The Latest in the Blair Legacy Agenda
It's been just another week in the Blair legacy agenda.
On Monday the Government introduced into Parliament its National Offender Management Scheme (NOMS) Bill. The way the probation and prison services have been set up for privatisation under this legislation has been in classic, text book New Labour style. You've got to hand it to them, they never fail to disappoint when it comes to the art of dissembling.
First the media gets set up to run a series of stories about how the probation service is failing to meet its targets and is fed a range of spurious statistics and a few shock case stories. Second you find an ambitious junior minister with a trade union background to seek to reassure everyone that this is not privatisation really but simply the wider involvement of the voluntary sector. Next you prompt a few supportive statements from voluntary sector bodies, which by the way are likely to gain huge sums from contracts awarded by the Government as a result of the legislation. And then you mobilise newly elected backbench MPs, who are aspiring to become the bag carrier to a minister, to eulogise in the Commons chamber about the wonders of private prisons.
Despite 27 Labour MPs voting against the Bill, it gets through its first stage in the House of Commons and New Labour begins the process of allowing private companies to garner massive profits from the imprisonment of our fellow citizens, something which in opposition when the Tories tried it on Jack Straw described as immoral. I thought the scenes from Harmondsworth might have given the New Labour project second thoughts about the disaster of allowing a private company run part of the justice system but I forgot it isn't any more "what works is what matters" but "what profits is what matters."
The week took a further tragic downturn with daily reports of more large scale loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each Prime Minister's Question Time now seems to start with the sadness of an expression of condolence for another British soldier killed in conflict.
Today the next part of the Blair legacy agenda was revealed by the leaking of the Hayden Phillips report on party funding. Again this was a classic New Labour stroke. Here we have New Labour caught out bending the rules on the declaration on the registration of loans to the party and up to its neck in the loans for peerages investigation. What is the New Labour strategy? We shouldn't ever be surprised. It is to turn weakeness and defence into attack by using the situation to promote its long held scheme for breaking the link between the Labour Party and the trade unions.
Leaving aside the need to cap election expenditure which we all agree with, the report's proposals prevent the party from being funded on any scale by the trade unions but leave the Tory party free to be funded by a multiplicity of rich individual donors. In one fell swoop the trade union link is broken, Labour is financially crippled in contrast with the Tories unless it resorts to funding from a large number of rich individuals and from state funding. New Labour will have achieved the ambition Blair and Mandelson dreamed of. They will have transformed the Labour Party into the Democrat or Republican party whose sole role is to secure the electoral rotation of an unaccountable political elite, largely representing big business.
Allegations are now being levelled that these proposals form part of a deal cooked up in secret discussions between Blair and Cameron. The silence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the last 24 hours appears to demonstrate that he has been complicit in their development. It is widely known that he has reacted badly against decisions at the Labour Party conference supported by the trade unions which opposed his privatisation policies.
So just another week in New Labour's legacy project to privatise the last traces of the welfare state introduced by past Labour Governments and to destroy the Labour party itself.
If you are a member of the Labour Party now is the time more than ever to contact your nearest Labour MPs and demand they stand up to this threat.
If you are a member of a trade union affiliated to the Labour Party, get your union in gear at every level to defeat this attempt to break the link. If we don't win this one there wont be a second chance as your voice will no longer be heard within the party.
On Monday the Government introduced into Parliament its National Offender Management Scheme (NOMS) Bill. The way the probation and prison services have been set up for privatisation under this legislation has been in classic, text book New Labour style. You've got to hand it to them, they never fail to disappoint when it comes to the art of dissembling.
First the media gets set up to run a series of stories about how the probation service is failing to meet its targets and is fed a range of spurious statistics and a few shock case stories. Second you find an ambitious junior minister with a trade union background to seek to reassure everyone that this is not privatisation really but simply the wider involvement of the voluntary sector. Next you prompt a few supportive statements from voluntary sector bodies, which by the way are likely to gain huge sums from contracts awarded by the Government as a result of the legislation. And then you mobilise newly elected backbench MPs, who are aspiring to become the bag carrier to a minister, to eulogise in the Commons chamber about the wonders of private prisons.
Despite 27 Labour MPs voting against the Bill, it gets through its first stage in the House of Commons and New Labour begins the process of allowing private companies to garner massive profits from the imprisonment of our fellow citizens, something which in opposition when the Tories tried it on Jack Straw described as immoral. I thought the scenes from Harmondsworth might have given the New Labour project second thoughts about the disaster of allowing a private company run part of the justice system but I forgot it isn't any more "what works is what matters" but "what profits is what matters."
The week took a further tragic downturn with daily reports of more large scale loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each Prime Minister's Question Time now seems to start with the sadness of an expression of condolence for another British soldier killed in conflict.
Today the next part of the Blair legacy agenda was revealed by the leaking of the Hayden Phillips report on party funding. Again this was a classic New Labour stroke. Here we have New Labour caught out bending the rules on the declaration on the registration of loans to the party and up to its neck in the loans for peerages investigation. What is the New Labour strategy? We shouldn't ever be surprised. It is to turn weakeness and defence into attack by using the situation to promote its long held scheme for breaking the link between the Labour Party and the trade unions.
Leaving aside the need to cap election expenditure which we all agree with, the report's proposals prevent the party from being funded on any scale by the trade unions but leave the Tory party free to be funded by a multiplicity of rich individual donors. In one fell swoop the trade union link is broken, Labour is financially crippled in contrast with the Tories unless it resorts to funding from a large number of rich individuals and from state funding. New Labour will have achieved the ambition Blair and Mandelson dreamed of. They will have transformed the Labour Party into the Democrat or Republican party whose sole role is to secure the electoral rotation of an unaccountable political elite, largely representing big business.
Allegations are now being levelled that these proposals form part of a deal cooked up in secret discussions between Blair and Cameron. The silence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the last 24 hours appears to demonstrate that he has been complicit in their development. It is widely known that he has reacted badly against decisions at the Labour Party conference supported by the trade unions which opposed his privatisation policies.
So just another week in New Labour's legacy project to privatise the last traces of the welfare state introduced by past Labour Governments and to destroy the Labour party itself.
If you are a member of the Labour Party now is the time more than ever to contact your nearest Labour MPs and demand they stand up to this threat.
If you are a member of a trade union affiliated to the Labour Party, get your union in gear at every level to defeat this attempt to break the link. If we don't win this one there wont be a second chance as your voice will no longer be heard within the party.
posted by John at 11:57 PM
25 Comments:
John,
I'm really glad to see you're speaking at the Fabian Society Conference in January. I think it's really important people from centre-left organisations get to meet & know more about you & your views. I was at one Fabian Society event recently where your name was raised (Jon Cruddas was asked if he would support you) but many there were not aware of you or your policies.
What did Cruddas say? I'm guessing he didn't answer that question directly.
No, he got quite defensive actually - he was going on about importance of social housing & how this was a big issue for him & was asked, in that context, that presumably he'd support John over Gordon ... he said neither had set out their manifestos on the issue! Bit dissappointed with him actually - I'd heard some good things about him (in comparison to the others anyway) but after that & hearing him speak not so sure.
Steve Bell said it all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,1866570,00.html
(.....soon to be ex-voter)
On the union link, I e-mailed my MP Chris McCafferty and she says she has signed John's EDM already. I understand there is an emergency NEC tonight and that members are up in arms.
My guess is this appalling new Machaivellian move by New labour cannot get through but given their track-record in destroying the democratic structures of the party we can't take that for granted. Lobby your MP now!
Added to John's review of this week's LabourTory destruction plans is the publication of the progress report on airport expansion :
Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander told MPs the government was committed to a third, short runway at Heathrow airport and a new runway at Stansted.
HACAN chairman, John Stewart, warns that for Heathrow alone 700 homes would have to be demolished, while 150,000 new people would be under the flight path for the new runway.
Tony Blair is determined that no-one will take his place and prove themselves fitter for the job. Has he no shame? He is worse than a disgruntled soon-to-be ex-employee who sabotages a company's systems.
Susan Press seems to go from bad to worse. In case you hadn't noticed, the Labour party is far more democratic than the Ba'ath party ever was ...
Jesus wept.
I'd love to lobby my local MP, but he's Shaun Woodward so there is no point. :(
"Leaving aside the need to cap election expenditure which we all agree with, the report's proposals prevent the party from being funded on any scale by the trade unions but leave the Tory party free to be funded by a multiplicity of rich individual donors."
- does everyone agree with that cap, or were you referring specifically to people who'd support your campaign?
I agree in principle, but I wonder what happens during the years between elections? A lot is spent on PR between elections these days, I wouldn't mind seeing that capped and limited.
Meanwhile - @sham:
"Susan Press seems to go from bad to worse. In case you hadn't noticed, the Labour party is far more democratic than the Ba'ath party ever was ... "
What has that got to do with anything? The Roman Republic was far more democratic than the Kingdom of Macedon, and?..
"They will have transformed the Labour Party into the Democrat or Republican party whose sole role is to secure the electoral rotation of an unaccountable political elite, largely representing big business."
This has been my nagging suspicion for a couple of years now. I only hope there will be a major struggle before this country turns into a US clone.
...and if we lose that battle, then I'm off to Europe proper. Vive la Revolution!
Does anyone have any news fromthe emergency NEC last night????????
"...and if we lose that battle, then I'm off to Europe proper. Vive la Revolution!"
Well, yeah, you could go to France where they have the electoral rotation of an unaccountable political elite that only represents itself.
I hear the NEC has slapped Blair down, told him not to let No.10 communicate with Hayden Phillips.
They've also rejected the leaked interim proposals
Hope that's the end of that, then.But we'd better be on our guards......
As long suspected by many of us, Blair looks determined to complete Thatcher's declared task of severing any link between organised workers and electoral politics. For trade unionists in LP-affiliated unions, whatever their own position on the relationship with the Labour Party, there is a compelling case to oppose Blair's manoeuvre in the guise of Hayden Phillips' proposals.
The calendar has moved on, however, and it's time for John to address the extraordinary events of last Thursday, with the Met Police visiting 10 Downing Street to quiz the PM in a criminal investigation and the arbitary suspension of another criminal investigation into BAe's dirty dealings with the House of Saud.
What a state of affairs, with a grotesque abuse of power shutting down a well-founded investigation into the corrupt sale of real weapons of mass production to a regime that is a latter day embodiment of feudal absolutism!
But the aftermath of the Attorney General's action is also an excellent chance to make the case for converting BAe's capital and its workforce's considerable skills towards socially useful products - the best answer to some trade union officials who celebrated the abandonment of the SFO's investigation. Doubtless, some of these same officials have actually helped pave the way for the adoption of Blairite policies within the Labour Party.
Finally, thanks to John for a good if only too brief speech at our Camden UNISON meeting last Tuesday. We are facing massive cuts by the Lib Dem/Tory administration totalling some 23 million and adding up to nearly 350 jobs. The packed meeting voted almost unanimously to ballot for strikes and other forms of industrial action to resist and the campaign got off to a reasonable start with a 120-strong lobby of the Council's Executive on Wednesday night.
Number 10s preemptive attack on the Union-Labour link is totally unacceptable. It is yet another indication of the total lack of regard Blair's New Labour elite hold for the working class roots of our party.
Number 10 should take the advice of our NEC and tell Sir Hayden Phillips were to stick it! The apparent alliance between Phillips and the Tories is one which we should have no part of.
As this parliamentary year progresses, it is becoming more and more clear the need for John to fight this New Labour elite and take back our party.
Cruddas was right not to answer the question about whether he would support John over Gordon. His positioning is clearly soft-Left but at the same time he does not want to alienate huge numbers of soft-Right Labour members by ranting on too much about hating New Labour. I respect many aspects of John McD's policy platform, but I think the constant diatribes against the Right are overly divisive. It's wrong to assume that only Blairite apparatchiks are put off by McDonnell's hard-Left. I've talked to a Campaign Group MP who explained how he doesn't like Brown but equally distrusts McDonnell's close connections with Trot groups. So I think the McDonnell campaign should work harder to attract the support of soft-Leftists rather than seemingly aiming their appeal at student revolutionary types.
p.s Despite what I just posted, I have to say that I think the level of free speech and interesting discussion that takes place on this blog is very commendable! Whilst I don't like much of the tone of McD's campaign, I wish him good luck and hope he will successfully pressurise the leadership into a more leftwards direction.
I made the point about Cruddas earlier & whilst I wasn't saying he ought to rant on about New Labour, but that he occupies a somewhat contradictory position on social housing (which he was ranting on about!) - I do agree with the last poster that John McD is not taken seriously at all & also ailientates masses of people because he has positioned himself too far left. I agree he needs to try & attract soft leftys too by adopting a different, less combative tone.
but I think that it is by keeping our opinions in a less combative tone that has lead us to today's position. Unless the leadership "hear" what we have to say there is every likelihood that the party will move further and further to the right, as the news over the last few weeks has shown.
if you do not have a Labour MP like me then if you are a trade union member you can lobby the MP's your union sponsors. There is a list of UNISON MP's on the UNISON website I know as that's my union but I haven't checked the websites of other unions for this. You can find them all via www.tuc.org.uk and there's a summary of the reasons why the TUC are supporting the Trade Union Freedom Bill which John is propsing on there as well.
The UNISON MP's list is interesting politically as it spans everyone from John McDonnell to Hazel Blears with many "soft left" in between!
Those of you on this blog who are accusing John of being overly extreme and "hard left" and a associated with so-called "trot" groups etc should remember that if he was that far left he would not be in the Labour party but in another group and also no-one is complaining to the same extent of the "hard right" -they don't use this as a term of abuse within thier own party as some of us in Labour do - of the Conservative party who are active and increasing their power as we speak, the Tories don't abuse each other in the way the left do and they can only gain from this appearance of being more united than they actually are ideologically speaking. Yesterday I received a four page colour election leaflet from them (it's a Lib-Tory ward) which is quite sinister when it's not even New Year yet.
to be continued after tea!
here we go again with the terms of abuse ("student revolutionary", above)
don't you all think we have moved too far away not from idealism but from any kind of understanding of the effect of the actions of our government on the rest of the world?? The Blair/Bushites have done a good job on making us believe that liberal(in the US sense not Lib Dem)leftie or whatever you want to call it is a dirty word yet it's not so long ago that times were more idealistic and while conservative forces may have been in power it was "ok" to protest about issues such as Greenham Common and so on and if you had any kind of conscience you made sure you did so. Now there's this breathtakingly naieve feeling that there's nothing left to protest about and everything is being sorted out yet you only have to look around you to see how our democratic rights are being pulled from under our feet - witness the Parliament Square situation - and of course we are still protesting massively - the anti-war demos were the biggest in this country's history and look at groups such as Military Families Against the War, in America there is a similar group for Veterans of the Iraq war who are against the war, they are doing a walking tour round the US and counselling their members who have been traumatised.
Blair and Bush have ignored their own people and they will pay the price at election time as the word on the street will tell you that now. So we need to have decent alternatives in place from now on and ensure that Blair does not drag the Labour party down with him as he's so obviously trying to do. If we lose the trade union link in Labour it will be the end as the Tories will be richer again as they have plenty of donors to which £50,000 is nothing which is why they have been in power for so much of the twentieth century. The trade unions are also democratically accountable unlike these donors and their members have a free choice as to whether to contribute to the political fund and whether to actually have one; there are no more closed shops (the NUS was the last one wasn't it).The anti-union prorganda since these measures came in under the Tories has made many people unaware of what unions actually do - primarily pressing for decent rights for working people - yes it would be good if there was no need for unions but look at the Gate Gourmet situation to take just one example of why they are in fact desparately needed and they need stronger not weaker powers in law i.e. a trade union freedom Bill to reverse the impotence the Thatcherite government imposed upon them. They also have an international role keeping up with developments in industrial relations internationally and campaigning for workers' rights in countries where they are few or no rights, in the worst cases in countries such as Columbia trade unionists who work for such famous companies as Coca Cola are still being persecuted and killed.
The two tier workforce must be ended in this country.
And what better person to lead the fight for this but John McDonnell, who is perhaps the new Tony Benn, very good at seeing the bigger picture and the historical context of issues that have come to the forefront of the public's attention recently.
I was re-reading the blogs above and wanted to add that JMD must be attracting the support of loads of soft-lefties in his own constituency at the very least - look at the size of his election majorities (still 11,000 odd, just short of 15,000 in 1997) - even Hayes and Harlington can't have that many socialists!
If allowed to actually have the airtime/platform time to speak he soon reveals himself as a sensible pragmatist who won't betray his core beliefs as many Blairites have hypocritically done such as those former lefties such Blunkett to name but ONE but who will always engage and work with whoever he needs to in order to find a solution to each problem. (I've seen the evidence of this locally and you can examine the work he has done on national issues such as probabtion and detention to name but one area - he can give John Reid a run for his money on any Home Office issues you care to choose. I don't think Reid will run unless really pushed by the party as he dosen't have the support in the party and he's resorted to heads rolling in his department now as his reforms have floundered which seems a rather cheap tactic to me. I expect they've silenced the manager concerned; or if he/she has been lax the responsibility should go further up the line back to John Reid anyway at the end of the day; I notice he didn't try to blame it on his predecessor.
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