Labour Councils and Party Discipline
Labour Councils and Party Discipline - Hallo World !!! News Today in World, In this article you read by title Labour Councils and Party Discipline, We've prepared this article well so you can read and retrieve information on it. Hopefully the contents of the post
Article All That Is Solid, What we write can you understand. Okay, happy reading.
Title : Labour Councils and Party Discipline
link : Labour Councils and Party Discipline
You are now reading the article Labour Councils and Party Discipline With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/02/labour-councils-and-party-discipline.html
Title : Labour Councils and Party Discipline
link : Labour Councils and Party Discipline
news-today.world |
Some good political news for a change. Council Leader Claire Kober of Haringey has announced her decision to step down as leader and councillor this coming May to take on "new challenges". This, of course, has nothing to do with the rebellion of her own local party and trade unions, the opposition of the local Labour MPs and the unanimous NEC decision to issue advice and offer mediation between her and her opponents within the party. For her career has come to a juddering halt as the new mood sweeps the party, and the kind of housing stock regeneration she championed increasingly falls out of favour.
But things are never that simple. As we look upon the aftermath, Labour people can be found offering a defence of the outgoing councillor on two grounds: of the policy itself and the autonomy of party groups in the council chamber. After all, the Refounding Labour document championed by St Ed underlined the role Labour groups have in the formation of local policy.
Of the Haringey Development Vehicle itself, there's no need for me to recap the detailed critiques that can be found elsewhere. Though hopping into bed with a developer with Lendlease's record should have set the alarm bells ringing, engaging in a scheme amounting to social cleansing in the name of tackling a housing shortage is par the doublethink characteristic of Blairist policy making. Other Labour councils have managed to demonstrate, not least those nearby to Haringey, how it is possible to renew social housing stock without cutting the number of homes available - which is what the HDV would have done.
I am more interested in the NEC intervention itself. It unanimously voted to request Haringey council think again about the HDV, and offered to mediate between her and the local party, considering the widening gulf Claire was responsible for cranking open in pursuit of this self-evidently anti-working class project. Nevertheless, the move ruffled the right feathers and we've seen disingenuous moaning about sexism, bullying, and complaints the NEC overstepped the mark. Sarah Hayward's defence is typical of this, treating the running of Haringey and the NEC's intervention as matters of process rather than politics. Small wonder - the HDV was politically unsustainable from a Labourist position. Nevertheless, if you want to talk process you have to be consistent. For instance, if it is impermissible for the NEC to intervene in Haringey then it was out of order when it went after Militant on Merseyside, and when Blair came for Dave Church and his administration in Walsall in 1995. If those are different cases, then you're going to have to start talking politics.
Another egregious aspect of Sarah's process argument is her warmed over adaptation of constitutional cretinism, which is never a principle but always a handy rhetorical crutch when there are no political arguments left. She argues Haringey's Labour Council are responsible to the good electors of the borough, no one else. What she is implying here is being Labour is merely a convenient label to aid one's election, because after then representatives should behave as they please. Well, no. Political parties are voluntary organisations that afford members a number of obligations, one of which is not to act in such a way as to bring the party into disrepute. The NEC reserves the right, and it's there in the rule book, to take action against any party member or party unit it decides is behaving in this manner. And in this case they were entirely right to. When the Labour Party made a stunning electoral advance in defiance of expectations as an anti-austerity party, and its continued health demands it stays the course, any unit of the party that has gone beyond passing on cuts made to local government to actively cultivate dodgy privatisation/social cleansing schemes like Haringey need to be called to account. Their strategy was fundamentally at odds with what the party is trying to achieve, and was a hostage to electoral fortune: "how can Jeremy Corbyn call for more social housing when Labour Haringey is reducing the provision?" would go the Tory attack line. If Claire Kober and friends don't like the obligation they have as Labour representatives, they can either step down from their position, as she has done, or resign from the party and carry on - though we all know how that can turn out.
Naturally, Labour groups elsewhere are getting quite nervous the NEC could come for them next. And by coming for them, I mean making a gentle suggestion - there were no such niceties for the dissident groups of Liverpool and Walsall when the right were in charge. Take the idiocy currently taking place in Sheffield, for example, where the council are determined to fell roadside trees on the basis of entirely spurious arguments. No doubt councillors loyal to the line will feel a bit sweaty after this week's events. Should the council be allowed to carry on with impunity, while heaving council monies into the gaping maw of a contractor and making the community it represents a less attractive place to live? No, of course not.
To reiterate, what Haringey reminds us is no one is bigger than the party. Labour is not just a label nor a flag of convenience, but once again a party that is drawing together the interests of the people who make our society tick with those at its sharpest end against the designs of an increasingly divided and unhinged oligarchy. Those are its politics, and it has every right to expect its representatives to act in ways consistent with this approach.
But things are never that simple. As we look upon the aftermath, Labour people can be found offering a defence of the outgoing councillor on two grounds: of the policy itself and the autonomy of party groups in the council chamber. After all, the Refounding Labour document championed by St Ed underlined the role Labour groups have in the formation of local policy.
Of the Haringey Development Vehicle itself, there's no need for me to recap the detailed critiques that can be found elsewhere. Though hopping into bed with a developer with Lendlease's record should have set the alarm bells ringing, engaging in a scheme amounting to social cleansing in the name of tackling a housing shortage is par the doublethink characteristic of Blairist policy making. Other Labour councils have managed to demonstrate, not least those nearby to Haringey, how it is possible to renew social housing stock without cutting the number of homes available - which is what the HDV would have done.
I am more interested in the NEC intervention itself. It unanimously voted to request Haringey council think again about the HDV, and offered to mediate between her and the local party, considering the widening gulf Claire was responsible for cranking open in pursuit of this self-evidently anti-working class project. Nevertheless, the move ruffled the right feathers and we've seen disingenuous moaning about sexism, bullying, and complaints the NEC overstepped the mark. Sarah Hayward's defence is typical of this, treating the running of Haringey and the NEC's intervention as matters of process rather than politics. Small wonder - the HDV was politically unsustainable from a Labourist position. Nevertheless, if you want to talk process you have to be consistent. For instance, if it is impermissible for the NEC to intervene in Haringey then it was out of order when it went after Militant on Merseyside, and when Blair came for Dave Church and his administration in Walsall in 1995. If those are different cases, then you're going to have to start talking politics.
Another egregious aspect of Sarah's process argument is her warmed over adaptation of constitutional cretinism, which is never a principle but always a handy rhetorical crutch when there are no political arguments left. She argues Haringey's Labour Council are responsible to the good electors of the borough, no one else. What she is implying here is being Labour is merely a convenient label to aid one's election, because after then representatives should behave as they please. Well, no. Political parties are voluntary organisations that afford members a number of obligations, one of which is not to act in such a way as to bring the party into disrepute. The NEC reserves the right, and it's there in the rule book, to take action against any party member or party unit it decides is behaving in this manner. And in this case they were entirely right to. When the Labour Party made a stunning electoral advance in defiance of expectations as an anti-austerity party, and its continued health demands it stays the course, any unit of the party that has gone beyond passing on cuts made to local government to actively cultivate dodgy privatisation/social cleansing schemes like Haringey need to be called to account. Their strategy was fundamentally at odds with what the party is trying to achieve, and was a hostage to electoral fortune: "how can Jeremy Corbyn call for more social housing when Labour Haringey is reducing the provision?" would go the Tory attack line. If Claire Kober and friends don't like the obligation they have as Labour representatives, they can either step down from their position, as she has done, or resign from the party and carry on - though we all know how that can turn out.
Naturally, Labour groups elsewhere are getting quite nervous the NEC could come for them next. And by coming for them, I mean making a gentle suggestion - there were no such niceties for the dissident groups of Liverpool and Walsall when the right were in charge. Take the idiocy currently taking place in Sheffield, for example, where the council are determined to fell roadside trees on the basis of entirely spurious arguments. No doubt councillors loyal to the line will feel a bit sweaty after this week's events. Should the council be allowed to carry on with impunity, while heaving council monies into the gaping maw of a contractor and making the community it represents a less attractive place to live? No, of course not.
To reiterate, what Haringey reminds us is no one is bigger than the party. Labour is not just a label nor a flag of convenience, but once again a party that is drawing together the interests of the people who make our society tick with those at its sharpest end against the designs of an increasingly divided and unhinged oligarchy. Those are its politics, and it has every right to expect its representatives to act in ways consistent with this approach.
That's an article Labour Councils and Party Discipline
Fine for article Labour Councils and Party Discipline This time, hopefully can benefit for you all. Well, see you in other article postings.
You are now reading the article Labour Councils and Party Discipline With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/02/labour-councils-and-party-discipline.html