There will be a hustings at the National Labour Link forum in Leeds next weekend. There will also be at least 50 other hustings taking place up and down the country. West Ham CLP (sponsored by London UNISON Labour Link) will be organising an event for members and affiliates – hopefully on Sunday evening July 18- tbc)
The affiliated unions will have a 1/3 of the total votes cast via a secret postal ballot of all levy payers. Apparently UNISON has about 885,000 levy payers out of a total 3.4 million. There are around 157,000 individual party members.
During the next week or so as the branch Labour link officer I will be trying to consult the 1,000 labour levy players in my branch on who they prefer should be supported (and also who should be the Labour Mayor for London candidate – that’s another story).
I might as well put my oar in now and say that I hope that UNISON Labour Link does make a decision to support and I also that it will be for Ed Miliband. I’ll post on why sometime soon.
In the meantime:-
End of supporting nominations is 26th July 2010 (West Ham CLP meets on Wednesday to decide on a nomination)
Ballot papers being to drop 1st September 2010
Freeze date for new members to join 8th September 2010 (which I assume means that new members will still get ballot papers?).
5 comments:
I really wish that these future Party leaders spent a little more time attacking the CONDEM Government rather than waiting for them to be elected leader and the comming hostility to wipe away this government of the rich.
We need to be laying into the Tories & liberal puppets on ever cut NOW
Hello John
I have placed this comment on Jon of the Rogers blog so here it is in the case he doesn't publish it... This is about the comments he made re the General Sec election on his blog yesterday
'It is of course a fact that many of us have different views on how to approach election campaigns and what tactics to use. Unfortunately we all think that our own way of doing things is right.
I publicly supported one of the 3 left wing candidates, namely Dave Prentis, as he has the only record of achivement. I would have looked at the options in a different way had we produced a woman candidate that came from the left.
There is no doubt in my mind that the left of the left put out a negative message to 'potential supporters' by showing a clear inability to select one candidate and show very publicly that the disagreement on finding such a person was far more important than the aspired 'policies'
The left of the left have, in a way, forced those on the left to rally around an existing leader (D Prentis) mainly because of the display of what is seen as profound disunity and arrogance.
At the end of the day Paul Holmes is seen as a nice guy who makes reasonable speeches but has image issues and a very low profile outside his own branch. Roger is more well known. The UL shows a certain degree of arrogance (something that always pissed me off!) by stating publicly that the door is always opened for Roger to come back to the UL? This is somewhat odd and an independent spirit like myself would think that since Roger got many more votes it would be him making the gestures?
I have been an avid supporter of yourself Jon but you got this one wrong. You should thank Marsha for all the work she has done under difficult (if not impossible) circumstances but she should not be asked to deliver the undeliverable. Your failure comes from not being able to find a candidate from the left of the left. It was also arrogant to suggest that the current Secretary is not on the left?? Cameron thinks he is??
You're way off the mark John. Don't believe what you read in the Guardian. UNISON has about 450k maximum members paying the labour link levy. We affiliate broadly that number.
There is a lack of transparency about how the one third union share is distributed, This is a serious issue as individual votes go into one pot. There is a massive discrepancy between what some unions affiliate and how many levy paying 'members' get a vote in Labour elections EG Unite - bearing in mind that other unions have only one political fund section.
The sad truth is that UNISON votes are diluted by members of other unions being balloted way in excess of their affiliation. We should receive a proportion of the third in line with our relative affiliation - but we don't.
I am sure DP is well to the left of many of our members
Name calling is a joke
our problem is that I guess a majoority of our members vote Lib Dem or Conservative
and certainly didnt vote to the Left of Labour
DP politics are probably to the left of RB given his understandable loyalty to Labour Party
Our members have to come along way, rember it was an anti abortionist right winger who polled the highest alternative vote to RB
You're mistaken, Tony C.
The ballot papers go out to the individuals and the ones that come back are counted.
The size of the affiliation is not very relevant. Turnout is what counts.
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