Labour Party

Labour left unfocused

Party should be “committed to socialist policies” now lacks any means by which it might be carried through. The only practical suggestion was that, given the dramatic loss in Labour Party membership, it was now much easier for the left to take over moribund constituency parties (and presumably the smaller they get, the better, as it then becomes even easier). John McDonnell argued very strongly that Brown’s victory without a fight by the unions was a turning point. Rather than proposing anything practical to reverse it, however, he seemed to say the game was up and “the old strategy was over...

The Labour Party: born of struggle

Down to the 1880s there was no “labour movement” [in Britain] in the continental sense at all. There were strong trade unions (of skilled workers), and these unions were politically-minded — but the only parties were the two ruling-class ones, the Tories and the Liberals. The trade unions expressed themselves politically by serving as the arms and legs of one or other of these parties — usually the Liberals, though in an area such as Lancashire and Cheshire where the employers were strongly liberal the trade unions might retort to this by supporting the Tories! The political prospect of the...

A five year plan?

Alistair Darling’s pre-Budget statement on 9 October promised real wage cuts for public sector workers through to 2011, as well as choking back health and education spending and decreeing extra job cuts in the civil service, especially the Department of Work and Pensions. The statement decrees “public sector pay settlements consistent with the achievement of the Government’s inflation target of 2 per cent” right through to the financial year 2010-11. Actually, the Retail Price Index currently shows inflation at 4.1%. It has been above 4% pretty much all this year — 4.8% at one point — and is...

Labour: Making the Rich Richer

Their triumphalism has been a little chastened. New Labour politicians these days are not quite as bold as Tony Blair was when he told Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight before the 2001 election that he was not bothered about a widening gap between rich and poor. “Paxman: Is it acceptable for gap between rich and poor to widen? “Blair: The key thing is not... the gap between... the person who earns the most in the country and the person that earns the least... The issue isn't... whether the very richest person ends up becoming richer. The issue is whether the poorest person is given the chance...

John McDonnell Assesses Brown's New Labour Party at Bournemouth

John McDonnell MP, who ran a left challenge for the Labour Party leadership earlier this year, has issued the following statement assessing the Labour Party's Bournemouth decision to shut down future Labour Party conferences by banning all "current" motions from unions or local Labour Parties. AFTER the events at the TUC and Labour Party conference, it is time for the left to take a hard-nosed look at where we go from here. First of all, we have to face up to the harsh realities of the new political world in which we are operating. The historical path of the left stems from working people...

The Unions after Bournemouth

Even in 2005, Tony Blair’s Labour must have seemed to most voters at least marginally less illiberal and less rigidly attached to inequality than the Tory party of the old Thatcher minister Michael Howard. But what about now? Younger people, looking at the parties afresh, have nothing presented to them which makes Labour seem even demagogically more on the side of the “common people” than the Tories. Sometimes, indeed, the opposite. It has not always been so. The 1959 Labour Party manifesto was issued at a high point of “Butskellism” (the term was coined in 1954) and of the drive by the then...

Why did union leaders vote to end Labour democracy? An open letter to Tony Woodley

Dear Tony Woodley, We hear that at a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Bournemouth (23-27 September), you invited a mild critic of your knee-bending before Gordon Brown to “come outside and say that!” Your offer to punch your critic at least shows some fighting spirit — but, Tony, isn’t it the wrong sort of fight, and isn’t it misdirected? Evidently you have a bad political conscience? So you should! Your decision, and that of the other “left” and not-so-left trade union leaders, not to oppose Gordon Brown’s moves to abolish Labour Party conference is astounding. Abolition is what...

Good haters, bad democrats

DALE STREET reviews The Blair Years — Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries “Some twat with a Trot poster came up to me on the way in (to the conference) and yelled ‘Butcher! Traitor!’ at me,” writes Campbell in his diary entry for 29 April 1995. “I stopped and mustered as much visual contempt as I could, then assured him that if we win the general election, then don’t worry — thanks to wankers like him, there will always be another Tory government along afterwards. These people make me vomit.” There are many people in Campbell’s diaries who make him want to vomit. Roy Hattersley is “a...

Unions vote for political hara-kari: LRC responds

On 23 September the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth voted to ban unions and local Labour Parties from putting motions on current political issues to any future Labour Party conference. Labour Party policy-making will now be supervised by the Parliamentary-leadership-controlled “Joint Policy Committee”, and ratified by occasional take-it-or-leave-it referendums of the membership. Union leaders had said as late as 12 September before that there was “no chance” of them supporting such rule changes. A few days before the conference, though, they all buckled. Eighty per cent of the union...

Unions vote for political hara-kiri

Sunday 23 September: a grim day in Bournemouth. The unions voted overwhelmingly to disenfranchise the working class - to ban themselves (and the local Labour Parties) from putting motions on current issues to future Labour Party conferences. Click here for background, and leaflet to download . Since the vote, on the first day of Labour Party conference 2007, was on rule changes, it was by card, not by show of hands, and the result will be announced on Monday 24 September, but there is no doubt about the broad picture. No trade-union delegate spoke against the rule changes (though long-standing...

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