This, from the Guardian, by Natalie Nougayréde looks at the historic development of the Social Chapter, poses it as a beacon of hope, the focus of an argument beyond project fear.to remain. She asks why Labour’s leadership, which in my book includes the EPLP aren’t allying with the European Left in the EP to pose a new renewal agenda with hope and vision. A better Europe, if you like, better than 7/10. …
Regulation
I have been a fan of Carlotta Perez’s work since reading her book; her account of five phases of capitalism with dominant technologies and morphing socio/political structures seems to explain so much. I have just started Mitchell & Fazi’s “Reclaiming the State”, and in their pursuit of why the State was lost, they talk about the “regulation theory school” which states that capitalism co-exists with other oppressive forces and that, in their words, capitalism “develops across its history through a series of discontinuous stages”. They see Michael Aglietta as its first proponent, and it would seem that the word Regulation comes from his 1979 paper, “A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience”. (Why did we not do this stuff at University?) More to read! …
Activism
We can all agree that the internet has changed the way we talk and the way we organise, but where are the mass movements? The tech. giants have built a means of control where we are spied on and victimise. Can we build open source, popular, and democratic peer-to-peer computing, the 21st century equivalent of mass action?
It will be hard, not because of the computers, but because of the networks, although TOR shows the way. …
Secretaries
More bloody rules – Chapter 7.IX.6 states that notices to affiliates must be delivered to the Secretary.
…Any notice required to be given under these rules shall be in writing which may include electronic communication. Notices to be sent to affiliated organisations and Party units shall be addressed to the secretary thereof.
Amnesty
As you may know, I am a supporter of Stop the Purge campaign as the rule under which these exclusions have been taken taken offends the principles of natural justice. After the election last year, the CLP Chair, in a speech to the General Committee observed that we had all worked well together during the election and wouldn’t it be great if this could continue. I agreed, and so I wrote the following motion as several people, that I know of, who joined the CLP have been excluded.
It calls for the lifting of all exclusion decisions taken under this Rule.
The motion was carried at my branch meeting last night.
All supporters of Labour Party welcome in Labour Party
This meeting notes
The Labour Party Rule Book 2017, Chapter 2 Membership rules, Clause I Conditions of membership, sub clause 4 Exclusions, (B) reads as follows:
‘A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.’
This rule has been used to exclude LP members with no defence, no appeal and no public review of the evidence.
This meeting believes
- Labour’s membership should be open to all who share our values and support Labour’s election campaigns.
- In the spirit of post-election unity, this branch calls for the reinstatement of automatically excluded members.
This meeting calls/GC instructs on the CLP Secretary to write to the General Secretary and the NEC calling for the reinstatement of those auto-excluded under Rule 4.I.2.B
This meeting instructs the branch secretary to submit this motion to the CLP Secretary for consideration at the next GC .
So now it goes to the General Committee.
ooOOOoo
There were two points raised which are interesting and deserve reply.
The first is that if we delete the rule, how can we defend ourselves against electoral opponents, The answer to that is simple, there are plenty of other rules that define that offence, but even then such actions should be considered under a process that includes a defence, and right of appeal.
The motion is not a rule change, its an appeal for amnesty but I have written about what I’d like the rule to look like elsewhere on this blog. …
Democracy Review
I have earlier today, unstuck the article on the Democracy Review and placed a link to it at the top of the index page. …
Stop Academies in Lewisham
The Management of Childeric school are beginning a consultation over joining a Multi-Academy trust.
There is a campaign meeting to oppose this being held next week.
Public Meeting:
Partnership not academisation for Childeric
Tuesday 30th January 7:30 pm., @ New Cross Learning (map…)
Speakers include Lewisham Deptford’s MP, Vicky Foxcroft.
There is an Eventbrite posting here, which will allow you to post the event into your calendar or electronic diary if you prefer to speak British English, but I think we’ve lost this one, otherwise post directly using the button below. (Facebook is coming).
Mastodon
An interesting evening at a Mastodon meetup. It was a mixture of mainly technical geeks with a couple of social scientists interested in how decentralised microblogging will impact conversations on the internet.
I joined, I am now @dfl1955@masterdon.social.
I shared my difficulties on creating a Mastodon instance, one being a problem with the script I chose (and my Linux superstructure knowledge) and the second being a lack of knowledge in how to build the SMTP interface. I was pointed at some interesting URLs that might help build an instance.
There was some discussion about the business model, and it was noted that mastodon does not charge business users, and its big draw is that it’s federated. I sort of came to the conclusion that it’s not what I want for the use case I was considering.
I decided it can’t hurt to join up on mastodon.social, since any semantic in choosing which instance to join is nullified. So I did! …
Investigatory Powers revisited
In December, the CJEU stated that the British and Swedish investigatory powers laws were in contravention to the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. This was in the case of the UK partly based on the litigation started by Tom Watson MP, initially with David Davies MP. This was reported in the Register, here, and the Guardian here. The Open Rights Group have asked for people to engage in the Home Office consultation; they propose to put a judicial warrant requirement on investigation requests for suspect internet data. This blog discusses my contribution. If you want to follow me, you’ll have to be quick the consultation closes tomorrow. …
Advantage
I came across this article in the New Statesman, called, “The Bennites’ revenge: how Jeremy Corbyn and his allies survived political exile”, and what fascinated me is the statement that Blair and David Miliband’s failure to aggressively support the social democratic tendencies and projects of the EU are one of the foundations of the failure to vote remain in the referendum.
The author, Prof. Jeremy Gilbert also looks at the US’s journey from supporting Social Democracy as a weapon against the radicalisation of the working class in western Europe during the cold war to Reagan’s initiating of the neoliberal world order after the fall of the wall and the Soviet Union. He also tracks the politics/media nexus amongst both Labour and Tories arguing that the right invented the threat of the federal super state to copy the US’s neo-con politics of insurgency.
His central argument is that Corbyn and his close allies are recognisably free from the US’s “Special Relationship” and the malign influence of the UK’s right wing press. Today this is an advantage,
It;s a great read and I am now following him on feedly and academi.edu; on his blog he points at a Compass Project, a podcast series, that he was involved in called a Beginners Guide to the Labour Party. …