The Labour party is nothing if not a broad church, encompassing different traditions working with – not against – each other. In a post-industrial world everything is some kind of coalition. If not, the party is simply a religion of true believers in a multi-faith polity. Over decades, Labour activists, interests and voters have broadly agreed on a common purpose – to elect Labour governments that can redress the imbalance of economic, social and political power in Britain. That broad-church approach has served Labour well and has served Britain well too
Beard of the Year 2023 Jamie Driscoll shaved by Starmerite clean shaven revisionism in Tyne Mayor vote,
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Jamie Driscoll who was voted Beard of the Year 2023 last December has emerged with credit in the poll for Tyne Mayor on 2nd May.
Jamie Driscoll came a very creditable second in the vote
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we congratulate Jamie Driscoll on his campaign achieving a very good second place in the Tyne Mayor vote. Defeating clean shaven Starmerite revisionism is a tough task and he has emerged with great credit from the effort.
The phrase was originally used by Gary Younge to describe George W Bush’s reaction to the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Nothing, fortunately, as dramatic happened in England and Wales on May 2nd.
In fact Labour did well and the Tories very badly. Not all the results are yet in but they are closing in a loss of 500 Council seats, a figure they floated on the assumption it would not be met and hence things could be spun as not that bad.
Blackpool South was the third largest By-Election swing ever and Councils were won which had previously been Tory strongholds.
Yet across England seats were also lost. They were lost to the Greens, Independents often focused on Gaza and in a much more limited way to the Workers Party. Much of this related to Gaza and Starmer’s refusal both to back an unconditional ceasefire and his statement that Israel did have the right to cut water and food supplies to Gaza. A considerable number of Muslim voters were alienated and little has been done to address it. It went further than that. Labour also lot in urban areas where there was a left-ish vote not happy about Starmer’s great moving right show and Gaza.
Rachel Reeves previously said as did Starmer that if people on the left didn’t like the New New Labour project then they were not wanted on board. Many got the message. What Reeves and Starmer clearly did not twig was that they still had a vote. This was the purpose of Labour’s Broad Church,junked by Starmer. To keep a broad range of left of centre opinion on board even if nothing much really happened
The Starmer project, on May 2nd quite a successful one, was to win back Tory voters who had in the past supported Labour. On some results I looked at the disaffected Tory vote split between Labour and Reform but there is a lot of local variance (also known as democracy). The narrow church strategy worked up to a point until the people Starmer didn’t know existed had their say.
The Times Editorial on 3rd May 2024 is without question a classic of the genre. It focuses on the US campus protests on Gaza, while of course ignoring or misrepresenting what has actually gone on. That said any claim to be the paper of record went out the window when Murdoch arrived.
It then goes on to UK University protests.
The starting point are the protests of 1968 and the Editorial recycles some classic phrases from that year. We read of ‘external actors’ normally known as outside agitators who have been at work in the US. In the UK it seems protests have been ‘infiltrated by militant organisers’.
The Times declares that ‘the right to political expression is inviolable but its exercise is appropriatley limited to the competing rights of others’. This is a reworking of the classic line that of course there is a right to protest but if it is actually exercised it will be condemned.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has congratulated the new Labour MP for Blackpool South, Chris Webb on his By-Election victory.
He got a swing of 26% and took 58.9% of the vote compared to the second placed Tory with 17.5%.
Chris Webb has a distinctive and now election winning beard which must send a clear message to the perpetually clean shaven Keir Starmer about the importance of Beard Power in politics.
The campaigners note that while the Tory candidate was also hirsute he was follicly challenged. This issue will be reviewed in forthcoming discussions on whether to relaunch the famed Baldies and Beardies Election Alliance.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we congratulate Chris Webb. His victory underlines the importance of Beard Power in politics
The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research,has sent solidarity to students and academics who are protesting at links to Israel and a plausible genocide in Gaza.
The UK protests follow those at a range of US Universities. Some have been attacked and cleared by police with State violence a key feature. President Biden has defended the right to protest.
The historians say this is a familiar mantra from politicians and the media that do not in fact support any right to protest. For them it remains purely a theoretical right not to be exercised. Numerous Times Editorials have made the point.
The historians say that the UK protests are entirely peaceful and have a broad base of supporters including Jewish students. Predictable complaints that they are anti-semitic come without evidence and essentially mean they are critical of the Israeli Government.
LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said. Sunak and Mordaunt have used robust language about the protests and encouraged police intervention. For them its yet another culture war. Those on the sharp end in Gaza will see things differently.
Boris Johnson is a veteran opponent of ID Cards but in true Johnsonian fashion he introduced legislation requiring a limited range of Photo ID for voting in elections in 2022. There no evidence of impersonation at the polls. It was an attempt to prevent what Johnson regarded as those less likely to have ID from voting, assuming they were Labour voters. They may just as easily be Tory voting pensioners but data on this remains hazy.
On 2nd May Johnson tried to vote for a Police Commissioner without Photo ID and was turned away (he later found some it appears and did vote) but as has been clear throughout his political and journalistic career rules are for others. His Eton tutor said as much in the late 1970s noting that even then Johnson thought rules were for others not him.
As is evident in other more important arenas the ruling class see rules as things that are done to keep others under control
Sky News report
Polling station staff were forced to turn the former prime minister away after he initially failed to comply with legislation he introduced while he was in Downing Street. Mr Johnson, who introduced the Elections Act requiring photo ID in 2022, was attempting to cast his ballot in South Oxfordshire, where a police and crime commissioner for the Thames Valley is being selected.
2024 will see an Election in the UK and local and regional elections in England and Wales are a precursor to that. As often the left is between wanting the Tories out (meaning a Labour victory) and looking to challenge a right-wing Labour Party in the terrain it focuses on- the ballot box John Saville, the socialist activist and historian, looked at the issue 65 years ago in the New Reasoner the journal he edited with E P Thompson after their break with the Communist Party in 1956.
Both had been active in the Fife Socialist League which involved future miners leader Lawrence Daly and which for a period managed to establish and electoral presence beyond Labour and the CP who had held the seat with Willie Gallagher
It is unlikely that we shall see repeated in many other places the combination of circumstances that produced this independent socialist candidature in West Fife. But if we develop a really powerful new current of ideas and political activity it is not impossible that a similar situation may be produced elsewhere. If it is, then we shall have to ask ourselves again the central question: is this an action that will push forward the movement for socialism, or will it result in a setback to our ideas and our ideals? The answer will depend on the circumstances of time and place and personalities; it will not rest upon a simple assertion that what is not favoured by the Labour Party organisation is in itself wrong for socialists and the socialist movement. With a Labour Party dominated by Mr. Gaitskell and a world dominated by nuclear weapons, no socialist can give that answer.
Local Elections: The historical and democratic importance of the vote
Local Elections take place in many areas on 2nd May. turn out is likely to be on the low side, it usually has been for such elections even though the Councils elected do make a significant difference to people’s daily lives for better or worse. In 2024 turnout is likely to be further suppressed by a Tory requirement for PhotoID
I’m far from an obsessive about elections of any kind, but participation in democratic elections is important.
It’s important because there far right to fascist candidates in some places that need to be resoundingly defeated and important to, to send a message to Sunak on thing he does care about- getting votes to stay in power locally and ultimately nationally.
It’s also important because the Chartists fought for the right to vote for men, not finally achieved until 1918 and the Suffragettes did the same for women. The vote was not handed out by those at the top of society it had to be won, and as ID issue underlines, it could disappear.
So vote on 2nd May where you have the chance. It may not mean much in itself but the fight to win you the right to vote in the first place means a lot and that means it’s worth exercising it.
The May Day demonstration in Hyde Park on 3rd May 1891 was a landmark as it marked the first united march (the first May Day in 1890 had seen two marches). Engels writing to Laura Lafargue about the day noted how he, the Bernsteins and Tussys had celebrated in the evening at his Regents Park Rd residence:
When we came home last night, we wound up with a Maibowle, the Maikrauth of which Percy had sent us from Ryde. We put in 4 bottles Moselle, 2 claret, 1 Champagne, and finished it — we, Bernsteins and the Tussy’s. Late in the evening Cunninghame Graham came in and actually had two or three glasses of it — he seems to have left his teetotalism at Tangiers. There is a slight but rather agreeable Kater,J kept in proper bounds this morning by a bottle of Pilsener.
A Maibowle is a punch and Maikrauth is Woodruff used to make the punch. Kater is a hangover.
From 1891 to 2024 the tradition of solidarity on May Day endures and if celebrating it was good enough for Engels 133 years ago it’s fine now surely.
