By Jeremy Dewar IT is fitting to mark Black History Month this year by focusing on a battle fought largely inside the Labour Party between 1983 and 1993 for two reasons. First, Black History Month was initiated by groups of mainly black Caribbean and Asian members of the Labour Party, who fought to make the […]

ANOTHER poll published yesterday by YouGov reveals that the overwhelming majority of Labour members (86%) support a referendum once negotiations are complete. This has prompted the predictable objection: “It’s a rigged/inaccurate poll” We know that pollsters got it wrong in 2017 and massively underestimated Jeremy Corbyn’s support, but YouGov were one of the only pollsters […]

By KD Tait THIS YEAR’S conference is the fourth under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but much of the legacy of the Blair and Brown years is still with us. Above all, this means that conference will  play no real role in finalising policy on the most important issues facing the party; Brexit, economic policy of a Labour […]

By Jeremy Dewar IT IS ironic perhaps that the Democracy Review, which is to be voted on at conference, will not be published until probably a day before the event. With a whole year to complete the business and plan deadlines, it lacks a certain prerequisite of democracy, transparency, in delaying till the last minute. […]

By Rebecca Anderson WE SHOULDN’T speak ill of the dead. That’s what Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson must have been thinking when he eulogised Frank Field’s passing as a “serious loss” to the Labour Party. However, the sentiment that all life is sacred is not one Field shared, so in his memory let’s dispense with […]

By Dave Stockton THIS SUMMER no one could ignore the remorseless campaign smearing Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as “institutionally antisemitic”. They will also be aware of the vigorous rebuttals mounted in the press, in the party branches, and online by the comrades from Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). JVL has performed an invaluable service […]

By Jeremy Dewar SHADOW Home Secretary Diane Abbott was in the words of the hymn ‘a kindly light amid the encircling gloom’ of the Brexit referendum; more so than any Labour front bencher, with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott stood up for immigrants and the invaluable contribution they make to our society. As a […]

By KD Tait THE Labour Party NEC’s decision to adopt all 11 unofficial examples attached to the IHRA definition of antisemitism represents a serious retreat from solidarity with the Palestinians and a victory for anti-socialist forces inside and outside the party who are determined to prevent the election of a leftwing Labour government. In capitulating […]

By KD Tait HUNDREDS of Labour Party members attended a rally called by Jewish Voice for Labour and others outside the party’s headquarters, to call on the NEC to oppose adopting the full IHRA definition of antisemitism, including all the examples, which would ban members from opposing the racist character of the Zionist settler state. Demonstrators […]

JEREMY CORBYN’S Birmingham launch of Labour’s  ‘Build it in Britain’ campaign has been welcomed by many Labour Party members as offering a roadmap to radical reorganisation of the economy “in the interests of the many, not the few.” Certainly it was about time Labour set out its industrial strategy. And there are certainly promises, repeated […]

By KD Tait After warning mutinous backbenchers that a divided Tory party risks paving the way for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government, Theresa May gambled on splitting the pro-Brexit faction of her party, and uniting the Cabinet around the “hybrid” negotiating position agreed at Chequers last Friday. For now, it seems the gamble has paid […]

By Simon Hannah  THE FIGHT over whether to leave the European Union is increasing in tempo. Hundreds of thousands marched in central London on 23 June (venomously described by some as “liberals”, “Blairites”, “croissant eating intellectuals” and so on) while sections of the left in Labour have swung to being militant Lexiteers. There is a […]

By KD Tait KEN LIVINGSTONE has resigned from the Labour Party, days before a formal disciplinary process was due to start, the outcome of which had become a foregone conclusion after “Baroness”  Shami Chakrabarti spoke out in favour of his expulsion, signalling that the leadership had definitively turned against him.  In making those comments, Chakrabarti […]

By Peter Main  THIS MONTH sees the second anniversary of the “Brexit Referendum” and, a few days later, the opening of a crucial EU summit on 28 June. Until now, it has been possible for Theresa May to hold her party together by publicly echoing the rhetoric of the “hard Brexiteers” whilst, in the actual […]

JUNE 5 2018 is the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service – the jewel in the crown of the British Labour Party and the welfare state. But the celebrations are tempered by the knowledge that the NHS is mired in the biggest crisis of its history, one that threatens the survival of a health […]

By KD Tait This year marks 70 years since the foundation of Israel and the Nakba, in which more than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Over the last month, refugees and their descendants in Gaza have been holding peaceful protests in support of the right to return. These demonstrations have faced savage repression […]

BY KD Tait THE DECISION by Labour’s right wing to reheat the smear campaign accusing Jeremy Corbyn of failing to tackle antisemitism within the party is a deliberate attempt to sabotage Labour’s local election campaign, discredit the leadership, and silence critics of Israel’s brutal oppression of the Palestinians. Though they have differing priorities and motives, […]

By KD Tait THE US, French, and British attack on the Syrian regime’s chemical warfare facilities, ostensibly in retaliation for the recent chemical attack in Douma, was little more than a cynical attempt by the Nato powers to avoid being made to look totally impotent by the Syrian dictator – whilst carefully avoiding a direct […]

ROBIN WALES, the long-standing, perhaps long-reigning would be more accurate, directly elected Mayor of Newham, has finally been deselected as the Labour Party’s candidate in the forthcoming mayoral election. In an Open Selection ballot of the membership, held after Wales was not adopted as the candidate in a second Trigger Ballot, he was roundly defeated, […]

ON 4 MARCH 2018, a former Russian spy turned double agent for MI5, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned using Novichok, a hitherto obscure nerve agent. The British government has named Russia and its newly re-elected President, Vladimir Putin, as the culprit. The main evidence is the claimed development of Novichok by Russia, […]

By KD Tait THERE WERE a lot of Labour people on Saturday’s demo for the 15 Gazans murdered in cold blood by Israel – but there was not one Labour MP among them. Why? The protest was so supportable, called by Palestine solidarity campaigns to protest the murder of 31 civilians by Israeli occupation forces […]

THE SUDDEN coordinated onslaught against Jeremy Corbyn over the weekend of 24-25 March was a transparent attempt by an alliance of rightwing forces to damage Labour’s strong lead in the run up to the May council elections, and to destabilise Corbyn’s ever-more consolidated leadership of the Labour Party. Things have not been going well for […]

A decade of austerity has undermined many of the economic, social and political gains achieved by women since the 1970s. Job losses, cuts to welfare and social care, and the rise in part time and precarious work, are just some of the factors intensifying the problems faced by women who have to work harder for […]

COMPLAINTS of sexual harassment and discrimination by women officers and activists often go unresolved in the unions and the Labour Party. This is a shameful record and one that must be corrected immediately. The campaign group LabourToo, has submitted a dossier of complaints about such behaviour in the Labour Party. It consists of 43 anonymised […]

MINNIE Lansbury was born in 1889 in Stepney in the East End of London. Her parents, Annie and Isaac Glassman, were Jewish refugees from Poland, who had escaped the pogroms fomented by the Russian Tsarist police. Her tragically short life amongst the slums of the area where she was born was filled with struggle alongside […]

AS FIGURES showed rough sleeping in England increased for the seventh consecutive year, Jeremy Corbyn promised a Labour government would immediately buy 8,000 homes to tackle the crisis. Official government data shows that on any given night in autumn last year, 4,751 people were recorded sleeping on the streets, a figure that has more than doubled since […]

SOME SOUTHWARK Labour councillors have been halted – if only temporarily – in their quest to turn Elephant & Castle’s dilapidated but community-oriented shopping centre into a mecca for the middle classes. A property developer Delancey bought the site and has applied to re-build it with no adequate plans to relocate existing small traders and […]

IN A dramatic about turn, Newham’s directly elected Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, has called for an “open selection” ballot to choose the Labour Party candidate in May’s election. This comes more than a year after party members challenged the result of a “trigger ballot” which confirmed Wales, Mayor since 2002, as the candidate. In that […]

ACCORDING TO police records, knife crime has risen by 21 per cent in the past year, and gun-related offences by 20 per cent. There were over 37,000 arrests for knife offences and over 6,000 for gun crimes. All recorded crimes were up 14 per cent. For the communities, families and individuals caught up in these […]

THE CLEAN sweep of Momentum candidates for three new seats created to represent Labour’s expanded membership on its nec is a chance for the left to press for long overdue democratic reform of the party. Yasmine Dar, Rachel Garnham and Jon Lansman’s landslide victory confirms the demoralisation and decline of the right’s base amongst the […]