Labour’s assault on its young members continues
Labour’s right-wing machine has mounted a continual and scurrilous campaign, together with its press allies, against the party’s official youth section, Young Labour.
Smears and a notice of investigation against YL’s chair Jess Barnard have been combined with smears against YL itself – and attempts to block the organisation from holding an event at all at this year’s annual conference, with particular attacks on Young Labour’s clear stance of solidarity with Palestinians. But the party backed down under widespread outrage, showing the usual shiftiness of the Labour right.
And that underhandedness was on show again yesterday, when Young Labour’s rally was ‘mysteriously cancelled’ on the party’s conference app, as one of its members pointed out on Twitter:
Despite the move, the event went ahead and was packed out. It’s just a pity that the vibrant and principled group is such an anomaly in a party that has now turned on it – and on all its members with political principles and vision, while the right-wing machine busies itself reassuring billionaires and barons that it will be too busy burying its nose in their backsides to actually change anything meaningful.
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It’s so good to see from Aisha’s tweet how well cancelled the Young Labour event was.
We need more cancellations like this.
And it will be interesting to see how well Jeremy’s call for the left to organise are taken in some quarters.
I personally think it is an important sign.
Starmer on Marr: Labour won’t bring energy companies into public ownership.
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1442051081672945665?s=19
The House Committee on Un-Labour Activities speaks
No doubt with a view to using the LP Retrospective Offences Act 2021.
Young Labour represent the future of the party. There are many young Socialists among them and additionally Young Labour is vocal in its support of Palestinians. These are the reasons for the viciousness directed at Jess Barnard and why their event was “cancelled” in my opinion.
In 35 years time( if the Labour Party survives) most current members, staffers and MPs will be retired or dead. On the other hand most of these young people will be still active and influencing policy. It is therefore essential, if Starmer is to deliver the Socialist Free and Israeli friendly party his financial backers require , that young Labour is crushed, its members expelled or so disillusioned that they drop out of political activity altogether like many of us did in the Blair years- in hindsight a bad mistake on our part.
Todays Young Labour are not that stupid. They have proved themselves to be capable of dealing with the current leadership and exposing their dirty tricks which I have no doubt will not only continue but increase .They also have the benefit of social media and sites like Skwawkbox but they need to watch their backs – there are no depths to which the leadership won’t sink in order to fulfil Starmers promises to his backers.
Smartboy, I both agree and disagree with you. The cynic in me believes Starmer needs Young Labour to keep the pretense of the “broad church” alive, that their is room for Socialism in the Labour Party.
I am afraid their is little chance of Young Labour been able to shape the current Party in any shape or form. I will argue too that you leaving the Party over Blair and older people like myself retreating from Labour into supporting community campaigns to save our local hospitals, local schools, protect services but without the Labour’s banner, that persuaded the right of the Party that it was safe to have OMOV and to allow registered supporters. The right was fooled to think that the left in the Party was gone with only a tiny fringe remaining.
The horror when they realised in 2015 that they have miscalculated and they were wrong.
Maria I agree that Young Labour are unlikely to be able to shape the current party but they are as I said the future of the Labour party. When they are in their 50s with 30 years experience behind them they will, in my opinion, be able to shape policy. Some of them will be MPs One of them may even be leader. You only need to look at how effective they are now without much experience and facing hostility at every turn to see the wealth of talent there.
Regarding those of us who left in disgust during the Blair years, I started to dislike him quite quickly but Iraq finished it for me. I became totally disillusioned and switched of politics altogether. I frequently didn’t even bother to vote. However by me and thousands like me walking away we gave him free rein to pursue his war mongering and wealth accumulation. We should have stayed and fought him tooth and nail. I will always regret that we didn’t
Maria, I don’t think the vast majority of people out there give – or ever HAVE given – any thought to the make-up of Young Labour, and that it mainly consists of left-wingers, so it’s hardly going to have voters thinking that Starmer is the leader of a broad church.
Smartboy, I don’t think it would have made the slightest difference to anything Blair did had you and the others who left the party had stayed. And as far as I’m aware, most of the people who left the party – who were of course on the left and, as such, anti-war AND against the invasion of Iraq – resigned from the party as a consequence of Blair joining with Bush in invading Iraq, AND the Big nazi-type Lies he told to Parliament and the country to justify the invasion.
I just did a search re LP membership figures and found the following graph, which shows that in the first three years or so of Blair becoming leader, about 100,000 people joined the party, but more-or-less as soon as he became PM, the membership steadily declined, and by 2005 had lost 200,000 members approx, about half of them prior to the ‘build up’ to the invasion of Iraq, and the other half afterwards.
oops…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Labour_Party_membership_graph.svg
Smartboy is 100 per cent correct.
Well done Young Labour in shoving Starmer’s bullying and underhand tactics right up his nose !
More of the same please.
Don’t give up.
‘Big Brother is watching You!’
Sir Keir “shiftiness-becomes-you Starmer
– one of only nine other living Britons whi is a non-billionaire ‘member’ of the Trilateral Commission.
More ambitious than we first thought.
He does know he’s only going to die, like the rest of us? He will be remembered for all the wrong reasons – even, should his demise happen tomorrow.
Unbelievable. If the left get another chance at control of the party they will have to go after the right and make sure this travesty of decency and honesty can never happen again. Right now the people of the UK are being betrayed. Problem is the vast majority of people don’t have a clue whats really going on.
bedroc Starmer is well on the way to ensuring that the left doesn’t stand a fighting chance. We know how difficult it was for Corbyn in 2015 to secure the 15% minimum nomination threshold. He would have never reached the necessary 20% that it is required since yesterday.
My guess is that the right wingers wish to completely obliterate the Labour Party and merge with the LibDems. They are turning back the clock to the time when the two political Parties of power were the Conservatives and the Liberals.
Basically, they one a parallel with the US, Republican and Democratic Party in which US’s Trade Unions donate to the Democratic Party but have no say or influence on it.
Hence, we need an alternative Party from the left asap. We managed to debunk the Liberal Party under FPTP in 2022 and we can do it again, if we bring enough of the Trade Unions with us and we aren’t starved from funding.
Millionaires will not donate to a Labour Party under Starmer’s leadership that cannot win. Therefore, they will prefer to donate to the Conservatives instead. I am not saying that it would be an easy road, but we have our first Labour MP Keir Hardy at the turn of the 20th C, it took us over 40 years to get to our first government, but we did it. We will never reach anywhere if we refuse to start the journey and right now we are in a far better shape that we were at them with nearly 40 MPs .
We aren’t going to win the next General Election anyway but we can displace Starmer’s Labour as the second Party of choice, the alternative to the Tories. We only need to get funding for the Trade Unions while Starmer’s Labour Party will be on the bring of bankruptcy and we will not only retain our seats but been able to make some gains.
Sorry we debunked the Liberal Party in 1922
Shocked to see the Young Labour Meeting as a news item on BBC News, late last night. I thought I was dreaming.
Pan round the room, to show the packed audience, followed by Jess Barnard welcoming JC with a big hug.
Well done, Young Labour! Solidarity!
I don’t know about you chief, But I’m as Sick with the Left as I am with the worst Leadership ever,How and why did A Socialist Party it is astonishing the grassroots Left have surrendered this once Great Beacon for the Workers So meekly to a Cabal off Thugs and Bullies,We the grassroots members and left MPs are guilty of COWARDICE we allowed these Tory Scum to Destroy the Best Leader since the days of Attlee and Bevin and No I was not around in the time of these Giants but I can read, Me personally I’m FINISHED WITH THIS CABAL OF CORRUPT BASTARDS. Independence For SCOTLAND will be My Only Thought and Actions from this day forward. Labour my Party since I was 18 has been in its Death Throes since the Election of Blair The Corrupt Murdering Warmonger then the Character Assassination of Jeremy Corbyn Today the Labour DIED