Tagged with Progress

Paul Kenny: no lectures from wealthy outsiders and CLP cuckoos

paul kennyThis is the full text of GMB general secretary Paul Kenny’s speech to Labour party conference this morning.

It is a pleasure of speaking today as Chair of TULO, representing the fourteen affiliated trade unions with a collective voice of millions of working people and their families.

The trade union affiliates will only put in one speaker to this discussion.  The reason being we think the real debate this week is about jobs, homes, living standards, employment rights NOT irrelevant navel gazing about internal party structures which frankly the British public do not give a fig about.

Continue reading →

Unite has been vindicated over Falkirk. It’s time for others to move on

Falkirk CrisisUnite Scotland statement on the Falkirk Constituency Labour Party (CLP) selection by Pat Rafferty, Unite Scottish Regional Secretary.

That Unite did nothing wrong in the Falkirk CLP is now a matter of fact.

This was made clear by the Labour Party last week (Friday 6 September 2013) and more importantly by Police Scotland earlier last month.

Despite this, two Unite members, Stephen Deans and Karie Murphy, continue to be misrepresented by the media. Continue reading →

Enhance the union collective role in the party, don’t reduce it

Defend the Link full colourEd Miliband’s proposals to “mend” the trade union/Labour Party link were prompted by an internal battle for the soul of the Labour Party. This culminated in a bitter row over Falkirk, when the right wing – Blairite shadow ministers, a majority of the PLP and the New Labour pressure group Progress – cried “foul “over UNITE’s success in building support for yet another working class trade unionist candidate. Continue reading →

The Blairites: strong, arrogant and oblivious to the wishes of Labour members

kim blair ilThere is no doubt that the Blairites have had a rough few years.

As they see it, Brown, the Pretender who hated the Great Leader, undermined him and forced him out. No sooner had the usurper stolen the Great Leader’s job, than he demonstrated that he wasn’t capable of doing it himself, didn’t really believe in ‘reforming’ public services, and was against modernisation. Then he very nearly managed to hang on in government when he deserved not only to lose but to be humiliated, in preparation for the great revival.

The Brown years never dented the Blairites’ sense of entitlement to run the Labour Party as the Great Leader would wish. They never doubted that the Great Successor would win the leadership, seeing off the treacherous brother who had learnt his perfidious ways in the court of the Pretender. Continue reading →

Yes to a union voice, no to state funding

State funding no thanksJuly has been a hot month. It has been especially hot in the hothouse world of Westminster politics, where lobby hacks mix with media savvy politicians, stories and plots are hatched and exposed. In the immediate aftermath of Ed Miliband’s shock announcement that in future he wanted Labour’s affiliated members to ‘opt in’ to party membership, one GMB official was reported to have said; “How did we get from Falkirk to here in only ten days?”

It is a good question and one that I don’t think has been answered. It may be that few are actually in a position to answer fully  just yet, but there are straws in the wind and little in politics happens by chance. Continue reading →