GOODBYE BILL

Three months ago I attended a meeting in Manchester of the Mayors For Peace working group. One of the people at that meeting was Councillor Bill Risby, who sadly died yesterday .

I'm pretty much at a loss to know what to say as Bill and his family have been part of my life for over 30 years.

Bill devoted his life to the labour and trade union movement. He was , right until the time of his death, a passionate advocate for peace and an instigator of the Nuclear Free Zone movement. He was a former Lord Mayor of Manchester, a hard-working Labour councillor in north Manchester for over 40 years, and a committed family man . Above all, he was a fundamentally decent person who I would always refer to when people asked me why I stayed loyal to Labour. We used to joke that the Party had moved so far to the right that he had somehow ended up on the "left." But he remained loyal to Labour and remained hopeful that one day his brand of moderate socialism would win the day. Many of the great and good in Manchester have been paying tribute today. I'm just glad that I knew him for so long - and will always remember him with great affection. Two days before he died, he sent me a message of support for my campaign in Keighley. That will stay on record as a tribute to the support he showed me through decades of political and personal friendship. It won't be forgotten

HE WALKS THE LINE ....

My best mate Coun Dave Young has the dubious accolade of being the most frequent visitor to my blog. He is also a mega-fan of the late, great Johnny Cash who I became converted to after seeing the film Walk The Line. In a world where we can garner many political enemies, we need our allies. So as a tribute to the friends who do walk the line when it matters here's a fab picture of the coolest man in country. More in the Guardian

THE SPICE OF LIFE.....

To say I feel rough would be an understatement. However I will keep taking the amoxycillin and venture out despite the cold weather tonight as the Trades Club is staging a tribute evening for a friend who sadly died last year . Dave Perkins was a good Labour Party member and curry aficionado - so tonight I'm going to make his favourite dish, keema peas, for general consumption. The last time we went out in Bradford was to K2, a tiny place near a pub called The Beehive. And he gave me a right telling-off for asking for a knife and fork. Solids were not high on Dave's list of priorities. But I will give the curry my best shot.......the evening is also featuring a bluegrass disco!

AN IDEAL COUPLE......

Sad today to read of the death of Ruth Frow.Her passing marks the end of one of the most intriguing stories in working-class history. Ruth and her husband Eddie, who I had the privilege to meet on several occasions, met. fell in love and founded what is now the Working Class Library.

Today, it's housed in a purpose-built facility in Salford. For years, it was sited in their home and open to students of socialism from all over the globe.

Now run by an independent trust, it comprises tens of thousands of pamphlets, books and artefacts, dating from the days of Tom Paine and William Cobbett to more recent battles in which the Frows themselves played their part. It's recognised as one of the outstanding collections of its kind, in Britain and internationally.
Ruth campaigned for Labour in the 1945 general election, but later joined the Communist party at the same time! She was secretary of Teachers for Peace and the Manchester Peace Committee, and cofounder, and first chair, of Manchester CND.
She met Eddie Frow, a Manchester shop steward, at a Communist party school in Sussex in 1953. And they stayed loyal to the CP, though always working in a comradely fashion with Labour Party activists and trade unionists in the north-west. Both rightly saw in the knowledge of working people's history an argument for socialism . Academics were always welcome to their library, and their friends included many eminent historians. But they took special pride in the union and community activists who visited the library. The library moved to new premises in The Crescent, Salford in the late 1980's and the couple moved there with their books. In 1989, Ruth was there to welcome a group of visitors ( including me) under the auspices of the British Soviet Friendship Society. Eddie died in 1997 and Ruth rang me to thank me for a piece I wrote about him for the Manchester Evening News. Which I was very touched by.

Two days before she died, she was apparently there as usual, attending the library committee. A wonderful woman......

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