Labour Representation Committee

A movement formed by trade unionists and socialists to secure a voice for socialists within the Labour Party, the unions, and Parliament.

Left protests against bureaucratic running of Labour Party conference

In a statement issued on 29/10/05, the Labour Representation Committee said it was "appalled by the brutal treatment of Walter Wolfgang" - an 82 year old delegate forcibly removed from the conference for mildly heckling Jack Straw - and it was "demanding a full and independent enquiry into way the party conference is currently being run." The LRC states: This week there have been shocking allegations of corruption of the democratic process and intimidation of ordinary delegates, as well as the blatant gerrymandering of the conference agenda. It is not just a matter of 80 year old hecklers...

Labour left backs Iraqi unions

The Labour Representation Committee conference in London on Saturday 16 July voted to support the new trade unions in Iraq and to recognise that: “the dominant military forces of the ‘resistance’ are Sunni-supremacist and Islamic-fundamentalist. They will crush the new Iraqi labour and women’s movements if they triumph”. Some speakers at the conference — Graham Bash and Mike Phipps from Labour Briefing, and Francis Prideaux from the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy — vehemently opposed the pro-union motion, arguing that key Iraqi trade unions are “collaborationist” and that it is only in US...

CWU backs LRC

Possible privatisation of Royal Mail, and the union’s link to the Labour Party, were the big issues at the General Conference of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) in Blackpool from Sunday 12 June. On Sunday the Executive’s emergency proposition, calling for a strategy to defeat privatisation and a review of the Labour link at conference 2006 if privatisation happens was narrowly passed. The alternative was a demand to withdraw from the Labour Party in November 2005 if the Government will not give a restatement of its commitment in the general election manifesto to keep the Post Office...

An alternative manifesto

The Labour Representation Comittee has launched an alternative Labour manifesto, counterposing policies widely supported by the trade unions to those pushed by Blair and Brown. The manifesto was launched at a rally in London on 21 March. Speakers including (above, right to left) Katy Clark, Labour PPC for North Ayshire and Arran (speaking); Paul Mackney, general secretary of NATFHE; Gerry Docherty, general secretary of TSSA; Jeremy Dear of NUS; and John McDonnell MP. Jeremy Corbyn MP and Billy Hayes of the CWU also spoke. The LRC is also supported by RMT and the FBU. www.l-r-c.org.uk

What we say: Labour after Brighton

The Labour Party conference at Brighton reflected the political state Britain is in now. The question is: did it offer any way forward for the labour movement and the working class? The simple answer is: no. The longer-term answer is: maybe. The atmosphere now is one of chronic, prolonged, irresoluble political crisis. The Iraq war and its aftermath form the eye of the political storm that continues to rage around Tony Blair. But many other things are caught up in it. Over the years this Blair “Labour” government with its Thatcher-Tory policies and brutish hostility to the labour movement has...

Going back to the roots

At a packed Labour Representation Committee fringe meeting, union leaders Jeremy Dear of the NUJ (pictured), Mark Serwotka of the PCS and Tony Woodley of the TGWU all spoke. The theme of the meeting was “rebuilding Labour”. This will mean rebuilding political trade unionism from the bottom up. Unions have to make the case for the involvement of ordinary working people in politics. Union political structures should represent members’ concerns and be part and parcel of internal union democracy. As Kate Ahrens from Unison, speaking on behalf of the LRC, put it: co-ordination between union leaders...

Text for union motions on the union/Blair "pact"

Suggested text for trade-union motions on the union/Blair-Brown 'pact'. Please adapt and reword as suitable for your union. This branch: 1. Notes the decision by the representation of the trade unions at the Labour Party National Policy Forum of 23/25 July to strike a pact with the New Labour leadership, dropping numerous trade-union demands for commitments in the next Labour manifesto in return for very limited concessions from the New Labour leadership. 2. Notes the verdict on those concessions pronounced by John Cridland, deputy director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, who...

Will the unions call Blair to account?

Seven years after Blair's New Labour Party formed its ostentatiously anti-Labour "Labour" government, there are signs at last that the trade unions are beginning to call the Blairites to account. It is not, in all conscience, before time. The most astonishing fact about the last seven years in British politics is that this viciously anti-working class government - whose ministers, for example, proudly bray that they have stopped EU trade union and social rights being extended to British workers - has in all that time been financially backed by the trade unions! Like the masochist paying...

Labour Representation Committee launched

By Maria Exall The launch conference of the Labour Representation Committee was held on Saturday 3 July. Over 300 delegates packed out the TUC Congress Centre to discuss key policy issues and debate the future of the Labour Party. John McDonnell MP welcomed everyone to the conference and called for comradely solidarity in debate and in the plans for organising for socialism in the Labour Party. There was a spirit of unity, with many of the delegates being aware that this conference represented the most serious attempt in the last decade to rally the forces of the left of the Labour Party. The...

Taking politics back to the workplace

Alex Gordon , from the South Wales and the West region of the seafarers' and railworkers' union RMT, and Billy Hayes , the General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, contributed to our debate on working class political representation at our Ideas for Freedom Summer school on 3-4 July. We print extracts from their speeches below Alex Gordon Working class political representation is under pressure from the impact of globalisation. Industrial struggle hasn't gone away but political struggle has moved out of Parliament - and onto the streets. The last few years have seen neo-liberal...

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