West Ham Labour Remain Campaign Bank Holiday Weekend

Last Thursday we had London Labour MEP, Mary Honeyball talking to the West Ham Labour General Committee and taking questions about the Socialist case to vote remain in the EU referendum.

Sunday lunchtime the Labour Party "Labour In" Battle bus came to the Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford.

Alan Johnson MP together with London MEPs spoke to activists about the economic importance of staying in the EU and protecting workers rights.

On Bank holiday Monday, West Ham CLP had over 15 activists, led by Lyn Brown MP, outside Stratford Station, handing out leaflets (and balloons) and putting the case for "Remain".

By coincidence, I met up with road sweeper, Rab Smith,  who I used to work with in Tower Hamlets and is a longstanding UNISON activist and we had a really good conversation about the annihilation of employment rights if we leave Europe and the prospect of 4 years of Tory/UKIP rule.

I think one of the best things we did that day was to explain to young people how easy it was to register to vote on their smart phones. Just google "voter registration" and if you have your national insurance number,  you can do it in 5 minutes. (By June 7 - but don't delay) 

London Labour Europe team "on the knocker" in Canning town.

On Saturday afternoon the Labour Candidates for the May Euro elections came to help out in West Ham CLP. In the morning they had been in East Ham.

Picture is of London MEP Mary Honeyball with West Ham Cllr Charlene Mclean and Neil Wilson.

We were in Canning Town ward and went door knocking around Ordnance Road. This area has changed in recent years but is still pretty solid Labour.There use to be a BNP presence in the past but this has largely long gone.

The area seemed to be well maintained. Mainly Council built flats and houses with some modern developments. There was not to be absolutely honest a huge interest in the Euro elections but residents I met seemed really pleased to meet one of their London Member's European Parliament. 

I had been canvassing in the morning in West Ham ward on local issues but it was interesting to be out with Mary and seeing things from a more European campaign prospect. I was hoping to have a debate with residents on Europe but apart from one very grumpy resident who just said he hated the lot of us, the issues were the same bread and butter problems such as street cleaning, rubbish, dog mess and housing waiting lists.

As a trade unionist I think it is vital that Labour does well in the Euro-elections.  The EU is in a mess and there are huge governance problems but Social Europe helps protect ordinary workers in this country and if the ultra Tory UKIP had their way, British workers would have no rights, what so ever in this country.

West Ham CLP Euro Husting 28 May 7.30pm Vicarage Lane Community Centre, E15

All 6 candidates to be ranked by a ballot of London Labour Party members next month have confirmed that they will be attending. Including UNISON supported candidates Sanchia Alaisa and Ivana Bartoletti. Existing London MEP Mary Honeyball is also planning to be there.

The thoughts of Chairman John...on Blogging

Mary Honeyball MEP has posted the video of her fringe at Labour Party conference 2010.  You can see my contribution on some of the perils of blogging and a possible potential political benefit here.

The other speakers were Mark Ferguson (Labourlist), Jessica Asato and Kerry McCarthy MP (her video not yet posted).

The fringe I thought was an excellent conference event.  Well done to Mary and her team for putting it on.

(The Guilty Newham 4 - they know who they are will now have an opportunity to understand just what they have missed out on - LOL :)

Labour Party Conference 2010: West Ham CLP delegates report

The Labour movement usually requires all delegates to write reports on the conferences they have been sent to by their unions or the Labour Party.

Ellie Robinson (right) and David Christie (middle) were the West Ham Labour Party delegates to Conference this year.  (Left is Forhad Hussain, who was there as a ex-officio visitor and is also a UNISON member).  All three of them are newly elected Newham Councillors.

This is Ellie and David's delegation report to the West Ham GC.

"We arrived in Manchester on the Friday night and stayed in apartments just over the border in Salford.

Saturday was the day of the leadership conference where they were to announce the new leader of the Labour Party.  The hall in Manchester Central was buzzing with excitement.  Gordon Brown kicked things off with an emotional speech where he celebrated what the last Government had achieved and thanked many people for supporting him and the Labour Party.  Ann Black, chair of the NEC then took the rostrum and led us through the votes.  It took several minutes to get to the result because of the AV system, and the tension and gasps from the audience mounted until in the final round David Miliband received 49.35% of the vote and we knew that Ed would be the next leader of the Labour Party.  There were cheers and Ed gave a short speech where he paid tribute to the other candidates. In the evening we attended the London Region reception where Ed spoke again.

On Sunday a London region welcome was held introducing delegates to the format of conference and Karen Buck, Labour MP for Westminster North launched a new priority campaign in London on housing reflecting the coalition’s attack on housing benefit claimants.  We attended the young councillor network launch and then went into the hall for conference business. 

Neil Kinnock delivered a moving tribute to Michael Foot who died in the year since the last conference. Merit Awards were presented to members from Hammersmith, Hyndburn and Exeter.  In the priority ballot as West Ham delegates we voted for debates on housing, people trafficking, consumer credit and rights at work as we felt these most reflected the particular needs of people in the West Ham constituency and would not all be prioritised by the Trade Union section. We attended a fringe event on the Gaza siege in the evening and a young Labour event. Labour friends of Bangladesh held a reception which several Newham members came up to Manchester to attend and Rushanara Ali spoke passionately about the Bangladeshi community uniting and having transparent elections and decision making in Tower Hamlets. Mary Honeyball MEP for London held a reception and talked about her ongoing focus in the European parliament.  At the end of the evening there was a Newham drink in a bar net to the Manchester Wheel.

On Monday David Miliband gave a speech as Shadow Foreign Secretary for which he received a standing ovation.  Particular focus was on Burma, Kashmir and Pakistan. Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Dianne Abbott also gave speeches throughout the week that were very well received.

Particular fringe highlights of the rest of the week included the Labour friends of India event hosted by the High Commissioner, again with very good attendance from Newham.   John Gray was on the panel for a fringe on new media and blogging.  Newham Mayor Robin Wales spoke at several fringes, including one on housing where he identified Newham’s plans in that area.

On Tuesday Ed gave his speech, there was tremendous anticipation and he delivered a passionate speech which aimed to draw a line under New Labour. The theme was the ‘New Generation’ and he spoke to the country saying ‘A new generation has taken over Labour- a new generation that understands the call to change’. He called for a mass membership party again with a membership greater than 1997, and talked about winning back votes lost since 1997.  He also promised to work with the coalition when they did the right thing. 

Throughout the rest of the week there was an increasing feeling that David would not run for the shadow cabinet and he announced this on Wednesday.  There was a lot of disappointment at this and generally there were a lot of mixed feelings about Ed’s election. It was inevitable that in so close an election, the losers would feel very disappointed and people did discuss the impact of the union vote on the election and the impression of that in the media.

On the Tuesday night we met our MP Lyn for a drink in the Midland Hotel with other Newham members.

On Wednesday there was a Q and A with our new leader, Ed Miliband, and Eddie Izzard. Two members a minute had joined the Party since Ed was elected leader and a lot of this session focussed on stories from new members.

Harriet Harman, as our Deputy Leader, closed the Conference on Thursday. We came home physically tiered but mentally reenergised to fight for our Party locally and nationally.

An update on rule changes will be provided at the GC".

Labour Party Conference 2010: Bloggers 4 Labour fringe

Last Monday I was a member of this panel at the conference fringe chaired by London Labour MEP, (and blogger) Mary Honeyball.  I was first to speak then Islington Councillor and head of David Miliband social media campaign, Jessica Asato; the popular website Labour List’s acting editor, Mark Ferguson (who despite a dare did not appear in the supposed atypical male blogging attire – boxer shorts and dressing gown) and Labour “Social Media Tsar”, Kerry McCarthy MP.

There were around 100 people present in the fringe.  Many of whom were furiously blogging, tweeting and facebooking as we spoke.  There was even a few die-hards writing notes with pen-and-paper!

I went first about the legal perils of blogging and how Alex Hilton, Dave Olser and I have lived in “interesting times” for the past 3 1/2 years.  Since my case and Alex is still “on-going” (although in its final stages hopefully) I was a little circumspect about what I could say. 

I did warn bloggers that they must be mindful that it only costs £75 for someone to make a claim (serve a writ) for libel no matter how seemingly ridiculous the claim.  If you are in receipt of certain benefits it is even free.  You could spend thousands of pounds in legal costs (and years of your life) trying to get such a case kicked out with no guarantee you would ever be able to reclaim any of your costs. 

There are a few things to safeguard yourself - such as if you make a somewhat controversial post or comment on something you see on a web site - then save a screen print of it.  If you allow comments then make sure you do indeed moderate them.  If you get a complaint - take down the post until you get advice. 

Some say that the best posts are written late on a Friday or Saturday night after a “few” drinkies – but it is best to post only in the cold harsh light of the following day.  No matter how brilliant you thought it was at the time.

It is not all doom and gloom.  There were a number of occasions of “high comedy”.  Such as when Dave Osler "Ex-punk. Ex-Trot. Unchanged attitude problem" (definitely not a New Labour Supporter)" had to stand up in chambers and respectfully address the bowler hat wearing and MCC tie judge as “Master”.

Check out top legal blog “Jack of Kent” for fuller details of case's.

Next, I spoke about my cunning plan to “drive a wedge in the Coalition by social media”.  Blogging is usually driven either by the top or the bottom.  There are a number of high profile national individual or party blogs with widespread readership and interest.  There are also a huge number of smaller local and personal blogs with a small number of readers.  There is a gap in the middle to exploit. 

I wanted to encourage a Labour movement family blog in every locality.  In London this could be on a borough or regional basis. Run jointly by the local Labour Party and the affiliated trade unions.  A campaigning and reporting blog which will primarily be aimed and used to demonstrate to the 3 million trade union affiliates (and others) that the responsibility for the massive cuts in services and benefits that we face are down to the CONDEMS – and no one else. 

(I did mention that this wasn’t probably the most sensitive time to mention the further political mobilisation of trade union members!).  

Next was Jessica who was able to tell us what it was like to run a national mass new media campaign.  She suggested that there should be a fund for bloggers who face legal action and we need to do something about vile misogynistic anonymous commenter’s (which Mary concurred)

Mark is in the best tradition of Labour bloggers – enthusiastic, knowledgeable, cynical yet amusing.  He will make a fine editor of Labour List as long as they do not run out of money.

Kerry is a total new media enthusiast who wants to use this medium as a new means to communicate our traditional Labour values to the real wider public.   

Mary noted that she “was very pleased by the number of serious bloggers in the audience Councillor Stephen Cowan, Jon Worth, Tracey Cheetham, Mark Nottingham, Colin Ellar and the increasingly well regarded Political Scrapbook”.

There was a very good Q&A from the audience and since no-one mentioned my grand design for local Labour movement blogging, I assume that everyone agreed that it was a wonderful idea - or were too polite to disagree. 

Mary gave all us panellists at the end a very lovely thank you card and a little pressie (see – bloggers do have manners!). 

My pressie was the DVD of “A Very British Coup”.  Which perhaps I ought to send on to our “Red Ed” to prepare him for what might happen when he does become PM!

Many thanks to Mary and her team for all their hard work for what was an enjoyable and instructive fringe.

Labour Party Conference 2010: Mary Honeyball MEP London delegates meal

On the Sunday evening London MEP (and blogger) Mary Honeyball hosted a meal for regional Labour Party delegates and guests.

It was a really pleasant evening (I rushed from the LHG fringe to attend) and there was also lots of interesting discussion and information about conference and other things (including just a little bit of gossip). 

Good food and good conversation.  We also did some planning for the "Bloggers 4 Labour Fringe" on Monday (post to follow).

Blogging for Labour: How social media can drive a wedge into the Coalition.

Hope those of you who are going to this years Labour Party conference will come to this fringe on the Monday evening.

"Blogging for Labour: How social media can drive a wedge into the Coalition". 

I think that anyone going to conference and reading this blog - will be somewhat interested!

Mary Honeyball MEP will chair and the panelists are Jessica Asato; Alex Smith Labour list, Tom Harris MP and moi.

Monday 27 September 18:00 - 19.30. Manchester Central - Charter 1.

UPDATE: see report of the actual fringe here

"Labour Bloggers fight the Coalition"

 Labour blogger Mary Honeyball MEP has organised this fringe at Labour Party Conference. 

I am also taking part and am looking forward very much to it. 

Apart from me, of course, there is a really good panel!

Hope you can make it as well?

Can blogging make a difference?  I think so...but there again, I would say that....

Dinner with London Labour MEP Mary Honeyball.

Next was a dinner with MEP Mary Honeyball. Every year Mary hosts a dinner for London CLP delegates to discuss European issues. Mary is of course also a European Parliamentary blogger (see The Honeyball Buzz).

The meal was very pleasant and informative. The West Ham delegation was sat next to East London comrades from Barking & Dagenham and Hornchurch.

Check out Mary’s report on the dinner.

Afterwards Newham visitors and delegates including West Ham MP Lyn Brown and Sir Robin Wales met up for a sherbet or two at the Grand Hotel which was absolutely packed. Sunday merged into Monday.

EU Housing Election Hustings

Catch up: Last Friday I went to a breakfast meeting on the European elections organised by Inside Housing. London Labour MEP Mary Honeyball (and blogger) Green MEP Jean Lambert; Liberal Democrat candidate Jonathan Fryer and Conservative Party candidate Warwick Lightfoot (no web site?) gave short speeches followed by a Q&A.

The meeting was held at the UK office of the European Parliament. Inside Housing Editor Stuart Macdonald chaired the meeting and the opening speaker was David Orr, CEO of the National Housing Federation and President of CECODHAS (which I had never heard of before).

David explained that CECODHAS represents 46 national and regional social (I don’t like that word “social” but...) housing organisations in 19 EU countries whose members manage some 25 million homes and house 75 million Europeans! He explained that while housing is not an EU “competency” (it’s a member state responsibility) it does have a role tackling homelessness, social policy and climate change. The EU is an economic entity but it is also a social project. Nowadays 80% of environmental and 50% of social legislation comes from the EU. There is a £100 million for energy efficient retrofitting. Currently 27% of green house gases emissions come from domestic housing while “only” 3% from air travel. He also made some interesting observations on the possible future enhanced role of the European Investment Bank in public housing. Could this be a way to get investment into UK housing?

Jonathan Fryer spoke first. He claimed that the Lib Dems are the most pro-EU Party. He is their number two candidate (it’s a Party list PR system) and he only missed out last from being elected by 0.6% of the vote. He is pretty keen on environmental issues, reform of the EU and good quality, accessible and affordable housing for all. Which was pretty much a familiar theme (to a lessor or greater degree) for all the speakers.

Jean Lambert came next as would be expected emphasised environmental issues to the fore. I like the idea of “every home is its own power station” even thought I am not sure how that will work out in practice.

Warwick Lightfoot appears at first to be the typical Tory Squire caricature with his name, drawl, good suit, public school confidence, occupation and dare I say haircut? But he bravely admitted that his mother had firsthand experience of housing difficulties when she had to flee his father due to domestic violence. He was however "fortunate" that her parents could afford to provide them with a cottage next to their home. He made what was to my ears a rarely heard argument that Margaret Thatcher was actually the first Green British politician! He also suggested that due to complex rules and agreements the UK would suffer financially if the EU actually increased its expenditure on the UK.

Mary spoke last and appealed to everyone present to remember that this election is not about British MP expenses, it’s about Europe, and it’s about reforming the EU agricultural policy and reminding the French that everyone does not live in their countryside. It’s about the nitty gritty of getting environmental policy into actual legislation and it’s about promoting and getting implemented integrated urban development.

In the Q&A I thought that the debate so far had been a little too polite and far too consensual. So I decided to see if there is in fact true red, blue, green or yellow water between the candidates. My question was that health & safety of employees is an EU competence and the recent attempt to end the British opt-out from the working time directorate (WTD) had recently failed in Europe. Since work life balance and occupational stress due to a long hours is a key issue to many housing associations what are the candidates’ views about this issue?

"Allowing" workers to work more than an average of 48 hours per week over a whole year is bad for the employee and the business.

We then had an interesting debate!

Very surprisingly Jonathon Fryer said that the Lib Dems were against the removal of the WTD opt out! He advanced some rather strange arguments around retained firefighters and junior doctors to support this view.

Jean Lambert and the Greens were strongly in favour of getting rid.

Warwick Lightfoot was not only strongly in favour of the opt out but proudly accepted personal responsibility for the opt out while being an economic advisor to the government at that time.

Mary of course pointed out that the Labour MEPs were opposed to the opt out and had stood up to pressure from the British Labour government over this issue. Well done!

All in all a very interesting event, it was perhaps appropriate that this public housing meeting of landlord representatives was disrupted several times due to the anti-social behaviour of certain local residents. The Brigade of Guards had decided to send several military bands and pipers to march around Hyde Park and in doing so had totally drowned out the speakers. For some reason I didn’t foresee any of the hard bitten public housing professionals present going off to apply for ASBOs against them.

TULO Parliamentary Reception for Claude Moraes MEP and Anne Fairweather

Just back from this TULO meeting at the House of Commons which was sponsored by Islington South & Finsbury MP, Emily Thornberry.

Emily is on the left of the photo addressing the meeting while Claude and Anne are standing on the right.

Claude is defending his seat with with fellow MEP Mary Honeyball. While Anne Fairweather is trying to be elected for the first time as a London MEP. Anne is in 3rd place in the Labour Party list for London (its a PR election). At the moment Labour holds 3 out of 9 MEPs but the number of London MEPs is decreasing at the June election to 8 (due to new countries joining the EU).

Claude spoke about the importance of ensuring that enough Labour MEPs are elected in order to help their fellow socialists in the European parliament continue to pass progressive policies such as the new rights for agency workers and ending the opt out from the Working Time Directive. Also they have passed much needed social legislation such as European Works Councils and the landmark proposal for an EU wide ban on discrimination in the provision of goods and services. Labour MEPs are also fighting the threats to trade union collective agreements following the adverse legal judgments of Viking, Lavall & Ruffert.

The message is don’t let anyone (or any Tory tabloid) tell you that the elections in June are not important.

I had a chat afterwards with Claude and Emily about attending possible Worker Memorial Day (WMD) events. Which I will see if I can organise via TULO. While Anne accepted an invitation to help out in the Newham Royal Docks by-election.

Plug No 2 from London MEP Mary Honeyball

The 2nd positive plug of the week for this blog was from Mary Honeyball , who is one of the few (very few) female MEP bloggers.

She is having a go here at the new “Labourlist” - a Labour Party supporting blog set up by Derek Draper.

She thinks it is too London centric, there is not enough on Europe or foreign affairs, not enough women contributors and not enough from the regions. She also recommends that :-

“Labourlist should also make cleverer political judgments by, for example, remembering that the majority of Labour representatives, including myself, are in opposition rather than power. Someone like Stephen Cowan reporting from the frontline fighting the Tory Taliban in Hammersmith merits a slot. For a Trade union voice active in the Party, LabourList should perhaps include John Gray”.

This is picked up by on-line Guardian blogger, Dave Hill, here

Of course... I couldn’t possible comment (or disagree).