Grassroots « Labour Uncut

Ed sets out his stall: an NPF member reports from Gillingham

28/11/2010, 10:00:52 AM

by Richard Costello

Labour’s national policy forum met yesterday at Gillingham FC’s Priestfield Stadium for the first time since it was elected at its Manchester conference. More importantly, it was the first time since Ed Miliband was elected leader. Rather less importantly, it was also the first meeting since I was elected as the West Midland’s youth representative.

As I entered the conference venue and collected my credentials I was greeted by a pile of reports and banners entitled “New politics. Fresh ideas”. In contrast to the message of the day, however, was evidence of the same old petty disputes and dissent from the usual suspects during the opening exchanges of the day’s first plenary. Following the rubber-stamping of Peter Hain as chair of the NPF, there was a hint of disunity during the election of vice chair. Simon Burgess and left winger George McManus were both nominated from the floor and a decision on who to elect was due to be made until in dramatic fashion McManus withdrew due to the chair’s (Norma Stephenson’s) insistence that there not be a secret ballot, but a show of hands instead. I guess some things never change.

Peter Hain sought to allay the fears of members in his opening remarks as chair by declaring that “there would be more influence for party members” and that the NPF would be “more transparent”, before introducing the main event, Ed Miliband’s keynote address.

The speech had been built up as Ed’s chance to renew the party and define his leadership. I thought he delivered on both.

Ed began the meat of his speech by declaring that “the next election is as much about us as it is about them (the government)”. He told us that the Labour party must reform itself before it can ask the country to vote for it again. As the country and the way in which we do politics have changed, so must the Labour party to match this. Ed seemed to get this and while today wasn’t quite a clause IV moment, it was still a very important step on the journey back to power. In Ed’s own words “the party hasn’t renewed itself since 1994” and today was “an opportunity to do so”. By referencing 1994, Ed elicited images of Blair and his great reforms of the nineties, parallels which would continue later in his address.

The opportunity Ed mentioned was seized upon. His determination to re-connect Labour with the people as an engaging movement “rooted in people’s lives” was clear to see. As well as understanding that Labour must be a party which reaches out to the public, he tackled probably the biggest elephant in the room, and tackled it head-on: the system which elected him as leader. Boldly, Ed discredited the system by saying that it “should be a thing of the past for people to have more than one vote in the leadership election”. In doing so, Ed showed that he is a leader not afraid to make difficult decisions.

Today wasn’t a day for detail, but Ed did give us a flavour a different Labour party, a Labour party more concerned with civil liberties, climate change and the excesses of the City. In short, this was Ed’s pitch to the public and his attempt at defining himself and moulding the party around that image.

He finished his speech by evoking memories of Blair and that famous speech outside the Royal Festival Hall by echoing the former Prime Minister’s declaration that Labour once again is “the people’s party”. One can only hope that Ed’s words match up to Blair’s actions in reforming us as a movement ready to govern again.

The questions and comments from the floor which followed the speech were remarkably positive. It was a friendly audience. One of the speakers from the floor was the midwife who delivered his new child Samuel.

Aside from Ed Miliband and Peter Hain, today had one other important character, Liam Byrne. Liam is leading the party’s policy review, a process which Ed’s renewal programme relies on for so much. Liam described the policy review as “a wake-up call” and seemed to signal change by saying that the “public don’t want a New Labour groundhog day”. In making such remarks, Liam showed that he understood the significance of the day and clearly signalled a new pluralistic era in Labour politics.

There does seem to be a genuine will to make the NPF and indeed the party as a whole more transparent and open. The discussions and seminars with shadow ministers that followed the speeches seemed to be genuine two-way exchanges. Whether things continue that way, only time will tell.

Miliband’s leadership will only succeed if those high ideals are realised. Ed has set his stall out and now he must deliver.

Richard Costello is a member of the national policy forum. He writes in a personal capacity.

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Miliband must resist the evils of spin

27/11/2010, 06:34:14 PM

by Keith Darlington

As a member of the Labour party for over 35 years, and one who passionately cares about our party, I believe that we need a frank and honest assessment of our period of government and what went wrong.

Ed Miliband is right to set up a review. I hope that this will mean not just reviewing policy but also consider our conduct during our time in government. Some in our party seem to think that all we need to do is tweak some policies here and there and everything will be fine. For me, this won’t do. For at the heart of everything that went wrong during the New Labour years was Blair and Brown’s obsession with spin.

The spin doctor culture, of which Brown and Blair were among the main architects, succeeded in shutting out much sensible debate and enforcing a regime of top-down control at the expense of constructive and open discussion. In the early years of government, there might have been a case for some of this after the chaos in our party in the 1980s – for fear of being off-message and divided. But it went much too far in that it eventually poisoned our image with much of the public who came to see us as out-of-touch, untrustworthy, unprincipled and obsessed with power. (more…)

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Let’s not play politics with drugs

25/11/2010, 12:00:42 PM

by James Watkins

Drug addiction is too often the background noise in communities up and down the country. Even if your own family has not been affected, it is very likely you will know someone who, in some form, has been damaged by this trade.

The financial costs of the drugs trade also demonstrates in stark terms the harm that is being caused. For instance, in the West Midlands police area, as of January 2009, crime linked to 1125 class A drug users had an estimated impact of £108 million on the economy. The charity, Addaction, claim that between 1998 and 2008, drug-related ill health and crime cost the UK economy £110 billion.

The last government had made progress in tackling this problem. The 2009/10 British crime survey found that 8.6% of 16 – 59 year olds in England and Wales used illicit drugs. That figure in 2008/09 had been 10.1%. The number of 16 – 24 year olds using illicit drugs in England and Wales dropped to 20% – compared to 22.6% in 2008/09.

But these statistics also show the shockingly high numbers of people whose lives are being steadily destroyed by drugs. The government will shortly publish its public health and drugs strategies – which will have implications for every single family. This will also be a test of Labour’s commitment to constructive opposition. (more…)

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Attack, attack, attack

21/11/2010, 05:00:14 PM

by Dan McCurry

The chickens have really come home to roost for the British Labour party. Look at the map that shows the whole of the south of England smothered with Tory blue with only the tiny enclave of inner London bearing the Labour red. This diagram demonstrates the confined extremity of the Labour core vote. It also shows how close we are to being wiped out. If you swapped the constituencies with pictures of cowboys and indians, it would be a diagram of Custer’s last stand.

In all my time as a Labour party member, I have never known this party to be in a greater state of denial. This Kosovo-style social-cleansing is not just nasty but also politically sinister, in that it aims to disperse that red; to disperse our people, our communities. They don’t care where they go, as long as they take their votes with them.

And while all this is happening, we, the Labour party, are slouching about discussing whether we should back AV. Shameful. (more…)

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Labour must be prepared to challenge the right-wing press

20/11/2010, 12:44:59 PM

by John Tipper

It was only as the march slowed on the approach to the Tate that I was able to take a good look at the crowd. To my left was the Buckinghamshire New University hockey team, who in addition to their sporting livery were wearing blue foam antlers; even then they struck me as unlikely to lead an armed insurrection, although I also concluded that if they did it would be worth sticking around for.

Directly ahead, a student had clambered onto a bin and was pleading for somebody to hand him a sign. Somebody did, apparently without noticing that it was in Welsh – cue much good-humoured speculation from the non-Celtic contingent about what it might actually say.

Amongst the forest of placards I noticed slogans bracingly direct (“Fuck Fees”) and oblique (“Would you cut a CAT? Then why cut EduCATion?”) and cursed myself again for forgetting mine.

At one point I observed a burly fellow with a beard and a Lib Dem sticker attempting a spirited if unconvincing defence of Nick Clegg – he’s got the tuition fees issue wrong but he’s a decent guy, always polite and nicely turned out etc. But not only was he pleasingly juxtaposed against a sign depicting Clegg as a weasel, I also began to suspect that his fellow Liberals Against Fees were not wholly in agreement. Some were loudly shushing, but most of them simply wore the pained expression of a pre-teen whose parents have insisted on dropping them right outside the gates on their first day of secondary school. (more…)

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Sally Bercow’s crime is being a woman

12/11/2010, 04:00:36 PM

by Simone Webb

Read this list of criticisms levelled at a woman: she expresses opinions too stridently, especially on twitter; she slept around and drank too much when she was younger; she should be “reined in” by her husband; and her voice is apparently too high pitched.

Although this could be a list from another century (apart from the line about twitter) it is actually from the twenty-first, and all aimed at one woman. She is a Labour activist, erstwhile member of Ed Balls’ leadership campaign team, and the victim of countless attacks from the right wing press. Oh, and she’s married to John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons.

People in the public eye will always receive a certain amount of vitriol, but Sally Bercow seems to get more than her fair share. The Daily Mail is the primary offender: Sally is “bizarre”, “swivel-eyed”, “confessed to one-night stands”, “[indulged] in casual sex”.

And that’s only the press: Conservative politicians, according to the Daily Mail, have asked John Bercow to “rein in” his wife, while Nadine Dorries MP has said that he ought to “tell her to pipe down”. (more…)

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Report from last night’s Foot tribute, by the 18 year old who last interviewed him

09/11/2010, 05:00:54 PM

by Conrad Landin

LAST NIGHT, family, friends and admirers gathered in the West End to pay tribute to the former Labour leader, Michael Foot. I fit into the latter category. As do many.

But I am probably quite rare in that Foot had already left Parliament by the time I was born. I don’t remember his powerful oratory, which would fill up the Commons on both sides with MPs drinking in the Cicero of their age. Let alone the master journalist speaking out for freedom of the press in the second world war and publishing gripping pamphlets on the perils of appeasement.

In fact, I only heard of Michael Foot by accident, when looking up the Labour party’s history four or five years ago. Researching him, I found it amazing that there was a man who seemed to be a politician of a different age still among us. And after reading of the 1983 “suicide note” manifesto and crushing electoral defeat, my reaction – perhaps to be expected from a twelve-year-old – was that 28 per cent of voters giving the thumbs-up to such an idealistic programme was a triumph. (more…)

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Concentrating media influence in the hands of the few will lead to a narrowing of political discussion

07/11/2010, 01:49:17 PM

by Andy Dodd

RECENTLY I heard Lord Tim Bell, ex-advisor to Margaret Thatcher, defend Rupert Murdoch’s bid to take full control of Sky on the BBC world at one. While Tim Bell’s views on media ownership are predictable, what caught my attention was how he enthused about the plethora of platforms and channels that enable us to have choice over how we access news and information, and how this diversity would ensure plurality and choice in the media.

I was momentarily beguiled by this warm, PR-spun vision of the always connected, always informed society, but then sanity prevailed and I began to realise that this vague, utopian sound bite really doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

It’s faintly ridiculous to see someone like Tim Bell using the very philosophy of free and open content provision that Rupert Murdoch hates so much, as a means to justify News Corp being allowed to further eradicate pluralism in the media.

The reality is that large media groups are doing everything they can to roll back openness and return us to the walled garden of the early days of the internet. For example; restricting access to content unless people are prepared to pay for it. Just because there are dozens of different ways to access information, it doesn’t follow that the content is accessible. (more…)

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In Florida, as in the rest of the country, Democrats “took a shellacking”

06/11/2010, 02:00:57 PM

by Dave Roberts

Now that I’m back home in cold, damp Wiltshire, the heat and humidity of Florida seem along way off, as do the frenetic last days of the US midterm elections. My endeavour to help rescue the Democratic congressional seat of Ron Klein failed spectacularly, and the Republicans have taken firm control of Floridian politics.

Republican candidates won all the marginal congressional districts, took the governor’s mansion, the Senate seat and the top three positions in the state legislature – attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner. The Democrats, as President Obama said “took a shellacking”.

Last Tuesday was a horrible night to be a Democrat. I was in the Ron Klein campaign “boiler room” as results began to come in from across the country. There were a few bright moments when extreme Tea party candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware failed to win, but on the whole the mood was down beat. Our own campaign in Florida district 22 had failed and the Tea party and Fox News favourite Republican Allen West won the seat. The race for the Florida Senate seat was always going to be a shoe-in for the Republican favourite Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott narrowly beat Democrat Alex Sink to take the keys to the governor’s mansion. (more…)

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Honesty, forensic scrutiny and playing the long game

04/11/2010, 11:30:17 AM

by Angharad Williams

The comprehensive spending review has changed Britain forever. George’s masochistic medicine will prove a bitter pill to swallow. The side-effects may be dramatic: social convulsions, outbreaks of crime and racially charged rioting, feelings of worthlessness and a loss of aspiration.

For the new generation which learnt the human consequences of hard-headed Thatcherism mainly from Brassed Off and The Full Monty, it was the beginning of a practical study in the DNA of the nasty party. It should not have surprised us that a new generation of Conservatives, raised on a rich diet of small state and strong market thinking callously cheered announcements that will devastate lives.

The worst thing about the coming cuts is the sense of powerlessness. We may win the odd skirmish, but the real battle is set for May 2015. Those who decry the “failure” of Labour’s 13 years in power will need to screw their heads back on. (more…)

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