Labour Uncut

UNCUT: Labour’s real problem with ‘tolerated entryism’

05/07/2013, 06:58:52 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Confirmation earlier this week that 14 constituency Labour parties are in “special measures” but only one – Falkirk – seems to have anything to do with the swirl of allegations surrounding Unite, begs the obvious question: what about the other 13?

Looking at that list, at least some of those suspensions are because of irregular recruiting practices by ethnic groups in order to affect the result of council and parliamentary selection processes. Indeed, four of the fourteen are in Birmingham, where six Labour councillors were convicted of electoral fraud in 2005, with the judge in the case saying their behaviour would not “disgrace a banana republic”.

This is, of course, a subject usually tucked away in the ‘dirty laundry’ file with party chiefs wary about cracking down on this sort of behaviour out of a misplaced sense of not wanting to castigate ethnic groups. Unfortunately this soft-soaping merely sees the problem persist, with many of the 14 suspended parties effectively in limbo for years.

Back in 1999, the party’s North West regional office received complaints of irregularities in the selection of council candidates in Oldham (the town’s two constituency Labour parties are included among the list of 14).

The dozen or so regular branch members of Alexandra ward Labour party were joined by 300 new Asian party members for the annual meeting to select the candidate to stand in the local elections. The sitting (White) councillor was duly deselected. The same hammer-to-crack-a-walnut tactic was then employed in other local selections.

The Oldham Independent Review, into the 2001 riots in the town, chaired by David Ritchie, succinctly explained what had been happening:

“…[L]arge numbers of new members have been registered shortly before some ward selection meetings and although they apparently comply with Labour Party rules on eligibility to vote, our informants had good grounds to question their allegiance to the Party. One of them when challenged professed that he normally voted Liberal Democrat. Some meetings to choose candidates have been disfigured by threats of violence and other disorderly behaviour, and in one case a selection meeting needed heavy police presence.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 11 Comments »

UNCUT: New Falkirk twist: Now Labour refuse to commit to pass evidence of law-breaking to the police

04/07/2013, 07:00:33 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Another day, another Falkirk West farrago. Labour has now managed to tie itself in knots over what to do with evidence of illegal activities, uncovered as a result of the party’s inquiries.

The current position is that Labour will not commit to handing over any evidence of suspected law-breaking to the police or relevant authorities.

To recap, this sorry affair was kicked off when local Unite members complained to the party about being recruited into Labour without their knowledge.

In late May, the Sunday Herald carried details of one of the letters of complaint, originally sent in March, that ultimately triggered the NEC inquiry,

“Myself and two family members have been enrolled by Unite…I or my family did not fill in or sign any forms and wish to know what information the party holds about my family… I have concerns as to the way Unite in Falkirk are recruiting party members.”

On this basis, two laws appear to have been broken – the 1998 Data Protection Act and the 2006 Fraud Act.

Just over a month ago Uncut reported that angry members in Falkirk West were considering reporting Unite to the Information Commissioner because of a breach of their data protection rights.

Under the terms of the Act, each individual must have agreed before their personal details are passed to a different organisation.

At the point where Unite members’ personal details were registered with the Labour party, without their consent being first granted, the law will have been broken.

Then, yesterday Uncut reported on the likelihood of a breach of the Fraud Act. Whoever completed the bogus applications and validated them would have contravened section 2 of the Act under the terms of “false misrepresentation”

Submitting completed forms to the Labour party, without the new members’ consent, would have constituted false misrepresentation.

Two laws, two breaches. One to do with peoples’ rights over their personal information, the other with the act of someone deliberately falsifying membership forms.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 15 Comments »

GRASSROOTS: The trouble with ‘45

03/07/2013, 05:35:56 PM

by Lee Butcher

Emerging phoenix like from the ashes of 2010 is proving somewhat more difficult than initially expected by some in the Labour party. The shattered economy, left ruined by the fiendish bankers, found the party holding the can and going down to a historically poor election defeat.

The usual fissures in the party have opened up and among the unsurprising and entirely unoriginal bickering between left and right about who is to blame, and who will resurrect the party in time for 2015, a certain wistful gaze over the historical shoulders of the movement has began.

The ‘right’ may have stopped looking back when arriving at Mr Blair’s lofty shoulders but the loosely defined ‘left’ have taken it upon themselves to cast their gaze back further into the distant past coming to a halt at the heady days of July 1945. Ken Loach’s nostalgic documentary outing, soon to be a regular repeat on Film 4, was the cultural firing gun of this endeavour.

A country whose recent past had left its economy close to bankruptcy and social ills crying out for remedy; 1945 and 2015 have never felt so similar. These observations are not entirely incorrect and any wise head in the party would do well to ask what Clement Attlee’s band of post-war “revolutionaries” has to teach us.

The problem is not that it is the wrong question to ask, the problem is that the answers returned are incomplete. As with all matters historical and political, the devil lay firmly in the detail.

As the proponents of such a view argue Attlee & Co. faced a fiscal crisis worse than our own and went on to dramatically increase public spending. They did it, so can we! They are entirely correct, but that enthusiasm can only be dampened when it comes to how they did it.

Britain’s economy, then as now, was in great trouble. Bankrupt is the term employed by most post-war historians to describe the Treasury’s books. George Osborne may have been rendered dumbfounded by a certain predecessor’s note informing him of the fiscal situation, Hugh Dalton must have been rendered incandescent at the sight of most of Britain’s cities laying in ruins.

In response to the fiscal legacy left by the work of the Luftwaffe’s finest, and the unbearable burden of maintaining over one million men in uniform scattered across the world, and the government picking up the bill for thousands conscripted to keep the essential industries running, Attlee and Dalton came to much the same conclusion as Messrs Cameron and Osborne; we need to cut spending.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Grassroots | 1 Comment »

UNCUT: New allegations of fraud and interference with party investigations emerge from Falkirk West

03/07/2013, 07:00:02 AM

by Atul Hatwal

For the past few days, the debacle in Falkirk West has been the main news story relating to the Labour party. The allegations of entryism by Unite are well known as is Labour’s response: to place the constituency in special measures and bar anyone who joined after 12^th March 2012 from voting in the parliamentary selection.

But, new information has emerged that suggests the problems maybe even more serious. The latest allegations centre on a potential breach of the 2006 fraud act and a subsequent attempt to induce those who had complained , to change their testimony before the national party could investigate.

The Unite defence against claims of foul play in the constituency has been that the recruitment of union members, with their annual subscription paid by the union, is within party rules.

This is true, but only on the condition that the new members would actually be willing to pay the subscription themselves and want to join the Labour party to participate as individuals, not as part of a bloc interested only in manipulating selection processes.

In terms of payment of subscriptions, the rules are clear:

“It is an abuse of party rules for one individual or faction to ‘buy’ party membership for other individuals or groups of individuals who would otherwise be unwilling to pay their own subscriptions. “ Clause II Membership procedures, Chapter 2 Membership rules, Labour party rulebook 2013

As they are on the motivation of new recruits for joining the party,

“iii. The party is anxious to encourage the recruitment of new members and to ensure that new members are properly welcomed into the party and opportunities offered to enable their full participation in all aspects of party life.

iv. The party is, however, concerned that no individual or faction should recruit members improperly in order to seek to manipulate our democratic procedures.

v. The health and democracy of the party depends on the efforts and genuine participation of individuals who support the aims of the party, wish to join the party and get involved with our activities. The recruitment of large numbers of ‘paper members’, who have no wish to participate except at the behest of others in an attempt to manipulate party processes, undermines our internal democracy and is unacceptable to the party as a whole.” Sub-sections (iii)-(v), Section A, Appendix 2 NEC procedural guidelines on membership recruitment and retention, Labour party rulebook 2013

The party investigation into Falkirk West was prompted by complaints made by two families who mysteriously found that they had suddenly become Labour party members, despite never signing the forms to join the party.

They complained to the local party, to local councillors, and sources suggest, the police.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 14 Comments »

UNCUT: Ed’s right, small state socialism can still be radical – but Labour needs to govern better next time

02/07/2013, 07:00:11 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Whisper it, but governing is the boring part of politics. Ironic, really, given so many would-be ministers would scramble over broken glass on their hands and knees for the sniff of a chance of becoming a parliamentary under-secretary for paperclips and sustainable date-stamps.

It’s not that governing – sitting behind a desk and running things – is pointless or unrewarding; it’s just that it’s hard and time-consuming and politicians are easily distracted by the thrill of the chase. Tony Blair, of course, famously did sofas rather than desks. So Labour’s approach to government for 13 years was, crudely, to announce things then throw money at officials and assume change had been made. Job done.

This approach was tested to destruction. For public services to improve, more state spending was always needed. To make them improve a lot, spend a lot. As a result, ministers often overspent and over-legislated, but, paradoxically, under-governed too. Of course you have to put money into the Whitehall fruit machine to make the lights come on, but you still need to know which buttons to press. That’s what governing is all about.

When the buzz of the press launch has faded and the television cameras have gone away, all that is left is the spadework of navigating bills through parliament, rolling-out new programmes, retraining staff to implement the changes to policy (which invariably takes a fiendishly long time), listening to the gripes of one lobby group or another and sitting in meetings. Lots of meetings. All this slog takes time and commitment and, frankly, a few Labour ministers found themselves bewitched by the Age of Spin last time around and didn’t do the hard work that real change demands.

Take the police. Measurable crime halved under Labour (for a variety of reasons, not least the longest unbroken spell of economic growth in 200 years) but anti-social behaviour, the bureaucratic term for describing thoughtlessness and thugishness, flourished. Police numbers also swelled, while Parliament passed twenty odd pieces of criminal justice legislation. Although the police had everything they could possibly need from Labour ministers, they still barely made a dent in tackling anti-social behaviour.

Not enough was demanded from them. In fact, unlike other public services, police performance targets were actually scrapped, apart for the single watery invocation to ‘raise public confidence’. Yet ministers didn’t ask why there had been a catastrophic loss of public trust in the first place. No chief constables were sacked for poor performance. The focus, especially after 9/11 was on security and no-one much bothered what the plod was doing – or not doing – on other fronts. It’s only now we get a sense of the rottenness at the heart of parts of our police force.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »

GRASSROOTS: We can topple Clegg in Sheffield Hallam

01/07/2013, 12:57:18 PM

by Oliver Coppard

Last Monday I was selected as Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Hallam. As you may know, our current MP is the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who holds the seat with a 19,000 vote margin over Labour. The Labour party has never won in Sheffield Hallam and I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me I’m crazy for believing we can win here. The question I was most frequently asked in the round of interviews that followed on Tuesday was ‘but can you really win it? But, really?’.

As I write this we have 677 days to overcome that 19,000 vote deficit, but I wouldn’t have taken the challenge on if I didn’t think it could be done.

Nick Clegg has been a disaster for Sheffield. He doesn’t live here or even spend very much time here. He broadcasts his weekly radio show on LBC in London. His government has cut the city’s budget by £50 million just this year, and last week they have announced yet more real terms cuts to the pay of public sector workers who make up 20% of the city’s workforce. Nick Clegg is an absentee landlord who has done nothing for the people who live in this constituency or this city.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Grassroots | 21 Comments »

UNCUT: Labour history uncut: Labour wins the one to lose in 1929

28/06/2013, 06:40:53 PM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

The first gusts of a returning wind seemed to be wafting into Ramsay Macdonald’s sails.

After the general strike in 1926 had shattered morale in the Labour movement, the Tories attempted to curtail union power with the 1927 Trade Union Disputes Act. That threat united activists and unions behind the party.

Once again, parliamentary action was the only game in town to stop the Tories.

As the 1927 conference approached, Macdonald wanted to wow the crowd with something big. A grand statement of Labour aims, perhaps. Or a medley of socialist showtunes.

Fortunately for everyone, he chose the former. Macdonald sat down with Labour’s Burt Bacarach, Arthur Henderson, and started scribbling. One montage sequence later, Labour’s new vision was complete.

They took the paper to the executive of the parliamentary Labour party for sign-off and some insincere praise before going to NEC and then conference. It was just a formality.

The PLP then, very formally, said “Ramsay, this is rubbish.” This was quite something coming from a body so pliable it would have declared Viva Forever ‘a tour de force’ had Macdonald produced it.

Hugh Dalton commented that it was “too long and very dully written,” before adding, “But it might sell if you chuck in a sparkly vampire.”

Meanwhile, the executive of the PLP passed a motion. It urged the NEC not to allow the document to be debated at conference because, being in Blackpool, the event was going to be quite boring enough already.

Hugh Dalton: in the opinion of the smartest man in the Labour party, he was the smartest man in the Labour party

Instead, Macdonald ended up part of an NEC sub-committee tasked with a rewrite.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

UNCUT: Ken Loach is marvellous

28/06/2013, 01:32:08 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I’m always puzzled by the contrast between Ken Loach’s politics and his films. In person, Loach is a quiet and modest man with fairly run-of-the-mill and defiantly unreconstructed socialist views, having left the Labour party in the mid-1990s.

In contrast his films, although clearly polemical, are brilliantly nuanced. They take the broad theme of the value of collectivism but Loach’s amazing talent lies in small detail; nailing characters and situations with brilliant realism, simplicity and compassion.

His 2006 Palme D’or-winning film about the Irish War of Independence, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is one of the finest parables about the clash between the politics of idealism and the politics of pragmatism that you will ever see.

Although his recent documentary, The Spirit of ’45, has been widely talked about before, it was two of his older films, shown this week as part of a Film Four series of Loach classics, that stand out for me.

The first, Riff Raff, was made in 1991 and sees Robert Carlyle’s jailbird, Stephen, an itinerant loner with a mysterious past, finding comradeship working on a London building site and love with a pub singer while squatting in a flat.

When Ricky Tomlinson’s character, Larry, a fellow labourer, complains to the management about the dangerous working conditions the men have to endure, he is sacked. Another man later falls to his death from the same scaffold Larry had been warning about. Given what we now know about the blacklisting of building workers in a notoriously un-unionised industry, the story is particularly poignant.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 7 Comments »

UNCUT: Letter from Wales: £400,000 for a man snoring in a telescope!

28/06/2013, 07:00:53 AM

by Julian Ruck

Skint UK? Ed Balls’ scrutinising of every pound? Don’t be daft this is the Arts Council of Wales!

And as if the £400,000 of tax-payers’ money for a Welsh contemporary artist to strut his stuff (no disrespect to said artist) at the Venice Biennale isn’t enough, it took the CEO of the Arts Council of Wales, one Nick Capaldi and six of his ACW cronies to tag along and hold his hand!

But what about the expenses the taxpayer has also forked up for? Following my FoI requests (12,13, 17^th June 2013) it turns out we have paid £260.00 per night for hotels and a damn your eyes to LateRooms.com and a brew of Tetley in a Venetian back alley.

Apart from Mr Capaldi’s £1,981.20 (for 4 nights), we have a real beauty: Professor Dai Smith, chair of the ACW not only claimed £1709.49 from the tax-payer for his three day Venetian jolly but his own book “Dream On” (you can say that again!) published last May, was also paid for by the tax-payer. Oh and he doesn’t like “nutters” like me scrutinising his artistic efforts either, I’m told.

Here are the expenses for the rest of ACW’s party-goers:-

David Alston (£1636.77 for his 4 nights) Arts Director ACW; Louise Wright (£1569.85 for 4 nights) ACW Commissioner for the Biennale no less; Eluned Haf (£1638.51 for 4 nights) ACW Director of Wales Arts International; Sian James (£1,964.77 for 4 nights) ACW Press Officer and not forgetting Osi Rhys Osmond (£1687.16 for 4 nights), an Arts Council Member and Chair of Advisory Committee?

Now you may be thinking why all these people are needed for a quick few second turn on BBC Wales’ Today programme. Jobs for the boys time again perhaps? The usual old suspects again? You would also be forgiven for wondering why it needs 7 people to do the same thing and enjoy an expensive city break at tax-payers’ expense, while they are at it?

Classic devolved Welsh replication of jobs maybe?

CEO Nick Capaldi was quoted as saying about the Venetian visual art extravaganza, “It’s the Formula 1 of the visual arts world, in that a Formula 1 racing car has little in common with the family hatchback other than four wheels and a steering wheel”.

Excuse me? Sorry to disabuse you Nick, but right now many people in this country are struggling to keep a four-wheeled pram on the road and you’re also dead right about the exhibition having little in common with the family hatchback man in the street – most of them are out there trying to hold on to a job.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 85 Comments »

UNCUT: The work programme: improving, but for who?

27/06/2013, 04:28:28 PM

by Bill Davies

The latest figures from the work programme show it is doing, on aggregate, better than it was. Now the programme has been running for 22 months, we are in a better position to consider whether it is achieving its main objective, to reduce unemployment and increase employment amongst all eligible claimant groups.

It is doing better than last time, particularly when you look at newer cohorts to the programme, but little better than the programme it replaced. At this stage of the flexible new deal, 13 week job outcomes as a percentage of eligible starts were 18%, and 26 week outcomes were 12%. The coalition’s work programme, introduced to dismantle the ‘fundamentally flawed’ Flexible New Deal, is at this stage achieving outcomes of 13%. Better than last time, but not brilliant. The statistical release of the department for work & pensions shows that 22 out of the 40 contracts have not met their targets for moving the largest group of job seekers allowance claimants (over 25 year olds) off benefits and into work. The target for this group was 27.5% of starters to move into work, but at this stage, the target has been narrowly missed, at 27.3%.

The most staggering figure is that employment & support allowance, the group for people moving from incapacity benefits gradually back into the labour market had a target of 16.5% of starts to job outcomes, but the actual outcome rate was 5.3%, only a third of the target.

Is the work programme assisting those regions that have the most difficult labour markets? On the basis of current performance, it is still largely reflecting them.