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So if things weren't bad enough for Gordon Brown, it looks like the
Labour Party has been taking big donations from Tory voters. Apparently, a number of confused members of the public have discovered that their bank accounts have been used to
transfer funds to the Labour Party. This all
sounds a bit fishy. Can we expect a new episode of "Our friends in the North"? 
The Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into an illegal
donation to Wendy Alexander MSP's campaign to take over from Jack
McConnell as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, following
Labour's worst electoral defeat in 50 years.
Hain resigns: New Labour enmired in sleaze
Did Blair and his right wing policies make Labour
electable? The defeats of the 1980s led many activists to despair. The claim that dominance of the Party by the left was
responsible for the defeats needs careful scrutiny, as it is completely
at odds with the facts. Like all other aspects of history, the story of
the 1980s has been written by the so-called victors and what actually
happened needs to be investigated.
The Electoral Commission
has launched an investigation into an illegal donation to Wendy Alexander MSP's
campaign to take over from Jack McConnell as Labour leader in the Scottish
Parliament. The crisis
unfolded when the Sunday Herald learned that every donation to the Wendy
campaign was under £1,000. Many were for £950. Under the Elections Act 2000,
all donations of £1,000 or more must be declared to the Electoral
Commission.
In 1970, just like today, the Labour Party seemed dead from
the neck up. After six years of desperately disappointing government, Labour
had been unceremoniously bundled out of office. The Tories were back, aiming to
put the boot in to the working class.
We are making available to our readers an appeal by the Labour
Representation Committee on the issue of internal party democracy. On Sunday
Labour Party conference kicks off. If Brown's proposals are accepted it appears
that from next year CLPs and affiliates will no longer have the right to take
resolutions to Party conference.
Floods, Foot and Mouth and hundreds of thousands of public
sector workers balloting for industrial action over pay, not perhaps the sort
of run up to the party conference that Gordon Brown had hoped for. But can we be
confident that Labour can beat the Tories in a "snap" election, and just
as importantly is there any evidence that Brown will be more convincing to
working class voters who have stayed at home in droves in the past period?
The establishment of the Labour Party to give a political voice to the trade union movement was a historic achievement. Even today, after more than a decade during which the Party has been firmly in the grip of Blairite, pro-capitalist interlopers, the link between the unions and the Party remains.
Gordon Brown and senior Labour Party officials
have greeted the defection to Labour's parliamentary ranks of Tory MP Quentin
Davies with joy. But what sort of person are they actually getting?
From more than 10 years the Blairites have attacked the democratic structures of the Labour party and reduced the democratic rights of party members to an absolute minimum. This was part of their campaign to shift the party to the right and turn it into a Tory party mark two. But today there is a growing backlash against Blairism but an urgent need to reestablish the accountability of the leadership.
A recent poll of Labour Party members, published
in the Sunday Times shows why the New Labour clique around Gordon Brown were determined to keep
left challenger John McDonnell off the ballot paper.
Thanks
to the sabotage of some 300-odd members of the Parliamentary Labour Party,
ordinary Labour Party members and affiliates, who were expecting a leadership
election, ended up with no election and a "one member, no vote" imposed
candidate. The task now is to strengthen the left in preparation for future
battles.
The lie peddled by the entire establishment, from the mass media to the universities and schools; from the Tories to Lib Dems, is New Labour's line that the left made Labour unelectable in the 1980s. Special venom is reserved for the Militant Tendency and the National Union of Mineworkers led by Arthur Scargill.
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