Silencing the left
Stuart Bruce asks whether anyone will be heckling Walter Wolfgang to give him a taste of his own medicine:
http://www.stuartssoapbox.com/2006/08/
should_be_heckl.html#comments
We won't actually get the chance - getting elected to the NEC if you are in the minority on it is effectively a trappist vow where conference is concerned.
Why? NEC Members can't speak from conference floor. All they can do is reply to debates. And the - thankfully sane - majority on the NEC does not give the job of replying to policy debates to Grassroots Alliance members.
So Ann, Wolfgang, Pete and Christine won't be speaking in the Conference hall for as long as they are NEC members.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 5:25 pm
9 Comments:
Didn't Ann chair a session last year ?
7:59 pm, August 07, 2006
The problem with blogs is sometimes you post in haste. The subtle point I was trying to make (and failed) is that coming to prominence for heckling isn't cool, clever or grounds to be elected to the NEC.
7:55 am, August 08, 2006
Anthony, I stand corrected ... can't see Walter W being given the chair or asked to reply to a debate though.
9:22 am, August 08, 2006
One thing in your favour Luke is that you are always honest about these things! Nice to see how 'One Member One Vote' elections are held in such high esteem in the party. Of course, 170 members 30 votes would be something closer to this election when you look at the turnout! Perhaps people don't vote because they don't think it makes much difference (such as the people they vote for being 'silenced'?)
1:57 pm, August 08, 2006
No they won't b speaking at conference but Ann might ask one of the 19 000 people that voted for her 2.
2:51 am, August 09, 2006
Ann did indeed chair a session last year and, I thought, did it as well as every other conference chair. The people she picked to speak were from a broad range of, well pretty much everything. Old hacks, new faces, good speakers, crap speakers. In other words, as random as if they'd been picked from a hat. And that's the way it should be.
5:52 pm, August 09, 2006
And thats one of the reasons she topped the poll!
6:53 pm, August 09, 2006
I think the point is that if Jack Straw shouted 'rubbish' at Walter Wolfgang, he wouldn't be summarily ejected and charged as a potential terrorist.
Then again...
11:02 am, August 11, 2006
No, after all, they only won a vote of the whole membership of the Labour Party. How stupid of us to expect them to be allowed to express their opinions.
Anyway, conference rejected the platform position on every controversial policy without them needing to say anything. Even AMICUS...
12:05 pm, October 10, 2006
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