Your chance to send a message to our Labour Government
Your chance to send a message to our Labour Government
Jenny Fisher Poplar and Canning Town CLP
In the coming months, some 400,000 Labour Party members will receive postal ballots for the constituency section of the National Executive Committee, the Party's governing body. As the only electoral exercise involving the whole of the Party membership, the results of this ballot will be a major test of Party opinion, and a unique chance for those who worked to elect a Labour government to make their feelings known.
The coming together of a united Centre-left Grassroots Alliance has given Party members a clear and practical choice which has been welcomed by many left leaning activists and widely supported throughout the Party. At close of nominations on 5th June (or at least by 12th June, when Millbank mailed delayed lists of nominations to CLP secretaries), twenty candidates had been nominated by CLPs. Candidates of the Centre-left Grassroots Alliance received no less than 128 nominations, over 30% of the total made.
However, nominations do not automatically translate into votes and there are some six weeks of hard campaigning in front of us until ballot papers are issued, currently estimated to be at the end of July. The battle will take place on two fronts.
First, at grassroots level, activists will be canvassing Party members -- and it may not only be at grassroots level. Ken Livingstone was assured at the NEC that the Party machine would remain neutral in this contest.
However, the Independent on Sunday reported as early as 3rd May that Downing Street itself was organising a draft of "Blairite loyalists" to beat off a "new bid for power by the left" and added, "a Number Ten staffer has been put in charge of the campaign, which will be boosted by the hiring of New Labour student activists in the summer. They will work on the campaign at Millbank." It will take a great deal of effort by those who support the Alliance candidates to beat a well-resourced campaign like that.
Second, the battle will be fought in the pages of the national and local press and on the airwaves. Name recognition is vital. Supporters of our team will need to write to their local papers and to the national press to match the number of Party members contacted in this way by those favoured by Millbank. Already, Michael Cashman has been chosen to present a Newsnight report on lesbian and gay MPs and was announced as a candidate for the NEC elections before the film.
While most candidates in the election promised in their nomination statements to report back to Party members, only the six candidates endorsed by the alliance gave strong pledges to stand up for the rights, and speak out for the priorities, of ordinary Party members.
We must rally round and make sure these candidates are elected.
The Labour Government will not be able to meet urgent needs for housing, education, transport and health unless it redirects resources, through progressive taxation, from the rich to the poor. I want to see our welfare state enhanced, not dismantled. We must fulfil our commitments on workplace rights, and redress the imbalance in industrial relations created by the Tories.
The constituency section of the NEC purports to offer members a real stake in the management of their party. This can only happen if constituency reps are responsive to the concerns of ordinary members, articulate these with vigour and passion and exercise their responsibilities with intelligence and care.
This year's elections to the NEC will give ordinary Labour Party members a rare opportunity to give their verdict on New Labour's first year in government.
In some respects the New Labour agenda on social and economic issues may have moved the Government to the right of the previous Major administration. I do not believe that this is what all of the millions of Labour voters, old and new, signed up to in May last year.
My principles remain the same as when I joined the Labour Party:
I would like to represent rank and file constituency members on the NEC because I know there is strong support for a properly funded NHS, a safe and integrated public transport system in public ownership, full employment and a national minimum wage starting at half median male earnings, retention of universal benefits, no cuts to disadvantaged groups and no compulsory workfare schemes.
The ravages of Thatcherism can only be properly addressed through our socialist and co-operative principles -- these are the modern values for the next century. This means redistribution of wealth, tackling gender, race and class inequalities in a systematic way, universal welfare provision and an extension of common ownership.
The candidates of the Centre-left Grassroots Alliance are supported by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Campaign for Socialism (Scotland), LLB, Labour Reform, Labour Women's Action Committee, Network of Socialist Campaign Groups, Socialist Campaign Group News. This initiative has been welcomed by the Tribune newspaper.
"There's a hard left slate and a hard right slate but no modernisers' slate. Something will have to be done or Tony Blair will end up with an unrepresentative NEC," -- The Guardian quoting a "Labour insider".
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