Labour Party

The Scottish Labour Party organised a lobby of the Scottish Government Cabinet meeting in Clydebank last week, to protest against the SNP government’s cuts of £350 millions in local authority funding. This week the Glasgow City Council Labour Group is staging a lobby outside the Scottish Parliament, to protest at the SNP’s cut of £133 millions in funding for Glasgow, which will cost around 3,000 jobs. This is progress compared to muttering about underfunding and but getting on with ‘managing’ local authorities on a reduced budget anyway. So too does Scottish Labour Party leader Kezia Dugdale’s...

The Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism (CfS) held their AGM on Sunday 14th February. The meeting heard of “Labour plans in both Scotland and the UK to re-frame the current political debate and provide a genuine economic alternative to Tory and SNP austerity.” Before the AGM, an open meeting was held with talks by Lesley Brennan MSP and the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell MP, who spoke at length about democratising the economy at the macro level, the personal pressure he faces from the press, and the fact that the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership was “a once in a...

On the weekend of 26-28 February, the Annual General Meetings of Labour Students and Young Labour will be held in Scarborough. Previously a bastion of the Blairite right, with a reputation for venal careerism, sinister banality (networking events!), and barely-legal bureaucratic skulduggery, Labour Students has been buffeted by the winds of change following Jeremy Corbyn's election. Across the UK, Labour Clubs have seen a surge of interest from leftwing young people from September. This has, naturally, been met with horror from the outgoing leadership. Blairite chieftains issued instructions...

Nuclear weapons — and especially those nuclear weapons whose use would incinerate tens of millions of civilians — are an obscenity. A future Labour government must abolish Trident. In the first instance, this is a moral question: Ban the Bomb! Imagine, if you can, the worst case: a nuclear attack on the UK in which London and other big cities were destroyed and millions were murdered by a foreign power. Perhaps the attack came from a rogue state run by a strange and insecure freak, perhaps it came from a resurgent Russia run by a ex-secret policeman gangster. What then? We are told by those...

Following the first democratic national committee meeting for Momentum, the Daily Telegraph has published an attack, written by notorious right-wing hack Andrew Gilligan, on people elected from the meeting to the Momentum steering committee, as well as on the organisation more broadly. The article is full of lies and inventions, including a claim that the Momentum NC was appointed — when in fact, following some arguments in Momentum, it was elected by a more democratic process. Gilligan's attacks focuses on individuals. One Momentum Steering Committee member, as a student union sabbatical...

Just the fact of Momentum holding its first democratic national representative meeting (on 6 February) was a success. The procedure could certainly have been improved — there was not enough time for local groups to prepare properly for the regional meetings, indeed some regions didn’t meet at all. For both the regional meetings and the national meeting, many documents were either not presented until the day or circulated at very short notice. Nevertheless in many groups and regions there was a lively process of electing delegates and discussing issues. A summary of what was decided by the...

What are you advocating? Firstly, that Labour councils and the Labour Party more generally campaign explicitly and actively for the restoration of the funding which local authorities have lost since 2010 and are going to lose in the years ahead. At the moment, the demand is not even being made. Secondly, that instead of insisting that their decisions about spending and cuts are not up for discussion, councils and councillors encourage a process of discussion in the party and the labour movement more generally, helping to create a Great Labour Movement Debate about the way forward. Minimally...

A long-serving Tottenham Labour councillor has had the whip withdrawn for three months after speaking out against cuts to adult care services. As a result of the budget of £70m cuts over three years passed by Labour-run Haringey Council in 2014, the Haringey cabinet meeting on 10 November 2015 voted to close day centres for adults with dementia and disabilities. Birkbeck Road Day Centre in Hornsey, Always Day Centre near Muswell Hill, the Roundway Centre, the Grange Day Centre and the Haven Day Centre are all set to close. At the meeting, Tottenham councillor Gideon Bull was reported to have...

On 30 January around six hundred people joined the first major protest against the latest round of cuts in Brighton on 30 January. They were trade unionists and seasoned campaigners. The one group notable by its absence was the local Labour Party. Just a couple of weeks before, a lively debate at a meeting of around two hundred Labour members voted for a weakened motion to campaign agains the “Tory” cuts, but fell short of committing to opposing them at council level. The Labour administration is proposing a budget that will make £68 million of cuts to vital services, shedding jobs and...

The process of preparing for Momentum’s first national committee meeting has had negatives but also definite positives. Things seem to be taking a step forward. We need to make the most of the positives to push things forward further. A sort of NC meeting was due in January, made up entirely of appointees. There was outcry, the meeting was delayed to 6 February, and a system of elections was put in place, with local groups electing delegates to regional meetings, which elected delegates to the NC. Even then, there were only three weeks to meet and elect delegates, leading to various problems...