Campaign news

Back John McDonnell for Leader - what you can do

21st May 2010

There are several things you can do NOW to help get John McDonnell on the ballot paper and ensure that as Labour Party members and trade unionists we have the choice to vote for a campaigning socialist as Labour leader:

• Please lobby your Labour MP to nominate John McDonnell
• If you don’t have a Labour MP, then why not lobby a Labour MP sponsored by your union or an MP who you’ve campaigned for
• Pass a resolution in your Labour Party branch or at your GC calling on MPs to nominate John McDonnell
• Pass a resolution in your trade union branch calling on your union to back John McDonnell
• Write to newspapers, magazine and on blogs and let people know why you’re backing John
• Join the John4Leader Facebook page

Download the flyer on why we back John McDonnell for Leader, to help you to build support

Thanks to your campaigning, we now have until 9th June to get the nominations for John McDonnell, but we need to build the pressure in every part of our movement

Let others hear what John has to say:

• Watch John McDonnell announce he is standing for Labour Party leader as he addresses PCS conference on Wednesday 19th May.
• Listen to John on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions on Friday 21st May.

John on immigration in PCS conference speech:

Let me say this very, very clearly: I welcome people coming into this country, I welcome them. I stand proud of the United Kingdom and its role in offering asylum to those people desperately in need of asylum.

I’m the grandson of an Irish migrant. We contribute to the economy of this country. We’ve built it, we‘ve constructed it, we’ve populated its public services. We make a major contribution. And where there are divisions it is not because of migration it is because of the shortage of houses, because of the shortage of jobs as a result of a mismanaged economy.

At the end of the day… we need to be explaining to people that within fifty years we will have open borders across the world, you cannot build a fortress Europe or a fortress Britain and we should start preparing for that. And that does mean assistance to the developing world so that people aren’t forced out of their countries as a result of poverty. It does mean ending the arms trade where we contribute to the wars in the developing world