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Organise People’s Agenda Electoral Platforms

Marie Lynam
2nd April 2010 at 15:18
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Hello comrades
The news of the exoneration of Policeman Smellie is very important, and thanks Ed, the LRC comrade who has reminded us. It is not the sort of news that gets repeats on TV, or radio, every 15 minutes!

To Dorothy who answered Ed, I say: It seems to me that it is not a matter of whether this exoneration should be - or not -  “pinned on Gordon”, as she says. It is easy, in election times, to feel a bit like like a herd behind the leader.

However, the leader himself has done himself and ‘Labour’ no good by denouncing the BA strike, by crossing the picket lines with his Chancellor on Budget Day, and by bringing back war-criminal Blair.

We are surrounded on all important sides by un-elected and elected gurus who worship at the altar of high finance. They all speak the same language and get us to play the ‘spot the difference’ game between them. Meanwhile, of course, how much time has the LRC got on TV or radio? Apart from John Mc and Jeremy?

For a long time, and unbeknown to us, non-dom Lord Ashcroft sat in the Lords. His social usefulness amounted to drawing the speculative billions back from under-developed financial haven Belize, to finance the Conservative Party and its electoral campaign. He could not have done this unless the financial system had been bailed-out of course. I can hear the stiffled non-doms giggles as they banquet together in the City where well-tanned Blair gives a ten-minute £250,000 speech to tell them how to use New Labour to keep Labour down. Only someone who hails from the labour movement can make such a speech: A speech worth its money.

A member of the public, Peter Godfrey, writes in the Morning Star 31.3.10, p10, about the coming general elections. He warns that “the socialist vote ... where there are no McDonnells and Corbyns’ standing [..] may be fragmented among various left wing parties and groupings”. And Peter to add: “Surely we should be uniting around the Peoples Charter now, not after the elections”.
Britain is not ruled by Brown, Darling, or any parliament. It is no news to you that we are ruled most directly, overtly and unashamedly by the rating agencies. Such agencies are surely very few, aren’t they? I would be surprised if they involved more than 0.000000001% of the population of the world. Although I hope you may (my reader) take up your electronic pen, and put me right.

So far, I have identified only one rating agency, which seems to have the same power over Alistair Darling as it has over the European Union in general, and over Greece in particular.

It could be that Darling is replaced, or not replaced, in the elections. But this makes no difference. Before, during and after Darling, it was, it is and it will be the rating agencies that decide Britain’s policies. The direction of the country is not in the hands of parliament or even the government. Sorry perhaps this is not quite true: Was it parliament that ruled that the 2 owners of a pet-shop (the lady being 70) should be tagged and curfewed for having sold a gold-fish to an under-age child?

The LRC as an organisation: Let us not be like a herd behind our own leader. In John Mc, we have a good leader, but he can only be as good as we allow him to be. And if we hang to his coat-tails, we surely stop him going higher and farther.

The elections are important, naturally. But mostly, they are important because they give an opportunity to intervene politically. A luxury long lost, in the great democracies of the ‘developed’ capitalist world.

The TV spectacle of Chancellor Darling with 2 of his shadows was some entertainment. Do you think the millions of the 1997 Labour voters were impressed? Or that the public felt consulted? Or that its opinion was being informed? No. As always, public opinion was only being manipulated, to the extent possible, which is no longer very much. The British people are an educated population, with a great sense of humour.

It is not too late to get the LRC, Briefing and other tendencies, to organise Peoples Charter/People Agenda platforms where they invite well disposed Trade Unions (not just the leaders but the activists too), TUC leaders and TUC members, all the workers parties, and all those in the general public WHO AGREE with the Charter and Peoples Agenda.

In well chosen constituencies, these ‘hustings’ would put the best foot forward of their preferred Left candidate (matters of Labour centralisation having been duly considered as much as feasible), and each chosen candidate keeping the name of their own Party: Their only obligation being to support publicly the Peoples Agenda.

The LRC would then have the national opportunity to explain to the world how it intends to recapture the Labour label; and how this label was stolen and confiscated from Labour by means most foul, by possibly one or two scoundrels who came at night on tiptoe to inject Labour with a trial anti-clause-4 drug recently smuggled out of a US neoliberal laboratory.

If we managed to create such Peoples Agenda Electoral Platforms, we would have the opportunity to convince - in my opinion - any number of the disappointed Old Labour supporters disposed to believe our explanations, and to fill in our recruitment form cleverly placed at the back of the Peoples Agenda for their perusal.
As things stand, the Charter remains unnecessarily under-used. And the groupings on the Left do whatever they think best, each one for itself, or forming platforms as chance and affinities best allow, empirically, each platform in competition with the other and all in separation from the LRC.

Now, the conditions are improving for the LRC to act more independently from its old attachments. There are good conditions for it to try and recapture the Labour identity set out very clearly in the Peoples Agenda. The very action of having printed this agenda raises the people’s consciousness. It re-awakens their sense of urgency blunted by an apparent lack of alternatives. The document Peoples Agenda, is very good. It extends and deepens the Charter’s programme. If there is a reprint, it could make a mention of the Peoples Charter, eh?

Now there are opportunities for the LRC to use the Peoples Agenda and get people to join the LRC.

Now, and not after the elections.

Now, during this electoral campaign.

Greetings, marie Lynam, Peoples Charter, 07535 804 328.

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