COALITION FOR A LABOUR VICTORY
From labour List
By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982
There’s been an interesting addition to the discussion on the future of the Labour Party, the policy directions it might take, and the personalities who may seek to influence that direction in the future.
Michael Meacher, who initially stood against Gordon Brown as Labour Party leader in 2007, has tonight sent out the following round robin email to a number of Labour Party MPs and activists, calling for a broad coalition across the Labour movement:
Dear —,
After discussion with several parliamentary colleagues, leading trade unionists and various organisations of Labour Party members about how to mobilise Labour voters across Britain in the forthcoming General Election, and the policies we need to win, I am appealing for your support for a Coalition for Labour Victory.
Please let me know whether you support the following statement – we will publicise it when I have gathered a sufficiently broad range of support from all sections of the movement but, as an indication of its breadth, it does have the active support of both Compass and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.
A COALITION FOR LABOUR VICTORY
In order to mobilise the maximum number of Labour voters in preparation for the next election, we believe that Labour should now focus its campaigning around the following key principles:
A. The recession should be tackled not with cuts in essential public spending, but by massive public investment in house-building, infrastructure and the de-carbonisation of the economy.
B. Banks should be split up with their casino investment arms hived off. Publicly-owned retail banks should be required to meet new social and community objectives and support manufacturing, with lending to businesses and homeowners restored to 2007 levels. Pay and bonuses should be tightly regulated.
C. A clean break must be made with market fundamentalism – deregulation and privatisation. Public provision should be expanded – in health care, education, housing, pensions, energy and transport. Royal Mail must remain wholly in the public sector.
D. In the face of huge and unacceptable growth of inequality, a big redistribution programme must swing resources away from the rich to provide sizeable increases in pensions, the minimum wage, the lowest benefit levels, and to fund job creation and improved public services. Union rights must be restored – it is in economic crisis that workers are most in need of that protection.
E. To achieve the 80% carbon emission reduction target by 2050, renewable sources of energy should be promoted on a far bigger scale, industry (including airlines) should be required to reduce its climate change emissions by at least 3% per year, household carbon allowances should be introduced, and the UK targets should be fully met by domestic action and not by carbon offsetting abroad.
We also believe that if Labour is to revive its membership in numbers and activity, it must fully restore its internal democratic procedures so that the voice of its individual and affiliated members is listened to and taken account of. This process has begun with the adoption of all-member voting rights for the National Policy Forum. But we believe that several further reforms are needed, in particular to restore to the elected NEC full supervision and control over the party’s operation and finances, to introduce a charter of members’ rights and a Party Ombudsman to enforce them, and to renew for all party employees the core civil service values of impartiality, integrity, honesty and objectivity in the development of party policy and selection of party candidates.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Meacher MP
And another term for Gordon Brown will bring this about…how?
Comment by ERS — 27 November, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
perhaps Michael will sell one of his 13 houses to fund the campaign!
Comment by Hugh Kerr — 27 November, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Come and join me helping Caroline tomorrow or promote times/dates/places to support other candidates you like!
Comment by Derek Wall — 27 November, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
All of these policies are very good its just a shame that none of them are supported by Labour?
Comment by Owen — 27 November, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
The trouble with MM is that he supports and advocates leftish policies until he gets into a position to influence them!
I have little time for the man. He was opposed to the war on Iraq but as a minister voted for it and sought to justify it, but once sacked attacked it as immoral and as a cynical conspiracy. So he has more or less admitted to having knowingly supporting a war that was morally wrong in order to preserve his Ministerial privileges!
He opposed genetically modified crop trials once deposed from his office but precided over them as a Minister.
At a GCHQ rally in 1997 he promised employment rights from day one under Labour but the Laour leadership had already made clear they would support no such thing.
Comment by Groucho — 27 November, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
And don’t get us started on his decisive vote on the NEC after the miners strike which blocked the party from adopting policy to reinstate scaked miners.
But, warts and all, this is still a not bad initiative.
Comment by Andy Newman — 27 November, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
Are you having a laugh? Vote Labour? Why? It can’t be for their record in government. Because they are Left-Wing. Well, if that’s the criteria we should be voting Liberal!
No - never, ever again will I vote for that party.
Comment by Anonymous — 27 November, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
What’s noteworthy and laudable is the fact that he has made environmental demands a central part of this platform.
Comment by Liam — 27 November, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
The Labour(chuckle) Party needs to be ripped apart root and branch. Perhaps a Tory victory will allow this to happen and progressives can build a party worth supporting.
Comment by Omar — 27 November, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
If this is statement is taken out of context and completely on its own, it does sound like quite a nice initiative. Problem is, it’s all words with no concrete action to back it up and comes from the same people who have screwed us for the last x amount of years for their own financial and personal gain. As already pointed out, MM is full of crap and is a man who has done nothing to warrant any kind of trust in anything he does.
It just seems like a hollow attempt at trying to convince all those people they betrayed that they are still left wing. I could guarantee that even if Labour were elected again, we would simply see more of the same: cuts, wars, privatisations and attacks on working class people. Perhaps not as bad as the Tories, but the same never the less.
It’s time to put an end to supporting these class traitors and start backing genuine, principled candidates who will fight for working class people.
Comment by Socialist V — 27 November, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
Does this coalition to re-elect “Labour” include the likes of NATO, US Neo Cons, merchant bankers and the EU elites? That’s whose interests Labour in government for the last 12 years have been acting.
Comment by Jim — 27 November, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
Do those left in Labour have no shame? Meacher must be pretty desperate if he’s now calling for support from all those who were expelled by the neo-liberals. Meacher knows what most of the left outside of Labour have been aware of for some time that Labour will be massacred at the next election. But perhaps there are still a few ex Labour and non Labour reformists out there who are in still denial and haven’t learnt their lesson. This initiative is a complete waste of time and a diversion from building a real left alternative to Labour.
Comment by Ray — 27 November, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
#12 Hang on there Ray.
So if Meacher manages to get some other Labour MPs to stand on this platform you wouldn’t critically support it? (particularly in ares where there is no Left alternative, which seems to me to be about 90% of the seats up for grabs)
Comment by aarghh — 28 November, 2009 @ 12:49 am
Very good that an initiative for an alternative manifesto to the one that New Labour will be presenting is at last being considered and proposed in Labour circles in the run up to the election. Good environmental stuff and publicly owned retail banks is a must(though casino banks should be shut down not hived off).
Section D is good but it could be fleshed out with demands that the monopoly retailers are nationalised along with the robber utility companies and other multi-nationals so that an enlarged socially owned sector can realise some of the ambitions of this section although looking at it Section C covers a lot of that.
Something specific about brining the unemployed into the workplaces to share the work and something about workplace democracy in opposition to the state or shareholder dictatorships we currently enjoy. Here is my contribution on that over at Liam’s blog:
http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/nhs-mutual-engaging-staff-and-aligning-incentives-to-achieve-higher-levels-of-performance-eh/
All in all a good initiative and it would be good if the group of MPs could give Respect candidates backing though I understand that may not be possible from an expulsion point of view of course. There is the basis there for a very radical coalition and a potential workers’ government. The task of the more radical left would be to stress the questions of power and defence. We must demand most forcefully that as many Labour candidates as possible sign up to it.
Comment by David Ellis — 28 November, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
for starters there should be an English Labour Party to represent the poor working class in England. for too long welsh and scottish socialists have ripped England off. A great line from the socialist website a few years ago on devolution was” self enrichment masquerading as social change”. call for an end to the barnett formula and an English Parliament.
Comment by tally — 29 November, 2009 @ 4:08 am
If this is the same Michael Meacher last spotted hanging around with 9/11 conspiracy crackpots, the broad Labour movement (if there is such a thing) should give him a stiff ignoring.
Comment by Paul Stott — 29 November, 2009 @ 12:17 pm
What’s the point? Labour are going to lose. They’re going to lose because they are far-right racist warmongers who would rather lose than adopt the policies that would enable them to win.
Comment by Tim Vanhoof — 30 November, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
#9
Oh good, another idiotic primitive slumpist.
Comment by 'spotter — 30 November, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
#19
No, Butthead, just someone who hates to see the energies of people who wish to see real change sapped by the farcical entity known as New Labour. Wise up!
Comment by Omar — 30 November, 2009 @ 6:52 pm