberty

"If they [the power companies] still don't get the message, this government should consider taking these essential industries - gas, electricity, water - back under public ownership", declared Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley at the Labour Party conference (22 September).

When I was at university, I had a friend who was in the SWP. Even after she left the SWP, she continued to regard herself as a revolutionary socialist, and for a while she behaved like one.

The article "A watershed moment in union politics" in Solidarity 3/135 contained misleading comments about the events at the CWU Conference earlier in the month.

At the Labour Party National Policy Forum starting on 24 July [2008], the unions want to get a “Warwick 2”, a second version of the list of concessions obtained by them at a Policy Forum in summer 2004, in the run-up to the 2005 general election.

An initiative has been launched to “draft” John McDonnell, the left-wing Labour MP who sought to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership after Tony Blair’s retirement, to contest the leadership again.

The BBC reports (27 July) that: "The Labour party has rejected trade union demands for less restrictive strike laws at its National Policy Forum at Warwick University. Calls for measures to make strike action easier were defeated on the final day of the forum".

By Colin Foster

According to the Daily Mail, “the GMB trade union has already taken the extraordinary step of discussing at its last executive council meeting whether its two representatives on Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) should be indemnified against financial loss in the event Labour goes bankrupt”.

Dear Brother Woodley,

We are probably on the way to a Tory government. In the local elections on 1 May, not only did Labour do badly; the Tories did well. An opinion poll on the weekend of 7-8 May showed the Tories ahead of Labour by 49% to 23%.

In a television interview on Sunday 4 May Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander suggested she was in favour of an early referendum on Scottish independence — “Bring it on!” was the expression she used. Later Alexander said she wanted a referendum during the next twelve months and that Gordon Brown backed her position.

Over the weekend of 10– 11 May the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty held its annual conference. The event was lively and vibrant, with a lot of newer and younger comrades contributing to the debates and discussions. We used the time to assess our previous year’s work and plan our future work.

An open letter from trade-union activists to Tony Woodley, Derek Simpson, Billy Hayes, Paul Kenny, Keith Norman, and other leaders of the Labour-affiliated trade-union left. Add your signature!

It is time for the trade union movement to face facts with New Labour.

See here for draft text for Unite, and here for draft text for Unison.
Conference notes with dismay the decisions taken at the 2007 Labour Party conference to abolish the ability of affiliated trade unions to set or change Labour Party policy. Unions and CLPs are now barred from putting political motions to Labour Party conference.

Gordon Brown sadly seems to have flattened what remains of the Labour Left rather than galvanising and rallying it.

Conference notes with dismay the decisions taken at the 2007 Labour Party conference to abolish the ability of affiliated trade unions to set or change Labour Party policy. Unions and CLPs are now barred from putting political motions to Labour Party conference.

David Cameron has launched a fresh offensive against single parents, unemployed and disabled people with plans to force them into work. The Tory leader’s proposals include making the unemployed participate in “community work”, penalties for those who turn down “reasonable” job offers and cutting the number of people receiving incapacity benefit by 600,000 over the next five years.

Communism and Social Democracy in Britain: How and why the old Labour Party and its reformism came to dominate working class politics in the Twentieth Century.

The AWL is debating how to assess the significance of the decision of the Bournemouth Labour Party conference to ban unions and local Labour Party from submitting motions on current political issues to future Labour Party conferences, and the strategic and tactical consequences for Marxists.

Gordon Brown has responded to the funding scandals by reopening the question of increased state funding for political parties, and curbs on trade unions' rights to fund political parties. His speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum at the start of December is reproduced in full on the Labour Party website.

For informative background from Peter Kenyon's blog, click here.

by

After the “cash for peerages" row, the New Labour party of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is now deep in another scandal about dodgy funding from millionaires, one which has already brought a police investigation and forced the resignation of Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt.

Extracts from an AWL leaflet distributed at a regional meeting of the National Shop Stewards Network, held in Glasgow on 1 December.

After the "cash for peerages" row, the New Labour party of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is now deep in another scandal about dodgy funding from millionaires, one which has already brought a police investigation and forced the resignation of Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt. Labour's affiliated unions should tell their representatives on the Party's National Executive to demand an emergency Executive meeting to decide on and install proper measures of accountability.

Unions and local Labour Parties have voted to ban themselves from submitting motions on current political issues to Labour Party conference. All the formal powers that conference once held to determine party policy will be transferred to the leadership, which will only have to ‘consult’ with the National Policy Forum, itself a well-controlled and largely impermeable body. These proposals have finished off Labour Party conference as a serious political event. They are an attempt to finally destroy the Labour Party as a democratic political organisation based on the labour movement.

For all the contributions, click here.

1. Under the rule changes tabled by Gordon Brown at the end of June, and ratified by the Labour Party conference on 23 September, unions and local Labour Parties are banned from submitting motions on current political issues to Labour Party conference. All the formal powers that conference once held to determine party policy have been transferred to the leadership, which will only have to "consult" with the National Policy Forum, itself a well-controlled and largely impermeable body.

October 2007
From SW
From MR
"Still a workers' party if Bournemouth is consolidated?" - MT
Six notes - MT

Between fifty and sixty per cent of the population identify as “working class”. Despite the term “working class” vanishing completely from the language of the Labour Party, the proportion claiming this now-unspoken identity has been fairly stable since the 1950s.