[Politics] Next leader of the Labour party

[Surf's Up]

Thanks for your points. I'm not sure where you get your data from but won't contest it. However, if you could reference it, I'd be obliged. I worked for Liverpool City Council (1978-84) and was a service provider to a great many others who did too. I was also a Labour supporter and still am. My view from the inside track, was that they were deliberately engineering a breakdown in the way the council operated to spark some sort of mass action following intervention by the government. I recall that everything seemed to be a means to an end. This included (and like you I not only remember Kinnock conference speech but was directly involved) the tactic of using the council (and its employees) as some sort of tool. On another level, there was a very scary or at least sinister policy within the council of preferential treatment for those who were 'connected' and the side-lining of those who weren't.
I'm not sure you'll find many LCC staff who would recall this as the council's finest hour. You might also find it quite hard to find huge numbers of Liverpool Labour folk who, living through that, would think of it likewise. As for Hatton, well if you are proud of him in terms of his actions then and his subsequent career, then (as the Scousers say) 'there's nothing down for you'.
This was not democratic socialism in my interpretation of the term, and I would not buy-in to misty eyed memories of it. I think it payed it's part in making us unelectable in the 80s and I'd rather not see it again.
I accept that this is a very specific perspective; but it is authentic.

You won't win - JRG is an obsessive, he loves the sight of his own written word, he takes every opportunity to launch a Spartacist hectoring and bullying rant and, like the left wing of the Labour party, he is of course never wrong.

 

[nicko31]

Large boom in membership it seems

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51245211

If Labour get this wrong it could be the Tories for a generation, what will follow will be the end of the UK as we know it.

Anyway signed up as supporter, never before we have we so desperately needed an opposition

 

[Garry Nelson's teacher]

Between 1979 and 1983 the Tory government stole £217million in grants to Liverpool City Council - it was strangling the city financially. The Socialist council was elected on the basis of creating 1,000 council jobs (in a city ravaged by unemployment) coupled with a reversal of the 1,000 job cuts announced by the Liberals, cutting council rents by £2 per week and introducing a minimum wage and a 35-hour week for the council's workforce. The DLP made these promises in their manifesto on the basis that this was the minimum necessary to lift at least a section of the city's population out of poverty. To implement its programme it was necessary to set a budget of £237million - $25m above the limit set by Tory cuts. The DLP decided to launch a campaign among the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool to force the Tories to hand back £25million of the money it had stolen from the council. The campaign generated unprecedented support for the DLP in the city and the following year the DLP significantly increased its support in the council elections.

You say there was a 'deliberate engineering' a breakdown - when the reality is that the Tories were the people engineering the breakdown. If the DLP had implemented the cuts the Tories demanded in 1984 then 5,000 council workers would have lost their jobs and the council rents would have been increased by 170%. This was unacceptable to the DLP so it fought and continued to fight a very successful campaign to force concessions from the Tory government (and it did so in the teeth of opposition from Kinnock and the right-wing leadership of the LP and from the right-wing trade union leaders - particularly at the time NUPE and the NUT).

Over the period that the socialist council ran Liverpool (and at its high point there were only 9 Militant members who were councillors - the rest were left wing activists who were members of other groups or non-aligned socialists) - this is their record -

6,300 families rehoused from tenements, flats and maisonettes
2, 873 tenement flats demolished
1,315 walk-up flats demolished
2,086 flats/maisonettes demolished
4,800 houses and bungalows built
7,400 houses and flats improved
600 houses/bungalows created by ‘top-downing’ 1,315 walk-up flats
25 new Housing Action Areas being developed
6 new nursery classes built and open
17 Community Comprehensive Schools established following a massive re-organisation
£10million spent on school improvements
Five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached, built and opened
Two thousand additional jobs provided for in Liverpool City Council Budget
Ten thousand people per year employed on Council’s Capital Programme
Three new parks built
Rents frozen for five years

This is the legacy of the socialist council in Liverpool - a council that was never defeated at the ballot box but was undemocratically removed from office by the House of Lords. As for Derek Hatton - whatever he ultimately did after being removed from office (and he was vilified and scapegoated, losing his job, losing his home, being blacklisted and an attempt to jail him on trumped up charges) - it does not take away from the role that he, Tony Mulhearn, John Hamilton, Tony Byrne, Pauline Lowes, Peter Owens, Bob Lancaster and the other 40 socialist councillors played in Liverpool in the 1980s. Thousands of people in Liverpool have decent homes thanks to these individuals, the DLP (which was shut down by Kinnock) and the working class people who supported them. There legacy is in bricks and mortar - and to say that folk of Liverpool would not regard it as the 'finest hour' is belied by the fact that the socialist council repeatedly won election after election.

You say Liverpool was the reason why LP under Kinnock became unelectable - yet the LP in Liverpool repeatedly bucked the trend in the 1983 and 1987 general election - with big swings to the LP - swings that if they had been replicated country-wide would have seen LP win a landslide - and swings that were built on the back of the campaigning socialist policies in Liverpool.

Thanks very much for your considered response. As I said, I won't contest the data but (as I also said) it would be good to have it references (sorry is this makes my sound like a teacher).
My impression of your response is that it does sort of show the problem. There's no trace of doubt here. No thought that maybe taking the council to the edge of bankruptcy might have been any sort of a problem. No acknowledgement that the tactic didn't take everyone with them - including many of the unions. It just a relentless bombardment of self-regarding 'facts'.
In fact it takes me back to the time; I can almost hear Hatton and company spouting this stuff, never pausing for breath, never engaging in wider debate. You were either a believer (good) or a non-believer (bad). For some reason Dominic Cummings suddenly sprung into my mind. (Sorry:the ultimate insult - but maybe you can see the parallel?)

Of course the key point is not whether you or I have 'won' our little debate. It's about whether this broad approach will win votes. As Jeremy himself said "we won the argument". But we lost the election. And I'm afraid the evidence is beginning to stack up that we might never ever win another one if we follow the same path. (I've got a feeling you know this.)

Cheers.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Large boom in membership it seems

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51245211

If Labour get this wrong it could be the Tories for a generation, what will follow will be the end of the UK as we know it.

Anyway signed up as supporter, never before we have we so desperately needed an opposition

It’s not often I don’t vote Labour but if RLB & that baffoon Burgon get the Leadership of the party, I might never vote for them again. I already blame Corbyn for giving that horrid Johnson 5 years, he’ll win the next two general elections if RLB & the suicidal Unions get their way. Bonkers!

 

[spence]

It’s not often I don’t vote Labour but if RLB & that baffoon Burgon get the Leadership of the party, I might never vote for them again. I already blame Corbyn for giving that horrid Johnson 5 years, he’ll win the next two general elections if RLB & the suicidal Unions get their way. Bonkers!

He will win the next two elections anyway regardless who gets in.

 

[shingle]

Who really cares, Labour are now an irrelevance, with the four candidates on offer where's the option for none of the above.

Nandy, Long Bailey and Thornberry are all Corbyn with a skirt, the party have learnt nothing from the election in which Corbyn and his policies were comprehensively rejected by the electorate. Their only hope was to elect a candidate in the Tony Blair, David Milliband mould, but the membership would never allow a centre left candidate to lead the party, they're too caught up in the Corbyn project I'm afraid. So, out of government for the next decade at least.

 

[majnoon]

Yep we need someone else to send the troops to war in the Middle East for absolutely no reason

 

[Bognor Seagull]

Who really cares, Labour are now an irrelevance, with the four candidates on offer where's the option for none of the above.

Nandy, Long Bailey and Thornberry are all Corbyn with a skirt, the party have learnt nothing from the election in which Corbyn and his policies were comprehensively rejected by the electorate. Their only hope was to elect a candidate in the Tony Blair, David Milliband mould, but the membership would never allow a centre left candidate to lead the party, they're too caught up in the Corbyn project I'm afraid. So, out of government for the next decade at least.

Perhaps the Lib Dem’s will get their act together & become the opposition?

As for the Labour Party I think that they are an irrelevance now (outside London) & grubby Brighton/Hove ...

 

[peterward]

Large boom in membership it seems

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51245211

If Labour get this wrong it could be the Tories for a generation, what will follow will be the end of the UK as we know it.

Anyway signed up as supporter, never before we have we so desperately needed an opposition

It will get it wrong..........., there will be a fight between momentum/McCluskey to install RLB, and Unison/Remainers to install KS. Neither are credible. It was mocha latte Londoner starmer who continually pushed the PLP towards abandoning manifesto promises and swathes of leave seats into his reverse the referendum obsession. He's a bland suit tainted by his spectacular misjudged failure, that in part lead to Labours worst ever election. He's responsible, all his blah about listening to what the electorate says.......

RLB is as big a quack as Corbyn, for sure there's a niche market for this brand of radical socialism, especially in around the north lanes in places that sell Tofu, but it will be not be voted for by the mainstream, RLB offerring to save people and the country who have no interest in her brand of salvation.

Thornbury is a waste of space.

Lisa Nandy however, is credible..... not tainted, hasn't been directly responsible for huge miscalculation like Starmer, more left of centre than hard left, far nearer to where the majority of the electorate sit and she could give Boris a damn good run his money..... It shouldn't matter at all, but being female may also help demographically.
She also came from a leave seat and respected the original referendum result. This last election again became a leave/remain election. If Starmer gets in with his never say die Remainer backers, in 5 years time it again won't be Labour v Tory, starmer v Bojo it will again be rejoining EU Starmer Vs Bojo (starmer has never accepted the result etc). Brexit referendum 3.
I hope for the sake of chastening Bojo and making Labour electable to the nation and not just London or hard left extremists, that Nandy wins.
Nandy v Bojo will be just that and Labour V Tory as it should be

Of course she won't, rigging and vested interests will.

 

[Ooh it’s a corner]

I agree with much of PW’s post and hope that Lisa Nandy is the surprise winner. She comes across well in her media interviews and apparently ‘won’ the hustings quite clearly. She would have the best chance of mounting a new challenge to the horrific prospect of many more years of a Tory government.

 

[Bakero]

Who really cares, Labour are now an irrelevance, with the four candidates on offer where's the option for none of the above.

Nandy, Long Bailey and Thornberry are all Corbyn with a skirt, the party have learnt nothing from the election in which Corbyn and his policies were comprehensively rejected by the electorate. Their only hope was to elect a candidate in the Tony Blair, David Milliband mould, but the membership would never allow a centre left candidate to lead the party, they're too caught up in the Corbyn project I'm afraid. So, out of government for the next decade at least.

Nandy is not exactly a Corbynite, is she? Her dad would say she's a right winger.

 

[Billy the Fish]

where's the option for none of the above.

Would f**king love a real life Monty Brewster!

 

[jakarta]

It's Wrong-Bailey for me and another 5 years of 'You do realise we have won the argument'...

 

[warmleyseagull]

It's Wrong-Bailey for me and another 5 years of 'You do realise we have won the argument'...

And Len McCluskey pulling strings even more obviously than under waste of space.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

You won't win - JRG is an obsessive, he loves the sight of his own written word, he takes every opportunity to launch a Spartacist hectoring and bullying rant and, like the left wing of the Labour party, he is of course never wrong.

Ah now - calling me a Spart - that is an insult. Any maybe you can indicate where I bullied anyone.

Wouldn't it have been easier just to post this link?

https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liverpool/index.html?l7.htm

It is there for anyone wanting to read the story of the socialist council in Liverpool -

This one is also useful -
http://www.liverpool47.org/

You forgot to mention sending out redundancy notices via Taxis

It is part of the story - the Tories cut off all funding to the council in an attempt to force them to back down. The redundancy notices were a legal mechanism to free up £30million to keep the council functioning. Every council worker knew what was happening, every council worker knew that nobody was going to be made redundant - and guess what - not one single worker lost their job.

Now - I do think it was a tactical error - I understand why the councillors did it - I told several of the councillors at the time it was a mistake and it would provide the Tories and Kinnock with a propaganda coup (and I wasn't the only one who did).- they were looking at the problem from within the bubble of council politics and they went ahead anyway. It took a long time for the councillors to acknowledge that it was a tactical error (that they should have called the council workforce to strike instead) - but most now acknowledge it was a mistake.

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Thanks very much for your considered response. As I said, I won't contest the data but (as I also said) it would be good to have it references (sorry is this makes my sound like a teacher).

drew gave a link and I added another - the info is uncontested.

My impression of your response is that it does sort of show the problem. There's no trace of doubt here. No thought that maybe taking the council to the edge of bankruptcy might have been any sort of a problem. No acknowledgement that the tactic didn't take everyone with them - including many of the unions. It just a relentless bombardment of self-regarding 'facts'.

Actually - there was constant debate, discussion, second guessing etc throughout the entire time - I was involved in some of these discussions. The purpose was to work out a strategy that could lead to fulfilling the election promises successfully. Everyone involved knew that Liverpool would be unable to survive the Tory onslaught indefinitely - that is why the socialist council attempted to engage with other labour councils to do likewise instead of implementing Tory cuts. 13 councils agreed to fight only to fall by the wayside one by one leaving Liverpool isolated. You talk about the 'edge of bankruptcy' as a problem - when the reality was that every council in Britain at the time (and many since) was on the edge of bankruptcy - have a look at Nottinghamshire over the past couple of years. The options were to implement Tory cuts that would have resulted in 5,000 job losses and a 170% increase in council rents - or fight to implement the election programme that the socialist council was elected on (and heaven forbid that any political party should actually try and implement its election promises). I have indicated above that the redundancy notices were a major blunder - and another major blunder was not splitting from the LP after Kinnock shut down the District Labour Party and re-establishing it as an independent DLP to fight the elections.

You are correct that 'everyone' didn't agree with the strategy - the Tories opposed it, the Liberals opposed it, the SDP (remember them) opposed it, Kinnock and the newly emerging Blairites opposed it. The vast majority of the working class in Liverpool supported the council as demonstrated in election after election in the 1980s and in demonstrations in support of the council in the city - the trade unions supported the council, with the exception of the NUT who refused to let the councillors address the workers before the vote and they still only went against the council by a slim margin - and NUPE who outright refused to hold a ballot among the council workforce and declared opposition to the council from the right-wing leadership in London (and NUPE were later responsible for providing one of the arch witch hunters to purge the Liverpool DLP of socialists after Kinnock shut it down). The DLP in Liverpool had thousands of members turning up to LP meetings every week. Militant at the time had over 1,000 active members in Liverpool - bigger than the LP, the Tories and the Liberals today.

In fact it takes me back to the time; I can almost hear Hatton and company spouting this stuff, never pausing for breath, never engaging in wider debate. You were either a believer (good) or a non-believer (bad). For some reason Dominic Cummings suddenly sprung into my mind. (Sorry:the ultimate insult - but maybe you can see the parallel?)

It actually is an insult to mention Cummings - Hatton was hugely popular in the city at the time - but he was a public face for the council, someone adept at public speaking and motivating a crowd. Politically he did little work behind the scenes - Tony Mulhearn, Tony Byrne and others were responsible for that. But you are wrong about the 'wider debate' - this wider debate took place all the time - not with the Tories, not with the Kinnockites - but with the Liverpool working class. As I said - thousands regularly attended LP meetings across Liverpool - at times up to 1,500 delegates attended DLP meetings on a weekly basis - all debating every move the council was making - and always making the decisions about what strategy the council should adopt. It was the DLP, after intense debate and discussion, that drove the decision-making process - not the councillors.

Of course the key point is not whether you or I have 'won' our little debate. It's about whether this broad approach will win votes. As Jeremy himself said "we won the argument". But we lost the election. And I'm afraid the evidence is beginning to stack up that we might never ever win another one if we follow the same path. (I've got a feeling you know this.)

The difference between the socialist council in Liverpool and Corbyn's LP is that the Liverpool DLP won every election it contested in Liverpool (local and national) - usually by an increased margin - and it did so by refusing to compromise on its election programme. Corbyn did the opposite - abandoniing his programme - he refused to implement mandatory re-selection, he refused to take on the Blairites who were sabotaging the LP and he caved in a switched from Leave to Remain - handing Johnson the election on a plate. The likelihood is that the next leader of the LP will make more concessions - and that is what will lead the LP to lose the next election.

 

[Dr Bandler]

And Len McCluskey pulling strings even more obviously than under waste of space.

Yes, it is hard to think of a more unpleasant, undemocratic, unintelligent man with so much power behind the scenes. Let's just say I have connections who know this first hand. What a disaster - how to these people get to apparently represent a union membership who dont really support them? Jurassic Park.

 

[shingle]

Nandy is not exactly a Corbynite, is she? Her dad would say she's a right winger.

Well apparently he's so far to the left that's not surprising.

 

[JC Footy Genius]

Looking forward to JRG's essays on why Stalin was misunderstood and the purges were necessary and Chairman Mao, the cultural revolution, blueprint for the future..

 

[Jolly Red Giant]

Looking forward to JRG's essays on why Stalin was misunderstood and the purges were necessary and Chairman Mao, the cultural revolution, blueprint for the future..

You will be waiting for those ones - and that should be a bit on the obvious side.