A MAJOR VICTORY FOR LABOUR PARTY DEMOCRACY

I've spent a couple of days trying to track this one down - and the VERY good news is that Labour Party Conference withstood serious pressure from the leadership and has backed a change in the way in which the National Policy Forum is elected.
I know that the trade unions were being arm-twisted for days before the vote on Wednesday afternoon. But they stood firm.
So now instead of delegates at Conference being the only ones who can vote on who represents us, we will all have a say in who gets onto the NPF. This is an issue which groups like CLPD, STLP and the LRC have been fighting for for a couple of years. It may end the farce by which dissenting views on the NPF have been effectively wiped out.
OMOV for the NEC has allowed the left of centre grassroots candidates to get four out of the six CLP places. Now it's time to take the fight to the NPF. And fight for the policies we need to change direction. This is not, as some have billed it , a return to the "bad old days" of internal strife. It may indeed herald a return to the "good old days" when Labour policy-making had input from all wings of the Party.

See link below for details.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8282449.stm

EMPTY RHETORIC AGAIN FROM THE UNIONS

Across the blogosphere, bemused Party mebers have been trying to ascertain what happened at Warwick. We were told, were we not, that now the unions had the upper hand they would fight for a Labour agenda , a return to core values. The reality is they did no such thing.
The FT reports this morning that Gordon Brown has been praised by business for resisting "the worst" union demands on policy. As follows:
Business reacted with undisguised relief to the measures for Labour's next manifesto hammered out at the party's National Policy Forum over the weekend. Reports yesterday claimed the prime minister had "caved in" to the unions, which represent the sole funding lifeline for his cash-strapped party. But employers pointed out that the reality was somewhat different. Facing a list of 130 union demands, Mr Brown rejected the vast majority outright and gave little ground on the remainder.
"Everybody appears to have seen some sense and understood the current economic climate," David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, told the Financial Times. "The business community must be heartened by this." Richard Lambert, director- general of the CBI employers' body, said the government had "resisted the worst of the union demands".
Employers said the document that emerged from the weekend talks between ministers, unions and Labour activists - a central plank of the party's policymaking machine - contained little to cause them alarm.

I DON'T MEAN TO DEPRESS YOU BUT.......

This is what actually happened to all those centre-left amendments at Warwick. Or at least the view from a councillor in Darlington. Gallows humour, I suppose, that the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance is absurdly dubbed "far left". In truth, it shows just how far removed the NPF is from the rest of us. As Duncan Hall says on Labourhome "fraudulent and useless." Worse, steering this Party to crushing electoral defeat .Pretty depressing stuff.


What was striking was how marginalised the far left were during these votes. The heirs to the Bennite tendancy in the Party are now coalesced around the Grassroots Alliance, a group which does secure some members on the Party's National Executive Committee via internal elections. At Warwick, where they pressed for decisions to abandon Trident, for example, or overturn our academies policy in education, they lost overwhelmingly. In most votes, where 161 delegates were present, the Grassroots Alliance got fewer than 10 and in most cases around 5 votes.
It shows just how distant the far left is in Labour politics now from the mainstream, and that Gordon Brown leads a united party. Clearly with the economic outlook looking uncertain and potentially negative, the Party is suffering in the polls. Gleeful Tories are assuming some kind of 1997 meltdown in two years time. The difference I think is that we are now, and do not appear to be a divided party in the way the Conservatives did then, over Euurope and other issues. If the economic situation begins to improve, and with a coherent manifesto for the next 5 years in place, we are much better placed to stage a recovery

WHAT HAPPENED IN WARWICK?

It takes a certain tenacity to have stuck with Labour in recent years. Foolhardiness, maybe. One of our hopes when Blair was still around was that the "Big Four" trade union leaders would somehow help the members "re-claim the Party." How vain that hope was now becomes absolutely clear.
The BBC website reports that the National Policy Forum - and the unions - approved the disgraceful, puniitve welfare reforms proposed by James Purnell. The NPF also approved ID cards, 42 days, more Academies. In other words, the whole right-wing package.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me what happened to the hundreds of amendments tabled by the CLPs on rather more progressive lines. The ones, presumably, which ended in the bin. And what, precisely, have people like Woodley and Prentis actually achieved in return for their backing of Tory policies on welfare? Not much, it would appear. The "concessions" on the minimum wage and parental leave are just sops which leave the bigger picture unremittingly New Labour.
The problem with the National Policy Forum, as we knew beforehand, is that it is a stitch-up. I was pretty sceptical that many of the left-of-centre amendments to policy positions would get through but it was worth a shot. However, that particular exercise appears to have been a complete waste of time. So what to do?
We need to campaign for an OMOV procedure to the NPF. Without that, the Policy Forum will continue to be a New Labour cabal. We need to publish the list of amendments which were proposed on Trident , trade union rights, etc and make it clear to people that many thousands in the Party support them. And we have no option but to carry on campaigning . It's clear the union bureucrats are following Brown into the abyss. We don't have to join them.

THE WAY TO VICTORY

A win in Glasgow East on Thursday will cheer Labour supporters currently staring into the electoral abyss. But what is happening two days afterwards will be even more important for the future fortunes of the Party.
The National Policy Forum meeting in Warwick has far more sway now than the Party Conference in a couple of months' time . And, yes, that's appalling.
For now, let's concentrate on the sheer commonsense of the demands which trade union leaders will make at the weekend. Rumour has it that Gordon Brown will oppose many of these demands. Minister Pat McFadden has already appeared on Newsnight to quash hopes the unions' collective wisdom will be taken on board at the NPF. Why? They are all mainstream , commonsense ideas which could take the Party out of the centre-right quagmire it has fallen into - with the ensuing meltdown at the polls.
The list, outlined in the Guardian the other day, includes the right to take supportive strike action, scrapping NHS prescription charges, bringing all hospital cleaning back in-house, and a new agreement on public sector pay.
Nearly 200 constituency parties have also submitted 4,000 amendments, about half them motions submitted by activists in the LRC and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.They include withdrawal from Iraq, a new council house building programme, and a 50p income tax rate on those earning more than £100,000.
Other union proposals include extending the adult minimum wage to 18- to 21-year-olds and apprentices, and legal changes that would allow councils to negotiate procurement contracts that include fair employment clauses.
On education, they want staff in city academies to be paid at the same rates as other school staff, the right to five days a year paid educational leave for all workers, free school meals for all children in primary schools, and mandatory time off to retrain.
On the environment, the unions want to extend the "not-for-profit model" to passenger train operators as franchises expire, and to break up the dominance of the six major energy companies.
On union rights, they want the right to strike, internet balloting, tax deductions for union membership subscriptions, and an extension of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to construction.
On equality, the unions propose extending a duty to promote equality to the voluntary and private sectors, reducing the lower earnings threshold to £30 a week to allow low-paid workers access to sick pay, a tightening of the equal pay laws, and a new right for unions to collectively bargain on equality issues. On parental leave, they want an extension of the child's age limit from six to 16.
What's extraordinary, of course, is that in days gone by these would all have been mainstream Labour policy. New Labour detractors are trying to say this list is some sort of hard left backtrack to the 1980's. What utter nonsense. Measures such as these are the only way we will defeat David Cameron's Tories at the next election.

NATIONAL POLICY FARCE

The ever-snidey Luke Akehurst has yet another sneer at the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance on his blog. Unlike Mr A and his friends, the CLGA really is what it says on the tin. A broad spectrum of left-leaning Labour Party members. On policy, they agree to disagree sometimes and members range from Gordon Brown supporters to lefties of the LRC variety .
But all share a real commitment to Party democracy and giving ordinary members a say in the Party's future. Which is more than anyone can say for Luke and his "loyalist" chums. If they had their way, anyone who disgareed one iota with anything said by the leadership would be thrown out of the Party. They can't wait for Brown to end contemporary motions at Conference - the final nail in the coffin of Party democracy. They prefer the nodding dog farce which is the National Policy Forum. A sick joke. But one, unfortunately, which rebounds on the ordinary member who never gets near an NPF meeting. While they clap and cheer like crazed Albanians., our CLP resolutions and submissions lie unread in the in-trays. The sooner NPF reps are elected by OMOV the better. At least we might get a representative spread of Party opinion.