Labour Uncut

UNCUT: Should Compass open its membership beyond Labour?

08/02/2011, 12:00:26 PM

by Ruth Lister

Compass is currently balloting its membership on the question of whether it should allow people who belong to political parties other than Labour to be full voting members. Not surprisingly, this move is controversial. It is, nevertheless, a move which I strongly believe Compass should take.

I’ve been involved with Compass since the word go, before it was formally established in 2004. Since then it has grown in both size and influence to an extent we could not have envisaged. I was recently co-opted on to the management committee. In many ways, I see it as my political home. And one reason why I feel so comfortable there is its non-partisan approach to politics. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Why do we tolerate these preachers of hate? Because we are British.

08/02/2011, 07:00:22 AM

by Dan Hodges

Sitting in a Luton hotel room on Saturday, listening to members of the English Defence League chanting boastfully, and slightly implausibly, about how they had, “fucked all of Allah’s wives”, my thoughts drifted to the issue of multiculturalism. Being surrounded by a couple of thousand tanked up Islamaphobes can do that to you.

My musings were given structure by the words of David Cameron, delivered that morning to the Munich security conference. British prime ministers have a poor record of departing that particular German city with the security of their nation enhanced, and I perused his speech with some scepticism. Once I’d finished it, scepticism had changed to bewilderment.

There must be a reason why the queen’s first minister chose to deliver a speech on the perils of Islam on the day a significant number of her subjects descended on a town with a large Muslim population and malice in their hearts. It was just that at that moment, as the first beer bottles started to land, and the riot squad began to don their helmets, I couldn’t for the life of me think of one. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Tuesday News Review

08/02/2011, 06:50:27 AM

Shock defeat in Lords

DAVID Cameron’s bid to introduce a referendum on the voting system and cut the number of MPs suffered a shock setback last night. The Government lost a Lords vote, by a majority of one, on a Labour motion to make May’s proposed poll binding only if turnout was 40% or more. It was the Coalition’s third defeat on the Bill. The result opens the possibility the Bill may not become law in time for a referendum on adopting the alternative vote, which the PM wants to be held on May 5. – the Mirror

An unholy alliance of Labour peers, up to 10 Tory rebels and one bishop (we’re all trying find out which Bish) has seen the Government defeated in the Lords on the issue of a threshold for the AV referendum. An amendment by ex Labour minister Lord (Jeff) Rooker calling for a 40% threshold for any vote has won by a single vote. Government whips were clearly caught off-guard by yet another Labour guerilla operation and ambush. The irony is that this is just as the Coalition came up with its carefully considered compromises on two opposition demands on the bill. – Paul Waugh

The government suffered a narrow defeat in the House of Lords on Monday night when rebel Tories joined forces with Labour peers to make the planned referendum on electoral reform non-binding if turnout falls below 40%. Labour hailed its win as highly significant after an amendment by the former minister Lord Rooker to introduce a 40% threshold in the referendum on AV, due to take place on 5 May, was backed by 219 peers to 218. The Labour peers were joined by 10 Tory rebels including the former cabinet ministers, Lord Lamont, Lord Brooke and Lord Forsyth. The Rooker amendment would mean that parliament would have to decide whether to accept a yes vote if turnout fell below 40%. Under the government’s plans a simple yes vote, regardless of the turnout, would lead to the introduction of AV for elections to the Commons as long as the plans to reduce the number of MPs are also in place. – the Guardian

ShadCab meet over prisoner votes

The shadow cabinet will meet later to decide its stance on prisoner voting rights after two ex-Labour ministers clashed over the controversial issue. Jack Straw and Lord Prescott rowed over it on Monday at a Westminster meeting. They disagreed over whether the Commons should defy a European Court ruling requiring that prisoners in the UK be given the vote. MPs will debate the issue on Thursday and the government says it will do the minimum possible in order to comply. At present, in the UK, only prisoners on remand are allowed to vote. – BBC Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: What Cameron actually said, and why it was cynical cant

07/02/2011, 05:00:39 PM

by Victoria Williams

“Go Home Muslims” signs still littered the streets of Luton as the prime minister took to the podium at the Munich security conference to address the “threat” of Islamist extremism. Attacking New Labour’s policy of “hands off tolerance” to those who choose not to subscribe to Western values, he called for a “more active, muscular liberalism”, to counter what he views as a lack of integration among immigrant communities.

Warming to the theme, he said:

“A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values“.

If he’d stopped speaking then, you could be forgiven for thinking “what a sensible man, perhaps I’ve misjudged him”. After all, what on earth could be wrong with leaving people to their beliefs so long as they don’t break the law?

So many were left scratching their heads wondering what Cameron’s definition of the word “liberal” actually is, when he continued:

“A genuinely liberal country does much more. It believes in certain values and actively promotes them… It says to its citizens: This is what defines us as a society”.

So then “liberal” means “forcing your beliefs onto others and excluding them from society if they disagree”. You learn something new every day.

Who, other than Cameron, says that multiculturalism and integration are mutually exclusive? It is hard to disagree with Margaret Hodge when she says that a higher uptake of English lessons among recent immigrants would beneficial to all of us. Outside of that, though, how does having personal faith exclude one from society? The UK is only nominally a Christian country; should those who subscribe to a secular set of values also find themselves on the fringes of society? A society is shaped by those who live within it. It cannot be dictated by the state.

Cameron has quite rightly been accused of playing into the hands of extremist anti-immigration groups such as the EDL and the BNP. He has also humiliated his deputy, Nick Clegg, whose own party favoured a more lax approach to immigration, including extending an amnesty to illegal immigrants.

It remains to be seen whether this will deepen the rift in the Tory-Lib Dem government, already on shaky ground after a number of Lib Dem walkouts over the decision to raise tuition fees. Either way, it will boost the opposition in the long run.

Victoria Williams is a freelance journalist.

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UNCUT: The Palestinians will not find peace through bloodshed

07/02/2011, 02:00:43 PM

by Dan McCurry

Malcolm X once told black Americans, “You didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on you”.

Millions of people from the developing world have risked their lives to get to the West, while the Palestinians had the western world come to them, in the form of Israel. But where this should have been an opportunity, it was more like a great big rock landing on them. They were simply unable to cope.

The photo shows me, in 1986, with one foot in Israel and one foot in Egypt. My anxiety is due to the barbed wire getting caught on my T-shirt. Back then there was no border on the West Bank, never mind a wall. Palestinians were free to come and go across Israel. They worked, they travelled, they engaged in politics. There was violence, but there was also optimism. Then came the suicide bombers.

The word “solution” in the phrase “two-state solution” is misleading. It suggests that the problems will end if property and land rights are settled. It does not promise to create jobs or prosperity for the Palestinians, but it does promise to end any further justification for Palestinian violence.

It was a top-down policy, insisted on by the international community. It created trepidation in the West Bank, with graffiti appearing on walls calling for a one-state solution. The Palestinians want jobs, but the solution seems to promise a permanent partition, with a permanent separation wall. Washington’s policy was never born from reading the writing on the wall.

Wherever I went in Israel, in the 80s, the building sites were full of Arabs. I asked an Israeli if this was somehow racist. He told me that Israelis wanted to get into construction, but the Palestinians wouldn’t let them in. Today, construction workers are imported from Asia. Technology companies adopt restrictive employment policies for “security reasons”. The Israeli economy is being denied to the “ungrateful” Palestinians. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: I love New Labour and am proud of what we did

07/02/2011, 11:30:24 AM

by John Woodcock

The thing is, I love what New Labour has stood for and I am deeply, deeply proud of what we did in government.

And I just don’t buy into the idea that that should be a controversial thing to think or to say. In some Labour GCs, maybe (though probably fewer than many think). Perhaps even for the dwindling number of journalists still interested in finding Labour splits, who may wrongly think that puts me at odds with my leader.

But not with the public who voted for us.

We must indeed focus on the future, not get trapped in the past – even our more recent past. But I am no longer going to use that obvious fact as a device to dodge saying what I really think about the changes we pursued to make our country better.

Why come out with this now? It is not as though this were an unfamiliar debate after a four month long leadership campaign.

Because while the old battles on particular reforms are thankfully over and familiar slogans now stale, keeping astride the centre ground is essential as we renew.

Ed Miliband showed that with his excellent speech on the British promise on Friday.

But we need to keep saying it: we cannot assume that anything is a given in a policy process where we rightly re-examine the basics to come up with new perspectives.

So I am not going to hedge anymore.

We have so much to do to ensure that Labour, or New Labour, or Even Newer Labour, regains the trust of the British people.

We must go on learning where we went wrong. But we had better be sure of what we got right too.

Robustly siding with individual users of public services against vested interests who do not want those services to change; understanding that crime is a massive issue in poorer neighbourhoods and must never be ceded to the right; believing in the power of public investment but refusing to impose punitive taxes to resource it.

Those fundamental instincts were, among others, central to the coalition of support that New Labour assembled.

Whatever we call ourselves, a party that drifts away from those instincts will struggle to win back the right to change Britain.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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UNCUT: Peace in nobody’s time – Why David Cameron will come to regret his Munich moment

07/02/2011, 07:00:40 AM

by Atul Hatwal

The English Defence League marches through Luton and David Cameron pops up attacking multiculturalism. Coincidence? Yeah, right.

Tackling radicalisation and its root causes is enormously important, but blaming the right’s favourite bête noire, multiculturalism, is lazy and wrong. Wrong about the reality of multiculturalism in this country and wrong about what will make us all safer.

In Britain there are nearly 11 million people from minority ethnic communities. The minority population in towns across the Northwest, Yorkshire, the Midlands and Bedfordshire where there have been problems constitute a small fraction of the total in Britain.

In these areas, the muslim population tends to be from the British Pakistani community and numbers about 500,000, of whom the vast majority will be utterly opposed to extremism. The problems that Cameron was referring to are real but are manifest in less than 5% of Britain’s minority communities.

The reality is that in most of the country, people from different communities get along fine. No conflict, no protests, they just go about their business, day in, day out. Because it’s so prosaic, it doesn’t make the news. But it’s what happens. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Monday News Review

07/02/2011, 06:26:04 AM

Stop it or we’ll take your ‘bling’

Thugs will have their stereos, iPods and other ‘bling’ items seized by police if they refuse to behave. Ministers will today announce the scrapping of Asbos, the anti-social behaviour orders which have become a badge of honour among hooligans. Instead, they will be hit with new ‘criminal behaviour orders’ banning them from town centres or street corners for up to two years. Under the ambitious initiative, troublemakers will face the same asset seizure powers as major criminals. They would be likely to lose personal items such as stereo systems and electronic gadgets. Previous ideas to target young tearaways with financial penalties – such as Tony Blair’s much-derided plan to march violent drunks to the nearest cashpoint – have been attacked as ‘gimmicks’. Opponents say that taking cash or property from criminals makes them more likely to carry out muggings or burglaries. But the Home Office believes that confiscating items which are hugely important to youngsters, such as their music systems, will ‘hit them where it hurts’. A Government source said: ‘We want punishments that are meaningful and useful.’ – Daily Mail

A range of measures to tackle anti-social behaviour will be unveiled as the Government pledges to crack down on minor crime. Among the proposals to be outlined on Monday are plans to compel police to investigate any incidences of anti-social behaviour reported by at least five people. The “community trigger” is one of a raft of proposals which form part of a government consultation on anti-social behaviour, a Home Office source said. Other measures will see police given powers forcing culprits to make amends for nuisance behaviour immediately. The move comes as the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) is overhauled. Instead police will be able to apply for a court order to tackle low-level nuisance behaviour. The new measures will be called criminal behaviour orders. – Daily Mirror Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: The Sunday Review: The Fighter

06/02/2011, 01:22:54 PM

by Siôn Simon

By coincidence, I re-watched Rocco ei suoi fratelli (Rocco and his brothers) a few weeks before going to see The Fighter. Visconti’s family melodrama had its half century last year. It is one of the best films ever made. Claudia Cardinale is beautiful, Alain Delon even more so. The moral ugliness of the older brother, Simone, is terrible. The pain inflicted and borne for no reason, the need to hurt mixed in with love, tell enduring truths about families and relationships. It is an operatic, Shakespearean film.

The same cannot quite be said of The Fighter. But Mark Wahlberg’s David O. Russell-directed biopic of Micky Ward is another boxing film which is actually about families, not boxing. And, even if it is not quite Rocco, it is a good film.

And the similarities between the triumvirates at the heart of the two films are striking. Read the rest of this entry »

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