John McDonnell

An interview with the former Labour MP Alan Simpson about Brexit, free movement and climate change. Read the left case against Brexit, a piece by Grace Blakeley, here. On Brexit, the reality is that Parliament is gridlocked. The Tories have no majority to get anything through. Labour’s response has to be much clearer. Initially ambiguity was sensible. If you’re not in the negotiations, you can’t say much about the details. That was when Labour set the six tests. That position doesn’t hold as you get close to the negotiation deadline. I see it in trade union terms. Your negotiators negotiate...

Workers from McDonalds, Wetherspoons and TGI Fridays all took part in an international co-ordinated day of action for £10 per hour and union rights on Thursday 4 October. In London they were joined by Deliveroo and Uber Eats riders, and supporters from across the labour movement. At their rally and demonstration in Leicester Square they were joined by traffic wardens in Camden Unison, who are also currently on strike for a £11.15 an hour. Solidarity action took place in cities across the UK. The first Wetherspoons strike was also coordinated from two sites in Brighton. Around 250 people made...

More than 12,000 people attended Labour Party conference 2018, with local parties sending noticeably larger delegations then in previous years. There was less of a focus on Corbyn as “a celebrity”, an improvement, and proceedings involved less political grandstanding. But the level of political debate was still, overall, quite low. We were told that Corbynism has matured into something that is now “mainstream”. The leadership wants Labour to have profile as a serious “party of government” who can capture the “national mood”. Press coverage seems to agree that Corbyn has partially succeeded in...

The social-democratic worthy Will Hutton, in his heyday the chief advocate that Britain can come good by adopting “Rhenish capitalism” on the German model, is happy about Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's plan for a bit of worker shareownership, as announced at (but not put for debate to) Labour Party conference. Hutton's praise is sincere, but double-edged if read by socialists. “Today John McDonnell has crossed a line: by wanting workers as shareholders and represented on boards, he signals that capitalism can be made to work for the common good. His comrades from the 1970s would...

The RMT SGM on 30 May voted narrowly to reject affiliation to the Labour Party. The overall vote, 25 – 31, is roughly proportionate to the votes in branches and regions on the question. As was carried in Solidarity previously part of the blame for the failure to affiliate has been the attitude towards the question by those in the RMT national leadership who supported affiliation but posed it almost entirely as a question of influence in national structures and what kind of return would be received from the affiliation fee. The SGM adopted a recommendation from the NEC allowing, “200 plus...

In the run up to its Labour Party affiliation SGM at the end of May RMT members came together in central London on 25 April to debate the issue. Hosted by “The RMT Campaign for Labour Affiliation” (TRCFLA) and the South West and South Wales regional council, it featured John McDonnell MP, Steve Hedley AGS and Paul Jackson branch secretary LU Engineering branch. Kicking off, John McDonnell described the delicate balance of forces within the party and how he could really do with the RMT throwing its institutional weight into the struggle with the right wing. The nub of the debate between the...

Pseudo-political Disneyland I really enjoyed reading Dan Katz’s article on pulling down statues. He makes a number of valid points. Maybe I can add a few details. After it was pulled down, Stalin’s statue in Budapest was smashed up and one part of it was used as an improvised public urinal. Pretty soon after, all parts of the statue disappeared including the boots which initially remained stuck on their plinth. Rumour has it that everything was melted down. There is a vivid reconstructed scene depicting the toppling of the Stalin statue in Marta Mészáros’ film ‘Diary for my Father and Mother’...

The contest which has opened up over who will replace Iain McNicol as General Secretary of the Labour Party should be an opportunity to talk about what a left-led Labour Party should be like in its culture and structures. Whether it can be anything other than an acrimonious factional battle, and one that is impossible for ordinary Labour members to decode, remains to be seen. First of all it should be an open contest. That was Momentum Chair Jon Lansman's stated reason for standing, and he is right against the leadership of the Labour Party who want Unite official Jennie Formby to get the job...

Editorial from Solidarity 462 Speaking at a Labour Party event on 10 February, Jeremy Corbyn reaffirmed Labour’s 2017 manifesto pledge “to bring energy, rail, water, and mail into public ownership and to put democratic management at the heart of how those industries are run”. “By taking our public services back into public hands”, he said, “we will not only put a stop to rip-off monopoly pricing, we will put our shared values and collective goals at the heart of how those public services are run”. He promised “a society which puts its most valuable resources, the creations of our collective...

Richard Barbrook, named as John McDonnell’s adviser on “war-gaming” for a future Labour government, spoke to Solidarity I’m in the process of doing the bureaucracy to go part-time in my university job and work part-time in the Labour leader’s office on role-plays for likely problems were we get into government. The media have picked up on the phrase “war games” because it sounds more sexy, but really it’s role-plays. John McDonnell in Brighton talked about a run on the pound as the thing we should role-play for. But it might not be that. With the mess the Tories are making, the pound might...