A terrible night for May, a fantastic night for Corbyn. We didn’t win, but we showed what’s possible.
And our own Andy Newman won the best Labour result in Chippenham since 1959 by votes, and since 1970 by vote share.
In 2015, Labour won 4561 votes; yesterday, with Andy as candidate, Labour won 11,236 votes. Well done to everyone who campaigned so hard against this vicious Tory mob.
From the Morning Star’s free General Election special edition:
With questions being raised about the City’s over involvement in politics, the Morning Star reaches into its own archives to reprint JEREMY CORBYN’s column from October 2008 when the banks went into meltdown.
Jeremy Corbyn wrote a weekly column for the Morning Star from 2004 to 2015. These two articles originally appeared as part of the same column on Tuesday October 21 2008.
THE galloping economic crisis around the world has turned all the market arguments of the 1970s and ’80s firmly on their head.
The 1976 Labour government’s capitulation to International Monetary Fund conditions politically cleared the way for the Tories to win the 1979 election.
Thatcher then declared war on industrial Britain, with the successive destructions of the shipbuilding, engineering and mining industries.
The Labour Party moved to the left after 1979. But now those who chimed in with the right wing, saying that the 1983 manifesto was the longest suicide note in history, should think again.
A very interesting part of that manifesto proposed the establishment of a national investment bank and suggested that the Bank of England exercise much closer control over bank lending policies, with its development plans being agreed with the government.
The manifesto also proposed the creation of a public bank through the post offices and a securities commission to regulate the City’s institutions. It called for a new pensions scheme that would give rights to trustees and contributors to control the investment strategies of pension funds.
The last paragraph of this section of the manifesto also made it clear that any banks that failed to co-operate in the national interest fully would be taken into public ownership.
Following the election, the Tories continued with their free-market strategy and, when Labour finally defeated them in the 1997 election, there was a very big change of mood.
The New Labour government did dramatically increase investment in health and education and made some valuable reforms, such as the Human Rights Act and the Minimum Wage Act. However, with Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Blair as Prime Minister, Labour resolutely refused to end the Tory strategy of deregulation.
New Labour used its influence in Europe and on the board of the World Bank and the IMF to continue the development of free markets and globalisation through free trade.
Peter Mandelson, while European trade commissioner, presided over a strategy to enforce an open-market policy on developing countries which enabled globalised business to dominate vulnerable markets and destroy local industries and agriculture.
The crisis that has developed over the past three months has been a long time coming and has been essentially brought about by excessive levels of consumer debt and the massive US federal debt.
In order to avoid a complete meltdown of the banking system, governments all over the world are now either taking outright ownership of failing banks or taking a substantial equity share in them.
All governments are currently pumping billions into bank loans so that the internal lending system can be revived between financial institutions.
The problem now becomes political. Brown and Alistair Darling claim to have saved the banking industry from total collapse and the only interference in the workings of the banks that they have made is to try to control executive pay and bonuses.
We have also seen a rather limp statement from the housing minister, asking them to slow down on repossessions of the properties of people with mortgage arrears.
The stark reality is that the free-market system has brought about this crisis and the competition rules of the European Union have already been torn up with respect to banking. It is time to draw from this lesson and make changes.
Jeremy correctly predicts housing crisis, 9 years ago
NEW LABOUR’S reliance on the market to solve all problems has come a cropper. The government is currently building fewer houses for social rent than at any time since the 1920s.
Since all developments in the pipeline are effectively “add-on” to private-sector developments, it’s likely that there will be a housing shortage for those in need in the near future.
We urgently need to invest in new building, providing local authorities with the powers and funds to purchase properties facing repossession and to buy unsold private-sector homes and turn them into council tenancies.
It is also clear that many industries and companies are facing short-term financial problems and, therefore, unemployment is beginning to rise.
Without rapid intervention by central government, we will see a repeat of the devastating rates of unemployment of the 1980s, at the height of Thatcherism.
This is not an isolated issue that only faces western European economies — the global effects are enormous.
A very disturbing report from the UN food and agricultural association showed that one billion people are now desperately hungry because they can’t afford food. In other words, one in six of the world’s population is now starving.
Over the past month, there have been very welcome developments and discussions about what a socialist economy would look like in this country and on a wider scale.
Free-market capitalism and deregulation have created the hunger, poverty, misery and insecurity that many people are facing. Surely it is now time to explain that the role of the political system and of central government is to ensure that everyone has food, work, housing, health and welfare available for them.
The solutions are at hand — fully nationalising the banks, taking failing rail companies into public ownership, protecting public services from cuts, increasing pensions and benefits to help reinflate the economy, putting huge resources into conquering the misery of homelessness and overcrowding that so many families face.
Globally, the peace and anti-war movement has shown that people can and do work across frontiers to achieve a common aim. We have to use the same spirit to conquer the global hunger and poverty brought about by the madness of free market global capitalism.
KEITH FLETT reminds us that those holding power never give it up without a bitter fight
WITH the 2017 general election campaign well underway, a constant media theme is that the left can’t change society and that while Jeremy Corbyn attracts huge crowds whenever he speaks in public, this also makes no difference.
It’s worth reflecting that this has been a regular discourse since the inception of any form of democracy in Britain and broadly from the 1832 Reform Act.
Historically we haven’t heard much about successful demonstrations but they do exist.
When the Chartists gathered on Kennington Common on April 10 1848 to protest for the vote, they failed. They were prevented from even marching. The failure of the Chartists on that spring Monday in south London is well known.
Rather less well publicised is what happened on a subsequent Monday, not quite 20 years later, on May 6 1867 when many of the same activists, under the auspices of the Reform League, marched to Hyde Park and did so again for the vote.
It was one of the most immediately successful demonstrations in British history to date.
The Reform League was a combination of middle class radicals, former Chartists and working-class trade union activists. The May 1867 demonstration was the latest in a series demanding an extension to the franchise.
Both Liberal and Tory governments had looked at extending the vote to allow more working-class voters, but deliberately not enough ever to have a majority influence. William Ewart Gladstone boasted that his property qualification for the vote would still leave fewer workers enfranchised than had been before the 1832 Act.
The government took the decision to ban the league’s proposed rally in Hyde Park and mobilised large numbers of police, special constables and troops to ensure that it did not go ahead.
The league was far from a revolutionary organisation but it determined that it would continue with its plans.
At 6pm on Monday May 6 1867, a protest of 150,000 people approached Hyde Park led by the Clerkenwell branch of the league with a red flag topped with a cap of liberty on a pole. There was no confrontation. Faced with the league’s determination, the government backed down.
The right-wing press was beside itself. Spencer Horatio Walpole, the Conservative home secretary at the time, was pressured to resign.
The impact of the campaign was felt at once. In the House of Commons the Liberal leader Gladstone announced his discovery that the people wanted reform of the franchise.
The actual measure, known as the Second Reform Act 1867, was passed in short order and was far more radical than anything proposed before May 6, all but doubling the electorate.
Historian Royden Harrison noted of the working-class impact on the demonstration: “If it was increasingly respectable, it was increasingly well organised. If it had abandoned its revolutionary ambitions, it had not wholly lost its revolutionary potentialities.”
The trade union leaders of the Reform League — Robert Applegarth, George Odger and George Howell — knew why the fight was worthwhile.
In 1863, the Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association noted that “the evils under which we suffer have a common origin, namely an excess of political power in the hands of those holding a higher social position.”
Very much the same is true today. In that context and the continuing media furore about Corbyn’s politics, it’s worth noting the balance of the events of those May days 150 years ago, when an important extension to the right to vote was won and extended parliamentary democracy. The extension however was won outside Parliament, by extra-parliamentary means.
from Things That Keep Tim Awake of A Winter’s Night
Most of all, it’s where
some men like to put their members.
Especially when it’s into each other.
Though he doesn’t think it sinful, exactly,
Click to continue reading
Saturday 6TH posted by Morning Star in Features
As long as the poor have to rent their homes from the rich and powerful, British society will never move forward, says JULIAN VIGO
WHILE researching a recent piece on the exploitation of young people in the UK through sex-for-rent advertisements, I discovered that the Britain has no official, accurate or complete land registry.
It is important to note that in England and Wales the Crown is the proprietor of all land which is tenured through either freeholds or leaseholds. Of the land in the UK, between 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the Crown tenancies are unknown and a vast chunk of the country’s acreage is held by nobility in what is referred to as hidden coalitions.
After 50 years of legal squabbling, the Land Registration Act of 1925 finally came into existence. Until this point in time, there had been deed registries in most counties in the country.
As Kevin Cahill notes: The effort to create a land registry happened at roughly the same time as the publication in 1873 of the Return of Owners of Land, the so-called “second” or “new” Domesday Book, a coincidence that almost certainly led to the failure of the push for a registry.
Click to continue reading
Far from being “strong and stable”, the UK economy is faltering as the Conservative government are asleep at the wheel. They had no contingency plan for dealing with a Leave vote in the referendum, and the resulting government paralysis and business uncertainty has led to a slow down in the UK economy, as revealed by the latest GDP figures from the Office of National Statistics issued last Friday.
The latest GDP figures show growth in the first quarter of 2017 of just 0.3% down from 0.7% in the last quarter of 2016. The service, retail and manufacturing suffered have seen a particular sharp slow down.
Meanwhile energy costs are driving up inflation – in March the energy component of CPIH was up 8.7% on 12 months previously (largely due to the cost of fuel). CPI inflation is currently running at 2.3% up from 1.8% in January 2017. This has a real impact on the household budgets of families struggling to get by. Average real wages have fallen 10.4% since 2010.
As Tim Roache, General Secretary of the GMB trade union, says:
“The Tories had no plan for leaving the EU – and now ordinary working people are feeling the pinch from the collapse in the pound, increased inflation and the rise in cost of living.
“Ministers have spent more time rehearsing their election catchphrases instead of helping the lives of millions trapped in a growing cost of living crisis made in Downing Street. The Tories are continuing to squeeze wages in the public sector, plan even more cuts and stand by while jobs in the private sector are being made even more insecure.”
While it might be expected that a trade union will criticise the Conservatives, the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales conducted a recent business survey, which shows that 82% of businesses now plan to offset higher costs by passing on increased prices and charges to customers. 48% of businesses say they are exploring cheaper supplies, which will put the squeeze on the profit margins of other UK businesses, and may lead to increased imports as cheaper foreign suppliers are sought.
Urgent government action is needed to intervene to restore business confidence, action which a Labour government committed to a strong economy will take.
Britain faces a stark choice, a competent, compassionate Labour government committed to an economy that works for all, or a bumbling, arrogant Conservative government that serves only the rich few. But we cannot achieve a Labour government unless we vote for a Labour government.
Although Prime Minister, Theresa May continually harps on about Strength and stability, her government lurches from one self-inflicted crisis to another.
The Conservatives led the UK into a referendum on leaving the UK, but had no plans drawn up for how to deal with a leave vote. Any business which didn’t have contingency plans for such a momentous change would be regarded as incompetently managed, yet the Tory government had done no forward planning.
Labour respects the referendum result, but we will fight to ensure that the terms of Brexit are the best possible for the citizens of the UK, not ones that only suit millionaire fat cats in the City of London. In particular, Labour will ensure that your rights at work do not suffer when European law is repealed.
Education is in crisis under the Conservatives, and a Labour government is seen as essential by teaching professionals, as we saw with the recent standing ovations given to Jeremy Corbyn by a head teachers conference.
The NHS is straining under the Conservatives, with some nurses forced to resort to foodbanks. It is harder and harder to get a GP appointment, and waiting lists are growing.
The record of the Conservatives in government has been the pursuit of narrow self interest by the rich for the rich, combined with blundering incompetence and short sightedness.
In contrast, we should be very proud of what was achieved by the Labour government between 1997 and 2010. By 2010, there were 41000 more teachers and 120000 more teaching assistants, 80000 more nurses and 44000 more doctors, and 4.5 million families received tax credits of an average £65 per week.
There was meaningful devolution to Scotland and Wales, the abolition of Clause 28, the introduction of civil partnerships, Sure Start, paternity rights, improved maternity rights, a right to Trade Union representation at work, a statutory route to union recognition, the minimum wage, expansion of the NHS, the school building programme, a vast increase of NHS and school staff, the working time directive, working tax credits, family credits, and more.
Not to mention an end to the war in Ireland, and the start of a meaningful peace process.
The Labour Party stands for a fairer and better Britain, a Britain that is on your side in hard times.
The Conservative’s record on housing is one of seven years’ of failure.
In the private rented sector, tenants are now spending £800 million every month on homes which the Government classes as ‘non-decent’. Around a quarter of this – some £2.3 billion a year – is paid by housing benefit. Of course there are very many good private landlords, who provide high quality accommodation, and carry our repairs and maintenance promptly. Many of us will have seen such success stories on daytime TV show Homes Under the Hammer. Yet weak regulation by the Conservative government of the minority of rogue landlords brings the whole private rented sector into disrepute, and profiteering levels of rents in some areas, where rogue landlords exploit vulnerable people, contribute to sky rocketing housing benefit payments, paid for by taxes.
The next Labour government, in contrast, will act in the interests of the many not just the few by delivering a consumer rights revolution for renters. We will improve standards, security and affordability for people who rent their homes from a private landlord. Good landlords will have nothing to fear from these proposals, which will be targeted only at the minority who abuse their tenants.
Labour will guarantee new legal minimum standards to ensure that all homes are at least ‘fit for human habitation’, give councils new powers to license landlords, allow private tenants to report those that rent homes that are unsafe, and will introduce tough new fines of up to £100,000 for landlords who fail to meet minimum standards.
Under Labour, no one will be denied their basic consumer housing rights or help to address their concerns.