Monday, November 19, 2007

Saturday's Left Conferences: A Tale of Four Sittings


Liam MacUaid has added a report of the Official Respect conference to his blog. This was - to report factually, albeit risking abuse - the Socialist Workers' Party led portion of the former Coalition. Written by a non-believer who attended as a selected delegate.

Comments on this report are strongly divided. He did not get called to speak. Now his report is being rubbished. Comments include a sort of transcript of a Mark Serwotka (Gen Sec, PCS) Speech which apparently denounced George Galloway as a splitter and a servant of Gordon Brown's purpose.

Mark spoke at three of the four socialist meetings in London on Saturday refusing Renewal Respect (Galloway). Official Respect, Socialist Party (no report yet) and Labour Representation Committee (resolutions and amendments available), which incidentally had three Labour MPs including Compassite Jon Trickett, Tony Benn, Jane Davidson AM. And Bundestag member Alexander Ulrich to boot. Susan Press has a LRC Report.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Chris

Six Labour MPs by my count - Kelvin Hopkins, Jeremy Corbyn and how could you forget John McDonnell?

My only problem was the elephant in the room - namely, was the PLP to blame for not nominating John, or John for not building bridges from the outset and getting PLP support?

No prizes for guessing who LRC members blame.

I was there as an observer.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks Peter

Only three MPs were named on the LRC site at the time of writing. McDonnell, Trickett and Corbyn. Hopkins is extra. Wareing? Katy Clark or Linda Riordan?

Although I supported John in many ways including on this blog my own view was consistently that he was not the right candidate - any more than Michael - to make the quota of supporting MPs.

The LRC clearly has to reach out into the centre of the PLP and although the programme we had wouldn't give many people too many problems and although John is very clear and dynamic he is regarded as an ultra within the PLP, and has quite also trodden on a good few toes along the way.

Anonymous said...

Hi - Wareing was there but is of course not a Labour MP. Worse he is proposing to stand against a Labour PPC, and if LRC wants to be taken seriously in the PLP it is going to have to find ways of accepting Wareing lost a re-selection. And if he does stand against the Labour candidate, they will need to disown him.