Election time
Last night's Hackney N & Stoke Newington Constituency Labour Party AGM, held at the Halkevi Turkish & Kurdish Community Centre was enlivened by a contested election featuring the author of this blog.
For some unfathomable reason the Hard Left broke off from moaning about Michael Meacher to run a candidate against me for the glamorous and highly sought-after position of Vice-Chair (Membership), a post I've held for six years.
I gather this has something to do with the internal dynamics of Leabridge Branch Labour Party, where the traditionally dominant Labour Left Briefing faction is being outflanked to the left (!) by new folks who I think may be connected to the AWL. Even more to branch commissar Graham Bash's chagrin the traditionally dominant West Ham fans in the branch are slowly being outnumbered by Leyton Orient entryists.
Anyway, I won by 24 votes to 7, so the comrades retired, hurt.
Even better than the result was that Diane Abbott MP as a non-delegate had to count the ballot papers.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 7:51 am
12 Comments:
Congratulations.
Was the candidate who run against you from LLB tendency or from the new ones who are trying to outflank them from the left?
9:27 am, February 23, 2007
The new ones I think.
9:40 am, February 23, 2007
thanks.
Did LLB vote for you or for your challenger?
10:09 am, February 23, 2007
My challenger but I got the impression just for form's sake. I don't think they came up with the idea of running someone against me.
10:13 am, February 23, 2007
We had ours at Man Wit also last night. No contested elections. In fact some empty posts. Lord Bradley actually got elected to something though ... Leyton Orient though? Graham will be upset if that is true and not just NL spin.
1:19 pm, February 23, 2007
Leyton Orient is the best football team in the whole wide world :-)
2:56 pm, February 23, 2007
Can she count?
7:00 pm, February 23, 2007
Congratulations Luke.
Now you have enjoyed the benefit of internal party democracy will you be urging the leadership to follow the deomcraticaly agreed policies on the fourth option and rail nationalisation?
Or is it democracy for some?
10:32 am, February 25, 2007
I can vividly picture Graham bashing out an essay "Leyton Orientism - An Infantile Disorder" ...
2:53 am, February 26, 2007
Luke,
Who would win in a fight between the Hon. Members for Hackney North and Hackney South?
Your public need to know.
5:15 pm, February 26, 2007
Sorry if this is too late - I've not seen this blog before.
My name's Rory and I stood against Luke for the VC post. My reasons for doing so, and the branch's reasons for nominating me, are no more sinister than wanting to have a challenge. I never expected to win, and was in fact delighted that as many as seven people voted for a completely new delegate they had never met or heard of before (it was my first GC meeting). The vote was democratically won by Luke, clearly, and I congratulate him on his wide margin of victory!
More puzzling, however, is this suggestion of AWL membership. I only personally know one AWL bloke who is in the Labour Party, and it ain't me! I'm also intrigued as to where the rumours about the LLB faction v AWL faction have come from! No doubt some food for discussion at branch meeting tonight. I'm sure Graham in particular will be surprised to hear about it.
The allegations of Leyton Orient entryism are harder to deny, however. Much to Graham's chagrin, two of our three branch delegates to GC are now Orient fans.
10:43 am, March 01, 2007
Look what happens in my absence from Leabridge meetings!
12:23 pm, March 06, 2007
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