GRASSROOTS LABOUR

I never meant this blog to be a long-term thing but two years on from its original incarnation as a Labour leadership call to arms things have moved on and, although sometimes I'm pretty uninspired, I intend to carry on.
Grimmerupnorth was never going to delight the Labour establishment but the way I see it grassroots members who are utterly fed up with New Labour's "command and control" of Party democracy, Labour Party Conference, selection of PPCs and by-elections need to have a place where they can have their say. And more and more members are aghast at the way things are looking. More and more of them are contacting me personally.
I spoke this morning to someone who loyally trundled up to Norwich to help Chris Ostrowski in what turned out to be a pretty hopeless battle in the constituency. Her tales of bland election leaflets written by Party HQ, control freakery by paid Party officials, constituency members not doing any campaigning as they were so angry at Ian Gibson's treatment, were all horribly familiar. So incensed is she that she is hoping to organise direct action at the Labour Party Conference. As all the old channels have been more or less abolished ie resolutions, speaking from the floor, this seems to me an excellent idea. And let me make it clear.
This is not an LRC member, this is not a hardened leftie hack, this is an out and out Labour loyalist who has been radicalised by personal experience of the mistakes which contonue to be made by a Party machine which chooses favoured sons and daughters over local candidates in any winnable seat, stamps out dissent and most importantly ignores the common sense on policy and strategy from ordinary members whose only wish has been to see Labour succeed. The peson in question happens to be a PPC. She tells me she will write her own election leaflets because she cannot bear the meaningless guff which emanates from the powers-that-be. Unfortunately, and inevitably, she happens to be standing in an unwinnable seat.