Posts Tagged ‘politics’

We have to be better than this

18/06/2016, 04:51:00 PM

Uncut didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Jo Cox. We know lots of other Labour MPs, some among the 2015 intake, many personal friends. As soon as Thursday’s terrible news emerged, our thoughts turned not only to Jo’s family but also to our MP friends and their families. You don’t have to believe in God to immediately sense that it was only some kind of grace that kept them from suffering the same awful fate that Jo and her family are suffering.

There was so much to admire about Jo. Those who knew her best have captured this far better than we would be able. We have been moved by their tributes. We think too of what she had in common with other politicians and feel vulnerable on their behalf.

We have to be better than this. We are a tolerant, civilised and democratic country. Whatever else Jo’s murder was, whatever may have motivated her killer, it was a brutal attack on all that we hold most sacred. Quite possibly the darkest hour in the long history of the oldest democracy in the world.

We all now, whether as newly threatened MPs or concerned citizens, have an obligation to ensure that these most precious gifts of life in this country are not further tarnished but renewed. It remains the case, as Jo so poignantly put in her maiden speech, that more unites than divides us. There are patriots on all sides of the referendum debate. There are good people on both sides of the House of Commons. There is still time for us to turn around.

This begins with the Jo Cox Fund – to which Uncut has contributed and would encourage others to do so – and continues with how we conduct what remains of this terrible referendum campaign, and our political and civic lives beyond that.

https://www.gofundme.com/jocox

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Negative campaigning works. But on the issues not the personalities

12/05/2014, 11:02:07 AM

by Pete Heskett

Labour’s task for May 2015 is complex. Clearly the party needs a powerful narrative that gives people positive reasons to vote Labour. However, history also shows that in many instances the electorate vote the incumbents out as much as the vote a new party in – Mrs Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was to a large extent a rejection of Labour, unemployment and the three-day-week, Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 was boosted by a rejection of sleaze, and John Major’s benign under-panted leadership.

If Labour’s recent party political broadcast is anything to go by then we seem to be asking the electorate to get rid of the coalition because Nick Clegg is shallow and weak and the Tories a bunch of mean toffs. Now I’m sure there are many Labour loyalists who agree with this character assessment. However, it’s communication that speaks to the prejudices of those already converted not the broad-based liberal coalition that Jonathan Todd rightly identifies as the target Labour needs to attract to form a government in 2015.

For me this raises an important strategic point for Labour’s communications team. Negative campaigning in the UK at least tends to be most effective when it makes a political point rather than when it tries to make a personal point. Or to use a gender-biased footballing analogy, Labour is now looking guilty of playing the man and not the ball.

Let’s look at some of the most effective political ads in UK history. “Labour isn’t working” was a poster that helped bring Thatcher to power. It didn’t attack Jim Callaghan as a person – wise as he was generally rightly perceived as nice guy – but it linked the Labour government with unemployment. A strategic masterstroke that hit straight at the heart of Labour’s credibility – how could a party of ‘labour’ be responsible for extending the dole queue? Mrs Thatcher rose to power with a greater proportion of working class votes than even the worst nightmares of the Labour leadership would have thought possible.

Labour working not

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Could we, or should we win again? Paul Bower on his difficult relationship with Labour

20/08/2010, 03:00:32 PM

I left the Labour party in March 2003 when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad.  This ended a formal relationship that began on 4 May 1979, when I joined the day after Thatcher was elected.  My Labour leanings had roots in my childhood in a small Sheffield terrace with no bathroom.  One of my earliest memories is of my dad explaining to me why Harold Wilson and not Alex Douglas Home should lead the country. My dad died in 1968.  He was a toolmaker in a family firm where conditions were Dickensian. Health and safety was non-existent and there was no sick pay or pension.  He didn’t trust politicians, but he told me that Labour were our best hope. He suffered from a series of lung diseases and his life was saved by the NHS on at least three occasions starting in 1949.  If Nye Bevan and Clem Atlee had not created the NHS I would not have been born.              

In between working with bands like ABC, The Human League and Heaven 17 I campaigned vigorously for Labour. In the 1983 election I argued with voters who looked at you incredulously when you explained that Michael Foot should be Prime Minister. In 1985 I played a small in part setting up Red Wedge, the collective of radical musicians, comedians, writers and film makers who attempted to engage young people with politics and encourage them to listen to what Labour had to say. We supported Neil Kinnock’s efforts to bring the party into the modern world without losing its passion and principles.  We liked Neil.  

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Sam Bacon embraces the armchair activist

18/05/2010, 09:51:29 AM

It’s often said that things happen in threes; and so it proved for me during this election.  At three separate events, and with three distinct people, I had the same discussion about the party and its supporters.  And despite being at events intended to inspire passion and support for the campaign ahead, I left each one with a heavy heart and sense of defeat.  It wasn’t because the speakers were poor or I feared massive electoral defeat, but because the conversation kept revolving around the ‘problem’ of ‘armchair supporters’.

The general point being made was that these big set piece rallies were weren’t ‘real’ campaigning, and tended to attract an undue number of ‘armchair supporters’.  What we needed, or so the logic went, was committed, passionate, proper Labour supporters, not people who would come out to see a Minister speak, but wouldn’t knock on doors in the driving rain.  What right did they have to attend these events? And why did the party flirt with them like this?

Many will have encountered similar attitudes at Labour meetings, events and discussions.  You may even have thought – even said –  something similar.  But the election defeat should teach all of us who have time for such arguments one thing: if we’re ever going to experience victory like ‘97 again, we’re going to have to be the party of and for the people once again.  And that means taking all comers with whatever they bring to the table. (more…)

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