How good was the victory? The turnout was low, 33.3%, as one might expect for a by-election held one month after Borough Mayor and Council elections.
Here’s how the vote share works over the last three elections. The Labour vote remains above 50% i.e. we beat all the rest put together. The chart below/overleaf shows the vote share in the last three elections … …
Lewisham Deptford CLP has a General Committee tomorrow; it will be making nominations for the Labour Party’s national committee vacancies. I have advertised the names, here & here.
Here is a leaflet for the meeting, it can be reused for any London Region CLP, if you can put up with the Lewisham Deptford for Corbyn branding. …
In Britain Elect’s pen picture of Lewisham East, they state that Karl Marx lived in Lee, one of the constituent parts of the parliamentary constituency although there seems little record of that fact, other than a plaque in a local pub and this video.
Lewisham has been the focus of some determined anti-fascist demonstrations over the last week provoked by the candidature of Ann Marie Waters of the current incarnation of the UK’s (or is it England’s) organised fascists. Yesterday, Lewisham’s anti-racist organisations led a picket of a so-called Hustings organised by John Hamilton once of Lewisham People before Profit but now organising as “Bring Back Democracy”. The reason for the picket was the proposed attendance of the fascist candidate.
The Janet Daby, Labour’s candidate rejected the invite as did the Tory candidate, although the latter claimed a diary conflict. This meant that the likely first two candidates were not attending; it’s not much of a hustings.
The Southern Press & Mercury report the event giving space to the Lib Dem candidate and Woman’s Equality Party complaining about a suppression of democracy, despite the fact that the Labour and the Tory candidates were not present. ( I am trying to find out what happened to the Greens.) The SPM does not report the early confrontation between demonstrators and a group of angry “For Britian” supporters.
They quote, Mandu Reid, the Women’s Equality Party candidate
“I wanted to go to the hustings to challenge the far-right’s hate-filled narrative and to expose their ugly ideology for what it is. Unfortunately, I was denied that opportunity and, more importantly, the residents of Lewisham East were denied the chance to question their future MP.
This is not true as the likely winner did not turn up.
It seemed the Police advised Ann-Marie Waters not to come; she didn’t.
The Hustings was a provocation, arguably designed to be. You can’t debate with Facists.
ooOOOoo
Many people argued with the event organisers to cancel it, and the hosting organisation had to change its branding several times. I believe that the final brand used was Lewisham’s “Bring Back Democracy”, which I have until recently supported as they sought to campaign for an end to the Executive Mayor system in Lewisham. I and others will need to reconsider this.
In a private conversation, a correspondent of mine made the following comments, reproduced with permission.
[I have] … Spoken to many colleagues today who were lifted by the news of yesterday’s demo after the weekend. I think there are important discussions needed on the strategy and tactics of the labour movement in combatting the far right. The situation has to be weighed up each time…. There will be times where a different approach might have to be taken and decided upon democratically. I think “no platform” was a correct approach last night after what had happened at the weekend, the attempts by ANW to bring people to the borough off the back of it and the very low numbers of unaligned voters compared to a mobilisation of the organised far right.
On the far right’s social media response, had ANW been able to stroll into the hustings unchallenged they would’ve spun it in a different way, suggesting she was a strong, credible candidate with a broad base of support in the area. Obviously, in the heat of a demo like that some things will be said or done that we would do differently if we were able to reflect on it coolly from afar. There does need to be some consideration of what slogans can be used to counter the far right but also raise a positive working class alternative to racism. But the strategic task of the left in Lewisham has to be to pull the rug from underneath the far right by opposing austerity and fighting for better conditions so that disaffected working class people are not drawn to the right in any way. That means Labour councils not making cuts anymore. Damian’s speech on Saturday raised a very positive policy of the council housing 100 refugees. That needs to be coupled with a comprehensive council house building plan. It means the families in Milford Towers in Catford, many of them migrants, being guaranteed social housing in the regeneration scheme rather than being kept on short term contracts and a set % not being assigned for social housing because “it might scare developers away”. In 2011 the TUC demo was approx 750,000 and when UKIP called a demo in favour of cuts a few weeks later they mustered a couple hundred. That’s a sign of the balance of forces when the labour movement takes a lead.
On the issue of organising an independent hustings, my correspondent says,
…On John ‘doyen of community cohesion’ Hamilton: he had it explained to him very clearly how he could’ve avoided having ANW on the platform by gaining agreement for parties to declare it as part of electoral expenses. … To put on an event consciously requiring the police to facilitate and then calling 999 on the demonstration without reflecting about what others steps could be taken is reprehensible. To come out today and denounce ‘mob rule’ goes even lower. This is a man who used to lambast Bullock for the use of the ‘rent-a-mob’ line when there was a community demo or when the Council called in the riot police in 2010 or to get him off the roof of Lewisham Bridge.
As far as I know, we already have proportional voting systems in the UK, in Scotland & Wales for the their Assemblies, in London for the GLA and for the Members of the European Parliament. I have experience of standing for and/or selecting/triggering Labour candidates in the latter positions.
While much focus of late has been on selecting/re-selecting MPs in the House of Commons these positions represent a special case.
Labour’s re-selection processes for “list” based seats in local government in England, currently only the GLA, unless we remain in the EU requires that incumbents are confirmed or otherwise as candidates (via a trigger ballot), and that new candidates are found and approved by panel. All the candidates are then ordered by a member’s vote, with the incumbents guaranteed the highest places.
This protection i.e. the guarantee that incumbents must get the highest ranking places on the list should be removed; the member’s votes should determine the order that incumbents and challengers are placed on the list, subject to the gender quota rules. The members should be offered an additional two candidates, who then become available for call up in the case that any of the selected candidates are unable to run. …
Not a #peoplesvote, more a case of #isthisreallywhatyouwant. …
I was reading my news feeds this morning and of course Brexit comes up. Richard Corbett, now the Leader of the European PLP writes that when Labour in the Commons considers the Lord’s amendments to the European Union Withdrawal Bill, while there is a lot of noise about remaining in the single market or the European Economic Area, a more important amendment might be the establishment of a parliamentary “meaningful vote”. At the moment the Government plan to offer Parliament a “Deal or No Deal” vote, the opportunity to tell them to think again or remain must be on the table.
Anthony Barnett, writes an open letter to Remainers, where the thrust of the article is to pose a new hope, probably arguing “Remain but Reform” which is something a Labour Government might realistically undertake but he points at a blog by Dominic Cummings, the former Director of “Vote Leave” who is more than a little disappointed with the progress made in negotiating Brexit. Cummings’ diatribe reflects in my mind the foolish simplicity, held by, it would seem, many Tory’s that Government’s decide and people follow.
In James Graham’s play, “This House”, possibly the central speech is between the two party deputy chief whips where they reflect on the growing split between both the Parties as butskellism ended and the growing dichotomy between the government and governed. Both Harrison and Wetherill had served in the wartime military, and both had worked outside politics; they became parliamentarians with a hinterland in the real economy and thus understood that people are complicated. The growth of the career politician has led to a fantasy understanding of how society and politics work.
During the Coalition, it seemed that they thought they could press policy buttons and it would have the effect they wanted. There was never any plan as to what would happen if the great unwashed masses misbehaved, as we always will. It’s the result of apprenticeships formed in the student movement and the advancement of sea lawyers with no experience of real life, and often little connection with their electorates.
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The Young Labour National Committee have submitted a rule change on mandatory reselection to LP National Conference. Sara Doyle posts the text on twitter ….
Extremely proud to be a member of the National Young Labour committee which unanimously voted in support of the rule change which, we as a committee hope will contribute to a more democratic and representative Labour Party. pic.twitter.com/oraxcWVUEX
— Sarah (@sarahrcdoyle) June 5, 2018
My mind turns to Gardening Leave, not because I have any outstanding disputes with any of my ex-employers but because there seems to be a lack of clarity as to when and why one might use it if one was an employer.
If someone is on Gardening Leave they remain an employee and may not work for anyone else, although this also depends on the terms of the employment contract. In a world of zero hours contracts, this maybe a part of the law that will be re-examined.
For full time workers though, more and more companies are placing terms in their contracts that if one should, say, invent a new cheese in one’s back garden, then the company claims the exploitation rights. All inventions belong to your employer. It’s unclear if another month, or three months would make much difference though, but protecting the company’s intellectual property remains a motive for delaying people leaving as does getting them off site and off the IT systems.
Another key advantage is that the employee cannot work for a competitor, again, employers often via employment contracts try and restrain people’s ability to compete with them on quitting, but this is fraught with legal risk; keeping them on the books is legally much safer. Many sales staff may find themselves constrained in this way and the strengthened data protection laws will make it harder for them to take their address books with them.
A specific and unusual example of this is where staff of regulatory, political policy or law enforcement organisations leave their job to work for regulated entities. In fact, the public sector has constraints on this, but they have been weakened in time over the decades. The public sector employment contracts nearly all have clauses similar to private sector non-compete clauses but restraining public servants from working with organisations that they had regulatory or procurement relationships with. Despite this many lobbying organisations employ ex-politicians, civil servants and police. (In some ways, the movement in the other direction is more corrupt.)
The final example is where someone has financial or judicially regulated authority within the organisation. It’s usually inappropriate to leave such senior staff in place once they have resigned, and certainly of there are question marks on their remaining commitment. This of course is compounded where a compromise agreement has been signed to avoid the need to undertake disciplinary or redundancy processes. Management need to ensure that they are acting in the interests of the organisation’s stakeholders and protect themselves against a class action.
That’s where the Labour Party finds itself. A huge swath of its senior staff have put in their notice, they remain able to exercise their authority and for some reason are being permitted to work their notice, in some cases it would seem an extended notice.
It should be noted that for the ex-employee, if someone with a full time job, one or three months gardening leave can be a welcome gift. …
All Momentum groups and activists should be very concerned.
This was distributed today to a meeting of Momentum activists.
On 23 April, a group trying to remove the entire Lewisham Momentum committee, on the basis of a secretive campaign of lies and slander, led a walkout from the group’s AGM and held a bizarre pseudo-meeting, with no democratic standards, in the front bar of a pub. This meeting has nonetheless been recognised by the Momentum office. This should be a cause of serious alarm for anyone concerned about democracy and members’ rights in Momentum, and its political direction.
On 23 April, so many people turned up to the Lewisham Momentum AGM that the venue organisers claimed it was not possible for more to enter safely. In addition to the hundred-plus inside, another 30 or 40 could not get in. There was a fierce argument about what to do, with the committee arguing to reschedule to a new date. Some of those who wanted to continue claimed to have found another venue, the large back room of the nearby Amersham Arms pub. By this time it was about 8.15pm. There was a vote, held in conditions of chaos – the figures are not clear, and many people did not vote, but it looked most of those who did voted to move to the “new venue”.
“New venue” because when those who left got to the Amersham Arms, about 8.30pm, they found that the back room, which the AGM had been told was available, had a gig going on it! A “meeting” was held in the front bar of the pub (much smaller than the original venue), with no proper procedures and no registration checks, at which anyone present in the space could vote, whether they were random pub-goers or had just come in off the street. A committee was “elected”, every position unopposed, by a single vote.
The organisers of the Amersham meeting claim about 75 at this meeting; others who were present and asked to count carefully and honestly counted significantly less (see statements linked below). Meanwhile about 60 remained at the original venue, and this number grew as people returned from the Amersham.
By themselves these facts seem bizarre and inexplicable. What was going on?
In the weeks running up to the AGM it gradually emerged that a secret slate was being put together to remove the entire existing committee. This despite the fact that it had already been agreed, before any of this controversy was even guessed at, to expand the size of the committee from about ten to about twenty to involve more people.
The driving force of this slate was people who have never had any involvement in Lewisham Momentum. At its core were people grouped around ‘Red London’, a Facebook page which turns out Stalinist memes and has engaged in numerous online (and not just online) campaigns of bullying and harassment. These people moved to Lewisham very recently – in fact there is strong circumstantial evidence that some of them do not live in Lewisham at all. They linked up with people long angry at Lewisham Momentum because in late 2016 they raised the issue of Jackie Walker’s removal as Vice Chair of Momentum’s Steering Committee but heavily lost the vote on this. That argument resulted in the most fractious meeting the group had ever had until the 23 April AGM, and the disappearance of a number of people who only reappeared on 23 April. The purgers also seemed to have mobilised people on the basis of social networks – fair enough and not necessarily bad, except that it was done for the purpose of deranged factionalism.
All this was done secretively, and they refused to sit down and talk about possible ways of compromising and working together, despite repeated offers to do so. Some of what they were telling people nonetheless emerged – and more has emerged since the AGM. It was a tissue of all kinds of lies, from the shocking – in particular accusations of support for child abuse, a mainstay of ‘Red London’ with which they are now trying to infect sections of the Lewisham left – to the absurd – e.g. claiming Lewisham Momentum has not supported a campaign against academisation, at Childeric primary school, which our comrades have in fact been central to but the accusers have had no involvement in!
No doubt many well-intention people were convinced, at least temporarily, by this campaign of slander or elements of it.
At the sharp end of the attack were comrades who are members of Workers’ Liberty, but the campaign targeted the entire committee and anyone who stood opposed to the Stalinist-led purge drive. Both sides mobilised hard – hence the big turnout for the AGM.
Most of the leadership of Lewisham Momentum are pretty cynical about the national Momentum office and leadership, but we were genuinely a bit surprised by the decision of a Momentum staff member to recognise the Amersham Arms group as “Lewisham Momentum”.
One reason the AGM was so slow to get going is that Momentum staff members insisted on double-checking everyone’s registration. Yet for the Amersham meeting all and any standards went out of the window, with no checks and anyone able to come and vote – this was apparently no problem.
The Momentum leadership has long regarded Lewisham Momentum as an irritating left-wing, critical thorn in its side. That is why, in the conditions of tight top-down control and witch-hunting of left-wing critics that have got worse since 2016, the ‘Red London’ people chose to target Lewisham. It is not just a matter of whether you agree with Lewisham’s political stance. It is a matter of whether Momentum’s bureaucracy can get away with supporting political thugs to attack and beat down anyone they regard as dissident.
Momentum groups should protest to the NCG and back our call for a rescheduled, democratic AGM.
Our open letter to the split group calling for reunification and meanwhile united campaigning (so far no reply – no reply also to a specific email calling for cooperation on a local strike) See davelevy.info/lewisham-momentum and davelevy.info/stitched/ which includes two videos taken at the Amersham Arms and eyewitness reports of the meeting.
Here is an article on the culture of lies and slander engendered by ‘Red London’ published on the AWL web site: bit.ly/2kGD0Xw …