Neil Williams writes:
Alice Mahon, the former Labour MP who resigned last month from the Labour Party after 50 years membership, will speak at her first public meeting since leaving the party in Birmingham on Tuesday, May 26th, in support of the No2EU campaign in the Euro elections.
Mrs Mahon, 71, was the Member of Parliament for Halifax from 1987 to 2005.
She joins a number of former Labour figures backing the anti-EU coalition - including the former leader of East Sussex Council Labour Group, Prof Dave Hill, former deputy Labour leader of Carlisle Council, John Metcalfe, and former election agent for Peter Shore MP, John Rowe, who are all candidates for No2EU on June 4th.
The former Labour MP for Coventry, Dave Nellist, is the lead candidate for the trade union backed campaign in the West Midlands.
Mrs Mahon in her resignation letter said she could no longer be a member of a party “that at leadership level has betrayed many of the principles that inspired me as a teenager to join”. Her letter, sent to former colleagues in her Halifax constituency, was sharply critical of Labour’s failure to deliver a promised referendum on the EU “Lisbon Treaty”.
“If that Treaty is ratified”, she wrote, “we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services…… we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs”.
Ms Mahon was joined at the election rally on Tuesday, May 26th, 7.30pm at the Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham by Brian Denny, national officer of the RMT trade union, and West Midlands No2EU candidates Cllr Dave Nellist, and Joanne Stevenson.
I don't know if anyone from No2EU is on Question Time this evening, and I have a prior engagement anyway so I won't see it. But I would be extremely surprised, to say the very, very least. The total non-coverage of No2EU is perfectly scandalous. How many ex-MPs, or serving trade union general secretaries, are candidates for the BNP?
No, but they have managed to find room for Pierre-Yves Gerbeau.
ReplyDeleteOh, well, he's, er, French - that'll do, won't it? Won't it?
ReplyDeleteThe Tory is Dan Hannan, the only Tory MEP who is not in the EPP now. And the only Tory MEP who won't be in the EPP on 5th June.
Is No2EU (for which I have a degree of sympathy actually a political party or merely a coalition of anti Europeans (for which I rejoice).
ReplyDeleteDave Nellist ex-Militant is hardly my or (I would have assumed) your cup of tea.
As voters we often have to vote for a Party, members of which we find personally distasteful.
The alternative would appear to be Independent voting.
Are there areas where you could support No2EU and places you couldnt because of the nature of the candidate?
I cant understand Nellist and Kate Hoey "nothing has been proved" are the acceptable face of International Socialism.
Meanwhile I have now been canvassed by six of our seven parties contesting European Election.
I might have to actually call on Jim Nicholson (UUP) as he is the only one not to bother. His heart does not appear to be in it.
"Is No2EU (for which I have a degree of sympathy actually a political party or merely a coalition of anti Europeans (for which I rejoice)"
ReplyDeleteIt's technically registered as a party in order to get its name on the ballot paper, but its main purpose, beyond winning seats, is creating future alliances. It can be seen as having been rather ahead of the times, in that electoral reform is on its way, and with it new parties.
I have blogged about Militant before. If their record in Liverpool (one of the 47 surcharged councillors is on the No2EU North-West list) is anything to go by, then they were pretty much Old Labour Right, really. And they have no other record in office. Plenty of rhetoric from loudhalers and in print. But no other record in office.
Well, apart from the fact that as an MP, Dave Nellist won Spectator Backbencher of the Year at the height of Thatcherism. I don't know what sort of Trotskyism that is supposed to be.
The real Trots are now in the Cabinet or at Tony Blair's court in exile. Contrast their record with that set out on the Liverpool 47 website.
"Are there areas where you could support No2EU and places you couldnt because of the nature of the candidate?"
I know that, because of people who are on their lists (and leaving aside other people who are), you SHOULD vote for them at least in London (Visteon convenor, Peter Shore's old agent), the East of England (Visteon convenor), the East Midlands (list headed by a leader of the Lindsey oil refinery workers), Yorkshire & The Humber (ditto), and the North-West (Harry Smith of the Liverpool 47, Steve Radford of the Liberal Party).
I am therefore also prepared to give them the benfit of the doubt here in the North East (one of their three names here rings a bell and so must have a mainstream Labour/trade union background, but not the other two), and urge people to do likewise elsewhere. As much as anything, who else is there?
I don't approve of party lists. And this is why.
I thought the young lady in the audience put the case for voting NO2EU very well especially when she spoke about Post Office privatisation.
ReplyDeleteBut see today's post on the subject.
ReplyDelete