Labour’s Scottish Problem. by Les May

IN the early 1970s I worked on an island in the Outer Hebrides. The people who lived there were not the ‘Industrial Proletariat’ so beloved by those of a romantic turn of mind, but small scale ‘entrepreneurs’ who made their living working on their family ‘croft’ and organised into ‘townships’ which annually allocated to each crofter strips of Machair land on which was grown a mixture of rye and black-oats which was cut in late summer to provide winter forage for a few cattle. With sheep summered on the poorer land on the east of the island and wintered on the land close to the house which had been used for hay in summer it provided a living, but not a very luxurious one. My two closest neighbours lived in two room, single story houses with a roof of thatch made from Marram Grass. One had carpets laid on the bare earth floor. Both got water from a tap outside their house

I’ve been back a few times since and, as well as paying my respects at the graves of some of the people I knew, I’ve seen the much greater prosperity enjoyed by the Islanders. The single track road with passing places has gone, there’s a causeway linking six of the islands, there are jobs for women and the two room thatched houses are museum pieces. No wonder Scots voted to stay in the EU. (Incidentally you will see the same improved infra-structure on the islands of Madeira and Tenerife.)

At the time the Scottish Nationalists were described as ‘Tartan Tories’ and the constituency returned a Labour MP. Now it returns both a Scottish Nationalist MSP to Holyrood and an MP to London . The SNP has morphed into, what is in many respects, a social democratic party. Is it possible that Labour and the SNP are fighting over much the same political territory in Scotland, and the SNP is winning? Perhaps Labour should start asking why the SNP has been so successful at invading its territory in Scotland.

Is it possible that the SNP is drawing significant support not for enthusiasm for a ‘go it alone Scotland’, but for the party’s domestic policies? Tory governments in particular have tried to force on Scotland domestic policies which have been less than popular over the border, e.g. water privatisation and the introduction of the Poll Tax a year before it was forced on England. Repeated attempts were made by the Tories to find a way of privatising Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry service which serves as a lifeline to 22 Scottish Islands. It is now a subsidiary of holding company owned by the Scottish Government.

Social care is funded differently in Scotland than in England. If you think that’s because we English are paying for it, think again. All governments have a limited amount of money to spend; Holyrood just makes choices which are different to those made in London. That does not mean everything is rosy over the border, education and health are areas which have drawn criticism.

At some time in the not too distant future Labour is going to have to confront the fact that the Scottish Parliament may vote to hold a second referendum on independence. It has a choice, it can fly the ‘Union’ flag along with the Tories and oppose a second vote or it can support it and risk there being a ‘Yes’ vote, Scotland becoming independent and no more Scottish MPs in the House of Commons which would effectively seal a succession of Tory government for the rest of time.

Johnson is a chancer. At present he is doing all he can to bypass the Scottish Parliament by means of a veto on its scope for action and by taking on powers which rightly belong with the Scots. The signs are that he is hoping that he can block a second referendum by legal means. He may think this will ‘save the Union’, but if he does he will kill it because it will no longer be a union by consent.

It has been estimated that about a third of Scots actively support independence, a third actively oppose it and the remainder are more ambivalent. Even if these estimates are not very close to the true figures it does suggest that there is some scope for persuading more of the electorate to vote to remain part of the UK. That persuading can only be done by Labour, if only for the selfish reason I alluded to above.

It was a Labour government that in 1998 introduced the Scotland Act which led to the setting up of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Why then is Labour apparently doing so little to oppose Johnson’s power grab? By doing little or nothing it risks being tarred with the same brush as the Tories in the minds of the Scottish electorate. Labour could work with SNP MPs in the House of Commons to form a government. Without the Union and the Scottish MPs it brings there seems to me little chance that we will ever have anything but a succession of Tory governments.

Nicola Sturgeon is a demonstrably competent woman which suggests she is no fool. She must be aware that an ‘independent’ Scotland will face all sorts of difficulties; a long land border with England and the question of what currency it would adopt are just two obvious ones. There’s also the fact that much though she may say she wants to be part of the EU, it’s not a ‘done deal’ and its an aspiration for the future. Perhaps a greater degree of independence within the Union could begin to look a more attractive option. There’s an opening for Labour there.

https://theferret.scot/scottish-water-public-ownership/

NV can no longer embed links in the text of articles. To use this link copy the full text of the link into your browser (Startpage, DuckDuckGo or Google) and search in the usual way.

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Making sense of the elections by Brian Bamford

IN THIS weekend's editorial in the Financial Times the editor writes:

'An old rule of politics is that British governments tend to lose midterm by-elections. That makes the resounding defeat of Labour in the centre-left stronghold of Hartlepool by the Conservative party in power for 11 years all the more extraordidary... Extrapolating too much from a town that is the 10th most economically deprived and one of the most pro-Brexit in England is unwise. Yet coupled with the early signs that Labour lost ground to the Tories in council votes too, Thursday's elections in England have provided a boost to the government - and left the oppostion searching questions.'

One thing that is odd in this context is that while in the North Boris Johnson is so popular in places like Hartlepool in the North East and yet he is almost persona non-grata north of the border in Scotland. I know an anarcho-syndicalist retired miner from the North East who voted Tory at the last General Election because of his support for Brexit. Yet in Scotland there are reports that some Tories voted tactically for Labour to try to keep the SNP out.

The 'i' newspaper had an article by its political editor, Nigel Morris, titled 'Labour in turmoil: "shattering" results plunge party into crisis' arguing 'The poor showing reopened wounds within Labour ranks as the party as the left blamed Sir Keir's lack of policy direction for its slump in support, while leadership loyalists said the party was still suffering an overhang from Jeremy Corbyn's time in charge.'

The Labour Party last 'Super Thursday' seemed to lack a serious strategy depending on sneers about sleeze and the claims about a 'chumochracy'; this led John McDonnell to write a post-election column in the 'i' entitled 'No wonder we lost: there was a vacuum instead of a vision'.

The FT editorial I referred to earlier suggests:

'Confounding Labour's urgings that it is time for a change after a decade of Toryism, many voters perceive this as a new government. Johnson has not just disassociated himself from the Cameron and May admisitrations but the Thatcherite past ....[and] has shifted Tory politics away from its former devotion to the free market.'

The conclusion is that there has been demographic shifts in politics and not just in England, Scotland, and elsewhere in the UK. Currently the expections of the centre-left in Germany now depend on the Greens more than the Social Democrats. Some like Boris Johnson are managing to combine right-wing popularism with the offer of more public spending. In this way the Johnson government appears to offer a breach with the past. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out in the long term.

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The Delegitimising of Jeremy Corbyn

by Les May

FIRST some figures. Amongst the Opposition parties Labour has 247 seats, the SNP 35, Independents 15, Liberal Democrats 14, Independent Group for Change 5, Plaid Cymru 4 and the Green Party 1.  In other words Labour has more than three times the rest of the Opposition parties combined and in particular it has 233 seats more than the Liberal Democrats.

So if there is a ‘no confidence’ vote in Parliament and the Johnson government loses its majority and is unable to secure a majority in a second vote within 14 days the outcome should be either an immediate general election or a cross party ‘caretaker’ government mandated to delay leaving the European Union without a deal, it would seem to be uncontestable that the leader of the caretaker administration should be Jeremy Corbyn.

Apparently not. Jo Swinson, who since July has been leader of the LibDems, has said he ‘risks jeopardising a vote of no confidence in the government by insisting he becomes caretaker PM’.  Previously she had said he was ‘divisive’.

Writing in the ‘i’ last week Kate Maltby, who on her website modestly describes herself as ‘a critic, columnist and scholar’ tried to cast doubt on Corbyn’s fitness to lead by claiming that some of his social media supporters were ‘anti-semitic’ and were linked to those opposed to vaccination of children. (As she provided zero evidence for these claims I do hope she is a little more assiduous in carrying out research for the PhD she tells us she is doing on her website.)

In mid August Caroline Lucas decided she would bypass Corbyn by offering to broker a deal for ten women MPs to form a cross party Cabinet. (Interestingly she was attacked in the Guardian because, amongst other things, none of them were ‘trans’ and most were not lesbians.)

Yesterday Yasmin Alibhai-Brown used her column in the ‘i’ to claim he was ‘worryingly beholden to his close, maniacally anti-capitalist advisers’ and that he should let Caroline Lucas lead a temporary government of national unity.

What these women are about is delegitimising Corbyn and, by inference, Labour’s claim to be the party to form a caretaker government.  Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour party on two occasions.  He was leader of the party when it confounded the pundits by denying Theresa May a clear majority in 2017.   None of the four women referred to above can make anything approaching such a claim.

You cannot maintain credibility by first attacking Boris Johnson for avoiding scrutiny by closing down Parliament for five weeks and then seeking to find an excuse for bypassing the leader of the largest opposition party.  If Jo Swinson is listening, ‘You have 14 MPs, Corbyn has 247.  Go figure’.

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BREXIT CONSIDERED by Vernon Bogdanor

ON June 23, 2016, British voters decided by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union.  Since then, British politics has been convulsed by the referendum’s repercussions. Some Remainers do not accept the finality of the vote.  The margin, they argue, was too narrow to provide a mandate for fundamental change, while some of the arguments that persuaded voters to support Leave were mendacious.  The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.

The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.

If, to alter the metaphor, one leaves a tennis club because one does not wish to pay the subscription and does not like the rules, one will not be able to continue to use the tennis courts on the same basis as the members. Therefore, some Remainers conclude, there should be a second referendum, to discover whether the British people still wish to leave the European Union.

The European issue is difficult for Parliament to resolve for two reasons. The first is that May’s government holds only a minority of seats—317 out of the 650—in the House of Commons, meaning it must rely for its narrow majority on the 10 members of parliament from the vehemently pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. But, perhaps even more important, both the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party are internally divided between Remainers and Brexiteers. That division reflects a geographical and cultural division in the country.

The large cities, together with Scotland and Northern Ireland, welcome globalization and are relaxed about the EU’s principle of freedom of movement. They voted to remain. But smaller towns and older manufacturing areas, in which many feel left behind, are hostile to globalization and freedom of movement, which, they argue, have kept wages down and put undue pressure on public services. These areas supported the Leave campaign.

Parliament has enacted that Britain will leave the EU on March 29. After long and tortuous negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May in November 2018 secured a deal with the EU. That deal comprises a legally binding withdrawal agreement providing for a transition period until December 2020, during which Britain will remain bound by EU rules while negotiating the final relationship. The pattern of that relationship is outlined in a nonbinding political declaration that hints at an outcome in which Britain could negotiate independent trade agreements, while also providing it with some degree of frictionless trade with the EU.

May’s cabinet, despite internal tensions between Remainers and Brexiteers, accepted the deal. But the Tories’ DUP allies were fiercely opposed to it, as they claimed that it might separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom by preventing a hard border with the Irish Republic and potentially creating a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The deal was also opposed both by Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, who claimed that it tied Britain too closely to the EU, and by Remainers—primarily Labour, but also Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists—who argued that it allowed for too many barriers to the export of goods and services to the EU. This coalition of incompatibles imposed a crushing defeat on the government motion to accept the deal on Jan. 15. Just 202 MPs supported it, while 432 rejected it.

A defeat of this magnitude is unparalleled in Britain’s parliamentary history. No fewer than 118 Conservatives, mostly hard Brexiteers, voted against the deal, with just 196 Conservatives supporting it. And many of those who voted for it had no choice.  (Because approximately 100 Conservative MPs are ministers or on the government payroll, they were duty-bound to support May or resign.  This means that a majority of Conservative backbenchers were opposed to the deal.) May’s defeat, in what was arguably the most important parliamentary vote in Britain since World War II, creates a moment of acute danger for the prime minister, the government, the Conservative Party, and the country.

A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers. Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels.

The hope was that the deal could unite Brexiteers and Remainers. Instead it has driven them further apart. A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers. Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels. Indeed, there may be no deal that could hold the Conservative Party together; an alternative could end the cabinet truce and possibly lead to the disintegration of the minority government, with a general election to follow.

It has happened before. In 1979, the Labour minority government led by James Callaghan disintegrated in this way, in part because Labour was internally divided on the issue of devolving power to Scotland. Then, in 1951, Clement Attlee’s Labour government, which enjoyed a majority of only five, disintegrated because the party was internally divided between left and right. In both cases, long periods in the opposition followed.

The vote also creates a moment of danger for the country. Since Parliament has already approved a bill stating Brexit will occur on March 29, that is the default position. The exit date can, admittedly, be extended with the agreement of the other 27 members of the European Union. But those countries may be unwilling to agree if the only reason for extension is that MPs, 30 months after the referendum, still cannot make up their minds. In any case, an extension would only postpone the dilemma. It would not resolve it.

Unless Parliament passes new legislation—and there are now fewer than 40 sitting days before March 29—Britain will leave the EU without a deal.  That is regarded by most commentators as disastrous, since it would mean that EU customs duties and, even more disadvantageously, an intimidating host of EU regulations would be imposed on British exports.  It would no longer be as easy to send goods from London to Paris or Frankfurt as it is to send goods from London to Edinburgh.

The Jan. 15 vote showed what MPs are against. But there seems to be little agreement on what they are for. Theresa May is now seeking consensus through all-party talks, although she has not yet budged on her so-called red lines, namely that Britain should leave both the European customs union (in order to pursue an independent trade policy) and the single market (to avoid allowing free movement of people and the jurisdiction of EU courts).   And the opposition parties see no reason to help her. Labour is unwilling to allow its deep internal divisions to be publicly exposed by articulating a clear alternative policy. It seeks not consensus but a general election to remove the Conservatives from power.   The Liberal Democrats seek a second referendum, while the Scottish nationalists seek to exploit the government’s difficulties to further the case for independence.
There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support.

There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support.  Were Britain to remain in the EU’s customs union, it would be unable to sign independent trade agreements.  Were it to remain in the EU’s internal market, it would have to accept freedom of movement.  Yet control of immigration from the European Union was one of the main motivations behind the Brexit vote.
At this point, there seem to be just three alternatives. The first is May’s deal, perhaps in a slightly modified form.  The second is for Britain to leave the EU without a deal; even though most MPs are against a no-deal Brexit, they find themselves unable to agree on an alternative.  The third is for Parliament throw the issue back to the people in a second referendum, even though the prime minister has so far opposed such a move, and its advocates cannot agree on the question to be asked.  Finally, given that the country remains almost evenly divided, a second referendum would not necessarily resolve the conflict.

The issue of Britain’s place in (or out of) Europe has arguably destroyed five of the last six Conservative prime ministers—Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron.  It may be about to bring down another.

Vernon Bogdanor is a professor of government at King’s College, London. His book Brexit and the Constitution will be published next year. In 2019, he will be giving the Stimson lecture at Yale University on the consequences of Brexit for Britain and the European Union.

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10th anniversary meeting of BLACKIST GROUP

One week to go until our 10th anniversary meeting in parliament... we've got new revelations that are gonna make the news:

5pm Wed 6th March 2019

Committee Room 10

Houses of Parliament, Westminster

Confirmed speakers (so far): 

John McDonnell MP - founder member of the Blacklist Support Group (and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer)
Imran Khan QC - BSG lawyer at undercover policing public inquiry
Gail Carmail - UNITE the union, Assistant General Secretary
Chris Stephens MP - SNP employment spokesperson 

More to be confirmed  

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Scottish Nationalists call for Asylum for Asia Bibi

SCOTTISH National party MPs, according to The Guardian today, have written to Theresa May calling on the UK to grant asylum to Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi and her family, who have been in hiding in their home country since her acquittal on blasphemy charges last month.

A letter from SNP frontbencher Carol Monaghan, co-signed by the party’s other 34 Westminster MPs, warns that Bibi lives in extreme danger in Pakistan where “violent mobs are calling for her execution”.

Monaghan and her colleagues 'commend Canada, Spain and France for their offers of asylum, and note that Germany and Italy have reportedly held talks with Pakistan on the issue'.

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Sir Robert McAlpine & the truth on blacklist?

THE Speaker of the House of Commons and the Sir Robert McAlpine chief executive both joined the war of words about the £29m contract to refurbish Big Ben being awarded to the blacklist company.  On Tuesday 5th September during a Westminster Hall debate on blacklisting MPs including Labour and SNP frontbenchers, Jack Dromey and Chris Stephens, joined Chuka Ummuna in calling for the company that was at the very heart of The Consulting Association human rights scandal to be stripped of the Big Ben contract. 

The former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna went further on Thursday 7th by raising a 'point of order' on the floor of the House of Commons asking the Speaker, his "views and advice with regard to the matter of Big Ben" adding, "what message do you think it sends to the victims of this gross injustice for this House to award a contract to a firm that not only funded the Consulting Association, but provided its first chair and ​another chair?"

John Bercow replied: that the question was "perfectly legitimately and reasonable" adding that although the company had been awarded the initial contract to provide scaffolding, the full contract had not yet been officially awarded to McAlpine.  The Speaker of the House of Commons summed up by confirming:

"It is important.   We are sensitive to it and we will be conscious in the days ahead of the reputational importance", and told MPs that he would make enquiries and make a further statement.

Stung by the ongoing criticism, the chief executive of Sir Robert McAlpine Limited, Paul Hamer wrote a letter to a number of newspapers claiming that "blacklisting has no place now or in the future” at his firm and that the contractor was committed fully to "a zero-tolerance policy towards blacklisting, illegal or unfair recruitment practices”.  Adding that “I am pleased to confirm that Sir Robert McAlpine complies fully with all legislation to prevent blacklisting and is committed to fair and transparent recruitment.”

Roy Bentham, blacklisted carpenter from Liverpool and Blacklist Support Group, joint secretary responded to the McAlpine statement:

"Paul Hamer might be the CEO but Cullum McAlpine owns the company and I sat behind Cullum McAlpine when he gave evidence to the select committee investigation. Upon advice from his lawyer who was sitting next to him throughout, the blacklister in chief smugly refused to answer questions put to him by MPs. 

"The select committee report stated that they were 'far from certain that all of our witnesses have told us 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth', despite many of them being under oath'.  Blacklisted workers completely agree with that assessment by MPs".

"30 years ago Sir Robert McAlpine Limited* denied blacklisting people as part of the Economic League, 10 years ago they denied blacklisting people as part of The Consulting Association.  And now they assure us that they've given up blacklisting completely.  Given the company's previous honesty on blacklisting, how could anybody possibly not believe them now?"

Unite assistant general secretary, Gail Cartmail said workers were “continuing to have their lives ruined simply for being a member of a union”.

*  In May last year, Sir Robert McAlpine Limited was one of eight multi-national contractors that made a public apology alongside a record breaking multi-million pound compensation payout in order to avoid prosecution at the High Court. 

Eight contractors – Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska and Vinci.

McAlpine Boss: No More Blacklisting!

Huffington Post

MPs said it was a ‘scandal’ firm won lucrative Big Ben contract.

08/09/2017 10:14

A CONSTRUCTION firm blasted by MPs after it was awarded a lucrative contract to refurbish Big Ben says it will never allow blacklisting to happen again.

Sir Robert McAlpine was one of eight major companies who had to pay out compensation after admitting it had penalised workers who were trade unionists or took part in union activities. 

Hundreds of construction employees across the country lost their jobs and were unable to find further work after they were blacklisted by industry giants through a shadowy organisation known as ‘The Consulting Association’, which kept lists of names.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Despite this, the government awarded McAlpine a lucrative £29 million contract to prepare the House of Commons’ Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben for refurbishment work.

MPs, including Labour’s Chuka Umunna and Jack Dromey and the SNP’s Chris Stephens, said firms that had been historically involved in blacklisting should face the consequences.

At a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday, Dromey, a former trade union activist, said it was “a scandal” that McAlpine had been handed a Commons contract and GMB chief Tim Roache said the deal should be cancelled.

McAlpine’s new CEO, Paul Hamer, wrote to HuffPost UK following our report and said the company was committed to making sure blacklisting “stays firmly in the past”.

“Since my arrival, it has been one of my priorities to review the company’s HR and recruitment functions.  I am pleased to confirm that Sir Robert McAlpine complies fully with all legislation to prevent blacklisting and is committed to fair and transparent recruitment,” he said. 

“Blacklisting in construction was, until 2009, an industry-wide issue.   Sir Robert McAlpine admitted and apologised for its involvement with The Consulting Association and amended its HR practices, policies and operations to ensure that it can never happen again.”  

Hamer, who joined McAlpine just over a month ago, said his company was subject to “significant and appropriate scrutiny” before being awarded the Commons contract, which will see the chimes of Big Ben paused for four years while major restorative works are carried out.  

“We carefully check the recruitment and employment practices of all our sub-contractors to ensure they meet our own high standards,” he added.  

“We have a zero tolerance policy towards blacklisting, illegal or unfair recruitment practices.  In summary, I can assure you that blacklisting has no place now nor in the future at Sir Robert McAlpine.”

Business minister Margot James promised the government would look into the future awarding of contracts to firms involved in blacklisting.

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Scottish Labour Leader Resigns

SPECULATION over the departure of Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party is rife throughout the British media.  Some are suggesting that she jumped before she was pushed, having previously criticised Jeremy Corbyn. Others suggest it is for personal reasons, which is what she says in her long letter of resignation.
Meanwhile,Harriet Harman has already called on Jeremy Corbyn to appoint a female replacement for Kezia Dugdale amid claims the Labour leader has a problem with women.
There are other difficulties and constitutionally the Scottish Labour party is registered with the Electoral Commission as an Accounting Unit (AU) of the UK Labour party, and is therefore not a registered political party under the terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. 
Consequently when Johann Lamont resigned as the Scottish Labour Party leader after the referendum in 2014, she angrily suggested that London persisted in treating Scotland 'like a branch office'.
Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian today:
'Scottish Labour membership has increased in the Corbyn period, but not by the phenomenal degree it has elsewhere in the UK. The scope for a Momentum-style surge in Scotland is limited. The left is a crowded marketplace in Scotland, with competition from the SNP but also the wider yes movement, including the Radical Independence Campaign, to say nothing of a Scottish Green party that can claim more MSPs than the Lib Dems.'
Only last weekend the Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland devoted two pages last weekend to speculating that Momentum were keen to get rid of Dugdale, along with Brian Roy, the Scottish party secretary, and, indeed, Iain McNicol, the UK general secretary – to make way for Corbyn’s true believers. The Herald quoted extensively from the upcoming edition of the Scottish Left Review, which backs the UK leader and seems to think elements of Scottish Labour are holding back the red Corbyn tide.
In a recent issue of the Scottish Left Review (issue 100) Carolyn Leckie in an article titled 'INDEPENDENCE IS STILL A GAME CHANGER' has written:
'In 2017, radical and progressive ideas are more popular in Scotland than for many decades.  Yet the left is more diffuse and fragmented than ever before.  There are radical leftists in the Scottish Green Party, RISE, the SSP, the Labour Party, the Communist Party and in groups like Common Weal and Women for Independence.  And, there are more socialists in and around the SNP than in all of these organisations combined.'
While there is voter fatigue in Scotland it seems the independence debate informs almost every aspect of Scottish political elections.

Corbo will engage in tonight's BBC debate

JEREMY Corbyn has announced he will take part in the live TV General Election debate tonight on the BBC, and he has challenged Theresa May to join him.
The Tories will be represented by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, after Mrs May made clear that she would not take part in a face-to-face showdown with any other party leaders during the campaign.

The Labour leader will take part with the leaders of the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru, and the SNP's leader at Westminster, at the BBC event, which is now being boycotted by the Prime Minister.

Mr. Corbyn tweeted:

Jeremy Corbyn‏Verified account @jeremycorbyn

.@Theresa_May come & debate me. Any time. Any place. Britain deserves to see the only two people who could be the next Prime Minister debate

Meanwhile, the Labour Party issued the following statement on behalf on Mr. Corbyn:

'I will be taking part in tonight’s debate because I believe we must give people the chance to hear and engage with the leaders of the main parties before they vote.

'I have never been afraid of a debate in my life. Labour’s campaign has been about taking our polices to people across the country and listening to the concerns of voters.

'The Tories have been conducting a stage-managed arms-length campaign and have treated the public with contempt. Refusing to join me in Cambridge tonight would be another sign of Theresa May’s weakness, not strength.'

Parliament Gets Vote on Brexit!

THE Supreme Court has ruled today that Parliament must vote on whether the government can start the Brexit process.

This judgement means Theresa May cannot begin talks with the EU until MPs, and peers give their backing - although this is now expected to happen in time for the government's 31 March deadline.
But crucially, the court ruled the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies did not need a say.
During the Supreme Court hearing, campaigners argued that denying the UK Parliament a vote was undemocratic and a breach of long-standing constitutional principles.

They said that triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - getting formal exit negotiations with the EU under way - would mean overturning existing UK law, so MPs and peers should decide.

The Decision of the Supreme Court

Reading out the judgement, Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger said:
'By a majority of eight to three, the Supreme Court today rules that the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of Parliament authorising it to do so.' 

He added:  'Withdrawal effects a fundamental change by cutting off the source of EU law, as well as changing legal rights.  The UK's constitutional arrangements require such changes to be clearly authorised by Parliament.'

The court also rejected, unanimously, arguments that the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly should get to vote on Article 50 before it is triggered. 

But Nicola Sturgeon has said that the Scottish government will propose legislation allowing Holyrood to have a say in the triggering of Article 50.

The Scottish Problem?

The justices held back from insisting that the devolved administrations would have a vote or a say on the process. That was, as described by a member of Team May, the "nightmare scenario".
The Scottish National Party has said it would not try to veto Brexit, but there is no question that having a vote on Article 50 in the Holyrood Parliament could have been politically troublesome for the government. After the judgement the BBC reported that it seems like an unexploded bomb.
And second, the Supreme Court also held back from telling the government explicitly what it has to do next. The judgement is clear that it was not for the courts but for politicians to decide how to proceed next.
That means, possibly as early as tomorrow, ministers will put forward what is expected to be an extremely short piece of legislation in the hope of getting MPs to approve it, perhaps within a fortnight.

'Populism', Imagined Communities & Nations

by Brian Bamford

ROUTINE elections in European countries in 2016 have ushered in a mercurial quality to the political landscape.  Jon Bigger in a thoughtful article on the Freedom Blog about the recent by-election in Richmond wrote:   

'The recent Richmond by-election victory for the Lib Dems shows that the Brexit split can make a very real difference to British politics.  It isn't inconceivable to see the British public split along the lines of the referendum for years to come, with the conservatives and UKIP on one side and the Lib Dems, Greens, and SNP on the other.' 

Mr. Bigger then writes: 

'Note that as things stand there isn't any real role for the Labour Party in this scenario.' 

On the 'libertarian communist' website libcom, commenting on Brexit, someone wrote in what appeared to be an editorial: 

'In the UK context it was clearly a vote against foreign “others” and anybody who can be labeled as such...  Nigel Farage (former leader of UKIP and important leader of the Leave campaign) said on more than one occasion that he would be able to sacrifice economic growth to see less immigrants.'

This seems to have been the case and François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said:

' In Britain, one of the campaign slogans for Brexit was “Vote Leave, Take Control”.' and the idea seemed to be that being in 'the EU was preventing Britain from doing that.'

The feeling is that the motivation driving many voters in Britain, the USA and now in Italy's referendum over a week ago, is to impress upon the politicians that the status quo and the establishment elites are now unacceptable. 

The Italian electorate threw out a constitutional overhaul that would have increased the power of the prime minister by cutting the number of senators and decreasing their power.  This wouldn't have mattered so much, but for the fact that it gave a political opportunity to the Five Star movement to gain political prestige by opposing it. 

What makes things worse is the lasting consequences of the global recession in 2008 in both Europe and the USA, and the underlying frustration of the pain still being suffered in many European countries. 

In France, economic growth only reached 1% last year, and youth unemployment is still close to 25%.  In Italy, Spain and Greece it's higher. 

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Plan, said recently:  'The Rust Belt isn't just in America – there's a Rust Belt in the north of France, ... they feel they are dispossessed, dispossessed of their countries sovereignty and their economy.' 

Ms. Scheffer added:

'The way Washington is perceived by many American people is the way many French or Germans or Italians perceive Brussels... they perceive Brussels as almost an illegitimate entity.'

Jon Bigger in his Freedom essay prudently argues that the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years and I don't think anyone has got the definitive vision yet (and you shouldn't expect to see it here either).'

And, he suggests:  'Think for a moment about how this anti-Establishment feeling has manifested around the world since it started:  the Arab Spring, Occupy, Brexit, Bernie Saunders, Donald Trump, Momentum and Corbyn...  The response to a disaster within global capitalism hasn't been one of simply global revolution.  Instead people have responded in ways that reject a simple left / right ideological perspective.  When things settle at home and abroad there will be a new alignment, a new politics which which may well conform to a clearer ideological split.'

Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Freedom Party in the Netherlands and regularly rated as the most popular politician, also has said:  'Right verses left doesn't exist anymore'. 

Clearly politicians who look to nationalism and promote worries about disenfranchisement are in vogue. 

The lib-communist website editorial is at pains to stress that they are against nationalism and claim they are 'indifferent towards any national question'.  They stress that 'for us, all nations (small or big) are fake communities.' *

The dogmatic thinking of the 'communists' on their website tract seem in a bit of a muddle between what is the 'state' and what is the 'nation'.  They even finish off with an exit platitude taken from the 1848 'Communist Manifesto' by by Marx and Engels: 

'The working men (sic) have no country.  We cannot take from them what they have not got...' 

Yet then it goes on 'the proletariat must ... constitute itself the nation... though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.' 

What are 'fake communities'? *  Are nations and nationalisms invented?

Or would we be better-off embracing Benedict Anderson and his now his famous study entitled 'Imagined Communities'?**

Put crudely what seems to have happen according Mr. Anderson, is that when peasant face-to-face communities declined from the 18th Century onwards people have felt a psychological need to replace the everyday communities of the village with the 'imagined community' of the nation state in which though people can't possibly know all of the members of the nation they come to feel an affinity with the other citizens through the national media and other cultural forms of identity. 

The 'libcoms' or 'communist libertarians' of small organizations like the so-called 'anarchist federation' are inclined to use a cookbook approach in such a way that their analysis almost writes itself.  Unlike Jon Bigger on the Freedom Blog who modestly admits the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years...', while the libcom gang for their part have the dreary dogma of a party-line don't even try to get to grips with the anthropological emergence of nationalism.***  It is so much easier to simply dismiss the whole phenomena of 'popularism' and resurgent nationalism with a grim guffaw and a quote from the 19th century Communist Manifesto to give their statement gravitas. 

 

*    Ernest Gellner has written:  'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist'

**  An imagined community is different from an actual community in that it is not—and, for practical reasons, cannot be—based on everyday face-to-face interaction among its members. It is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

***  Benedict Anderson has explained his now influential concept thus:

'In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation:  it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. 

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.'

Unite support's a Citizens Basic Income!

By Derek Pattison,

President, Tameside TUC, (in a personal capacity).

 

IN this country and abroad, we are seeing a growing interest in the idea of a guaranteed universal unconditional basic income scheme for all citizens. What seems to be driving such initiatives, is the realisation that the world of work is becoming more precarious with jobs under threat from technology and automation. The Bank of England now estimates that as many as 15 million jobs are under threat from technology and a third of jobs in the retail sector, are predicted to disappear by 2025, due to such things as online shopping.

Another factor is the way in which the world of work is changing. One is seven Britons is now classed as self-employed. Although some of this so-called self-employment is possibly bogus, as in the case of Uber and Deliveroo, the latest official data shows that 83% of new jobs created in the UK between March and May 2016, were self -employed. Such is the rise of the so-called 'gig economy' that in 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reported that since 1995, 'non-standard' jobs - temporary, part-time or self-employed positions, - accounted for the whole of net jobs growth in the UK since 1995.

Employment law in the UK also makes it easier to hire and fire workers by using zero hour contracts and agency working where employees have very few employment rights. The self-employed don't get sick pay, holiday pay, pensions or employment protections nor are employers obliged, to pay their NI contributions or the living wage.

My own union, 'Unite', supports in principle a universal basic income scheme and is urging other unions to support such a scheme. At the Unite policy conference in July (2016), the following resolution was adopted:

"Conference notes the growing crisis of low pay, in work poverty and precarity in a labour market increasingly characterised by casualised forms of employment that offer low pay, zero hours contracts and no long-term security.

Conference further notes the evident inability of our bureaucratically costly social security system, with its dependence on means-testing and frequent arbitrary sanction, to provide an adequate income floor.

Conference believes that a Basic Income, an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid to everyone, has the potential to offer genuine social security to all while boosting the economy and creating jobs.

Conference welcomes the ongoing exploration of the concept of a Basic Income by the think-tank Compass, the innovation charity Nesta, the Royal Society of Arts, and others; further welcomes the planned practical experiments in Finland and Utrecht, Netherlands.

Conference calls upon the union to actively campaign for a Universal Basic Income and eradicate poverty for all."

Although the Tories have rejected the idea of a basic income scheme as unaffordable, Scotland is considering a universal basic income scheme pilot and the Labour Party is considering a universal basic income which would replace means-tested benefits with a flat rate payment.

Postscript (11/12/2016):

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), passed a composite resolution supporting a Universal Basic Income Scheme, at their September 2016 TUC Congress.

Brexit Fall-out & a 'little local problem'

Les May

WHEN the milkman called to collect his money this evening his comment on Brexit was 'Well they said there'd be job losses, but they didn't say it would start at the top!'.  Cameron's gone,  Boris has gone and if Labour MPs have their way Corbyn will be gone too, though at the moment I would not bet on it.  So whose next?

In spite of the referendum result no one in government seems to be in a big hurry to trigger the process of actually leaving the EU.  Cameron wisely dumped the problem onto his successor.  Presumably he thought that would be Boris and there would be a kind of justice in him having to clear up the political mess he has caused.  But now we know it won't.

Tory MPs will vote for the candidates who have put their name forward.  The two successful candidates will be go forward to a final vote in which all members of the Tory party will be balloted.  No doubt quite a lot of Labour MPs will be wishing they had a system for electing a new leader like that of the Tories.

In the autumn the new leader will be ordained at the party conference.  And then what?

Though I'm sceptical myself it has been suggested that the new Tory leader might dissolve the parliament and call an election to give him/herself a so called 'mandate' to try to negotiate with the EU.   But that might not be so easy to do.

Fixed-term Parliaments, where general elections ordinarily take place in accordance with a schedule set far in advance, were part of the Tory-LibDem coalition agreement which was produced after the 2010 general election. This was consolidated in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.

There are two provisions under the act by which an early election can be called.

If the House of Commons resolves “That this house has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government”, an early general election is held, unless the House of Commons subsequently resolves 'That this house has confidence in Her Majesty's Government.'  This second resolution must be made within fourteen days of the first.

If the House of Commons, with the support of two-thirds of its total membership (including vacant seats), resolves 'That there shall be an early parliamentary general election.'

The first of these options would require the government to launch a motion of no confidence in itself or ask the opposition to do so and the second would mean that the government would have to get the support of 434 of the 650 MPs to secure the necessary majority.

Conversely 217 MPs could block it.  Labour has 232 MPs so even without the 56  Scottish Nationalist MPs they could block it.  That puts the Labour leader, whether Corbyn or someone else, in a position of considerable strength.

Even without their present difficulties they might be wise to do so.  After all it's the Tories who got the country into this mess.  What is clear even now, and becomes clearer every day, is that try as it might, no UK government, whether Tory or Labour, is going to get access to the so called 'single market' unless it accepts free movement of workers, a.k.a. immigration.  

This is why:  'The internal market, or single market, of the European Union (EU), also known as the European single market, is a single market that seeks to guarantee the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people – the "four freedoms" – between the EU's 28 member states.'

So why not just sit back and watch the Tories fail?  Why take the risk of being contaminated by the fall out from this failure?

But there are clearly quite a lot of Labour MPs who are deluded enough to think that if there were an early election they would have a chance of winning it after spending most of the past year creating a huge rift in the party by monumental disloyalty and attacks on the present (and quite likely future) leadership.

But if my scepticism is misplaced and there is an election with Labour's passive or active cooperation, then things get particularly interesting for those of us in Rochdale.  You see Labour will have a 'little local problem' in the form of Simon Danczuk MP.

Now Simon has been mercifully silent in recent months.  If it wasn't for the visit to the police station to be questioned about a rape allegation,  being told he had to repay £11,000 he claimed in expenses, the small matter of the claim for parking when parliament was not sitting and the recent £500 claim for 'crisis management', we would have entirely forgotten about him.  The last of these claims is particularly galling as we have known since January that he received £5,000 from the Sun for an interview about the crisis!  Or is it, as the Zelo Street blogger Tim Fenton would have it, that the money was claimed for something else entirely?

But Simon is still Rochdale's MP.  Though suspended from the Labour party for sending texts of a sexual nature to a young woman who contacted him and who later turned out to have a nice sideline as a financial dominatrix, there is no sign that the local Labour party have taken steps to distance itself from him or that the national party are in any hurry to reinstate him.

So what happens if I am wrong and there is an autumn General Election?  Rochdale Labour party would find itself facing an election without a candidate endorsed by the Labour party and with about a month to find one.

But there may be worse to come.  According to a former girlfriend who was interviewed by The Mirror on 2 January 2016, 'he had vowed to stand as an independent if his career was threatened' and that 'He said he would stand as an independent but not do any campaigning'. He said he wanted to make sure Labour lost the seat he won for them.

My advice to Rochdale Labour party is 'start distancing yourself from Danczuk now before it's too late.' 
Does any party want to be associated in the public mind with someone who is seen by people in the town as a freeloader?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015
http://www.europeanpolicy.org/en/european-policies/single-market.html
http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/100883/danczuk-claims-nearly-700-for-just-four-months-parking
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/18/simon-danczuk-labour-agrees-repay-expenses
http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/103734/danczuk-claims-500-on-expenses-for-crisis-management-over-Christmas
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/simon-danczuks-consultant-revealed.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1352498/shamed-simon-danczuk-claimed-money-for-crisis-management-after-the-sun-exposed-his-sordid-texts-to-teenage-girl/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/09/simon-danczuk-5000-sun-on-sunday-interview
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mp-claimed-500-to-calm-sex-text-crisis-wqjbpxxbg
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/01/labour-mp-simon-danczuk-crisis-management-expenses
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/simon-danczuk-made-500-expenses-8322755
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/self-obsessed-simon-danczuk-cried-7109813

Nick Robinson & reporting politics

From Media Lens

THE BBC's Nick Robinson has made a career out of telling the public what leading politicians say and do; sometimes even what they 'think'. This stenography plays a key role in 'the mainstream media', given that a vital part of statecraft is to keep the public suitably cowed and fearful of threats from which governments must protect us. The 'free press' requires compliant journalists willing to disseminate elite-friendly messages about global 'peace', 'security' and 'prosperity', uphold Western ideology that 'we are the good guys', and not question power deeply, if at all.

But when a senior journalist complains of 'intimidation and bullying' by the public, making comparison's to 'Vladimir Putin's Russia', the mind really boggles at the distortion of reality. Those were claims made by Robinson, the BBC's outgoing political editor, using an appearance at the Edinburgh international book festival to settle a few scores.

As we noted on the eve of last year's referendum on Scottish independence, Robinson was guilty of media manipulation in reporting remarks made by Alex Salmond, then Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party. During a press conference, Robinson had asked Salmond a two-part question about supposedly solid claims made by company bosses and bankers - 'men who are responsible for billions of pounds of profits' - that independence would damage the Scottish economy. Not only did the full version of the encounter demonstrate that Salmond responded comprehensively, but he turned the tables on Robinson by calling into question the BBC's role as an 'impartial' public broadcaster. The self-serving report that was broadcast that night by Robinson on BBC News at Ten did not accurately reflect the encounter. Instead, the political editor summed it all up misleadingly as:

'He didn't answer, but he did attack the reporting.'

But the public was able to compare Robinson's highly selective editing of Salmond's press conference with what had actually taken place. The episode sparked huge discussion across social media. It even led to public protests outside the BBC headquarters in Glasgow. Some called for Robinson to resign.The protests involved thousands of pro-independence campaigners, although Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond's then deputy and now leader of the SNP, distanced her party from the demonstration outside the BBC when she 'emphasised it was not organised by the official Yes Scotland campaign'. The Glasgow protest was but one episode in a bigger picture of considerable public dissent against BBC News; indeed, against corporate news bias generally.

The outcome of the September 2014 referendum, following frantic propaganda campaigns to block Scottish independence by the main political parties, big business and corporate media - akin to what we are seeing today with the establishment targetting Jeremy Corbyn - was 55 per cent 'No' and 45 per cent 'Yes'.

Now Robinson, promoting his latest book 'Election Diary', has spoken out about what happened when his reporting was exposed for what it was:

'Alex Salmond was using me to change the subject. Alex Salmond was using me as a symbol. A symbol of the wicked, metropolitan, Westminster classes sent from England, sent from London, in order to tell the Scots what they ought to do.

'As it happens I fell for it. I shouldn't have had the row with him which I did, and I chose a particular phrase ["He didn't answer, but he did attack the reporting."] we might explore badly in terms of my reporting and that is genuinely a sense of regret.'

So Robinson's distorted reporting, caught and exposed in public, led merely to 'a sense of regret' which 'we might explore badly'.

He then launched a bizarre attack on the public:

'But as a serious thought I don't think my offence was sufficient to justify 4,000 people marching on the BBC's headquarters, so that young men and women who are new to journalism have, like they do in Putin's Russia, to fight their way through crowds of protesters, frightened as to how they do their jobs.'

The hyperbole continued:

'We should not live with journalists who are intimidated, or bullied, or fearful in any way.'

And yet, in June, Robinson had played down the alleged bullying as ineffectual:

'In reality I never felt under threat at all'.

Given that the protest was triggered by Robinson's propaganda, one wonders to what extent the 'young men and women who are new to journalism' at the BBC were 'intimidated, or bullied, or fearful', or whether this was more tragicomic bias from Robinson. Needless to say, Robinson was silent about how the corporate media routinely acts as an echo chamber for government propaganda, scaremongering the public about foreign 'enemies' and security 'threats'.

A couple of days later, Salmond responded to Robinson.  He told the Dundee-based Courier newspaper: 

'The BBC's coverage of the Scottish referendum was a disgrace.

'It can be shown to be so, as was Nick's own reporting of which he should be both embarrassed and ashamed.'

Salmond continued:

'To compare, as Nick did last week, 4000 Scots peacefully protesting outside BBC Scotland as something akin to Putin's Russia is as ludicrous as it is insulting.

'It is also heavily ironic given that the most commonly used comparison with the BBC London treatment of the Scottish referendum story was with Pravda, the propaganda news agency in the old Soviet Union.'

The Guardian then gave ample space to Robinson to respond to Salmond with an ill-posed defence of the BBC's slanted coverage of the independence debate. This was amplified by a news piece by Jane Martinson, head of media at the Guardian, about the 'row' between the two.

'The BBC', declaimed Robinson, 'must resist Alex Salmond's attempt to control its coverage'.  In fact, Salmond had rightly pointed out that the BBC's broadcasting had been biased and 'a disgrace'; a view held by many people in Scotland and beyond. Robinson's pompous response was that, all too often, politicians 'simply do not understand why the nation's broadcaster doesn't see the world exactly as they do.'  Case dismissed.

The BBC political editor then fell back on the old canard that complaints from both sides implied that reporting had been balanced: 

'There were many complaints about our coverage of the Scottish referendum – although interestingly just as many came from the No side as the Yes.'

Deploying this fallacious argument means that the strong evidence of bias against 'Yes' need not be examined (see, for example, this book and short film by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland). In its place, Robinson paints a heroic picture of himself and the BBC rejecting demands from 'politicians' to 'control' news reporting. Robinson declared his unshakeable confidence in: 

'the BBC's high journalistic standards, which are recognised around the world'.

This is precisely the attitude one would expect from someone who is rewarded handsomely for thinking the right thoughts about their employer.

 Submitted by Trevor Hoyle

Blacklist Support Group: June 2015

1. Police collusion in blacklisting goes back decades & other press coverage 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/2015/jun/16/evidence-of-police-complicity-in-blacklisting-of-trade-unionists-stretches-back-decades?CMP=share_btn_fb

http://labourlist.org/2015/06/we-cant-ignore-the-unjust-practice-of-blacklisting/

2. Blacklisting firms derisory compensation offers to try and buy us off

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/09/former-electrician-industry-blacklist-offered-compensation

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/blacklisting-scandal-construction-firms-offer-5854907

3. Armed police on Teeside construction protest this week were heavy handed throwing their weight around and manhandling older workers standing up for their rights (photo attached). The attack on the collective agreements by firms at the Redcar plant has seen huge early morning protests and marches through the town - all of them peaceful. Now the police are using bully boy tactics and guns to try and intimidate us. It won't work. We are not prepared to accept that kind of behaviour from the police for carrying out peaceful democratic union activities. 

Next Sita / Sembcorp protest 

5:30am start 19th June

Willton Complex

Teeside

TS10 9RF

Please support and attend this important protest.  Please pass this message to activists.

#PayTheRate 

4. SNP - Trade Union Group inaugural conference 

The first ever conference organised by the Scottish National Party Trade Union Group will take place in Stirling on Saturday 20th June.

A number of motions on the issue of blacklisting have been submitted by trade unionists and blacklisted workers attending the conference. The following clauses appear in some of the motions:

• "Conference calls upon the Scottish government to hold a full open and transparent Scottish inquiry into blacklisting".
• "Conference calls upon all public authorities in Scotland to refuse to award contracts to firms who subscribed to the Consulting Association unless they comply with the STUC demand to 'self-cleanse' and fully compensate blacklisted workers". 

5. More deaths on London building sites - our thoughts are with the families of the construction workers killed.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irishman-killed-tragically-on-london-construction-site-was-fatherofone-31299790.html

http://www.highlandradio.com/2015/06/13/dunfanaghy-man-dies-in-accident-on-london-construction-site/

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/worker-crushed-to-death-by-falling-pane-of-glass-on-roof-of-paddington-office-block-10304510.html

6. Blacklist book tour continues:

Blacklisted book has now officially sold out of its first print run. With reviews in this month's Red Pepper, Socialism Today, Hazards magazine and more coming soon, the second print run is being prepared now. 

June

Fri 19th - Worcester - alongside 'Salt of the Earth' film 

http://worfs.org/?tribe_events=worf-screening-3

25-29 Glastonbury Festival - Speakers Forum & Leftfeild stages 

http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/line-up/line-up-2015/?stage#speakersforum

July

2nd - Unite the Resistance, ULU - with John McDonnell MP, Mark Serwotka, Michelle Stanistreet, Candy Udwin, Chris Stephens MP  

4th - National Shop Stewards Network Conference, Conway Hall, Holborn - wih Matt Wrack, Mark Serwotka, Ronnie Draper

9th - Tunbridge Wells (flyer attached)

7. Big contracts won by blacklisting firms recently:

Carillion have been awarded the extension to Anfield stadium for Liverpool FC.

Bam have been awarded the refurbishment of the Admiralty Building in Horse Guards Parade. 

8. Labour Party leadership election

Jeremy Corbyn has spoken in support of the Shrewsbury Pickets and blacklisted workers at events organised by the Blacklist Support Group in Islington and has signed a number of Early Day Motions in parliament supporting the campaign in parliament. BSG wish him well - Has anyone got any photos of Jeremy at the BSG events, so we can use them in publicity?