Lead story

The battle for Labour’s soul

by Daphne Liddle

THE FRONT line of the class struggle is inside the labour movement and right now there is a very heated battle going on over the choice of the next leader of the Labour Party and the role of the unions in relation to the party

Nick Cohen, writing in the New Statesman, has told Labour that Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, is the party’s enemy and accused McCluskey of “imposing a useless leader on it in Ed Miliband and an equally incoherent programme”.

Meanwhile McCluskey said last week that Unite’s affiliation to the Labour Party could be reconsidered at the union’s conference in July.

Two years ago at the Durham Miners’ Gala McCluskey laid down a challenge to Miliband: “The Labour Party must understand it can only exist if it remains the voice of ordinary working people,” McCluskey said.

“The parliamentary Labour Party today does not look like, or think like, the working class communities it seeks to represent. That is a serious problem. It is increasingly the preserve of people who glide from university to think tank to the green benches, without ever sniffing the air of the real world.”

He said that the Labour Party has no God-given right to exist and that if it fails to represent the working class then “what is it for?”

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The battle for Labour’s soul

ITV workers on strike

WORKERS employed by ITV News took strike action against low pay last Thursday in action organised by the National Union of Journalists and broadcasting union Bectu, timed to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in Westminster.

The unions have rejected a two per cent pay offer as inadequate.

Michelle Stanistreet, the NUJ general secretary, said: “Members from across the joint unions at ITV have stuck together in this battle for a fair pay settlement and support has been flooding in from across the trade union movement and beyond.”

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ITV workers on strike

Editorial

Mutiny in the ranks

DAVID Cameron was overjoyed to win a narrow majority in the general election and immediately set out a 100-day offensive with a raft of new, drastic austerity and other measures to make the rich people richer and to screw poor and working people.

But he may be having second thoughts about some of his ideas as he is finding opposition from some unexpected quarters that highlight the weakness and isolation of his position.

He made the abolition of the Human Rights Act, passed by Labour in 1998, priority in his manifesto and now faces a rebellion from his own backbenches. And with such a slim majority it would take only a handful of rebels for him to lose the first important vote of this Parliament.

The abolition of the Human Rights Act would exempt the Government from implementing rulings from the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR). This is not the same authority as the European Union. The EHCR was set up just after the Second World War and Cameron’s predecessor Churchill was among its main initiators.

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Mutiny in the ranks