Labour Party

On the Left Futures website (3 July), Labour left activist Jon Lansman replies to the Mail. The Daily Mail this morning fulminates about its finding that “70% of Labour candidates for 2015 election have links to unions.” Worse still, it finds that “more than half of those are affiliated to Unite, the giant Left-wing union which is targeting as many seats as possible to exert maximum influence over Ed Miliband.” All part of the conspiracy orchestrated by the diabolical general secretary of Unite to take over the Labour Party. Hang on a minute. Only 70%? What about the other 30%? The Labour...

The Labour Party National Policy Forum met in Birmingham on 22-23 June 2013. In Tony Blair’s 1997 restructuring of Labour, much of the Labour conference’s policy-making work was supposed to be transferred to this Forum. In fact the Forum confirmed what has long been clear: that it is a weak consultative body, and real policy-making is concentrated in the party leaders’ offices. As Jon Lansman has reported on the Labour-left website Left Futures, “Important issues addressed in keynote speeches, like that of Ed Miliband on social security policy, or by Jon Cruddas’s policy review, could... not...

Once again, it's more money for the banks, and more people to the food banks. From 2015, if you lose your job, it will be at least seven days until you can get JSA. That will not bother you if you are someone like George Entwhistle, who got an £800,000 pay-off when he resigned after just 54 days as director-general of the BBC. If you are low-paid, or you are on a zero-hours contract and got no pay at all last week, it will. In his spending review on 26 June, George Osborne also tightened the squeeze on lone parents and vowed to abolish public service workers' automatic or semi-automatic annual...

On 17 June, the Local Government sector conference of the public sector union Unison voted to back the Councillors Against Cuts network (CAC). It voted down a wrecking amendment from its Service Group Executive designed to gut the motion of support of its content. The SGE argued that full support for CAC would place the union in legal jeopardy, as it would mean pressuring councils to set illegal budgets. One delegate told Solidarity : “The union leadership wheels this argument out to block any attempt to do anything vaguely militant. But people have had enough of it.” CAC is a group of Labour...

Non-payment and partial payment of the extra rent social housing tenants have to pay because of the Bedroom Tax is beginning to put pressure on the policy. Leeds City Council has said about 50% of its affected tenants are in arrears and this is expected to rise. Many other local authorities and housing associations have similar levels of arrears. On 7 June 34 Labour local authorities met in Manchester and issued a statement condemning the Bedroom Tax and demanding that it is repealed. This is very welcome; it that puts Labour in local government ahead of the national party which has given no...

Draft skeleton text for motions for Labour-affiliated union branches and Labour Party branches and committees. We note that in speeches on 3 and 6 June Ed Balls and Ed Miliband said that Labour, if elected, would stick with Tory spending plans for 2015-6. They also talked of “a cap on social security spending” which would start from levels set by Tory cuts. We condemn this stance because it effectively gives George Osborne a blank cheque for the new cuts which he will announce on 26 June, and which even Tory ministers are resisting as excessive, and those he will announce in 2014. We note that...

The leaders of Unite and GMB, two of the three biggest unions affiliated to the Labour Party, have responded worryingly to the speeches by shadow chancellor Ed Balls on 3 June, and by Labour leader Ed Miliband on 6 June. Balls and Miliband said that Labour, if elected, would stick with Tory spending plans for 2015-6. That effectively gives George Osborne a blank cheque for the new cuts which he will announce on 26 June, and which even Tory ministers are resisting as excessive. They also talked of “a cap on social security spending” which would start from levels set by Tory cuts and make...

George Osborne is due to announce his latest spending review on 26 June, the day before the first regional strike in teachers’ industrial action over pay, pensions, and workload. Osborne says he hopes to make £11.5 billion cuts in the new review, which would cover the 2015-2016 financial year. A general election is due to take place in May 2015, just after the financial year begins, which Labour is expected to win. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said on 4 June that, if elected, Labour would maintain the basic framework of Osborne’s spending plans. Leading figures in the GMB union accused him of...

Val Graham, a trade union and Labour activist in Chesterfield, spoke to Solidarity about the “alternatives to austerity” discussions she has been organising in the town. The first few meetings had about 30 people at them. Reflecting a general issue on the left, most of the people attending are older. There have been some young people, but not as many as I would wish. Most of those who come are active trade unionists and involved in other campaigns. The first meeting we had was on welfare — including what kind of welfare system we wanted. The second meeting discussed the issue of councillors...

Leeds City Council, which still controls 85% of the city’s social housing, has reclassified rooms that were classed as spare bedrooms in over 800 homes affected by the Bedroom Tax. However, 8,000 homes under council control are hit by the Bedroom Tax. The council decided to reclassify only box rooms or ground-floor spare rooms. Councillors have hinted that evictions are impractical, but tenants are still getting letters threatening eviction if they don’t pay. Leeds’s Labour council has gone further than most councils. This is partly due to the efforts of the Hands Off Our Homes campaigns...