None of the 60,000 joiners are £3 "Labour Supporters", all have joined as full members.
There's a real danger that the left will drag Britain back to the 1970s, with secure well-paid jobs, ample housing, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition, student grants, final salary pensions, affordable rail fares and fabulous films and music. David Osland 2025
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
It was the message, not the messenger that got Jeremy Corbyn elected as Labour Party leader (the other candidates obviously not striking the right chord with the voters) Instead of the mps getting right behind him right from the start (against the democratic vote of ordinary labour voters)there's been a number of mps and the media sniping away at him finally using the pathetic excuse he didn't do enough for the remain side (considering more labour voted to stay than David Cameron got from the tories. If it comes to a labour leadership contest I'd assume that since the tories say they'd want him to be the leader (because their propaganda says it will make the labour party weaker - not the fact they're scared stiff because of their cuts and austerity program he could possibly win the next election on a lot of what he stands for) they'd encourage their supporters to try to get in on the vote and vote for Corbyn. In reality they'd vote for him to go as there is likely to be more cuts and austerity to come plus There will be more selling off of the country's silver for short term gains.
George Osborne has already marked himself out as the biggest seller of the country's silver since the time of Margaret Thatcher.
Since becoming Chancellor, he has flogged at least £37.7 billion of state assets - with another £20 billion reportedly up for grabs this year.
"The Government are privatising the profits of the Land Registry – which made a surplus of £100 million in 2012/13 – whilst retaining the risk.
Sorry! I didn't know you could join for a pound.I am thinking about it.I am not a Tory only support myself and a socialist.My problem is I am olso a realist and like to speak my mind, which could debar me.The Wallasey meeting was I hear, quite a rowdy affair.
The elites hate Momentum and the Corbynites - and I’ll tell you why - David Graeber The movement that backed the Labour leader challenges MPs and journalists alike – because it’s about grassroots democracy
As the rolling catastrophe of what’s already being called the “chicken coup” against the Labour leadership winds down, pretty much all the commentary has focused on the personal qualities, real or imagined, of the principal players.
Yet such an approach misses out on almost everything that’s really at stake here. The real battle is not over the personality of one man, or even a couple of hundred politicians. If the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn for the past nine months has been so fierce, and so bitter, it is because his existence as head of a major political party is an assault on the very notion that politics should be primarily about the personal qualities of politicians. It’s an attempt to change the rules of the game, and those who object most violently to the Labour leadership are precisely those who would lose the most personal power were it to be successful: sitting politicians and political commentators.
If you talk to Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, it’s not the man himself but the project of democratising the party that really sets their eyes alight. The Labour party, they emphasise, was founded not by politicians but by a social movement. Over the past century it has gradually become like all the other political parties – personality (and of course, money) based, but the Corbyn project is first and foremost to make the party a voice for social movements once again, dedicated to popular democracy (as trades unions themselves once were). This is the immediate aim. The ultimate aim is the democratisation not just of the party but of local government, workplaces, society itself.
‘I’ve spent much of the last two decades working in movements aimed at creating new forms of bottom-up democracy, from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street [2011].’
I should emphasise that I am myself very much an outside observer here – but one uniquely positioned, perhaps, to understand what the Corbynistas are trying to do. I’ve spent much of the past two decades working in movements aimed at creating new forms of bottom-up democracy, from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street. It was our strong conviction that real, direct democracy, could never be created inside the structures of government. One had to open up a space outside. The Corbynistas are trying to prove us wrong. Will they be successful? I have absolutely no idea. But I cannot help find it a fascinating historical experiment. The spearhead of the democratisation movement is Momentum, which now boasts 130 chapters across the UK. In the mainstream press it usually gets attention only when some local activist is accused of “bullying” or “abuse” against their MP – or worse, suggests the possibility that an MP who systematically defies the views of membership might face deselection.
The real concern is not any justified fear among the Labour establishment of bullying and intimidation – the idea that the weak would bully the strong is absurd. It is that they fear being made truly accountable to those they represent. They also say that while so far they have been forced to concentrate on internal party politics, the object is to move from a politics of accountability to one of participation: to create forms of popular education and decision-making that allow community groups and local assemblies made up of citizens of all political stripes to make key decisions affecting their lives.
There have already been local experiments: in Thanet, the council recently carried out an exercise in “participatory economic planning” – devolving budgetary and strategic decisions to the community at large – which shadow chancellor John McDonnell has hailed as a potential model for the nation. There is talk of giving consultative assemblies real decision-making powers, of “banks of radical ideas” to which anyone can propose policy initiatives and, especially in the wake of the coup, a major call to democratise the internal workings of the party itself. It may all seem mad. Perhaps it is. But more than 100,000 new Labour members are already, to one degree or another, committed to the project.
If nothing else, understanding this makes it much easier to understand the splits in the party after the recent rebellion within the shadow cabinet. Even the language used by each side reflects basically different conceptions of what politics is about. For Corbyn’s opponents, the key word is always “leadership” and the ability of an effective leader to “deliver” certain key constituencies. For Corbyn’s supporters “leadership” in this sense is a profoundly anti-democratic concept. It assumes that the role of a representative is not to represent, not to listen, but to tell people what to do.
For Corbynistas, in contrast, the fact that he is in no sense a rabble rouser, that he doesn’t seem to particularly want to be prime minister, but is nonetheless willing to pursue the goal for the sake of the movement, is precisely his highest qualification. While one side effectively accuses him of refusing to play the demagogue during the Brexit debate, for the other, his insistence on treating the public as responsible adults was the quintessence of the “new kind of politics” they wished to see.
What all this suggests is the possibility that the remarkable hostility to Corbyn displayed by even the left-of-centre media is not due to the fact they don’t understand what the movement that placed him in charge of the Labour party is ultimately about, but because, on some level, they actually do.
After all, insofar as politics is a game of personalities, of scandals, foibles and acts of “leadership”, political journalists are not just the referees – in a real sense they are the field on which the game is played. Democratisation would turn them into reporters once again, in much the same way as it would turn politicians into representatives. In either case, it would mark a dramatic decline in personal power and influence. It would mark an equally dramatic rise in power for unions, constituent councils, and local activists – the very people who have rallied to Corbyn’s support.
Check out this program about decision making on bbc iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wyr3c It makes you think, are you actually choosing or has the choice already been made for you without actually thinking about it A thought provoking programme
Anyway, back on topic I reckon all this in fighting between the MP's will lose voters of the party as a whole And that goes for the tories as well
Video of the rally walking down Paradise Street from Radio Merseyside which went on to Marks & Sparks Church Street.
I reckon on over 2000 people, maybe around 2500 people?
Meant to put this up earlier but had a few problems with the upload which takes about 4 hours.
Didn't have a video camera with me so its just taken on my camera with no image stabilisation - I've left it unedited.
There's a real danger that the left will drag Britain back to the 1970s, with secure well-paid jobs, ample housing, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition, student grants, final salary pensions, affordable rail fares and fabulous films and music. David Osland 2025
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Yeah, I think the camera is limited to 10 minute clips before the cmos sensor overheats and I had no idea how long the parade was so I thought I'd speed things up. I had only planned to take photos, I didn't think that many people were going to turn up.
I'll put another vid up in a while, once its uploaded.
There's a real danger that the left will drag Britain back to the 1970s, with secure well-paid jobs, ample housing, properly-funded NHS and social care, free tuition, student grants, final salary pensions, affordable rail fares and fabulous films and music. David Osland 2025
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
