It is the moral thing to apologise for the calamity a previous Labour leader visited upon Iraq, but should Jeremy Corbyn win and formally make penance for this awful, unnecessary war; it's the politically sensible thing to do as well. Still, some party members might think this is water that flowed beneath the bridge long ago. It has been over 12 years since Tony Blair made the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq. And as for the political salience of the matter, wasn't that settled in 2005 when Labour were returned with an outright majority? If that wasn't enough, one of Ed Miliband's first act as leader was to put distance between "his" Labour Party and old New Labour, especially on this. Firstly, Ed didn't apologise for Iraq. He said Blair was wrong and Britain was mistaken to follow America's lead in ignoring international opposition to the invasion. So no, if Jeremy gets the opportunity he will be the only leader to have said sorry for Iraq. As for the 2005 general election, you might say Blair wasn't punished electorally but in the long-term, the party certainly was. Thanks to their initial opposition to the Iraq War before the first bomb dropped, the LibDems surged to 22% of the vote. Six million votes only gave them 62 seats, but those voters stayed put five years later. Other Labour voters dropped out, or drifted to other parties. The only reason why the Tories didn't do better was because Michael Howard's leadership had a touch of nudge, nudge, wink, wink racism about it, and he was a complete has been. Once again, it wasn't Tony's unique talents that won us the general election - it was the disarray and incompetence of his opponents. More toxic was the effect Iraq had on the party and mainstream politics more generally. Each constituency party suffered dozens of resignations, including hard-to-replace key activists. With the Tories and Labour agreeing that attacking Iraq was necessary, cynicism toward the centre left and centre right of politics was entrenched. This isn't to say anti-politics wasn't a thing before the first cruise missiles slammed into Baghdad, but it was redoubled by the arrogance with which the largest demonstration in modern political history was dismissed. And that's before we even start talking about the dodgy dossier and the tissue of fabricated "facts" cooked up by the State Department and British Intelligence. Whether Blair and other ministers lied to get the outcome they wished is a moot point: it was widely perceived that they had. Does this matter now? Absolutely. From within the Labour Party, Jeremy is the repository not just of left populism but also anti-establishment politics sentiment. By declaring this now, Jez is making a very clear statement about the kind of party Labour needs to be - one that is engaged with and animated by its members and supporters, not one that treats its support as a "core" to be neglected because it has nowhere else to go. An honest apology can, for some, go a bit of the distance needed to re-win popular trust in politics generally, and our party in particular. Whether it's a dead cat tactic or not, it's a position his opponents would find it hard to respond to. Before today, it was Yvette Cooper who had made Iraq a campaign issue and was among the first of Labour's big beasts to break cover all the way back in 2007. Andy Burnham has stayed schtum, but back in 2010 he stood by the Iraq decision and thought it was time to move on. And Liz Kendall, who knows? Whether their responses are "it doesn't matter" or "intervention was right", it paints them into a corner normally reserved for unwashed wallflowers and they look even more out of touch - if that was possible. Also, Jeremy (and at a push, Yvette) pre-empts any damaging political fall out from the forever-delayed Chilcott inquiry. No doubt the Tories will be looking to use it to damage Labour, despite their voting along with the war - including messrs Dave and Osborne. Necessary? Yes. Timely? Yes. Politically smart? Absolutely.
Busy at the moment so no time for blogging, which is a touch annoying considering what's happening. Here then is another guest post, this time from Robin Wilde. Robin is from Sheffield and is backing Andy Burnham for leader, but he comes here not to proselytise but to let new members know (warn?) about the traditions they're likely to encounter. With 300,000 people having just signed up for the Labour Party, I’ve come to wonder if they all know what they’re getting themselves in for. I don’t say that to be unkind or tribal - I want as many people as possible to belong to the Labour Party, to get involved with its campaigns and its culture. But I want them first to understand what it is, and why it might not be what they think it is. On the continent, the main parties of the centre-left find their history in the revolutions of the 19th century. The Parti Socialiste in France can trace its lineage to the battle lines of the Paris Commune in 1871, and the German SPD hails from Marxist groups in the 1860s. The Partito Democratico in Italy is a descendent of the Italian Communists. Noble histories, all. The first fighters for liberty, equality and fraternity marching their way through fraught periods of crackdowns, war and dictatorship and emerging on the other side of that treacherous pass to found new post-war nations of economic strength and relative levels of social justice and equality. They made lives better. But just as it would be wrong to denounce their history, it would be wrong to co-opt their history as part of our own. In the words of Morgan Phillips, the Welsh mineworker who served as Labour’s General Secretary during the 1950s, Labour “owes more to Methodism than to Marxism.” From our roots in the Liberal-Labour pact of the 1880s onwards, we have never been a revolutionary party, nor sought to become one. We were always a radical movement, but radical in the sense of wishing to extend opportunity and liberty across the board. We founded working men’s libraries to give education to those denied it. We founded trade unions - fought for them, died for them - but not to flip the country on its head. We did it to extend a hand to management they did not always want to grasp, to work with them, be recognised and respected as equals in our labour - “by hand or by brain”, in the words of the old Clause IV. Dan Hannan, perhaps the most radical of Conservative Eurosceptics, and a man with which few in my party will find many points of agreement, said this in a 2012 Telegraph article:
The proudest achievements of the British Left, down the years, have involved the dispersal of power from closed elites to the general population. This high-minded ambition led to religious toleration, legal rights for women, the extension of the franchise, universal education.
He is right. Our greatest achievements have been to liberate people from forces which held back their potential. We freed millions from the crippling poverty of old age. The worry and stress of healthcare paid through the nose. The indefensible practice of legal gender pay segregation. But we didn’t do that by being angry - though anger and radicalism are powerful tools - we did it by being respectably high-minded, by never talking over those who opposed us, but by responding to their arguments with reason and with passion, and not giving way. The best way to get what we wanted wasn’t to smash them out of the way, but to get them to agree. Labour members have traditionally been, with notable exceptions, a small-c conservative body. They are not wholly devoted to the party or to politics, and that reflects itself in the party’s culture at the lower levels. These are people who’ve got through the last century in a socialist party running raffles, sharing photos of their cats, taking their kids to Scouts meetings and attending impassioned speeches after which nobody takes to the barricades, but everyone goes to the pub. These are not people without belief or compassion. It is their compassion for the rest of humanity that makes them members, that has them out traipsing through mud and driving rain to deliver immediately-binned leaflets for a by-election to an unwinnable ward on the borough council. It used to be a source of mockery for the socialist city council in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that they were ‘sewer socialists’, more concerned with their excellent drainage system than fighting the class struggle. We took that attitude, of gradual, understated but meaningful improvements in the living conditions of the majority, and turned it into a virtue. A very British kind of socialism. We look now like we’re about to take a path never before trodden. It will be only the second time in our history that the most left-wing option has won a leadership election - and the first time, with Michael Foot, put an established cabinet minister and academic into the post. We are in territory unknown, and about to put to the electorate the most radical platform seen in 30 years. Come what may, I know that the members will stand by it. That program will excite a lot of people. But from a party of kindly schoolteachers with five cats, idealistic students discovering politics for the first time, gruff trade unionists playing darts in the pub, eccentric scientists with bald patches and odd socks, don’t expect it to look like any progressive uprising you’ve seen before. A party of passion and principle and camaraderie, yes. But if you seek a revolution, look elsewhere
Only one of the Labour leadership candidates have strayed into North Staffordshire and, of course, Yvette Cooper's pitch to members in Stoke-on-Trent last Sunday means she'll easily win the contest. The "Stoke effect" is real and has catapulted many a politician and celebrity into the stratosphere - just because I've been waiting on the launch pad for 20 years with no sign of ignition is besides the point. I'm rambling. Yvette Cooper came and she said some interesting things. For readers who've seen her previously at hustings events, her preamble may sound familiar. The anecdote about the woman a thousand pounds in bedroom tax arrears, and not being able to do a thing about it because we're not in power. Being steeped in labour movement campaigning traditions and marching against Thatcher in the 1980s, not that that prevented her from carrying through her programme. Yvette - rightly - pointed out that swallowing the Tory narrative on the economy and the deficit does their job for them. She also argued for a 21st century vision, asking where the jobs of the future are going to come from, while pledging to double national investment in science, ending the culture of quarterly capitalism, ensuring people are paid at least the living wage, and putting more money into social care so the scandal of low pay there can be ended. Parking tanks on the Tory lawn, she set out a vision of Labour as the party of family. This would involve extending SureStart and providing universal childcare on the Scandinavian model. It's here she took her first swipe at Jeremy, whose disembodied presence lay like a persistent itch, comparing the radicalism of this to that of transferring the running of power stations to men in Whitehall. Lastly, the old principles and power meme got an airing. The meat to the preamble's gravy resided, as always, in answers-to-questions. Here is a selection, summarised: Q What would you do about banking reform? A The improper regulation of banks was a global problem. We would have to look at banking reform, but the net needs to be cast wider: government should be looking at corporate governance and thinking in the longer-term. Yvette also chose this answer to critique Corbynomics, singling out his comments about reopening the coal mines, and the problems that come with consistent quantitative easing - particularly currency depreciation and inflation. Q The 1980s weren't all bad, a huge number of people joined after being enthused by the Labour Party's turn to the left. How do we turn the new wave of radicalised activists into long-term members and activists? A We've got to make sure their anger is focused on changing the world. We would be doing them a disservice if we gave them false hope. Q Should I feel aggrieved that as a long-standing activist who's held all lay positions at branch and constituency level, my vote is valued at three pounds? A The registered supporters have proven good for getting people signed up, but the debate about its rights and wrongs isn't really for now. Q What do you say about land banking for tax avoidance purposes? A There are double standards around benefits and tax collection. We can tackle Tory hypocrisy, and Labour in government will close the loopholes and support a 50p tax rate for those earning in excess of £150,000/year. Q How does Labour regain its reputation for economic competence? A We need to make an argument for a mixed economy. This means addressing power, but also helping other types of enterprise - such as co-ops. We also need to talk confidently about public services and attack the notion that they exist to encourage dependency on the state. In fact, they enable people to be independent. Q If education helps poorer people out of poverty, why saddle young people with huge debt arising from tuition fees? A Fees generate debt, and it's a bonkers policy. It puts people off going to university, and the present funding arrangements do not work. A graduate tax is fairer. We can't say students shouldn't make a contribution, they should. It also has the virtue of not narrowing entry. But we have to ask where the money is going to come from if HE is made free? Q How to engage younger people? A Young people are the hardest hit by Osborne's austerity. There are a number of things the party can do. First, there needs to be a shadow cabinet member with responsibility for young people. Second, youth engagement has to be the property of and led by young members. And lastly we need to focus on the FE colleges as they're bearing the brunt of the cuts. Q Do you support a rent cap? A There needs to be much more regulation of private rents. We have to also think about tenancies - the lack of long-term tenancies can and are an acute source of insecurity. But neither regulation or reform will work unless we build more houses - we should be aiming for 300,000 a year. Winding things up, Yvette talked about having the right values, radical visions, and determination to take them (the Tories) on. She finished by emphasising the need for unity. If we rip ourselves apart after the leadership election, we're not so much as letting ourselves down but the people who need a Labour government. Though this account probably doesn't convey it, Yvette's performance was stronger than the West Midlands hustings a couple of months back. She didn't come across as slick in that smarmy Blairite way New Labour ministers of old excelled at, but knowledgeable, humorous, relaxed, and warm. But did she need to do what she needed in terms of winning people over? As Stoke and North Staffs tends to be forgotten when it comes to "celebrity" politician visits, her visit would have won some support among the 120 or so present. There were no loaded Corbynite questions as such, though it's worth noting a point about how to win back Scotland went unanswered in the final round of questioning. In all, it was a competent performance. I was pleased to see more is getting added to a pitch that hasn't really said much until recently, but is this too little too late? We will find out in less than a month's time.
Another guest post, this time from Lawrence Shaw who's another good comrade of mine. Whatever your views regarding the Labour leadership contest, Lawrence's analysis skewers the complacency of much of the Labour right. Dear Tristram, Thanks for your email and publicised statement informing us of your voting preferences in the Labour leadership and your numerous issues with Jeremy Corbyn’s politics. I felt I should also respond openly as you have done to articulate my views as a local member in Stoke Central. I share some of your concerns about Corbyn’s wider appeal to the electorate. I have been disturbed also by the personality cult which now surrounds him. I know he is not organising this hysteria himself, but regardless I am inherently suspicious of any bandwagon surrounding an individual person. It is why I never fell in love with the stage managed euphoria of New Labour around Tony Blair. However, I have to say that the rest of the leadership field has failed to impress me at all. It would be easy to blame the media for this, but having carefully watched hustings and other events streamed online, neither Kendall, Burnham or Cooper have sparked any inspiration in me as an ordinary member of the party. Sure, they are all competent and polished and very nice people. But politically speaking, I simply don’t really believe a word any of them says. What I think that many within the Labour Party hierarchy fail to understand, and sadly given your email today I must include you in that number, that this distrust many of us have with many senior figures in the party is precisely one of the factors driving Corbyn’s appeal. There are many people within the Labour Party for many years who have felt completely powerless. There is a feeling that we are used at election time, and then told what to think and to keep quiet the rest of the time. That’s not true in our CLP where I think we have a decent debate, albeit limited, but there is still a general sense that beyond elections our ability to affect any real change in the Party or outside it is very limited indeed. Take the position on the renationalisation of the railways as a case in point. Like it or not (and I have some misgivings about how much nationalisation could achieve without the necessary increase in investment) the Labour Party Conference has voted year after year for this policy to be adopted, only for this to be completely ignored by successive Labour leaderships, as if the member’s democratic decision means nothing. Given we know there is widespread public support for such a move, and a serious pressing need to sort out the transport infrastructure in our country, I simply cannot understand why the party leadership could not bring itself around to adopt this policy. This willful ignoring of the will of the members breeds resentment of authority within the party. It is that resentment is what today is driving ordinary members to look for a candidate who comes from the outside. So when you, on the day of the election papers landing on our doormats, give members the message to vote for ALL the other candidates but Corbyn, you are actually reinforcing the belief in members that there is no fundamental political difference between the other candidates. When Liz Kendall urges her supporters to use their preferences for other candidates, you are all sending out a clear message that the differences in the politics between those candidates are slight and meaningless. Indeed, you yourself pass no judgement at all on Cooper or Burnham’s actual political differences with Liz Kendall … only Jeremy Corbyn’s. When senior Labour Party figures like yourself send out messages like this, you confirm the belief of ordinary Labour members that the entire party front bench is largely indistinguishable from one another politically speaking. And therefore you make many of us want to do the opposite from what you tell us to do. I’ll let you and the other leadership candidates into a little secret: We don’t like being told how to think or what to do. It’s what makes us union reps to challenge dictatorial employers. It’s what makes us residents group campaigners to challenge blundering council officers. It’s what makes us want to challenge vicious and calculated central government attacks on the most vulnerable in our community. And that’s also why when Tony Blair is wheeled out to demand we elect anyone but Corbyn, and dismisses most of the union movement in this country as “in the grip of the far left”, we take exception. It is precisely because of the party hierarchy’s hysterical reaction to Corbyn, that has led me to think we must support his leadership bid. The party badly needs democratising as part of a wider push away from the awful top down, managerial politics that has alienated so many people in this country. And if we can inspire people new to politics in the bargain, so much the better. So I would ask you openly to respect the democratic decision of members, whatever it may be. I have been very disturbed about reports the newspapers about your role in the setting up of a secret new grouping apparently to challenge a Corbyn leadership before it has even begun. Imagine if the left had done something similar when Blair was elected? Where would Labour be now? In solidarity, Lawrence Shaw Stoke Central CLP member
Has Gordon Brown reached down from heaven and, like the vengeful Presbyterian God, smited Jeremy Corbyn with his great clunking fist? Well, no. The much-trailedPower with a Purpose speech wasn't the knock out some were hoping for, as if a talk could derail the Jeremy juggernaut anyway. Instead we had a thoughtful, nuanced and lengthy tour of the policy and ethics of the Labour Party. He asked the questions about what Labour is, its purpose, its direction of travel. In a way, it was less an attack on Corbyn - though one can easily be found in the historical vistas Gordon directs us to. In fact, the nearest he comes to explicitly doing so is in the following: In the spirit of I've read it so you don't have to, these concluding lines sum it up:
First our principles demand of us that we seek power to help people in need. Second we have to always listen to and learn from the public, always look outwards talking to them and never looking inwards just talking to ourselves, and that the Labour party is at its best when it speaks for the whole country. Third we don’t win if we just work out our anger against the global change happening around us. It is not enough to be anti-globalisation: we have to show how global forces can be controlled in the interests of working families, work out our answers and the alternatives and, as John Prescott once said so powerfully, apply modern values in a new setting. Fourth the Labour Party must give people realistic hope – that it can form a government to bring about the change. I repeat: making what we want – the desirable – possible means making the desirable popular and electable.
A couple of points. The first has Gordon at his most philosophical. He doesn't come close to elaborating a theory of social power. Here, it's understood conventionally in the Westminster sense. You have it when you're in office, and you don't when you don't. More on this in a moment. What Gordon is doing here - or at least nodding toward - is acknowledging the Labour Party as the political component of a movement, and that movements are articulations and condensations of interests related to occupational groups, types of property ownership, and so on. As I've argued many times before, the labour movement and Labour Party is a particularly messy aggregation of interests because as an organisation founded to represent all workers (by hand or by brain, by wage or by salary) that traverses, on paper, an immense proportion of the population. This encompasses all variations in income, types of work, industry, levels of autonomy and power, and divisions outside of work that takes in status as well as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability. The organisations of workers tend to point in certain directions around shared interests, and these work against differences becoming divisions, but they also take in the prejudices and antipathies present. Hence when the Labour Party, for example, takes awful positions on immigration and social security, it isn't just because the leaders are opportunists and/or don't wish to take received wisdom on. As an organisation that represents a class of people as a whole progressive positions mix with those that are anything but. In a mode far removed from the unspun language of class and class interests, what Gordon is evoking is Labour's economistic side, that part of our politics that deals with wage bargaining, the working day, health and safety at work, security, how far wages can stretch, and housing and rent. These are the bread and butter issues around which our forebears combined and formed nascent trade unions to tackle. He's right to mention this because economistic matters have been treated as a private matter for the unions to take up with various employers, and only feature in party programmes haphazardly. Ed Miliband had his cost of living crisis, he championed the living wage, but was much weaker when it came to matters related to social security. Under Tony and Gordon child and pensioner poverty rates came down, while employers took an axe to future pensioners by butchering their schemes - sometimes with government connivance. This unevenness cannot be resolved by using power to be nicer to more (poorer) people, which Gordon implies, but actually understanding that playing off one section of our constituency against another because of perceived political expedience harms our party as well as those who lose out. Those not in the Jeremy camp would be rise to note he became Stormin' Corbyn only after Harriet Harman's welfare debacle. Therefore, while Gordon's panglossian language about power is indicative of where our movement's sympathies lie, leaving it at this level presents a barrier to understanding how power can be deployed in the best interests of the constituency we represent. The second point comes down to Gordon's (implied) understanding of power. As Ed Miliband once put it, opposition is "crap" because you can't do too much with it. Though, to his credit, in terms of setting the political weather the supposedly useless Ed proved effective as an opposition leader. Well, as good one can be without winning an election. But power is something you wield, something that is enacted, something that can change things. Of course, the operation of power throughout the social body is much more complex, but that is how it can appear if you're in the business of competing for elected office. Hence you can understand why the power vs protest, or power vs principle distinctions - replicated in Gordon's speech - have had a great deal of traction since Jeremy's emergence as the front runner. The problem is it's not a question of either/or. If principle and power must go together, the party also has to stop being shy about the huge but power potentials outside of Parliament. Yvette Cooper has often noted her participation on the March for Jobs/Right to Work demonstrations of the 1980s, but highlights them to emphasise how protest is ineffective. She is right, but only to a point. The huge anti-Iraq war demonstration didn't dissuade Tony Blair - or her - from taking the wrong course. But 13 years earlier the huge anti-Poll Tax mass non-payment campaign did. From 1997 to today, the rights of lesbians and gays have advanced uninterruptedly, but this was only possible because of collective action taken in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. As a protest movement, the various anti-cuts campaigns haven't chalked up many successes, but were it not for the networks forged in the heat of battle Jeremy Corbyn wouldn't have an impressive machine behind him. In reality, at least where Labour is concerned, power and protest can be complementary. Being in opposition is frustrating, but a strong labour movement need not be powerless. Parliament may well be sovereign, but our traditions, our organisation, and our party wouldn't be here if the early movement had not used its own power to establish itself in the face of official, sovereign authority. This is more than building up redoubts in local governments and devolved administrations, a point recognised by the bulk of active party members involved in a number of causes and campaigns. If, to use Tony Blair's words, Labour is serious about using "the power of the community to advance the cause of the individual", a sentiment Gordon also endorses, we should start thinking about power in terms of empowerment - of empowering community groups, cooperatives, groups of workers, of knitting together the political fabric of civil society into something that can help us form governments and enable our constituents to better defend themselves from Tory attacks. Gaining power is important and you can't change the world without it. But you also need to effectively recognise and use the not inconsiderable power we already have too.
While we await Gordon Brown's (clunking?) intervention into the Labour leadership debate, here's some proper poolside pina colada music. By the time you've seen this, hopefully the sun will have come back out.
This is from my friend and comrade Alex Dawson. It's worth noting that Alex was grudgingly going to vote for Andy Burnham until Tony Blair's cack-handed intervention in the week. As the ballot papers go out... I've been really, deeply uneasy with the Corbyn campaign. Not the man, who is decent. Not the platform, which if you look at it is actually a fairly moderate Nordic/European centre-left social democratic menu. (Only in this hysterical country would we allow that to be painted as communism.) What concerns me are the thousands of identity-politic window shoppers who have flocked to his banner. Open interviews with his campaigners reveal people who freely admit they are joining the party only to vote for him, then will leave the party immediately if he loses. This highlights the increasingly shallow, consumerist nature of our rotten politics - looking for quick fixes and immediate wins or flouncing out again if you don't get your way. People blame politicians for being shallow, vain and corrupt. But actually we get the politicians we deserve in our culture of instant gratification. However, having looked carefully from the sidelines the other three leadership candidates have been among the worst candidates for any elected office I can remember. I had high hopes for Burnham in particular, but he has been woefully bad - slippery, uncertain, waffly, platitudinous. Cooper has been mundane, faux-diplomatic, ponderous, focus-grouped and - I'm sorry it shouldn't matter, but it does - still married to useless election loser Ed Balls. Kendall could have been interesting and radical from her wing of the party and laid down a credible liberal alternative - instead she has been hectoring, patronising, offensive and unctuous without setting out anything politically distinguishable from what the party has been offering for the past 20 years. Above all, the intervention of the succession of decrepit has-beens over the weeks - Milburn, Blunkett, Beckett, Kinnock, Straw, Campbell - and culminating in the predictable intervention of the grand cash-lacquered Reverend Blair of Baghdad with his disgraceful comments writing off the entire union movement in this country as a "hard left fringe" and begging his dwindling band of disciples who remain in Labour to vote for "anyone but Corbyn." The scaremongering is almost entirely replicant of the insanity which gripped the 2015 general election when too many little England simpletons swallowed the lie that only brave Prince Cameron could slay the evil Scottish as Labour would be "in league" with the dark lord Salmond. To put it another way, it is the establishment closing ranks to try to shut down anyone who might challenge the status quo of neoliberalism through fear. So I am left in a bind. My hope if Corbyn wins is that as soon as he gets in and starts making concessions to the various sections of patchwork quilt that is the Labour Party (as he will have to), the fly-by-nights tear up their freshly printed cards in disgust at his treachery and go back to the Greens/Lib Dems/Natural Law/paper-selling historical re-enactment cults. I hope Corbyn proves to be a likeable, avuncular and honest leader who builds a serious movement of community and workplace activists intent on changing politics from the braying, public-school debating club that is the palace of Westminster and that he rises above the inevitable barrage of lies from the rabid media barons. Because the reality is Labour wont win the UK general election in 2020 regardless of the leader. So better to be a real political party for a bit and actually decide whether we stand for something materially different to the Tories or just replicate them in a nicer way. I'm voting Corbyn.
At North Staffs Trades Council this evening, we heard about one of the latest TUC initiatives - the Dying to Work campaign. It turns out - and I didn't know this - that workers diagnosed with a terminal illness are not protected under workplace legislation. Unlike pregnant women who cannot (or rather, should not) be sacked under the law for any diminished capability during the course of their pregnancy, terminally ill workers can. This can lead to a loss of any death-in-work benefits that might be accrued during the course of one's employment, as well as a sudden loss of income, added stress as the employer shows their "appreciation" by turfing them out of work, and can attack a person's sense of dignity. Surely it's up to them how they spend their remaining few months? The TUC - rightly - are campaigning for the law to be changed. Workers should not be cast off at an employer's whim. Below I've reproduced Dying to Work's standard letter for MPs. There's plenty of other things you can do from your computer screen too. If someone is unfortunate to receive a terminal diagnosis, they should not have to worry about the stress of losing income and other work-related death benefits that will go to assist their family members. Dear Re: Dying to Work campaign I am writing to urge you to pledge your support to the Midlands TUC’s ‘Dying to Work’ campaign. As you will know, the Equality Act provides protections against discriminatory treatment based on the concept of ‘Protected Characteristics.’ However, currently workers with a terminal illness are not classified as having a Protected Characteristic and therefore have very limited legal protection against employers dismissing them due to illness. Unfortunately this means that employers are therefore free to dismiss terminally ill workers once they have made ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the employee’s job to assist with the illness. I am sure you will agree with me that the last thing a terminally ill worker needs is to have to fight for the right to continue working and not to face the indignity of being sacked. Furthermore, the loss of death in service benefits to terminally ill workers sacked before death is a further distress at a time when security for a family for the future should be protected. I therefore hope that you are able to support the ‘Dying to Work Campaign’ and to work with the campaign to help introduce new legislation that - Seeks to get terminally ill workers covered by Protective Rights at Work in line with those covered by Pregnancy/Maternity Rights - Seeks to protect death in service benefits - Seeks to allow workers with terminal illness to die in dignity To find out more about the campaign please do email Lee Barron at the Midlands TUC lbarron@tuc.org.uk I look forward to your response Yours sincerely
Unless the accuracy of the polls are seriously awry, in just over a month's time we could be welcoming Jeremy Corbyn to the office of the Leader of the Labour Party. Who a couple of months ago thought that possible? Yet despite what some say - Barry Sheerman and Alastair Campbell are the latest to weigh in with counter-productive interventions - Corbynmania isn't driven by infiltration. If there are Greens and Trots signing up they're a) swamped and b) tailing, not leading, a mass movement. Nor are Jeremy fans thick. They're sick of what they see as valueless politics, believe the strategies advocated by the "sensibles" have been tried and found wanting in 2010 and 2015, and think it's time for a new approach. If the people in Scotland can be inspired to vote in huge numbers for a (formally) anti-austerity party, why can't the same happen in England - especially when the political distance between the two isn't that great? While the Jeremy juggernaut carries all before it, there are layers of members and Labour voters who aren't entirely convinced. To use the Gramscian language, he may have hegemonised the left but there are those in the selectorate of the centre and the right who have not been won to over to his historic bloc. Contrast this with Blair who, whatever you think of his politics, did exercise political hegemony - at least for a time - over those to his left. When you're on 53% and enjoy a 32 point lead over your nearest rival, some Jez supporters might not think this is worth bothering with. Yet Jeremy himself clearly believes it to be of some importance. The most immediate, for practical purposes, is to draw the sting from anyone on the right plotting mischief. If most "moderate" members accept the result, the scope for PLP shenanigans becomes more limited - especially with the redrawing of constituency boundaries and a likely move to mandatory reselections under a Jez leadership. Will your Labour MP sign a no-confidence letter when they know a constituency full of Corbynites holds their political future in its hands? Assuming Team Jeremy want to head this off at the past, there are a number of questions that must be addressed to build political hegemony before and after the leadership election. Here are a few. 1. Dealing with hostages to fortune. It's a sad, depressing fact that too many on the left are careless about who they ally with. A case in point this last week has been the stories about unsavoury friends in the Palestinian solidarity movement. Of course, anyone who takes an interest in and is critical of Israel for any length of time will eventually get criticised for imputed anti-semitism. All the more reason why left wingers shouldn't turn a blind eye/fight shy of noted anti-semites. Jeremy's championing of the Palestinian cause is consistent with the rest of his politics. Associating with the likes of Paul Eisen and other holocaust-denying riff-raff is not. The "revelations" of these associations, first aired with not a small quantity of chutzpah by the Daily Mail, have barely registered. But if he is leader and when Corbynmania dies down, this and similar about the likes of Hamas, about Hezbollah, about Iran, and so on, are going to come back to haunt him. These questions need an answer - they cannot be allowed to stand without Jeremy and the party itself sustaining reputational damage. 2. Appealing to the better off. The trend across all Western representative democracies is that the more affluent you are, the more likely you are to vote. This is why many on the centre and right of the party are extremely sceptical of the belief that large numbers of habitual non-voters will be drawn to the ballot box. True, Scotland at the independence referendum and after shows it is possible, but improbable. Besides, thanks to the vagaries of our wonderful electoral system more affluent voters tend to a wider distribution, meaning that their vote is likelier to count more than the less well-off, who are disproportionately located in safe Labour seats. What Jeremy needs is a response to this electoral arithmetic. What can his programme promise middle income earners and successful small business people that might turn their heads away from the Tories? If Jeremy and his team can come up with a credible response that goes beyond abolishing tuition fees and sorting out the railways, then a lot of the hesitation - the so-called head/heart dilemma - many members feel conflicted by will be addressed. 3. Anti-austerity in local government. As everyone knows, the axeman is coming yet again for the Local Government Grant. Under Ed Miliband, Labour-controlled authorities operated the so-called "dented shield" approach to cuts. Set a legal budget and manage the cuts the best you can without harming too many of our people. That these cuts fall disproportionately on Labour authorities and thereby the poorest and most vulnerable tells you all you need to know about the Tories' recent conversion to One Nation rhetoric. Most councils and councillors followed the national lead on this. Unfortunately, there proved to be little in the way of active opposition to cuts - Labour has not had much of a political price to pay for administering them. What then will Jeremy's attitude be to Labour-run councils and austerity in the future? In his New Settlement for Local Government document, he argues for "maximum democracy for local democratic processes". Are councils going to be left to determine their own attitude to dealing with the cuts, or will they be expected to not set a legal budget if it involves passing them on? Either path is messy and fraught with opportunities for Labour's enemies, and will inevitably lead to internal convulsions. It's not a pressing issue immediately, but for party members who serve as councillors - collectively a body with quite a bit of clout among the membership - they would at least appreciate some clarification.
