Today I was pleased to speak at the Labour Grassroots Zoom meeting, which focused on the problems being created by the correspondence from the General Secretary of the Labour Party purporting to issue “guidance” which steers Party members away f…Read more…

So Compass have launched “Compass Labour”  as part of a wider project to campaign to bring together a “progressive majority”. On the one hand this is an idea which pops up from time to time when it looks like the Tories cannot be defeated any…Read more…

 
Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Blogger) will realise that you are unlikely to read here any praise of the Tory Government – but anyone would have to admire the Prime Minister’s imaginative development of the English language.
Appare…Read more…

Open Labour have published an interesting little pamphlet, which I intend to read more fully, advocating what it calls a “progressive foreign policy”.To be precise it is titled “A Progressive Foreign Policy for New Times”. Yes, that’s right “New Times”…Read more…

Nine years ago yesterday, I was hauled in, after a meeting of UNISON’s National Executive Council (NEC) to be given an official “ticking off” by the General Secretary, in the presence of the Presidential Team (and – so I would know how seriously things…Read more…

Following my previous correspondence with the Labour Party General Secretary I have not, of course, received a reply – but (along with thousands of others) I got yet another circular email this afternoon;
“Dear Jon,
I wanted to put on record my thanks …Read more…

Solidarity with Haringey Council, who have made clear that they won’t be sharing data with the Home Office to facilitate the Government’s disgraceful policy of deporting any non-UK nationals who are rough sleepers.This is a cause which Labour Party mem…Read more…

One thing about having been blogging here for so long is that I can look back ten years and see that, in the run up to Xmas 2010 our movement was just beginning to gear up for action against the (then) threatened austerity measures of the new Coalition…Read more…

Yesterday some of us managed to have a very enjoyable Xmas social organised by Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party (CLP). This got me thinking about what socialists should be doing in the Labour Party in the coming year.
We very much ne…Read more…

Although it is now nearly a year since I was made redundant, I continue to engage with my UNISON Branch as a volunteer caseworker and I obviously care about the organisation for which I worked for 33 years. I was therefore concerned to see the latest r…Read more…

A little more than thirty years ago a small group on (and outside) the Labour Left, one of whom would go on to become Director of Public Prosecutions, produced a few issues of a magazine which called for a better response to the defeats and setbacks su…Read more…

 
It is good to see that Labour CND are launching a campaign to try to influence our Party leadership in the direction of opposition to Tory plans to increase expenditure on “defence” (which actually means expenditure on ever more advanced means o…Read more…

The Home Office yesterday went to the extent of publishing a blog post seeking to justify its forthcoming Deportation Charter Flight to Jamaica.This is, of course, the same Home Office that has been responsible for the scandalous treatment of the Windr…Read more…

Friday was the closing date for receipt of ballots in the UNISON General Secretary election. This has certainly been an election unlike any other, having taken place during a global pandemic which has had dramatic implications for the functioning of ou…Read more…

I have refrained from blogging much recently about goings on in the Labour Party, of which I have been a member for forty years (and which I shall leave only by reason of my death – hopefully still some time away – or my unjustified expulsion).I was a …Read more…

Today has been a shocking day. Before most of us have had time even to read properly the report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into antisemitism in the Labour Party, the Party has suspended our former Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, pending …Read more…

 Having decided to cast my vote in the UNISON General Secretary election for Paul Holmes, I was pleased to speak alongside friends and comrades today at Paul’s election rally for retired UNISON members.With four candidates on the ballot paper, at …Read more…

The long-awaited exit payment cap is now upon us, undoing the automatic right of local government workers made redundant above the age of 55 to an unreduced pension. Under cover of a hue and cry about large pay-offs to senior officers, the Governme…Read more…

Unfortunately the offer made by the Socialist Party’s candidate for UNISON General Secretary (which was welcomed on this blog) has not been taken up by the other candidates. It seems however that this offer was indeed made “for show” since Hugo Pie…Read more…

Apparently it is – in the opinion of the frontrunner to succeed Dave Prentis as General Secretary of UNISON (expressed in an interview with the “Left Foot Forward” Blog) – both patronising and misogynistic to characterise her as the "continuit…Read more…