“Let us organise to meet our masters and end their mastership” – RMT worker quotes Irish union legend James Connolly in stirring speech to hundreds who braved a freezing night to support nurses and other workers on strike
Hundreds of workers came out on a freezing night in Liverpool on Thursday to march in support of striking nurses and other workers who have risen up to demand an end to the Establishment’s endless attacks on ordinary people, their income, standards of living and dignity.
And they were rewarded with a string of excellent speeches by union activists – and one of the best fighting calls of this or any year as the local RMT rep Karl Schofield quoted Irish union legend James Connolly as part of a stirring battle cry. You won’t spend a better five minutes:
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… and whilst working people are forced to take to the freezing streets to fight for fair pay rises …
“Pro-Israel lobby group is biggest donor of free overseas trips to MPs”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/conservative-friends-israel-lobby-group-free-trips/
Was Keith there?
well, whilst the article only names Chris Bryant as one of the Labour MPs who had indulged, it does say,
“Labour’s equivalent group, the Labour Friends of Israel, has funded 62 trips to Israel for MPs in the last decade, either in whole or in part.”
Have you read the paper that LFI published earlier this month?
https://www.lfi.org.uk/publications/gaza-reconstruction-revitalisation-and-reality/
Julie, some m.p s just aren’t doing their jobs. No sweeties for naughty boys.
Joe, He had to go somewhere to sacrifice the Labour Party.
……….but never confuse or conflate Nationalism with Socialism.
Great speech. We need to continue fighting this Militant Tory Govt and Militant Bosses.
“See the people play.
Hear the workers say:
We make it all.
They take it all.
We make the world.
And lose it all.”
(Big Red Freedom Train).
No more crumbs, we want the table!
Labour are exactly the same.
Streeting talks about crushing “hostile” health unions in a Sunday Telegraph interview. Ominously, he also says the NHS must “reform or die” – a pretty big hint of more private healthcare involvement.
The unions involved, have given Labour over £15m since Starmer became leader. What do these unions think the party, Starmer and people like Streeting offer?
New Labour: hard right in disguise.
Andy – Improved worker’s rights and a government that is prepared to negotiate with them.
@SteveH
After his recent TV, radio and press interview outings, no one trusts Wes Streeting at all. The unions are furious with him, The British Medical Association (BMA) issue a statement condemning him for saying quote : Labour will not have a “something-for-nothing culture in the NHS” – what the hell is he talking about? It’s Westminster that has the ultimate something-for-nothing culture.
Some may think viewing Labour as hard-right govt in waiting, is absurd, you may think, at worst they’d be centre-right, like the Tories. But armed with a huge FPTP derived majority, to railroad things through, people like Streeting, Starmer; Reeves could well move well to the right of where the Tories are now on health policy, fiscal and social policy.
The Tories are constrained by the likely outcry if they were to even try to introduce further US private healthcare provision into the NHS, whereas Labour wouldn’t face the same constraints.
Another example is the the Tories’ idiotic ‘Online Safety Bill,’formerly Online harms Bill, which seeks to censor and Disneyfy the UK’s internet on totally spurious grounds – Labour have pressed and are still pressing the Conservatives to go much, much further. Starmer’s Labour are the new reactionary right of UK politics.
Andy – You are of course entitled to your opinion. What is the alternative that you are offering, another dose of Sunak?
Andy – Have you listed to this (15 mins) – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001g8fk
Wes Streeting – Profile
As nurses strike and the Health Service faces winter pressures, Mark Coles looks at the life and career of Shadow Health Secretary and Labour MP for Ilford North, Wes Streeting.
Friend and colleagues reveal how childhood poverty and a cancer diagnosis have shaped the views and aspirations of the man tipped to be a future leader of the Labour party.
@SteveH
Background doesn’t mean much if a politician is a liar and/or corrupt. Streeting once believed Blair a war criminal remember.
Why is Streeting taking tens of thousands from a billionaire Tory donor with huge interests in the US private health care system?
And to answer the other question. No I don’t want Sunak to win, but I don’t want Labour to get a huge majority either, whereby Starmer can ride roughshod over the socialist conscience of SCG objections.
Have you thought the Tories may actually want Starmer to win big, to do the unthinkable (for them) to the NHS? Yep that’s how poor our representation is with realistically only two right-wing parties vying for power to choose from. Starmer rejects PR, because he acts like he works for the Tories.
Andy – Of course your right it’s yet another conspiracy 😏
Oops
youryou’re 🤭Those who dismiss such an idea are naive. Look at the evidence:
Trilateral man Starmer was a govt employee who joined the Labour party in 2015 to run for election. He posed as left to win the leadership then abruptly veered right. Every appointment since has seen any old right-winger he can find, regardless of their quality, win over quality leftists. The man is clearly pathologically opposed to the left, so why did he join Labour and seek to enter parliament at a time it was moving away from Blair under Miliband, then(2015-2019) Corbyn?
There is something deeply off with him. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he was approached and asked to reclaim the Labour party for Blairites by any means necessary, on the promise of huge rewards post-politics. Do you know for sure he wasn’t? Look at the Paul Mason scandal, the BBC’s antisemitism rubbish – that vanished like morning mist post-Corbyn – the UK is plagued with fake politicians, fake media and fake politics.
Andy – You might have had a point if Keir hadn’t been a supporter of the Labour Party since his teens.🤔
Do you seriously think the difference between a Corbyn govt and a Starmer govt aren’t big enough for the US & UK elite to try to intervene in politics? Remember Pompeo plotting to stop Corbyn and our press thought nothing of that meddling.
Why do you think the SPD sprang up in the 1980s other than to split the anti-Tory vote. In a two-party system all you need to do is control the two people who lead the two big parties. why do you think the elite are so dead set against proportional representation?
A PR system would give power back to the people and take it off the hidden elites who are quietly unbeknownst to the electorate, buying politicians. In the last election in the Netherlands, held under PR, 17 different parties won seats, how would the British elite retain control in a system like that?
PR is the way to bring true democracy to the UK and break the spell of the aristocrats and wider elite.
Correction : SDP, I confused them with Germany’s SPD
The UK is probably about as democratic as China, Russia or Iran.
Those three are overtly undemocratic though, they don’t have the veneer of democracy. The British elite have always specialised in the covert, indeed that’s how the UK operates throughout its history when given the choice. We have the veneer of democracy and a free press, so hardly anyone suspects what’s really going on. Compared to Europe we are chalk and cheese.
Try to vote for change under FPTP; start a new party, or lead a big party in a different direction and the weight of the hidden establishment falls on you as per Corbyn’s treatment.
I mean, sure we can vote: Red Tory or Blue Tory
Or waste your vote.
How is going through that performative charade every 4-5 years, that changes nothing, better than not voting at all, as per China?
Steve H posts hasbara who knew…. Its apartheid steve
It’s great to see the working class taking on the rich and powerful.
Success to all workers taking part in industrial action !
I’m not expecting any support from the Labour leadership.
We must develop our own activism to win our own battles.
Stephen Kinnock on TV supporting the Tory plan of bringing the army in to break strikes. But the army understandably aren’t keen to be closely associated with Tory domestic policies, especially being pitted against popular NHS staff.
Starmer has now filled every single shad cab position with someone held to be from the right of the party. Former Mr Remain, Starmer now fully supports Brexit and won’t countenance moving away from Johnson’s hard Brexit deal. The ever-smirking Streeting appears to have designs on privatising the NHS by stealth for his hidden billionaire private healthcare patron. Although, everyone is starting to wake up to his sinister designs with his recent attacks on the BMA. Reeves wants to be tougher than the Tories…on everything. At Defence, Tory backslapper,the hawkish John Healey, can’t see beyond fanning the flames of war in Ukraine. Ukraine are firing off the equivalent of the entire British inventory every single week (thousands of shells daily) – i.e. it’s an unsustainable situation considering they are going to have to live peaceably bordering Russia forever. Russia, who have the manufacturing and allies (Iran, N.Korea, China, India) to constantly resupply and sustain a war for years if needed. Even that old war hawk Henry Kissinger is looking for an off-ramp, and is thus to the left of the PLP.
In every area the where the Tories lead, Labour just blindly follow.
Given all this, I find it shocking they’re doing so well in opinion polls with many extrapolating out huge HoC majorities from those polls. But look beyond the simple metrics, at actual results, and Labour support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Hardly anyone can be bothered to turn out to vote Labour, v.little enthusiasm for these reheated Blairite leftovers. The recent Stretford and Urmston by-election saw Labour win and the Tory vote collapsed, but turnout was 25%!
Can anyone spot the difference “A liar and a thief” or just a Lawyer and a politician “
Joseph – How many of the SCG are lawyers?
Steven, well done. That’s a great question. See what you can do.
SteveH, good question. Go on, send us a link. Thank you.
I think Starmer is incompetent – simple as that –
as well as dishonest of course.
He REALLY thought Ref 2 a good idea – couldn’t
imagine why voters from the Red Wall didn’t share his ideas.
And now he is proved wrong he has gone to the other extreme
in turning away from the Single Market and other sensible ways
of implementing Brexit. He is COMPLETELY forgetting the fact that NI
is itself in the Single Market and there is a new border in the
middle of the Irish Sea.
Another bit of arrogant forgetfulness .. ..he has no idea how ordinary
people think and that Unionists might feel peeved at how things
have worked out.
HFM – You’ve neglected to mention that since he stepping down Jeremy has clearly stated that he eventually went with the CV policy because the vast majority of both Labour’s members and voters supported a second confirmatory referendum and staying in the EU.
It’s just a shame that by the time he’d finished spending month after bloody month prevaricating behind ‘constructive ambiguity’, neither side believed a word he said on one of the major issues.