ChatterBank15 mins ago
Do The Unions Run Undemocratic Labour?
16 Answers
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/// It is understood the three-person selecting panel from Labour’s National Executive Committee declined to put Ms Godfrey on the long list after unions blocked the move. ///
/// It is understood the three-person selecting panel from Labour’s National Executive Committee declined to put Ms Godfrey on the long list after unions blocked the move. ///
Answers
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Dominic Sandbrooke, Daily Mail columnist // But I cannot help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the Unite boss, even though I do not share McCluskey’
13:10 Mon 02nd Nov 2015
It's certainly true that with Corbyn in charge, we will see a lurch to the left - but I'd question how strong the unions actually are now. I understood that union membership is at its lowest that it's ever been.
But looking at the article, is it not more likely that this was an edict from the Labour leadership and the executive committee?
But looking at the article, is it not more likely that this was an edict from the Labour leadership and the executive committee?
We have never had an independent left wing party ! The Labour party has been dominated by the unions and to a lesser extent the reverse is true, the Unions have never had a truly free voice. The result has been the ' middle ' ground 'has been a no mans land occupied by the floaters who don't know what they want .
At best they are wishy-washy protesters.
At best they are wishy-washy protesters.
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I'm looking for links with Oldham that might suggest she was a viable candidate ... I can't see anything ... on what basis should she have been allowed to parachute in?
Even if you accept the 'big brother' angle, would Cameron have allowed a voluble critic of his leadership to be on a selection list?
I'm looking for links with Oldham that might suggest she was a viable candidate ... I can't see anything ... on what basis should she have been allowed to parachute in?
Even if you accept the 'big brother' angle, would Cameron have allowed a voluble critic of his leadership to be on a selection list?
Made up rubbish. Full of 'allegedly' and unattributed comments.
Under previous leaders, a safe seat would have a candidate parachuted in chosen by the leadership in London. That was undemocratic. The Unions have always suggested that Candidates should be sought from the local community. The new leader agrees with them, and that is how this particular process is being run.
She was rejected because she is not from Oldham. The seven other candidates are.
Under previous leaders, a safe seat would have a candidate parachuted in chosen by the leadership in London. That was undemocratic. The Unions have always suggested that Candidates should be sought from the local community. The new leader agrees with them, and that is how this particular process is being run.
She was rejected because she is not from Oldham. The seven other candidates are.
Dominic Sandbrooke, Daily Mail columnist
// But I cannot help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the Unite boss, even though I do not share McCluskey’s far-Left principles.
A former docker, he knows rather more about the real world than most of his Blairite critics. And when he laments that our politicians have become socially and culturally remote from the ordinary people they claim to represent, I am entirely on his side.
All too often, as Unite’s leader remarked two weeks ago, Labour candidate selection is merely an exercise in ‘parachuting favoured candidates into safe seats on a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours basis’.
And all too often, these candidates come from the same template of private school and Oxbridge. As Mr McCluskey puts it, the sons and daughters of working-class families ‘have more chance of cleaning in the Commons than being elected to it’.
It is tempting to dismiss this as militant Left-wing rhetoric. But the facts bear out his claims.
When the Labour Party was founded as the political wing of the trades union movement in 1900, it was an explicitly working-class party.
As recently as 1979, 40 per cent of Labour MPs came from manual occupations. But now the figure is just 9 per cent.
Mr Miliband himself, a Marxist professor’s son who has never held a real job outside politics, worked as a researcher and was parachuted into the safe seat of Doncaster North, is the classic example of a modern Labour MP.
Many rising stars of the 2010 intake come from a similar mould. The smoothly plausible Shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, for example, is the privately educated grandson of a High Court judge.
And when the TV historian Tristram Hunt — a privately educated peer’s son — was eased in as Labour candidate for Stoke-on-Trent just before the 2010 election, the local party secretary was so outraged he stood as an independent candidate himself.
Little wonder, then, that Len McCluskey, who left school as a teenager to work in Liverpool’s docks, is so keen to promote more Labour candidates who actually understand the ambitions and anxieties of ordinary working people. //
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// But I cannot help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the Unite boss, even though I do not share McCluskey’s far-Left principles.
A former docker, he knows rather more about the real world than most of his Blairite critics. And when he laments that our politicians have become socially and culturally remote from the ordinary people they claim to represent, I am entirely on his side.
All too often, as Unite’s leader remarked two weeks ago, Labour candidate selection is merely an exercise in ‘parachuting favoured candidates into safe seats on a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours basis’.
And all too often, these candidates come from the same template of private school and Oxbridge. As Mr McCluskey puts it, the sons and daughters of working-class families ‘have more chance of cleaning in the Commons than being elected to it’.
It is tempting to dismiss this as militant Left-wing rhetoric. But the facts bear out his claims.
When the Labour Party was founded as the political wing of the trades union movement in 1900, it was an explicitly working-class party.
As recently as 1979, 40 per cent of Labour MPs came from manual occupations. But now the figure is just 9 per cent.
Mr Miliband himself, a Marxist professor’s son who has never held a real job outside politics, worked as a researcher and was parachuted into the safe seat of Doncaster North, is the classic example of a modern Labour MP.
Many rising stars of the 2010 intake come from a similar mould. The smoothly plausible Shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, for example, is the privately educated grandson of a High Court judge.
And when the TV historian Tristram Hunt — a privately educated peer’s son — was eased in as Labour candidate for Stoke-on-Trent just before the 2010 election, the local party secretary was so outraged he stood as an independent candidate himself.
Little wonder, then, that Len McCluskey, who left school as a teenager to work in Liverpool’s docks, is so keen to promote more Labour candidates who actually understand the ambitions and anxieties of ordinary working people. //
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