A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.
Thanks to Theo Blackwell (http://regentsparklabour.blogspot.com/) for sending me the link to the SWP's response to Galloway's critique of their behaviour inside Respect:
posted by Luke Akehurst at 3:04 pm
Labour MP for North Durham since 2024. Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Dad. Unite and GMB union member. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
8 Comments:
And why are labour students not there? As the only left group that actually delivers for students, I am shocked and appauled.
3:12 pm, September 14, 2007
And if you are a university student and can't spell the word "appalled", I'm feeling pretty sick about our education record over the past 10 years of Labour Government.
3:16 pm, September 14, 2007
Oh for goodness sake, I type fast!
3:44 pm, September 14, 2007
The Communist student document says:
"Student Broad Left: The left face of the NUS bureaucracy, and vocational school for Ken Livingstone’s personal staff.
Secretly run by: Socialist Action.
....Masters in the black arts of sectarian manoeuvring, careerism and opportunism, SA’s political hit-men move in the shadows and make the Stasi look like rank amateurs. Avoid."
Luke - Im not versed in the dark arts of the ultra left - but would be interested to learn if indeed this is true before i cast my vote in the Mayoral elections.
8:20 pm, September 14, 2007
The far lkeft have always divided and divided.
The point is that those of us who are no longer labour members bare not necessarily 'left-wingers'. I always thought of myself as on the right of the party.
But I simply don't agree with neo-con liberal interventionist foreign policy and I think NL is too Atlanticist. It was on that issue - iraq - that I resigned from the party.
That didn't mean, for one minute, that I would want to join Respect or anything similar.
12:06 am, September 15, 2007
Disappointing how Luke sees the CPGB as an ally to attack sections of the left who campaign for Labour.
Remember CPGB said there were only four Labour candidates worth voting for in 2005.
Why Luke sees these as his friends in his endless quest to exterminate those who are not Labour-right is bizarre...
12:23 am, September 15, 2007
I've always been entirely baffled by the secret lives of the 'so-called' 'organised left' (I say so-called, because the implication is that people like me are disorganised... I suppose there may be a point there!) I was always vaguely aware that good comrades of mine were also members of these various groups, but the only way it impinged on the quality of their activism (and indeed the hard work they put in for the party) was insofar as you couldn't persuade them to talk to each other. The mistake I always made was to think that in organising a vote at a Labour Students conference people could put to one side whether they thought the Soviet Union was a deformed workers' state or if it was state capitalist, or whatever...
(I like the 'word verification' thing below here today: 'epest' - it sounds like something that would come up on Call My Bluff and would probably mean some sort of hacker!!)
8:55 pm, September 16, 2007
(I also suspect that Luke might be the CPGB)
7:02 pm, September 17, 2007
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