Letters

I would like to add a couple of comments to Barrie Hardy’s review “Sweden in the 1930s: a shithole country”.

Barrie mentions the strikes in Adalen in the 1930s. The Swedish director Bo Widerburg made an interesting film featuring these events: Adalen 31 (1969). I haven’t seen it for a long time but if you can find a DVD check it out. Widerburg also directed a film about Joe Hill in 1971.

Barrie mentions the Native American Party, noting that they were “appropriately dubbed the Know Nothings”.
No doubt they were as thick as planks but their name, as far as I am aware, doesn’t originate in their undoubted lack of intelligence.

It comes from the fact whenever members were asked a question they would automatically reply, “I know nothing that is in our political programme that conflicts with the US Constitution” (or something similar).

John Cunningham

Labour selections suspended

Labour activists in Nottingham have been told that Labour’s parliamentary selections have been suspended, apparently on the authority of the General Secretary, while the Party focuses on managing trigger ballots.

A comrade well-informed on such matters tells me:

“It was expected that some moderate MPs in safe seats would be triggered by local members [under the new ‘trigger ballot’ procedure to decide whether to have a selection contest] and have to face reselection. If that happened, it would be a good opportunity for the Leader’s Office and the unions to get their candidates into nice safe seats.

“But several MPs thought to be vulnerable to the trigger have (easily) survived it. Therefore, the suspicion is that those at the top are looking at other options to get their people into safe seats (Nottingham East being one)” — i.e. to make sure selections can’t be completed until an imminent general election allows the NEC [National Executive] to decide them on emergency grounds.

I also hear that Unite and GMB have already decided the candidates they want shooed in by the National Executive and have shared out the regions.

This stinks. It looks possible that Enfield North are continuing with their selection. Whether they are flouting the General Secretary’s instruction or not, I don’t know.

Ralph Peters, Nottingham