What's happening at Newcastle East CLP?

It has been a busy period in politics, and I am hesitant to write anything for fear it will go out of date almost immediately, given how swiftly events are moving. However, I would like to take this opportunity to pass on to members of Newcastle East CLP some information about what is happening locally.

My understanding from the Chair, David Wood, is that Newcastle East CLP will not be holding a nomination meeting, due to concerns over bullying and harassment. This decision was, I believe, made in conjunction with CLP officers.

Unlike the other CLPs in Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle East CLP holds closed meetings where it is only possible to attend if delegated from the branch AGM. In order for delegate appointments to be valid, the branch is required to have a quorum of 25%. Newcastle East, however, reduced its quorum to 15% last year - another story!

When Newcastle East CLP held its Annual General Meeting in May it was reported that only 4 of the 9 branches were quorate at their AGMs. If correct this would mean over half of delegates not having the democratic backing required under Party rules. 

CLP chair and Secretary, David Wood and Walter Gilmour, have refused to say which branches were quorate, stating simply that, "All branches meet the criteria laid out by the Regional Office." However, along with Regional Director Fiona Stanton, they will not say what the criteria are for branches that do not achieve a quorum.

This leaves a massive question mark over who on the CLP has democratic legitimacy: since we do not know which branches were quorate, we cannot know whether, for example, David Wood and Walter Gilmour are the legitimate chair and secretary. Both of these positions, and all other positions on the CLP executive, are elected by CLP delegates, over half of whom have apparently not been elected by a quorate branch meeting. Indeed, we don't know whether the Chair and Secretary's own branches were themselves quorate. If the y were not, then under the delegate model they are not eligible to be delegates never mind executive officers!

All of this has a knock-on effect to the Local Campaign Forum, members of which are elected from the CLP, and whose decisions affect the whole Newcastle City Council area and not just Newcastle East CLP!

This confusion could easily be cleared up by the CLP executive being transparent about which branches were quorate when appointing delegates. 

An even better solution, however, would be to dispense with the unnecessary delegate model altogether and allow all members of Newcastle East CLP to attend CLP meetings in the same way that Newcastle Central and Newcastle North do.

Given that it seems over half of CLP delegates from branches have no legitimacy, why should other members be excluded? Under such circumstances the CLP becomes simply an unelected clique.

As an example of how undemocratic the CLP executive seems to be behaving, consider the case of Mark Winskell. Mark's branch, Jesmond North, was one of the few which was quorate and he was duly appointed onto the executive. Subsequently, however, he has been excluded from a Working Group at the CLP, which was set up precisely to examine the issue of branches failing to achieve quorum! 

We therefore have a situation in which members who may have been appointed without democratic legitimacy are sitting on an executive Working Group, from which they are excluding an Executive Delegate who actually has legitimate democratic backing! 

When Mark contacted Secretary Gilmour to request participation in the Working Group express, he was apparently accused by Chairmain Wood of bullying and harassment!

Here are a few things that members of Newcastle East CLP could do about this situation: Firstly, you could contact the CLP secretary, whose email address is on your membership card, and ask him to confirm which branches were quorate - though he will likely refer you to the delegate from your branch, for which there is a 5 in 9 chance your delegate was not appointed by a quorate meeting and is therefore by definition not a legitimate delegate; Secondly, you could also contact your branch chair and secretary with the same query; Thirdly, you could enquire whether members are allowed access to CLP meetings without the backing of a quorum, whilst other members are not; And finally you could call for open CLP meetings with transparent rules and procedures.

Response to Nick Brown MP's Leadership Update

This is an email from Mark Winskell, a Newcastle East CLP Executive Delegate from North Jesmond Branch, to Nick Brown MP in response to Nick's recent Labour Leadership update which is pasted afterwards.

 

 

Dear Nick

I enjoyed your Labour Leadership Update and found it an informative and useful exercise in clarifying for the constituency members your views and historic support for the Party Leader.

Although I do differ with the view that there is widespread and deeply felt dissatisfaction with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, certainly there is dissatisfaction on the right of the party and large elements of the Parliamentary Labour party and indeed amongst prominent Labour Councillors. 

This dissatisfaction is both organised and entrenched and validated by a right of  centre Liberal consensus to the point that they find it almost impossible to countenance a Socialist leader of the Labour Party with a Social Democratic agenda in Britain.

That Socialist leadership and Social Democratic agenda actually has wide spread and deeply felt support amongst the membership and indeed the electorate, as is ironically evident given the Tories and their fellow travellers recent apeing of Jeremy Corbyn’s and John McDonnell's principled and Pragmatic Labour platform. 

I am heartened that you wish to hold the Labour Party Constituency together. 

The Constituency Executive of which I am a quorate member could start that process by allowing a CLP Supporting Nomination meeting to take place such as those being held in other Newcastle and North East regional CLP’s and to have that CLP meeting open to all constituency members who wish to attend. 

However I understand that such a CLP Supporting Nomination meeting within our CLP has been proscribed by the Chair and executive officers with the confusing endorsement of the Regional Directorate.   

Ultimately what would really unite our Constituency and help overcome our problems such as failed quorate attainment and membership disengagement, despite the growth in numbers, would be to do as other CLP’s and Newcastle Central CLP do in facilitating an open CLP.

The general and annual meetings would be open to all constituency members as an egalitarian expression and faith in our membership, unencumbered by prescriptive barriers and procedures that inhibit engagement and do not arbitrarily apply in other CLP’s.

Finally some recompense and support must be made to those new constituency members denied a ballot in the Labour Leadership vote by an arbitrary deadline on members enfranchisement subsequently imposed by the National Executive Committee after those members had joined in good faith.

With very best wishes,

Mark.

This was the email from Nick Brown Mp:

 

Dear Member,

 

 

I continue to receive a large number of letters about current events in our Party. I have tried to make my own views clear in previous emails, but I accept that events have now moved on since I last wrote. I apologise for the standard nature of this reply and please feel free to get back to me if there is some point you think I haven't covered. 

 

 

I want to extend a warm welcome to the Labour Party to those of you who have recently joined. I attach copies of my previous responses which I sent out as events unfurled, which I hope may be of interest. My position in summary is that I supported Yvette Cooper for leader and Angela Eagle for deputy leader last year. I accept the results of the leadership election and have tried to work constructively with the Parliamentary leadership as a backbench Labour MP. I do hold office on House of Commons Committees, representing the Labour Party. I have not resigned from any of these posts and get on with doing the job that I have been asked to do. I did not support the PLP no confidence motion at the PLP meeting on the Monday it was discussed. I do not believe we should be having this leadership contest, however this is very much a minority point of view amongst MPs.

 

 

Dissatisfaction with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is widespread and deeply felt. There are people who never gave him a chance when he was elected leader and opposed him from day one. The present row and disappointments spread well beyond this however.  

 

 

My fear is that the present leadership contest will not resolve the issue regardless of the outcome. My objective is to hold the Labour Party together at Constituency level. 

 

 

I have argued in favour of Jeremy’s right to be on the ballot paper in the leadership contest as a matter of right, because he is the incumbent. Some members have written to me saying that they joined too late to take part in the ballot. This is a National Executive Committee decision. Although I accept that all deadlines are somewhat arbitrary, I hope this won't put new members off enthusiastically participating in our party.  

 

 

I haven't nominated, or declared support for either of the candidates in the leadership contest, partly because I don't believe we should be having the contest, and should have found another way through, but also because I don't want to be a partisan supporter of one side or another when the key task is to unify the party, rather than exacerbate its divisions. I do have very strong views as to how we could constructively move forward and I am happy to discuss these with members who are interested in these issues about party structures. 

 

 

I was first elected to Parliament in 1983. Roy Jenkins, David Owen and others had broken away from the Labour Party and set up the SDP. Indeed, I defeated their candidate, Mike Thomas, who was the previous Labour MP for East Newcastle before he defected. As a relatively young man I saw at first hand the miseries that this put the Labour Party through, exacerbated by Trotskyite entryism. There must be a better way forward than going back to where we were 35 years ago.  

 

 

With very best wishes,

 

 

Nick

 

 

Rt Hon Nick Brown MP

 

 

Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne East

Saving Corbyn & Socialism

Campaign Meeting 29/06/2016
Report by Gavin Thompson
with thanks to Mietek Padowicz for photos

Momentum Tyne and Wear met today with members from Momentum Hexham for an urgent meeting in response to the recent implosion of the Labour party through an orchestrated coup. This coup which threatens socialism itself here in the United Kingdom and could see such ideas laid to rest for another twenty years is aimed at the incredibly popular Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour party.

Over 100 high spirited, extremely determined and focused members met at short notice to discuss the actions of both the media and Labour Parliamentarians behind this attack and how best to formulate a grass roots movement to destroy any challenge completely and permanently, giving Labour and socialism the best possible chance in the next elections.

The evening began with many of the attendees being given opportunities to express their concerns at the current situation, speculate as to what is really going on behind the scenes and also what is likely to happen next.

MPs who had betrayed the Membership and the Leadership in this coup through a vote of no confidence were identified and it was suggested by Momentum officials that it is too early to make attempts of deselection right now though there were many in the room who felt differently. Momentum officials suggested the organization put aside deselection attempts and focus on campaigning for Jeremy with practical activities.

There is still some hope that MP’s will return to representing the membership by protecting the leader, his ideals and his policies, once more. Suggestions were taken from across the room as to what practical things Momentum members can and should be doing at this time which included:

• Making contacts with mainstream media, 
• Increasing presence at Labour events, 
• Coordinating within CLPs 
• Major membership drives for the Labour party and Momentum
• Promoting the six members running for NEC positions from the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance.

The members split into groups with specific interests and began brainstorming and debating before producing numerous deliverables to be achieved. This included

• Creating union links,
• Running events and stalls
• Creating promotional materials
• Online media work
• Community outreach
• Defending Jeremy at CLPs

During these discussions the realization that actually, we can do this seemed to set in. A real energy began buzzing around the place. People were rushing from one group to another collaborating and co-operating in an incredible way which I don’t recall seeing any place before. The sense of urgency coupled with a passion for this kind of politics created one of the happiest and most productive
environments I have ever known. If Momentum continues at this pace, nothing will stop them!

Info@peoplesmomentum.com

www.peoplesmomentum.com

Labour’s Civil War: Which Side Are You On?

“The most disgraceful thing about this coup to remove Corbyn is, it’s a class coup. It’s a coup to remove a leader who has the interests of the working class at heart, and to replace him with someone who has the interests of neo-liberalism, pro austerity, wealthy multinationals and landowners at their heart.”

The above words from Nadia Ermilova put perfectly into perspective what is at stake in the current Labour Party crisis. When Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership contest last September, it was a victory not just for Corbyn himself, but for the movement as a whole and, here in the North, also for his chosen campaigners, Ben Sellers and David Stockdale.

Councillor Stockdale’s stock went up, if you’ll pardon the pun, yet the man himself all but vanished from the political scene. He was widely expected to take on a leadership role on Newcastle’s left and to help consolidate the Corbyn victory. Beleaguered leftists looked to him for support against the counterrevolutionary Blairite forces who still hold much of the local Party structure in their grasp. Yet it appears that David may have stretched himself too thin, and the many people complaining about missed appointments and unreturned calls are actually a testament to his value to Newcastle’s left. It also has to be mentioned, to his credit, that he has continued to serve his constituents with, among other things, campaigns such as The People’s Post Office and successfully blocking the building of a new McDonalds. It would be unfair to hold against him that family, work or other private matters have taken precedence over politics these last few months. Nobody thinks any the less of Cllr Stockdale for needing time to himself, but it must be recognised that his absence has been felt and has led to something of a leadership vacuum on the local left.

Stockdale prominently re-entered the public eye again in March by announcing a new fortnightly column in The Newcastle Evening Chronicle. While we can forgive and sympathise with his need for personal time, what I personally find less forgivable was that his debut article attempted to smooth over some very nasty internal party politics by pretending they just didn’t exist. He wrote:

“This period of adjustment (I am being diplomatic) has created a climate within the Labour Party that the press and our opposition like to characterise as infighting.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a leader, we are united behind our leader and we are consistently challenging the Tories on big issues and winning.”

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/news-opinion/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-who-11115629

On his facebook wall, I challenged this statement in the following terms:

“David, what you have written here could not be further from the truth, as you well know, not least because several of us have been keeping you informed. I am not having you pretending that what I am going through is not happening.

The backlash against Corbyn in Newcastle East CLP in particular has been very personal and vindictive, and it feels like you are glossing over these problems. When complaints about breaches in the rules are entirely ignored, and active party members bullied and harassed out of attending their own branch, I think it is fair to call that 'infighting'.”

It would be an understatement to say that I was disappointed when David’s response was to accuse me of ‘chastising’ him and ‘hijacking’ his post, and in later discussions to accuse me of ‘revenge’, ‘lashing out’ and ‘soft bullying’. This was the man we looked to as Corbyn’s Man in the North, whom we had appealed to privately for help in dealing with bullying stemming from the Blairite camp. Unfortunately, Stockdale made a choice to publicly support the undemocratic and unconstitutional tendencies in our branches.

Fast forward to the Leadership Coup, and Stockdale appeared before the crowd gathered at Grey’s Monument for the #KeepCorbyn demo on 27th of June. He took to the mic to call on us to ‘fight’:

“We always knew this would be a fight, and it’s a fight we’re gonna win, ‘cause we’ve already won it…. My message to you is that we’ve got to keep fighting and to stand up for the things that we believe in, and if we keep fighting we will win.”

The fighting talk did not last long, soon taking a conciliatory turn towards those engaged in the Coup. Days later, on the 29th, when news came out that Newcastle Central MP, Chi Onwurah, had voted against Jeremy Corbyn in the PLP vote of no-confidence, Stockdale took to twitter to say:

@ChiOnwurah is a fantastic MP for Newcastle. Any party member who might be tempted to have a go at her now ought to stop & think #solidarity

Followed up shortly after with:

To be fair @ChOnwurah didn't ignore us, she weighed everything up & made a decision. She's been loyal to Jeremy.

This brings us back to where we came in; that this coup represents “a class coup. It’s a coup to remove a leader who has the interests of the working class at heart, and to replace him with someone who has the interests of neo-liberalism, pro austerity, wealthy multinationals and landowners at their heart.” This coup is an assault on party democracy, on socialism and on the interests of the working classes. How can we possibly say of those engaged in the coup that we should not ‘have a go’ at them? Or that they have been ‘loyal to Jeremy’? How can we hashtag solidarity with those who voted against the overriding democratic will of the Party membership?

It is clear that there exist strong friendships and relationships between Councillors, MPs and other influential figures in Newcastle’s Labour Party. That is to be accepted and encouraged for a functioning government. However, the question has to be asked, which ties are stronger - those of the Tyneside Chumocracy, or the ties of working class solidarity?

Many will remember the calls for solidarity from Newcastle figures - including Stockdale - during the leadership campaign. I cringed at the use by the left of a phrase that is literally a fascist slogan: ‘Unity is Strength’. These calls were joined in enthusiastically by known Blairites, who meanwhile spoke terms such as ‘hard left’, ‘militant’, ‘looney left’ out the other side of their mouths. That is, when they were not busy purging the membership. I always remember one particular response to that: “No false unity”.

Corbyn's Challenger

Great meeting with Momentum tonight at the Tyneside Irish Centre.

One attendee suggested the Right are intentionally refusing to to field a leadership challenger against Jeremy Corbyn in order to drag out the manufactured leadership crisis interminably. It then becomes a war of attrition designed to take its toll on Jeremy's reputation as leader. 

In discussions afterwards, we came up with the following way of handling this:

The Corbyn camp could trigger an immediate Leadership Election by putting forward their own challenger - John McDonnell. This will force the Blairites to scramble for a candidate, and JC supporters can be guaranteed of having either Corbyn or McDonnell as leader by using their first two preferences to vote for them.

This would allow us get this manufactured leadership crisis out of the way quickly, in time to challenge whoever the Tories choose in October.

Welcome to Geordie Labour

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.