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The Labour Party - Part 2

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30 minutes ago, CaptainSwing said:

Why ironic?  What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

 

Sure, the progressive and regressive wings of the party should be working together, but unfortunately the die was cast during the Corbyn years.

 

In any case, there is a certain amount of rapprochement happening.  I've seen Paul Mason retweeting Lisa Nandy, for instance.

the die was cast during the blair"ite" years, whys the Corbyn years special? both factions have "never" got on

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40 minutes ago, melthebell said:

the die was cast during the blair"ite" years, whys the Corbyn years special? both factions have "never" got on

the die was cast long before then, the hard left have always been part of the labour party but the infiltration of the labour by the "militant tendancy" in the mid 70s probably marks the start of the public face of the factionalism

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2 minutes ago, andyofborg said:

the die was cast long before then, the hard left have always been part of the labour party but the infiltration of the labour by the "militant tendancy" in the mid 70s probably marks the start of the public face of the factionalism

I dont really remember a proper Centre (right) until Nu Labour though for them to really get their teeth into something.

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30 minutes ago, andyofborg said:

the die was cast long before then, the hard left have always been part of the labour party but the infiltration of the labour by the "militant tendancy" in the mid 70s probably marks the start of the public face of the factionalism

The hard left formed the labour party..!!!!... it was formed by the unions to fight for workers rights in parliament, so all this nonsense about the party being infiltrated by the left is laughable, it is the other way round, it has been infiltrated by the right...and what the right is doing in labour i really dont know, how can you have a let and a right in one party? i am still trying to work that one out

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29 minutes ago, banjodeano said:

The hard left formed the labour party..!!!!... it was formed by the unions 

They didn’t, well not on their own anyway. The Labour Party grew out of the Trade Union movement, but also needed others, plenty of non-Union members were involved in setting up the party. It simply isn’t true to say that the party has hard left origins.

 

In any case, that’s all ancient history. The modern Labour Party can’t be a hard left party if it wants to govern. Take a look at the electoral records of Foot and Corbyn for evidence.

 

Momentum and their predecessors Millitant  have both failed to change the view of the electorate. They’ve made Labour unelectable twice in the last 40 years. The result of that was the Thatcher governments and now this shambles.

 

Mercifully the MEMBERSHIP of the party have elected a competent leader. In turn, he’s appointed a competent Shadow Cabinet. All is well.

Edited by Pettytom

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15 minutes ago, Pettytom said:

They didn’t, well not on their own anyway. The Labour Party grew out of the Trade Union movement, but also needed others, plenty of non-Union members were involved in setting up the party. It simply isn’t true to say that the party has hard left origins.

 

In any case, that’s all ancient history. The modern Labour Party can’t be a hard left party if it wants to govern. Take a look at the electoral records of Foot and Corbyn for evidence.

 

Momentum and their predecessors Millitant  have both failed to change the view of the electorate. They’ve made Labour unelectable twice in the last 40 years. The result of that was the Thatcher governments and now this shambles.

 

Mercifully the MEMBERSHIP of the party have elected a competent leader. In turn, he’s appointed a competent Shadow Cabinet. All is well.

that is indeed correct, it grew from trade union members who  of course hard left,  this was the time when the workers were in constant struggle with their employers

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5 minutes ago, CaptainSwing said:

Nope.  Foot was well ahead in the polls until he was undermined by the Limehouse Declaration (and then the Falklands War).  If anybody facilitated the second and third Thatcher governments, it was the Gang of Four.

 

The leaders of Militant were all expelled before the 1983 election.

 

I don't know of any particular connection between Militant and Momentum.  Militant were a bunch of Trotskyist insurgents beyond the fringe of the party, whereas Momentum won two leadership elections.  I appreciate that you may not be able to distinguish Trotskyists from anybody else to the left of Tony Blair, but that is not my fault.

 

Quite so.  You won.  Get over it.

Foot never stood a chance in the 1983 election. Even without Owen and chums defecting, he’d have lost easily. Events happen, good politicians work with them. Foot responded with a crazy manifesto and lost. Just as Corbyn did in 2019.

 

Millitant was a problem within the party until the early 90s. It took a massive effort to clear the reputational damage that they caused. 

 

I’ll take your word on the differences between Millitant and Momentum, I find that sort of tribalism a bit dull. I will, however, caution you to look at the sub-divisions within momentum. There are plenty of Trotskyist entryists lurking there. 


I am over it, by the way. I just think that Deano could possibly be a bit more objective.

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"It is my view that when we rejoin the European Union we should also join the Euro. Probably we won’t be able to rejoin on any other terms anyway. Next time we can’t be ‘half in, half out’. That’s why we made such a mess of it last time, and are suffering so badly now"

 

Andrew Adonis on Twitter: posted 9:34 AM · Nov 13, 2020·Twitter for iPhone. 

 

Supporting the explicitly capitalist neo Liberal EU, Andrew Adonis helped the second referendum campaign seize control of the Labour party before the last election and throw Corbynism  and people who had voted Labour 'forever and a day' under a bus. For voting Leave in the referendum these Labour voters were criticised, harassed, accused of being fascist. And they were told not to vote Labour.

 

Andrew Adonis in a 2018 LBC radio phone interview, even said that those who were pro-Brexit should not vote Labour because the party was going to stop Britain leaving the EU. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/25/andrew-adonis-apologises-brexiters-not-vote-labour-eu-elections-brexit

 

A leading campaigner for a People's Vote second referendum, Adonis helped lose Labour the general election and even now advocates rejoining the EU at a much deeper level. These people have learned nothing about why the working class are turning away from the party.

 

“What’s happened in America is really quite interesting because so many of the same people who are having a go, understandably, at Donald Trump are exactly the same people who wanted to ignore a vote in this country. And they fail to see the hypocrisy, and I can’t get my head around it." - Laura Smith, former Labour party MP.

 

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/interview-rebuilding-labour-socialism-brexit-and-democracy

Edited by Car Boot

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16 hours ago, Car Boot said:

 

 

“What’s happened in America is really quite interesting because so many of the same people who are having a go, understandably, at Donald Trump are exactly the same people who wanted to ignore a vote in this country. And they fail to see the hypocrisy, and I can’t get my head around it." - Laura Smith, former Labour party MP.

 

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/interview-rebuilding-labour-socialism-brexit-and-democracy

Good to see the death rattle of Stalin still being supported after all these years 😎

 

Anyone to the left of Farage not having a go at Donald Trump?

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On 13/11/2020 at 20:21, banjodeano said:

that is indeed correct, it grew from trade union members who  of course hard left,  this was the time when the workers were in constant struggle with their employers

That’s a hugely sweeping statement, and not a very accurate one in my view.

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6 hours ago, tinfoilhat said:

That’s a hugely sweeping statement, and not a very accurate one in my view.

indeed, harold wilson said the labour movement owed more to methodism than it did to marx. 

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Union leadership may have been hard left but the membership are self interested, patriotic, traditionally conservative and patriarchal.

 

. . . . . . . . . . and quite capable of becoming right populist. As we all well know.

Its the central challenge to the left which no-one is coming close to solving at the moment

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