Travesty of meeting from which many members, especially black members, were barred now sees right-wing faction receiving early information on vote tallies – when not even scrutineers and tellers will have it until Monday and regional executive member was barred from overseeing vote
Last week, many left members of Streatham constituency Labour party (CLP) were barred from voting in their key annual general meeting (AGM) to select their officers for the next year to run the CLP’s business and meetings. Many of those blocked from entering the Zoom meeting – which had been taken over without cause by Labour’s London regional office – were black.
Almost seventy members have today written to the party demanding an investigation into the travesty, in a public letter published by SKWAWKBOX, and decrying the abuse of their democracy by Labour and its officials.
But at the same time, evidence has emerged that, in the view of many members, proves those party officials have been feeding information on voting tallies – two days before even the meeting’s tellers and scrutineers are supposed to find out how ballots were cast. A WhatsApp chat run by the CLP’s right-wingers has leaked, including a boast that ‘the figures coming in are looking good’ for their faction:
Barred oversight
In addition, SKWAWKBOX has learned that an elected regional executive committee member – invited to oversee the meeting and the various votes – was also barred from much of the meeting and was therefore unable to observe much of the voting process. That elected official is said to be raising serious questions with the regional director about the conduct of the AGM.
The conduct of Labour’s regional offices continues to be highly problematic and seeming targeted at ensuring that left members are both deprived of their democratic rights and kept in the dark about what is taking place, with London members now suffering similar disenfranchisement to their colleagues in the south-west, Liverpool and elsewhere.
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If these manoeuvrings succeed the Labour party is finished. The Right are showing they understand who their enemy is and act accordingly. This is a fight to the death (of socialism in the LP) and I suspect most members don’t even know it is happening. I was just reading a short piece on Rosa Luxembourg, and there the equivalent of Labour’s right set the Freikorps on the Left. These people are our deadly political enemy. Their ranks will include security service assets of several countries, not just the UK, and they intend to end the “problem” of the Left in the LP for good. The fact that it will destroy the LP in the process will be beyond the ken of most of them, and be welcomed by some.
The Labour Party is indeed finished, John Thatcher, – certainly as a mass membership Party with government winning potential. The loss of the electorally vital 50 Scottish seats to the SNP is now permanent – with the crushing of Leonard and the Left by the resurrected zombie Murphyites and their Blairite Tory-lite politics – which , along with endemic decades long crony corruption, destroyed Scottish Labour electorally BEFORE Jeremy was ever Leader . And the sheer hubristic arrogance of the triumphant, deeply corrupt, Labour Right , so evident in this item on vote-fixing in Streatham (and of course the goings on in Liverpool) , clearly shows that the fruitless 100 years plus fight of the Labour Left ‘to win Labour to become a even mildly socialist Party’, is truly over. It was only the ‘Corbyn Left Surge’ of 2015 to 2019 that prevented Labour from following all the old social democratic parties of Europe into electoral oblivion . They are all essentially gone now, from PASOK, to the French Socialist Party – to the sad German SPD – now locked in permanent coalition with the German Christian Democrat ‘Tories’ !
Yet still the constantly ‘hope over bitter experience’ Labour Left believes it can all be turned around , for yet another fruitless charge at the impregnable fortress of endemically corrupt pro capitalist, , pro NATO, pro nukes, Labourism – in its reborn NuLabour2 , Starmerite (creature of the Trilateral Commission) electorally toxic business as usual, form.
Get real Lefties (or more accurately in most cases – non-socialist Left Liberals) – the Labour Party has NEVER ever been a socialist party (despite the opportunistically adopted in 1918, original Clause Four) . The Labour Party has always been, and will always be, a chauvinist pro capitalist, pro monarchy, deeply corrupt, bourgeois party of organised labour – always totally dominated by right wing union ‘barons’ and corrupt right wing local councillors and MPs. These scum ARE the real face of the Labour Party historically , not the perpetually optimistic but naive Labour Left . Well, after the fluke of cowardly passive Corbynism, the Right have indeed ‘got their Party back’ – and are busy with a ‘slash and burn’ mission to destroy that naive Left forever – and saddle the NuLabour 2 Party with electorally toxic politics and policies which will guarantee the terminal ‘PASOK Moment’ for Labour is already upon us – as the May local elections will demonstrate.
Time for a new Left Party – but only if some key Left-led trades unions come on board. The current split on the Left around the UNITE General Secretary post does not fill one with optimism on that score !
Sadly, it is difficult to disagree with your analysis jpenny, and Pasok is the nearest direct example of the same phenomena, though “social democratic” parties all over Europe have gone the same way. If the Left can’t push through major reforms at the next LP conference they should abandon NuLabour 2 and start again.
Just more power games from the cult of new Labour 2.0 complaining about lack of democracy in a morally bankrupt Tory-lite cult masquerading as a political party what a joke. Common why are you surprised?
It’s no secret the right has taken oven socialist are not welcome in there club and yet you continue to waste your money and time even worse vote for these scum.
No, I am getting tired of all these people surprised by these games? You have been warned again and again about this takeover and you carry on trying to fight and waste your time with this why?
The ONLY avenue is start again and get it right NO right wing only socialism and get some dam people in with real conviction not these wishy washy useless so called socialist MP’s who are terrified of saying or doing anything in this cult. So there quiet acceptance has doomed Labour and for that I will never forgive them. Okay maybe a few are worth keeping but FFS please for your own sanity stop with this stay and fight it’s pointless!!!
Let them have there cult and lets have a real socialist party we can support. That’s why the UK needs not this Tory-lite BS Labour has turned into… I am so glad my parents never got to see what a mess Labour has turned into…
We know what happened to Rosa and Karl and Europe. Good post.
Just thinking about the alternatives, and how we could move forward. Lessons we need to learn, and constitutional things we might need to avoid repetion of recent experiences.
Dead right Sabine. Self criticism is essential. People need to be reminded how powerful socialism can be. Everybody needs to relearn the history of the class war and drag socialism out of the false bog of identity and cultural”marxism”. Bourgeois travesties which lead people into cul de sacs of ignorance.
I don’t know what the Regional layer of Labour bureacracy is for, nowadays. I can see that it might well have been administratively necessary in the early days, when hardly any members would have had a car or a phone; telegrams were mainly for births, illness and deaths, on the whole — so LP information, including rallies, meetings, etc would need to have been cascaded from the top, pyramid fashion.
Now that almost everyone has a smartphone and/or computer, GenSec/NEC can create groups with CLP chairs/secs and impart info direct. Similarly, chairs/secs can co-ordinate with each other and with branches, and branches with wards/members.
The Regional layer is redundant — and should be made so by Conference!
While I entertained the idea of an alternative party, I don’t think any is viable (except for the Peace and Justice project if it turns into a party). It is clear that Workers Party GB is just a way for George Galloway to syphon money from unsuspecting people, TUSC is another more dead than alive project. Chris Williamson Movement for a People’s Party is more a movement and not a viable party. Really nothing looks good as an alternative. We need to not vote for Labour Right councillors and only for left ones.
In Liverpool, they want Anna Rothery to run as an independent. That gives them te chance to purge LIverpool Labour of leftwingers. Not just Anna herself, but also other vocal people. If Liverpool goes udner, the Labour right gets more influence. It’s a very grim time for proper socialists in Labour.
Samual…..your chances of survival in the Labour party are very unlikely if you support democratic socialism.The bit on your membership card is already down for removal along with the true socialists.No doubt this will not be a problem for most of the members socialist or not who will get behind the banner of unity for all…
It seems that Democratic Socialism is dead in the UK!
I’ve already said in a previous comment a while back that I would never vote labour again, after doing so my entire life, even though I sometimes had to hold my nose.
We need Revolutionary Socialism, from the ground up!
Indeed. But as Jeremy Corbyn showed, even the most moderate, common-sense reformist socialism is TOO revolutionary to be tolerated by our over-lords and masters.
The suppressors of democratic socialism are the billionaire press, the BBC, FPTP and an unhealthy failure to question things on the part of ordinary people – reduce them and the world is our oyster (so to speak).
Democracy and socialism should be indivisible – hence why the billionaires control the press, manage the BBC, celebrate FPTP and encourage blind, unquestioning obedience.
You would almost think they were pursuing a scorched earth policy to clear out socialists, now if the boot was on the other foot
Can we just get on with it
It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. Silencing the right wing, insisting on everyone subscribing to socialist principles, doing unto them what they do to us and, whenever in power, to everyone else, works for them but it would be disastrous for us.
A real change or revolution, the end of a long programme of reforms imposed by the people, depends upon a vibrant mass movement in which every voice is heard and every opinion assessed and every vote counted. Only such a movement can develop the mass energy needed to overthrow capitalism and build a new decent and equal society in which we all work for each other.
The right wing don’t want changes they want jobs: the way to beat them begins by taking the careerism out of electoral politics,. There are ways of doing that which we need to study and develop- policies designed to put an end to corruption and give members power over not only the selection of candidates but their behaviour in office.
Marx suggested that no representative should earn more than the average wage of his/her constituents. Every CLP should get a signed letter of resignation from candidates for elected office. All salaries over a certain figure should be paid to the CLP for community or Union organising. All MP and councillors staff should be selected/vetted/elected by the CLP.
Most off these right wingers believe in nothing except their right to grow rich and order others around- take that from them and they’d lose interest. My old CLP used to hold open public meeting once every month at which the MP would be grilled on what he had done and instructed on what to do in future. That was in 1945-50, since then we have reverted to Toryism.
Things could be so different if only you weren’t in the minority.
I would be willing to do ALL that, except when it comes to swearing oath to queen & all that bollocks, my oath would be to the electorate.
Bring on the republic of great britain, better still independence referendums in Scotland AND Wales, along with referendum in N.I. to unite Ireland.
I watched the MSM news last night. After the obligatory coronaporn there followed twenty minutes of royal news. Someone told that opra iwin woman how bad it was to be a royal, racists and taking away her title and other such insurmountable obstacles she faced as a part black, millionaire member of one of the richest mobs on earth. Blair can get her carded up for the nulabour party. Ticks all the boxes. I dunno how it all ended but the interviewer looked deeply offended. Has Owen Jones been told?
bevin
Its a job, we are their employers, a pre signed letter of resignation is interesting, a sword of damocles hanging over their heads would certainly do no harm to the democratic process
Regulation and a legal fighting fund big enough to scare them off are other pre requisites
bevin, the cynical comment by that ‘troll brand’ posting as SteveH, , ie ,”Things could be so different if only you weren’t in the minority.” is unfortunately all too obviously true – particularly as to which faction has now got control of all the levers of power in NuLabour2 !
What is the point, bevin, of typing out your utter fantasy list of all those nice democracy-enhancing changes to the Labour Party structures , when the Labour, Corbynite, Left has just been effortlessly crushed by the Labour Right , AGAIN, and has no chance whatsoever of being in any position to implement such changes ever again ? The Labour Left HAD its once-in-a-lifetime chance to implement such changes under Corbyn – but failed even to introduce mandatory re-selection ! Get real, bevin, it’s OVER. The Right have ‘got their (historically corrupt, pro capitalist, pro status quo) Party back ‘. Let em have it – Its heading resolutely for its terminal ‘PASOK Moment’ now – move on , and work to build a new Left Party .
bad penny
if you were a bookmaker what odds would you lay on a new party
The best I’ve seen recently was the reverse takeover of the cheap and nasty Tory party by the Brexit party
At some stage the centrist Red and Blue Tories will form a new party
So we are simply preparing for the future
RaV
Money does not Talk it SWEARS said Bob Dylan in one of his songs. Sounds like its very true in Labour party in its present state.
Yes, it is swearingly using anglo saxon english to say “please leave our party” to the genuine left.
Happily, some of us just become more determined to stay. and fight them close-to every time we hear it..
the Roundup party thinks it’s clearing out the weeds but are too stupid to realise how long it will take to detoxify the whole.