CWU backs Corbyn as antidote to Blairite 'virus'

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Communication Workers Union backs Corbyn as antidote to Blairite 'virus'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... rite-virus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CWU follows example of Unison and Unite unions in backing leftwing candidate ‘to fight back against Blairites’


‘There is a virus within the Labour party – Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote,’ said Dave Ward, the CWU general secretary. Photograph: Getty Images


Jeremy Corbyn has taken another major step forward in his campaign to become Labour leader after the Communications Workers Union announced that it is to endorse him to act as the antidote to the Blairite “virus” in the party.

In a sign that the veteran leftwinger is building up huge momentum in his campaign, the CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, announced that he is to follow in the steps of the Unison and Unite unions to endorse Corbyn.

“There is a virus within the Labour party – Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote,” Ward said. He added that Corbyn offered the chance to fight back against Blairites such as Peter Mandelson.

In a statement and a video message posted on Twitter, Ward said the CWU had decided to back Corbyn because it rejected the idea that Labour should occupy the political centre ground.

Ward said: “I am delighted to announce that the CWU will be backing Jeremy Corbyn MP to be the next leader of the Labour party. There are no quick fixes for the Labour party, but there are some easy decisions and choosing Jeremy as its leader should be one of them.

“We think that it is time for a change for Labour. The grip of the Blairites and individuals like Peter Mandelson must now be loosened once and for all. There is a virus within the Labour party, and Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote.

“We reject the notion that Labour needs to move to the centre ground of British politics. The centre ground has moved significantly to the right in recent years. We do not see arguing for fairer wealth distribution, decent jobs with good pay, terms and conditions and a substantial increase in affordable housing for the next generation as a leftwing agenda.

“Jeremy agrees with the vast amount of CWU policy, ranging from opposing the selling off of Royal Mail, to offering a real alternative to austerity, and repealing anti-trade union laws.”

The decision of Britain’s fifth biggest trade union to follow the two largest – Unite and Unison – in supporting Corbyn is fuelling a growing sense in the Labour party that the MP for Islington North is building a momentum that may be unstoppable. On the eve of the close of nominations by constituency Labour parties (CLPs), the New Statesman has reported that Corbyn is leading the field. It says he has so far secured 133 CLP nominations, followed by 106 for Andy Burnham, 100 for Yvette Cooper and 15 for Liz Kendall.

The CLP nominations carry no formal weight but they can give a strong indication of how the Labour membership will vote. In 2010 David Miliband won the highest number of CLP nominations and won the membership section of the electoral college. His brother, Ed, overtook him after winning strong union support in the trade union and affiliated societies section of the electoral college. Under the new rules, party members, registered supporters and registered trade unions all have one vote.

The CWU has 200,000 members, making it Britain’s fifth biggest union behind Unite, Unison, the GMB – which is not backing any candidate – and Usdaw, which is backing Burnham. But the CWU is the fourth largest union in terms of the number of members eligible to vote in a Labour leadership contest. A CWU source said its members tended to follow the advice of the leadership.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.cwu.org/news/archive/cwu-bac ... eader.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The CWU has today (Thursday) announced its endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn MP to be the next leader of the UK Labour.

Speaking after the decision, the General Secretary of the CWU, Dave Ward, said:

"I am delighted to announce that the CWU will be backing Jeremy Corbyn MP to be the next leader of the Labour Party.

"There are no quick fixes for the Labour party, but there are some easy decisions and choosing Jeremy as its leader should be one of them.

Dave Ward GS
"We think that it is time for a change for Labour. The grip of the Blairites and individuals like Peter Mandelson must now be loosened once and for all. There is a virus within the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote.

"We reject the notion that Labour needs to move to the centre ground of British politics. The centre ground has moved significantly to the right in recent years. We do not see arguing for fairer wealth distribution, decent jobs with good pay, terms and conditions and a substantial increase in affordable housing for the next generation as a left-wing agenda.

"There is a virus within the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn is the antidote"
Dave Ward, CWU general secretary

"Jeremy agrees with the vast amount of CWU policy, ranging from opposing the selling off of Royal Mail, to offering a real alternative to austerity, and repealing anti-trade union laws."

The CWU will be also recommending that members vote for Andy Burnham as their second preference in the leadership election.

In the Deputy Leadership Election the CWU will be recommending that members vote for Angela Eagle as first preference and to vote Caroline Flint as their second preference.

[Lounge Lizard]

"The CWU has today (Thursday) announced its endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn MP to be the next leader of the UK Labour."
"The CWU will be also recommending that members vote for Andy Burnham as their second preference in the leadership election."
So only a man for potential Prime Minister ? That must be the legacy of Thatcher.

[Puppetmaster]

Can someone please explain to a thick head like myself why on earth the CWU is medalling in Politics, the labour leader is nothing to do with the CWU, if everything was going good for the CWU Members then political involvement may have a case.

The situation we are now in in the workplace is we are now doing everything most of the local offices to me went out on strike for, when under a labour government we were pressured to go back to work .
In my office we went out on strike not for Pay but over working conditions, larger walks ,absorption/lapsing ,now we empty boxes deliver all tracked and specials do D2D for houses we have no mail for ,and even more bullying from Management and the stress and sickness levels has rose substantially, and we are working at the hottest part of the day !

What are the CWU doing about all of this with a new leader of course playing Politics instead of getting its own house keeping in order first.

How about Dave ward and Andy Corbyn do a Park and loop round for a week ,both get to know each other better and give Dave a insight into a job he has no knowledge of in the present day ,not like years ago when you could go to watch your team play on a Saturday !

[Lounge Lizard]

Can someone please explain to a thick head like myself why on earth the CWU is medalling in Politics, the labour leader is nothing to do with the CWU, if everything was going good for the CWU Members then political involvement may have a case.

The situation we are now in in the workplace is we are now doing everything most of the local offices to me went out on strike for, when under a labour government we were pressured to go back to work .
In my office we went out on strike not for Pay but over working conditions, larger walks ,absorption/lapsing ,now we empty boxes deliver all tracked and specials do D2D for houses we have no mail for ,and even more bullying from Management and the stress and sickness levels has rose substantially, and we are working at the hottest part of the day !

What are the CWU doing about all of this with a new leader of course playing Politics instead of getting its own house keeping in order first.

How about Dave ward and Andy Corbyn do a Park and loop round for a week ,both get to know each other better and give Dave a insight into a job he has no knowledge of in the present day ,not like years ago when you could go to watch your team play on a Saturday !

No, not a week, a day, or a part of a day, and then Jeremy Corbyn would say "On my visit I found that postmen and women not only deliver the mail but play an important part in the local communities across Wimbledon. I joined local CWU boss, Dave, who had heard all about delivering mail to people all over the country for a number of years. This is the best way of getting an insight into the work involved in delivering the mail on a daily basis - they go out in all weathers, and I thank them for all the work they do."

[bogstandard]

Who would or more importantly could the swing voters be encouraged to vote for that is the real question. i honestly believe that if David had been chosen instead of Ed there would have been a greater Labour vote than what came to pass. As superficial as this is David was visually a more bankable commodity than Ed, no matter what you think you must entertain the possibility that some vote with their eyes. To make it government policy you need to be in goverment. Watch, there will be a massive transformation of George Osborne.
Point being looks count take Micheal Foot, brilliant mind, looked like a nutter. The ones who control who becomes PM do not listen to whats being said only how that person looks when they say it.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Can someone please explain to a thick head like myself why on earth the CWU is medalling in Politics, the labour leader is nothing to do with the CWU,

Sorry but you are incorrect in your assumption that the Union has no involvement in the Labour Party, in fact on a both a historical level and in the modern view the Labour Party and The Union/s have a very close working relationship.

THE RELATIONSHIP
The relationship between the Labour Party and the CWU operates at three levels: national, regional and local.

National: The CWU is represented on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee in the Trades Union section by Andy Kerr, CWU Deputy general Secretary (Telecoms and FInancial Services). The union is represented on the National Policy Forum by General Secretary Billy Hayes.

The CWU also has representation on the Trade Union Liaison Committee with the General Secretary, which brings trade unions together in order to organise support during election campaigns.

Regional: There are eleven Labour Party Regions and the CWU is represented on most of the Regional Executive Committees. These act as administrative units to co ordinate the work of the Party.

Local: Each Branch of the CWU can affiliate to Constituency Labour Parties within their boundaries. The CWU Branch can then send a nominated delegate to CLP meetings to support the work of the Party in that Parliamentary Constituency.

POLICIES
The CWU is able to send delegations of its members to both the national Labour Party Annual Conference and Regional Labour Party Conferences. At these conferences, the union is given voting rights in accordance with its affiliated membership, weighted by a 50:50 percentage division between trade union and CLP voting strengths. The CWU has a direct input into debates by being able to submit motions and amendments and through contributions by its delegates.

PARLIAMENTARY SELECTIONS
The CWU has nomination rights for candidates involved in standing for Parliament in individual Parliamentary Constituencies. Up until 1993, trade unions had voting rights in Parliamentary selections, but the move to a One Member, One Vote (OMOV) procedure limited trade union involvement to nominations.

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION

The following are CWU constituency supported MPs:

Joe Benton (Bootle) former Girobank Clerical Officer
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow & East Falkirk)
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham)
Peter Hain (Neath) former UCW Head of Research
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall)
Bob Laxton (Derby North) former BT Engineer

Constituency Development Plan Agreements have been established with the Constituencies of the following MPs:

Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North)
Sadiq Khan (Tooting)
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North)

The CWU also has a special relationship with two members of the House of Lords who are former UCW/CWU officers:

Lord Clarke of Hampstead and
Lord Young of Norwood Green

All these politicians are from the Labour Party.

POLITICAL FUND MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
Internally the CWU has the above committee to manage the Political Fund of the union. By law, the union is required to ballot its members on retaining a Political Fund every 10 years. The last ballot was held in 2004 and 73% voted in favour of retaining the Fund. The PFMC deals with all political matters except policy issues which are handled by the Policy, Education & Training Committee.

LABOUR PARTY MEMBERSHIP
Under the rules of membership agreed by the Labour Party in 1993, trade union members belonging to a union affiliated to the Labour Party can join the Labour Party as full members for only £12 a year. The CWU has run many recruitment initiatives to maximise recruitment to the Labour Party from its own ranks.


Also the Labour Party itself was formed as a result of direct pressure from Unions and members which in the end by way of the TUC and various other bodies the Labour Party was formed to represent the working class in parliament. http://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/MORTIMER.HTM" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Midge]

To any CWU members who have not yet registered to vote in the Labour Leadership election: the deadline is tomorrow, 12 noon on Wednesday 12th August.

You can register as an affiliated supporter at this webpage:

http://support.labour.org.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[fishtank]

Just a pedantic point Teebs Michael Connarty no longer represents Linlithgow & East Falkirk, like most former Labour MPs north of the border he no longer represents anyone which leads to another question, isn't supporting a dead party in Scotland with zero influence a waste of members money?

I met Michael many times and he seemed like a decent enough guy but let's be honest what did the CWU Parliamentary Committee actually achieve for the funding we gave it?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

The Anti-Jeremy Corbyn People: How They Sound to Me
Posted on August 3, 2015 by markfiddaman https://markfiddaman.wordpress.com/2015 ... und-to-me/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I may not have read any of Corbyn’s policies. But I have imagined what he might think, on the basis of an unorthodox hat he once wore. And let me tell you— never have I heard such barmy, bleeding-heart, loony-left, pie-in-the-sky, stuck-in-the-past, socks-and-sandals, mouth-frothing, terrorist-licking, weirdo-beardo Islington pinko codswallop in all my life.

I’m told Corbyn has some fanciful, Trotskyite notions about not treating the poor like vermin and avoiding imbecilic economic policy. Pfft. Go back to Russia, mate. I think I also read somewhere that he wants to reduce the deficit with a growth strategy, the like of which has never worked ever, apart from all the times it has.

Well, Corbyn can’t trick me with that old ‘saying things that are true’ routine. He can’t pull the wool over my eyes with his manifest skill at harnessing grassroots momentum and his ability to articulate a message of hope with clarity and conviction. Because I know that Corbyn is unelectable. He’s simply too left wing. I mean, for God’s sake, the man was friends with Tony Benn. And apparently he was a Bennite.

What the Corbyn Camp fail to realise is that, to stand a chance at the next election, we have to appease all the aspirational-small-business-owners-who-want-to-get-on. And those guys hate growth. They’re none too keen on schools or hospitals either. That’s why they, along with the rest of the country, love Osbornomics. This was proven at the general election. The public were able to voice clear-minded approval for the right-wing economic narrative, without being distracted by any ‘meaningful critiques’ or ‘credible alternatives’.

Moreover, I’ve just sacrificed a chicken and, according to its spleen, public opinion will stay exactly the same for the next five years, whatever events occur. So why would we elect a leader who’d only waste time and energy defying the chicken-spleen, trying to present a meaningful counter-narrative? Do you have any idea how much principled argument and competent political communication that would involve? No thanks, loonies.

There’s a much easier, much more sensible route back to power in 2020. We simply trail along in the Tory slipstream, frowning a bit should a pauper keel over from hunger or whatever, but basically drifting further and further to the right. Come election time, we’ll need a way to distinguish ourselves from the actual, historical party of the right. Easy. We simply sacrifice more chickens, petitioning the poultry gods to intervene in the campaign on our behalf. A nice scandal should do the trick: perhaps ‘Boris Johnson’ is outed as three Eton Sixth Formers sharing a suit; or perhaps George Osborne is filmed patrolling the treasury on a giant mechanical spider. We don’t know yet— it’ll depend on the breed of chicken.

The point is, in focusing near-exclusively on the centre-right, we have a tried and tested victory strategy.

It’ll be just like the Glorious Spring of ’97! Every schoolboy knows the story— Tony Blair hides inside a giant wooden Margaret Thatcher, tricking the Middle Englanders into letting him through their gates, only to leap out in the night and introduce the minimum wage at them. The moral? Labour only wins elections by pretending to be a different political party. (It also helps to have a preternaturally charismatic leader, a brilliant and ruthless media strategist and a divided and weakly-led opposition; but that’s all optional probably.)

Sadly, many Corbyn supporters are simply too stupid to appreciate water-tight arguments like the above. But there are others who know he’ll never get anywhere near Number 10. They see their support for Corbyn as a means of expressing their anger at a post-New Labour party too afraid to distance itself from the Tories, or want to try to shock it out of its complicity in a morally and intellectually bankrupt economic narrative.

What these idiots need to realise is that an important part of political maturity is accepting that your democratic preferences don’t matter. If you care about politics, it’s your duty to suppress what you believe to be right and true. You have to pander to the second-guessed preferences of everyone else. You have to examine your nearest set of chicken-guts, predicting where public opinion will be five years hence, shirking from any responsibility for shaping or changing the prevailing consensus.

If you don’t accept that, then you’re a petulant, naive, wet-behind-the-ears child, in need of a heart transplant, with a death wish for Labour. You should take your medicine and listen to your betters, like illegal war-enthusiast, Tony Blair, or scowling Apprentice semi-finalist, Chuka Umunna. They’ll tell you that, in the upcoming leadership vote, there’s only one way Labour members can save democratic socialism: sit down, shut up, and vote the way you’ve f***ing well been told to.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Just a pedantic point Teebs Michael Connarty no longer represents Linlithgow & East Falkirk, like most former Labour MPs north of the border he no longer represents anyone which leads to another question, isn't supporting a dead party in Scotland with zero influence a waste of members money?

I met Michael many times and he seemed like a decent enough guy but let's be honest what did the CWU Parliamentary Committee actually achieve for the funding we gave it?

Damn CWU up to date with everything

[chrisj]

Sadly, Corbyn cannot be an effective Leader of a main political party.

Party politics is just not as simply as having someone decent and with good ideas... He simply cannot (and should expect to) command any sort of loyalty because he has not been loyal himself; so many times voting against his party.

I was really hoping that he would have pulled out by now - with the sort of notion that I have made my points and there is groundswell support for an alternative to the narrative from the so-called Blarites or the pragmatist that stand for very little except getting into power first.

This is so sad for the Labour party! The other candidates are much of a muchness and they are totally unconvincing except being just a little but better than Ed Miliband (just because they have learned their lessons not just because they can present better and are not going to go gung-ho against big businesses and the Press).

Corbyn will be ousted as soon as he wins the leadership contest; and that is well within the privilege and mandate of the MPs - they have that power and they could and should use it but the ramifications will be unpredictable for the future of the Labour party unless they elect someone like Andy Burnham (the flip-flopper). I think Yvette Cooper is lightweight and has baggage with Ed Balls and being former Treasury minister.

Labour needs all the MPS and support they can get - without the likes of Skinner, Abbot, Watson, Corbyn and others, Labour will not get the numbers they need to rule (have power as Alistair C, Liz Kendall and Blair are obsessed with). With Scotland virtually gone, can any of the Leadership candidate really command a majority in the next election? Labour needs left ideas like those of Corbyn and SNP and some 'Centre or even some centre-right*' ideas like those of the Tories (not Liz - she is just a copy cat).

*Centre Right* Immigration, Defence, Nationalism/Britishness, Welfare controls and wealth creation (in a non dodgy and unethical way) should not be Taboo subjects for Labour, not any longer. For example, The Tories promised an EU Referendum where Labour treated the electorate with disdain and contempt on the issue - the result is more vote for UKIP and Tories... The irony is that the Tories are not so different from Labour on Europe - the Tories are just tough talking but will do no different but it was enough to fool some voters.

And Labour also needs to bust the myth about causing the Crash and being solely responsible for the Deficit. The trend of underspending and leaving some areas of the UK deprived is continuing under the Tories. A Labour government in 2025 will also have to spend like Tony Blair/Gordon Brown because by the time the Tories leave, a lot of areas in the UK will have been run down...