Scot Labour Boss to crack down on blacklisting

based on information supplied by Joe Bailey.

SCOTTISH Labour leader Richard Leonard claims he will crackdown on outsourcing and blacklisting.  In a speech to the Scottish Labour conference as the party’s leader in Scotland, he condemned firms that exploited and blacklisted workers. 
 
'Our strategy will ensure that we stop once and for all giving millions of pounds of public money in subsidies to exploitative tax-avoiding companies like Amazon down the road in Dunfermline,' he said. 
 
'And that we stop awarding billions of pounds of public procurement contracts to companies which don’t pay a living wage, which use zero-hours contracts and which blacklist workers. So, we meet in Dundee and we applaud the redevelopment of the waterfront, but we condemn the use of a blacklisting company to do it.' 
 
Construction giants BAM and Sir Robert McAlpine have harvested major contracts out of the redevelopment, which includes a new branch of the V&A museum.  Both were backers of the undercover blacklisting organisation the Consulting Association, which was exposed in 2009 for running an illegal blacklist of trade union activists, often targeted for their workplace safety activities.

The  announcement of the victory of Leonard last November, was considered at the time another  triumph for Jeremy Corbyn.  It is believed the Unite union played a significant role in this.

This week saw yet another Corbyn prefered candidate appointed as Labour's general secretary when Jennie Formby, an official from the Unite union.  She defeated Christine Blower, former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

Jim Pickard in the Financial Times today described the Ms. Formby triumph thus:
'Ms. Formby's victory ..... demonstrated how comfortable Mr. Corbyn is with Unite, Britain's largest union, controlling many posts in his operation.'

Madam Formby is seen by some as a bit of a brute in the office and some of the staff have been quick to throw in the towel in as soon as it was known she'd got the job.

It also seems that Momentum  has some misgivings about the dominant influence of Unite.  Momentum wants a wider reflection of views within the party than the union base.

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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.