HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORNING STAR

Today I should have been at a planning meeting for this year's Morning Star Conference but I have been laid low by illness .

The Star no longer has the "red gold" which used to come from the USSR nor is it any longer slave to any one political party. But after 80 years it still provides an invaluable role as the only newspaper whose bias and indeed very existence is down to the left and the labour movement.

While the likes of former Labour General Secretary Peter Watt peddle their revolting ( let's trash Gordon Brown from a great height because I'm no longer in a position of influence and swanning about so couldn't give a stuff if the Tories win) tittle-tattle to earn shedloads of cash , staff at the Morning Star survive on a pittance. Call them naive but they do that because they want to work for a newspaper which is not pro-capitalist and anti-socialist.

Most journalists don't have that option and do the best they can within confined limits.Meanwhile the Morning Star, for all its flaws , still shines as a beacon of integrity in the often grubby world of Grub Street. Happy 80th birthday.............

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/85337

LRC HEADS UP MORNING STAR CONFERENCE

On Saturday June 20 the Labour Representation Committee will be providing key speakers at the Morning Star 's annual conference at Congress House. Theme for the day is Surviving Capitalism's Crisis. The day opens with a speech from Jeremy Corbyn and there will be a series of workshops on everything from the state of the NHS to climate change . The LRC's workshop is on the Welfare Reform Bill and there will be lots of opportunity for discussion and debate plus the opportunity to meet activists and trade unionists from across the left. More details here.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/conference

WELL SAID, VINCE!

I still owe Vince Mills a pint from last summer. I tried to buy him one in Bournemouth but he was en route somewhere else. Now I probably owe him another one now after shamelessly nicking a piece he has written from the Morning Star but I hope he will forgive me. Vince is a member of the LRC and Campaign for Socialism in Scotland. Like me, he used to have a lot more faith that we could use existing structures within the Party to "re-claim " it. And maybe, like me , he used to think the end of Blair would herald a new era which would at least be social democrat if not socialist. That simply hasn't happened. So if we are ever to build the Labour Party again then we have to reach out beyond it in a new way.

Trade union activists are as disillusioned as any other Labour Party members, not least because trade unionists are watching a Labour government that consciously works to limit the effectiveness of the trade union movement.
I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that there are not the resources within the Labour Party to bring about the transformation which we seek.
Clearly, the left needs a vehicle for bringing activists together in a way that will not only allow us to pool resources but also to begin a dialogue about the nature of our common problem, contemporary capitalism.
The new Labour leadership is, of course, deeply hostile to the Labour Party being used in that way because, as promulgators of feral capitalism, they are part of the problem we seek to address.
The LRC has to become the change that we seek.
Founded originally in 1900 to fight for political representation for the working class and refounded in July 2004 to fight for socialist policies in the Labour Party, it has the history and the flexibility to bring together those forces willing to fight with us for socialist policies in and beyond the Labour Party.
I am not saying that the Labour Party cannot be salvaged as a vehicle for radical change.
I am saying, however, that we need to work together with those forces that are willing to work together with us, whether they are committed to the central role of the Labour Party or not, to bring about the alliance we need to attack poverty and inequality in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
The one option that we do not have is that of doing nothing.
There are too many people in Scotland, Britain and, more importantly, beyond it in the Middle East and Africa who are suffering too much.
Inaction is being complicit with that suffering. Let's end both

AND JUST IN CASE I HAVEN'T MADE IT CLEAR......

From today's Morning Star.....
TRADE unionists and Members of the Scottish Parliament called for a return to mass struggle and socialist values at the Scottish Morning Star conference in Glasgow on Sunday.
Elaine Smith MSP opened this weekend's very successful Morning Star conference by quoting Tony Benn on the need to inspire anew the wider labour movement with the ideas of socialism.
"As Tony Benn said, it is today the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) that has the breadth and commitment to bring the movement together again on its original principles/
"In Scotland, people don't want apologies from Wendy Alexander. They want Labour to return to socialist values, to reject Trident and to oppose privatisation.
John McDonnell MP castigated Gordon Brown's conference speech as seeking to turn the Labour Party into "evangelists for global corporatism.
"Closing down conference democracy will divorce the party from the people and this makes it all the more important to broaden the work of the LRC to include the social movements on climate change, asylum, the arms trade and privatisation."