Labour Party

Mainstream media coverage of the labour movement is, as we all know, awful. But just how awful it is became clear following the TUC demonstrations on Saturday, 20 October. The BBC, to its credit, led the news at nine o’clock with coverage of the march and rally. But it chose not show any of the trade union speakers — not even a soundbite — and instead showed a few seconds of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband saying something stupid and being booed. That was so predictable that it could almost have been written before the event even took place with the film clip of Miliband added later. That was...

The Financial Times reports that one European state has broken ranks with the neo-liberal consensus and started Keynesian policies of extra state spending rather than cuts to deal with the crisis. It is... the solidly right-wing government in Sweden. It has announced plans to spend SKr23bn to boost growth, and said it will invest more if the downturn gets worse. Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says he can do it because Sweden’s debt and deficit levels are much lower than others’. But if he’s right (as he is) that extra state spending can help drag capitalist economies out of recession...

Over 250 people lobbied Labour-controlled Hull City Council on 18 October 2012. The rally was called by the council unions against the proposed £100 million worth of cuts the council will seek to implement over the next two years. Crucially, a number of Labour councillors have come out publicly against the cuts, and have proposed that Labour fight the cuts locally and nationally. Councillor Gary Wareing told Labour members to go to their branches and CLPs and hold their councillors to account and tell them to stand up and represent the trade union movement and working-class people in Hull. The...

What lies ahead with the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition government? Seventy per cent of their planned cuts are yet to come. The Government plans to cut £50 billion from the Health Service. Its Health and Social Care Act, which aims to transform the NHS from a public service into a marketplace based, for now, on government funding channelled through GPs, will make the cuts hurt worse. By quarter 2 of 2012 there were 97,000 fewer staff in state schools and FE than before the 2010 election. Benefits are being cut, first disabled benefits and housing benefit. George Osborne announced a further £10 billion...

At the start of October, on the initiative of the NHS Liaison Network, Labour Party conference voted to prioritise the NHS for debate and then passed a resolution calling for the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, opposing the cuts, and demanding the rebuilding of the NHS, paid for by taxing the rich. Within hours of conference passing the resolution, Labour leader Ed Miliband told Channel 4 news he could not promise not make cuts in the NHS. Few believe we can rely on the Labour leaders to save the NHS. It was the last Labour government that promoted the Private Finance Initiative (PFI...

Pat Smith, the Hull North Constituency Labour Party delegate who moved the NHS motion at Labour Party conference, spoke to Solidarity. What’s your assessment of the debate on the NHS? The presence of protesters on the NHS Liaison Committee lobby was very effective, and must have been a factor in a majority of delegates prioritising the NHS for discussion. It also put pressure on the party officials and right-wingers who tried to water down the motion in compositing. We got everything we wanted apart from text against the internal market. I think the leadership realised they couldn’t bully or...

In his speech to Labour conference on Tuesday 2 October, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband took up the “One Nation” idea of Benjamin Disraeli, a Tory prime minister of the 19th century. In one sense this deserves the sneer from Scottish National Party politician Angus Robertson: “The extraordinary message in Ed Miliband’s speech is that Labour now amounts to nothing more than a party of one nation Toryism”. “One Nation” was the catchcry of many Tories in the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, the Disraeli who coined the phrase “the two nations” to describe class-divided England in 1844-5 was...

Poor old Mrs McDonald starved to death in a cash-strapped NHS hospital last week because your dad has a free bus pass and your daughter gets a free university education. That was Scottish Labour Party leader Johann Lamont’s message to Scottish voters in a heavily trailed policy speech last week. Like Scottish Labour’s policy on the 2014 referendum, there had been no prior discussion with the party membership or affiliated unions about this “new” policy initiative. Lamont argued: “The idea that Scotland is a land where everything is free is a lie. Someone always pays for it in the end...

In the first three days of Labour Party conference (30 Sep - 4 Oct, in Manchester), delegates have three times voted down the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) report. Each time the chair, Michael Cashman, has bulldozed on, declaring the report accepted and ignoring calls for a card vote. Delegates had a struggle to get the composite on the NHS onto conference floor, and avoid it being gutted. Many other proposals were manipulated off the agenda. Two rank-and-file rule-change proposals were rejected for debate after being held up for a year on the grounds that the National Executive had...

According to the Royal College of Physicians, acute hospitals are on the point of collapse. Emergency admissions have increased 37% in the last decade, but hospitals have a third fewer beds than 25 years ago. For a while the decrease in beds was matched by a shortening of patients’ stays in hospital, but that trend is now in reverse. Older patients are coming into hospital with more complex conditions and are staying longer. Meanwhile the Tories plan £20 billion cuts by 2014-5, and £50 billion by 2019-20. The Tories’ Health and Social Care Act, passed despite wide protest in March, will make...