Here:
Kate Hudson, who has lead the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament since
2003 as Chair and then General Secretary, has been selected as candidate
for Respect in the Manchester Central by-election expected on 15
November. The by-election is caused by the decision of Tony Lloyd to
stand as Labour candidate for Police Commissioner of Greater Manchester.
There is no record of Respect (or other left-of-Labour) success in the
constituency — but nor was there in Bradford West. Manchester Central
has the twelfth highest unemployment in the UK (Bradford West is fifth),
a place where Labour’s core vote has voted with its feet in recent
years — a place where Labour has no grounds for complacency.
The by-election is undoubtedly a test for Ed Miliband, since Lucy Powell,
Labour’s candidate, ran his campaign for the Leadership and was his
deputy-chief of staff until selected for this by-election. But it is
also a test for Respect. Until George Galloway won in Bradford West,
Respect looked like a spent force. The election of Ed Miliband and the
beginning of a return by Labour towards its social democratic roots
seemed to remove the remaining logic for its existence. There were
rumours that Salma Yaqoob was contemplating joining Labour. If
Respect is a vehicle for more than George Galloway’s return to
parliament, it must surely show that it can make significant inroads in a
declining inner city constituency like this, in spite of its lack of a
large Muslim community.
In 2010 the Lib Dems, presenting themselves to the Left of Labour,
achieved a 6% swing against Labour in spite of Tony Lloyd’s record of
opposing New Labour on issues like the Iraq war, tuition fees and the
detention of ‘terrorist suspects’. Labour’s share was 52.7%, the worst
result in a central Manchester constituency since the disastrous
by-election of 1973 when Labour won 55 (in the Exchange constituency
which disappeared into Manchester Central as a result of boundary
changes the following year). Kate Hudson is certainly more than a
single issue campaigner. She is active in the national anti-cuts
organisation, the Coalition of Resistance, and the Greece Solidarity
Campaign, as well as a former leading member of the Communist Party of
Britain.
We have no doubt that Lucy Powell is a formidable campaigner, but so
too is Kate Hudson. Lucy Powell would be well advised to forget her
previous association with Progress — two years ago she was elected to
the national policy forum in the north west on their ticket. It is not
‘triangulation’ that will win this seat, but the sort of clear break
with the policies of New Labour that Ed Miliband promised.
If you would like to help Labour’s Campaign in Manchester Central, you can volunteer here.
Who are you endorsing in that case? You are quite favourable about the CPB as "part of the family" unlike those to their left, and you are very close in thinking to CND and the StWC.
ReplyDeleteHudson is not a pro-life Catholic with no Hard Left background, unlike Galloway.
ReplyDeleteBut to our Left are those who may remain attached to the name and to some of the symbolism of the Communist Party, but who share our total rejection of Maoism and Trotskyism, and our approach to the former Soviet Union and allied states which balances a recognition of economic development, of full employment, of universally free education and healthcare, of affordable housing for all, of cheap and extensive public transport, of scientific progress, of cultural facilities, and of the rights of women and national minorities, with the most profound regret at the entrenchment of the bureaucratic-command system, at the integration of the Communist Party and the trade unions into the apparatus of the State so that they were rendered incapable of critiquing it, and at the fact that large numbers of innocent people to be persecuted, imprisoned and executed.
Since as long ago as 1951, those comrades have rejected violent revolution in Britain, in favour of the parliamentary, municipal, industrial and wider communitarian processes. With them, we share the strongest possible identification with those who have resisted enclosure, clearances, exorbitant rents, absentee landlordism, and a whole host of other abuses of the rural population down to the present day, instead obtaining, and continuing to defend, rural amenities such as schools, medical facilities, Post Offices, and so on.
Those who have opposed the destruction of the national rail and bus networks, and who continue to demand that those services be reinstated. Those who continue to fight for affordable housing in the countryside, and for planning laws and procedures that take proper account of rural needs. Those who insist that government requires the clear electoral mandate of rural as well as of urban and suburban areas, so that any electoral reform must to be sensitive to the need for effective rural representation, as must any new or reformed second chamber.
We must seek co-operation with those comrades, in order to secure an economy including a very substantial role both for workers’ co-operatives and for publicly owned enterprises run on behalf of the people, with the public ownership of key industries in order to boost the economy and raise the general standard of living, with massive investment by the State in key areas of the economy, and with a planned economy designed to increase the standard of living for working people, including the utilisation of this country’s vast reserves of coal.
Co-operation in order to secure a substantial increase in public spending on education, healthcare, transport, housing, and recreational facilities, with the tax burden shifted onto the rich and onto large corporations, and with the reduction of direct taxes on working people’s incomes.
We emphasise the importance of democracy and freedom in everyday life, with a particular emphasis on the freedom of the press and on freedom of speech, with full engagement in the battle of ideas at every level of cultural life and of the education system, with the refusal to consign or confine demotic culture to “the enormous condescension of posterity”, and with full participation in broad-based and inclusive campaigns for human rights and civil liberties, for peace (including nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological disarmament, and including against the arms trade), for environmental responsibility, and for the defence and extension of jobs, services and amenities.
We must therefore be most concerned to secure the continued publication of the Morning Star and of Tribune, and to end the wider media’s discrimination against them.