I had a message from the Arise Festival of Left Ideas notifying me of the various events they’re holding at the end of the month and into June. One of them is a campaign to have the whip restored to Jeremy Corbyn, and there’s an online rally on Wednesday, 31st May, about resisting the Tories and another on June 14th about fighting Starmer’s dictatorial constraints and restoring true democracy to the Labour party.
‘ACTION ALERT: As 70k oppose Starmer’s bloc on Corbyn – let the members decide!
Let the members decide – support the new model motion – Download here & take to your CLP // Read more here // Retweet graphic here // FB share here.
Keep building support as 70k+ sign petition – sign & share here // Retweet image here // FB share here // Read more here.
Join The Case for Labour Party Democracy – for Members’ Rights & the Union Link online event – June 14, 18.30. Register here // Retweet here // Full info below. With Jon Trickett MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS//Simon Fletcher // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour.
We will keep fighting.
Yours in solidarity, Matt Willgress, via Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas & the Labour Assembly.
EVENT: The Case for Labour Party Democracy – for Members’ Rights & the Union Link
Online, Wednesday June 14, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Jon Trickett MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS//Simon Fletcher // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour.
Join us for a vital discussion In light of the growing concern about the erosion of democracy in the Labour Party. To make the case for a democratic party and movement – and to map out next steps in campaigning for members’ rights and in defence of the trade-union link.
Part of Arise – An Online Festival of Left Ideas 2023.
Also coming up at Arise 2023
1) RALLY: Our Right to Resist
Online, Wednesday May 31, 6.30pm. Register here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here & spread the word.
John McDonnell MP // Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP // Kate Osborne MP // Kim Johnson MP // Lord John Hendy KC // Zita Holbourne, BARAC // Myriam Kane, Black Liberation Alliance // Chantelle Lunt, Black Lives Matter & Kill the Bill // Ellen Fearon, GND Rising // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) & Momentum NCG // Rob Poole, Strikemap // Chris Peace, Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign // Hasan Patel, Young Labour // Daniel Kebede, NEU next General Secretary// Fran Heathcote, PCS President // Alex Gordon, RMT President // Video message from Shami Chakrabarti // Christine Blower (Chair)
Opening Arise – An Online Festival of Left Ideas 2023. ‘
This is another message I got from the organisers of the Arise Festival of left-wing ideas. They’re organising an online meeting on the 31st May 2023 about defending our right to resist from the highly authoritarian and illiberal legislation that was used to arrest the anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation.
The shameful rushing through of anti-protest legislation in the run-up to the Coronation – & how police treated protesters during it – starkly illustrate how a deeply unpopular Government has had a major authoritarian shift on top of years of attacks on our democratic rights. As John McDonnell noted yesterday, “There’s a comprehensive assault on basic civil liberties – the right to strike, right to protest peacefully & right of journalists to report without arrest.. Time has come for a new movement to defend our civil liberties.”
Yours in solidarity, Matt Willgress , Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas (via Labour Assembly.)
Our Right to Resist
Major online rally. Wednesday May 31, 6.30pm. Register here // Retweet here & spread the word.
John McDonnell MP // Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP // Kate Osborne MP // Lord John Hendy KC // Zita Holbourne, BARAC // Myriam Kane, Black Liberation Alliance // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) & Momentum NCG // Rob Poole, Strikemap // Chris Peace, Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign // Hasan Patel, Young Labour/ / Fran Heathcote, PCS President // Alex Gordon, RMT President // Video message from Shami Chakrabarti.// Chair: Christine Blower // & many more tba.
The deeply unpopular Tory Government has had a major authoritarian shift, with a new assault – on top of years of attacks – on our basic civil liberties and democratic rights. As part of the growing opposition to this, we are bringing together a wide range of voices to stand up for our right to resist and say no more.
Opening Arise – An Online Festival of Left Ideas 2023. ‘
I got an invitation the other day from the Labour party to buy tickets so that I could meet Peter Mandelson at a special dinner in Swindon. It was a repeat of a similar dinner a little while ago, in which they Labour faithful were asked to buy tickets to a similar event to meet certain members of the party’s front bench. I didn’t want to go then. Not just because I couldn’t afford it, and am too sick to travel to Swindon anyway, but also because I objected to it in principle. The Labour party was set up by the trade unions and socialist parties to fight for working people. It should be funded from their subscriptions, not from corporate donations and dinners set up in emulation of the Tories.
And principle says I don’t want to meet Mandelson anyway. He was very clever as the party’s spin doctor and electoral strategist, but he and Blair prolonged Thatcherism well past its proper lifetime. It was Blair’s government that cut of benefits for asylum seekers and pushed them into detention centres, pushed NHS privatisation into high gear, and went about cheerfully outsourcing more state business, introduced the work capability tests, carried on with benefit sanctions, and was very enthusiastic about private management of prisons. Blair also took money from pro-Israel Jewish businessmen, thus ensuring his silence over that country’s flagrant human rights abuses. And then there was a little matter like the illegal war in Iraq. It was under Blair that the party turned away from its working class roots to appeal to middle class swing voters. They condescendingly expected Labour voters to go with it, as they had nowhere else to go. Hence the shock and outrage when Jeremy Corbyn started packing them out at halls, parks and sports grounds up and down Britain. Hence also the rise of UKIP, as White working class voters who felt they’d been abandoned by the both parties turned to Farage’s xenophobia and populism.
If I want to go and see someone from the Labour party, it’d be Richard Burgon, Jeremy Corbyn or that other dissident, ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone. I’d go and see Rosina Allin-Khan, a woman of mixed Polish and Asian heritage, who’s a doctor working in the NHS and concerned, as so many are, about the state the Conservatives have reduced it to. I’d want to hear Black Activists Rising Against Cuts. I dare say they have takes on racism and White privilege that might annoy me, but austerity is hitting the Black community hardest, as is clear from a paper in the collection The Violence of Austerity. I’d go to see the head of Young Labour as she defies the leadership on issues like socialism and Israel.
I want proper, working people back leading the Labour party. I want to see a working mother tell her story about struggling to keep her family fed and their home heated on her and her partner’s wages. I want to hear former students tell how, despite their degree, their now mired in £40,000 worth of debt and are flipping burgers at McDonald’s for a living. I want to hear the people who volunteer at food banks about the starvation and privation they see. I want to see someone from Disabled People Against Cuts talk about how austerity, low wages and welfare cuts is affecting ordinary disabled folk. I want to see Jews like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker talk about Israeli atrocities and the sectarian anti-Semitic persecution to which they’ve been subjected. I want to see Alexei Sayle, shouty, foul-mouthed Sayle, make jokes about Communism and the Conservatives, celebrating and supporting real anti-racist activists like Marc Wadsworth.
I want to hear the voices of ordinary men and women stuck in dead-end jobs and zero hours contracts talking about their lives and how they can be improved. People on supermarket checkouts, cleaners, white-collar office workers, now being depressed into the rest of the proletariat. As for business, I only want to hear from the small business people, the Arkwrights, who run local stores and corner shops, who are being driven into the ground as the Tories and corporatist New Labour support big business and the supermarkets.
I want to hear from the elderly as they worry about pensions and issues like mobility, as well as the problems they experience as everything goes on line. Many of them don’t have a computer and don’t understand them. They have to rely on their children to sort some of this out for them. What if they haven’t had any, and don’t have younger friends and neighbours to help them?
I want the victims of the benefit agencies humiliations and sanctions regime to tear into that and the cruelty and self-interest of the clerks administering it.
These are the people, I’d pay to see. Not someone like Mandelson, Blair or Starmer, who seem to have only a nodding acquaintance with working people, and see them through the prism of voting and demographic documents with the cool, detached eye of the ad man. Not someone who patronises them with management-speak, who expects Labour grassroots activists and supporters to act as drones reading from specially prepared scripts.
I want that to end. I want it to have ended long ago, when Brown lost the election.
I want to see local MPs for local people, not right-wingers parachuted in against the wishes of ordinary voters.
Those are the real Labour party. Not Mandelson, Blair and Starmer. I want to see proper Labour activists at protests, picket lines and church halls. I don’t want to see corporate closet Tories across a dinner table.
Last week Starmer blocked Corbyn from standing as a Labour party MP, very much against the wishes of his Islington constituency party. This is just the latest in Stalin’s attack on democracy in the Labour party, and the grassroots are organising against it.
‘EVENT: Let the Members Decide – For Labour Party Democracy.
Online. Wednesday April 5, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Retweet here to spread the word.
Initial speakers confirmed: Jess Barnard, Labour NEC (pc) // Neil Findlay, former MSP // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour Chair // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) // Jon Trickett MP .
An online meeting facilitated & streamed by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas in light of the growing concern about the erosion of democracy in the Labour Party. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event.‘
Coming together with us in the evening at the #BuildingtheFightback online rally at 6.30pm. Full details are below – PCS, NEU, RMT, CWU & more voices of resistance will be joining us!
Yours in solidarity. The Arise & Labour Assembly volunteers.
RALLY: Building the fightback in 2023.
Online rally, 6.30pm, THIS Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country! Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
FINAL-LINE UP CONFIRMED: Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // John McDonnell MP // Riccardo La Torre, FBU // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Angie Rojas, Acorn // Tandrima Mazumdar, Migrants Organise // Logan Williams, striking teacher // James Braithwaite, RMT Young members activist // Robert Poole, co-founder of Strike Map // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No/
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event. ‘
I’m not planning to go, but I’m putting this up for those who are interested. And I’m 100 per cent behind everyone battling the Tories and their anti-worker policies.,
‘We must do everything we can in support of the strikers – Diane Abbott
Be part of the fightback – Register here // Retweet me here // FB share here // Read article here.
HelloDavid
Whatever the Tories may tell us, the current strike wave that has been unleashed is as a direct result of government policies to benefit big business by impoverishing workers. Now, ministers are directly involved in attempting to defeat the strikes in numerous ways. As a result, these strikes are objectively highly political. The government has made them so, and is willing to use every type of divide-and-rule tactic and press vilification to defeat the strikers.
Online rally, 6.30pm, Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country! Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Liz Cabeza, Acorn (Haringey) // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No // Matt Wrack, FBU GS & more.
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event. ‘
I’ve had some of this blog’s great commenters wondering what the Labour left is doing to challenge Starmer’s stranglehold on the party and his determination to turn it into another version of the Tories. And not necessarily one further to the left. The Labour left is still around and organising events. I’ve had some emails about them, but didn’t put them up as they were in-person meetings in London, and so difficult to get to for people like me in the provinces, or they were about foreign politics, like Latin America, which I didn’t think many people would be interested in. Yesterday I had another email from Matt Willgress through the Arise festival of left ideas and the Labour Assembly against Austerity, giving details about events coming up in what remains of this month and February.
Let’s make 2023 the year of growing waves of resistance.
Read my article here // Retweet it here to spread the word // Register for Feb.1 here
Hello David
Last week, Tory ministers met numerous unions to discuss public-sector pay, but no movement was made, meaning that strike action is set to escalate, including with the PCS announcing 100,000 will be on strike on what is shaping up to be a major day of industrial and other forms of action on February 1st, the day of our #BuildingtheFightback rally.
The Tory refusal to budge on pay is the logical follow-on from locking-in austerity for years. On the Left we need to understand the scale of what we are up against politically, the extent of the crisis Britain is facing, and the nature of what is to come if the Tories aren’t forced out, including that this is an increasingly authoritarian Government.
We need to be organising resistance right now – and we need to be backing those movements taking direct action and backing those workers taking industrial action. Let’s make 2023 the year of growing waves of resistance to the Tories – join us at Building the Fightback on February 1 (details below) in solidarity with workers in struggle and to map out our next steps.
Yours in solidarity, Matt Willgress, on behalf of the Arise volunteers.
RALLY: Building the fightback in 2023.
Online rally, 6.30pm, Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country! Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Liz Cabeza, Acorn (Haringey) // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No // Matt Wrack, FBU GS & more.
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event.
OTHER 2023 DIARY DATES:
1) FORUM: The economic crisis – was Marx right?
Online. Monday January 23, 2023. Register here // share & invite here // retweet here to spread the word
Here in Britain and around the world the economic crisis is deepening. Join economist Michael Roberts for debate and discussion – was Nye Bevan right, wrong, or both when he said “Marxism put into the hands of the working class movement… the most complete blueprints for political action the world has ever seen?”
Labour Outlook forum as part of the Socialist Ideas series – kindly streamed by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas.
2) CONFERENCE: The World At War – A Trade Union Issue
Register here. Saturday 21 January 2023, 10.30am, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD (Nearest tube: Euston/Kings Cross).
Jeremy Corbyn MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF // Salma Yaqoob // Fran Heathcote, PCS // Alex Gordon, RMT // Ricardo La Torre, FBU & more.
Organised by the Stop the War Coalition.
3) DIARY DATE: A Society in Crisis – Building a Progressive Policy Platform.
Sat 11 Feb, 2023, 10:00am, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, WC1B 5DQ. Register here – Retweet here.
“The economic, social and environmental crises we face mean the need for a transformative policy agenda is more urgent than ever. For this reason, on February 11, I will be bringing together academics, think tanks, policy researchers and experts, campaigners and others to develop a progressive policy platform – and hope you can join us there.” – John McDonnell MP.
Organised by Claim the Future & Influencing the Corridors of Power’
It’s a pity the last meeting is in London, as this is what the left really need to challenge neoliberalism, in the Labour party as much as anywhere else. Perhaps they’ll release a video of it later on YouTube.
This Friday, the 8th of July, the Arise Festival of left Labour ideas is also presenting the event ‘Justice for the Global South’, the description of which goes
‘Justice for the Global South – tackling climate chaos, ending the debt, vaccines for all.
Online event, Friday July 8, 13.00.Register here // Retweet here // Get ticket for the whole festival here.
With: Heidi Chow, Debt Justice /./ Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now // Asad Rehman, War on Want // Stop Oil speaker & chaired by Fraser Amos, Young Labour Student Rep.
Tomorrow the Labour left has organised a Zoom event calling for a return to nationalisation as part of the Arise Festival of left-wing Labour ideas. The event is called ‘Public Ownership Now!‘, and the description of it in the email I received runs
‘Online. Wednesday July 6, 19.00.Register here // Retweet here // Get ticket for the whole festival here.
With: Ian Lavery MP // Kate Osborne MP // Kevin Courtney, NEU General Secretary // Nadia Jama, Labour NEC // Johnbosco Nwogbo, Lead Campaigner, We Own It // Fraser McGuire, candidate on Socialist Future slate in Young Labour // Dr. Sonia Adesara, Keep Our NHS PubliC.
Join the discussion on how public ownership, stopping the privatisation scandal & public control are essential to tackling the crises facing Britain. From addressing the cost-of-living crisis, to the climate emergency, to the urgent need for more resources for public services, extending public ownership across the economy is key.’
I also got this email today from the organisers of the Arise Festival of left Labour ideas notifying that there’s an event at 7.00 pm tonight about LGBTQ+ Liberation, Solidarity and Socialism. The email runs
Premieres TODAY, Sunday July 3, 19.00. Join & watch with comrades here or watch back later here // Get ticket for the whole festival here.
As the government turns to reactionary divide and rule politics in the face of a cost of living crisis, and as violent attacks on LGBTQ+ increase at an alarming rate, Amy Smith of Arise Festival meets in conversation with Mike Jackson (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) and Katherine Harlow (LGBTQ+ candidate on Young Labour’s Socialist Future slate) to discuss the way forward for LGBTQ+ liberation.
LGSM were at the forefront of providing solidarity to striking miners throughout the 84/85 strike. The NUM then led the 1985 Pride March and moved the motion supporting LGBT rights at Labour’s conference in the same year. We’ll be discussing what we can learn from that experience, the importance of Pride, and why solidarity and socialism must be at the heart of fighting for LGBTQ+ liberation.
‘LGBTQ+ Liberation – Pride, solidarity & socialism.
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