Geordie Labour is a new project which aims to reach out to the bulk of Labour Party members in the Tyne and Wear region who back Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Many of these members are new to the party, and unfamiliar with its structure, how it operates and what their rights are as members. Many of you are also busy people, perhaps with families, full time jobs, businesses or other demands on your time, who cannot attend every single meeting. There is a thriving political scene in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and across the region. However, those of us who have the luxury of being able to attend the plethora of meetings - branch, CLP, Momentum, People’s Assembly, Talk Socialism, Counterfire, etc etc - are in danger of becoming a self-selecting clique if we don’t reach beyond this circle. So the primary role of Geordie Labour is to inform the wider membership of what we are up to. To that end we hope that reportage of all these meetings becomes a key aspect of this website. And if you are part of the circle who attends those meetings - we need your help in writing these reports!
A secondary objective of the Geordie Labour project - and one that cannot be achieved without the outreach efforts mentioned above - is to campaign for the democratisation of the Labour Party along the principles outlined by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership platform. On the historic occasion of the great man’s rally in Newcastle last year, he asked, “How we can make our party more representative, more democratic, more appropriate and more in touch with people’s lives?”
After he became the leader of the Labour Party, he said “We want to see this democratic revolution extend into our party, opening up decision-making to the hundreds of thousands of new members and supporters that have joined us since May. It’s a huge opportunity for Labour: to remake our party as a real social movement, organising and rooted in our communities…. It’s about being open to the people we seek to represent, giving them a voice through our organisation and policy-making and drawing members into political action.”
In contrast to this fantastic aspirational vision for a democratised Labour Party, Newcastle East Constituency Labour Party has instead used the massive increase in membership as an excuse to lessen the democratic representation and participation of normal party members.
Since Jeremy became leader in October last year, the executive officers of the constituency have imposed top-down changes in the rules which reduce rather than increase representation. Quorum requirement at branch has been reduced from 25% to 15%, and the delegate representation from branches has been even further limited. Those of us who have called for a process of membership engagement and education have been consistently ignored by a blairite controlling clique, who understand that Corbyn-supporting members are a threat to their hegemony. Hence the creation of this website to engage the new, Corbynite constituency and inform you in what is going on in the party, and how you can exercise your democratic rights as Labour Party members.
The other two Constituency Labour Parties in Newcastle hold open meetings which are welcoming and inclusive of members, regardless of experience. Geordie Labour is campaigning as a bare mimimum for Newcastle East to be brought into line with the rest of the city by opening up its CLP meetings. More details on Geordie Labour’s Campaign for Democratisation of the Labour Party will be forthcoming in future posts.
As I write this, the political scene in Britain is changing rapidly in the aftermath of an unexpected #Brexit vote. The creation of Geordie Labour has been fomenting for a while, and we expected the launch of this project to benefit from a few more weeks of preparation. However, so much is going on, and support for Jeremy Corbyn is so vital, that we have decided to launch immediately. Things have been stirred to such an extent these past few days that huge opportunities for change have been thrust upon us. Geordie Labour intends to give members of the local party the tools and knowledge to take advantage of these opportunities.
