Labour Party

Today at TUC Women's conference, PCS moved a motion congratulating their members at BEIS for successful strike action, and drawing attention to the appalling conditions that outsouced workers, many of them women, face. I made the following contribution to the debate.

Congratulations to PCS on its brilliant win at BEIS and solidarity with your ongoing sturggles at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and elsewhere.

I made Nadia Whittome's maiden Commons speech into a poem. Here it is:

"I'm here through solidarity 
and hard work in my town
I want to say to Nottingham:
'I will not let you down'

I'll represent this burning earth
- a planet we must save
To speak up for a generation
outward-faced and brave

In the cacophony of post mortems of Labour’s defeat, the role of Labour councils is being overlooked or at least understated.

I spoke with my dad (pictured) about his memories of the 1945 general election ...

75 years ago when I was seven, I experienced the first of 22 general elections in my life.

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have poundshops, pawnshops, boarded-up shops
and industries replaced by social services
We too have schools with leaking roofs
and youth in gigs and gangs and anguish

Isn't this a heartland too?
We have hearts and we have lands
Hearts that beat on rundown streets
and lands blemished with landfill
and corporate-municipal scandal

I’m stockpiling for harder times
I'm panicking and hoarding
But I won’t vote for Labour 'cos
I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn

Of course I’d like to see more help
for those who face adversity
Of course folk shouldn’t have to pay
to go to university

And rent controls would be so good -
the costs that they’re absorbing
But I’ll not vote for Labour 'cos
I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn

This is my opening speech at the debate at The World Transformed 2019 about whether it would be right for the Labour Party to enter into electoral pacts or coalitions with other parties. The other speakers were Nadia Whittome (Labour for a Socialist Europe), Clive Lewis MP and Caroline Lucas MP.

Audio file, photos and comments on the discussion to follow!

This is Janine's speech seconding the motion on the Trade Union Act at TUC Disabled Workers' Conference 2019. The motion was passed unanimously.

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RMT welcomes PCS’ motion and its focus on electronic balloting. Our amendment extends this discussion to the rest of the Trade Union Act and to the rest of the anti-union laws.

Under UK law, we can not take lawful industrial action except in so-called ‘trade disputes’:

Ian Townson reviews 'Minnie Lansbury: suffragette, socialist, rebel councillor' in Solidarity 491, 16 January 2019

Minnie Lansbury was one of the rebel Labour councillors of Poplar (East London) who in 1921 forced the Tory¬Liberal coalition government to start central government payments to equalise resources between councils in poor and in well¬off areas.

Janine Booth’s biography of Lansbury is rich in detail about her life; working¬class conditions at the time; and much more. It is a solid achievement given the scarcity of material available on Lansbury to work on.