Labour Party

Something to learn from the past

Although familiar with Martin Thomas’s educational agitation, analytical explanations and delivery of argument in discussion over the last five years: I don’t share the same historical tendency, having come to political maturity through the Communist Party of Great Britain (original CPGB 1920-1991) in its final eurocommunist stage. Martin, in Solidarity 377 makes some good points in his feature on the possibilities of a Young Labour revival. Orthodox Trotskyist sects and Communist Party national roads to socialism were deeply affected by high Stalinism; influencing some in the Labour Party and...

Sticking to The Theory

The Corbyn surge has drawn into the Labour Party hundreds of thousands of people previously outside it. It couldn't have done that unless, before the surge, there was enough oomph inside the Labour Party to get the Corbyn candidacy going (which wasn't easy: he was the fourth person approached to be a left candidate; he wasn't keen; enough soft-left MPs had to be pressured into nominating him that enough right-wingers would feel embarrassed about denying him the few extra nominations necessary to get on the ballot paper). In my letter ( Solidarity 376) about which Mark Osborn complains (...

Realism or illusion? The left, Labour, and reforms

While the Labour right openly try to sabotage and smear Jeremy Corbyn, more subtle Labour centrists tell him that he must move only as fast as the middle ground. The Labour left surge of the early 1980s saw the same debate. That makes this exchange from that time relevant today. Vladimir Derer was the secretary of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, a central force in that early-1980s surge and still important today. Sean Matgamna of Workers' Liberty replied to him in Socialist Organiser, then the paper of a broad range of activists on the Labour left. By Vladimir Derer Comrade O'Mahony...

Hundreds at inspiring Labour left conference fringe meeting - but we also need discussion on way forward

At a left-wing Labour Party conference fringe meeting on 28 September, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the audience: "The view now is straightforward and I tell you this: when workers want to take action, we will support them automatically. Our movement should not be divided, there is one struggle. We need to take industrial action and we need to take direct action, on the streets and into the occupations... We are campaigning to close the [immigration] detention centres, we are in solidarity with the people in them. It might not be popular right now, it will be a struggle... The secret...

Labour Party conference votes to restore right to take solidarity strike action

On Monday 28 September delegates at Labour Party conference voted unanimously for a motion committing the party to fight the Tories' Trade Union Bill and the next Labour government to "legislate for strong rights to unionise, win recognition and collective bargaining, strike, picket and take solidarity action." Those words came from a motion promoted by the Right to Strike campaign , submitted by a number of Constituency Labour Parties and in complete form by two, Broxtowe and Chesterfield. This is the first time since the early 1990s that the Labour Party has supported the crucial right to...

Army general threatens all means “fair or foul”

Just eight days into Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party leadership, and four and a half years before the next general election, a serving army general has already threatened a mutiny against a Corbyn Labour government. “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it”, the un-named general told the Sunday Times on 20 September. “The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security. “There would be mass resignations at all levels...

Conference should start to open up

The annual conference of the Labour Party takes place in Brighton from 27-30 September. It comes just two weeks after the dramatic victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest. Over the last thirty years Labour’s annual conference has become unrecognisable as a working-class political conference. And the preparation and documents of this year’s event were mostly drafted before the Blairites were aware of any coming defeat. In the official programme there are dozens of business-sponsored meetings, with (former) front bench spokespersons invited to speak. Included in the sponsors of...

Analysing the Corbyn surge

Sean Matgamna writes in Solidarity 367 that Corbyn’s victory was the second time since 2010 that the unions have asserted themselves inside the Labour Party. Sean says the first time was when the unions got Ed Miliband elected to Party leader after the 2010 election defeat. If this is asserting themselves, it is assertion-lite. The striking parallel between the election of Miliband and Corbyn is that the unions waited until the candidates appeared and then declared a preference from the list of candidates they were presented with. They weren’t scurrying around to find a union candidate to...

A letter to Charlie Kimber

Dear Charlie Kimber (National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party), I am responding to your “Letter to a Jeremy Corbyn supporter” (8 September), and subsequent statements by your organisation in which you basically tell “The tens of thousands of people who cheered Jeremy at his rallies [who] are a sign of the potential for a mass movement against austerity” that they are wasting their time. You say, the Labour Party leadership are so right wing and the unions will only back Corbyn if he can win the next election so there is, “no point spending four years striving to get Corbyn into office just...

Organise Labour's newcomers! Remake the party!

The trade unions and the working class have re-taken the Labour Party! An enormous beginning has been made to regain the working-class representation in Parliament that in the years since the Blairite coup in 1994 has been more or less absent. That is the fundamental meaning of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader on 12 September. The influx of 150,000 new members — including individual members politically activated by the trade unions — has the same meaning, as well as being a tremendous expression of the hunger for a radical alternative to both the Tories and the Blairite Labour...

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