John McDonnell MP explains the role of LEAP within the LRC. The video is taken from the first LEAP conference: Beyond the Market Economy.
Beyond the Market Economy conference
LEAP held its first conference Beyond the Market Economy - socialist solutions to the economic crisis, on 24th May 2008 at Birkbeck College, London. Find out more at the LEAP blog.
The conference included a morning plenary with John McDonnell MP and Tony Benn, and then afternoon sub-plenaries on Securing Housing for All; Ending corporate power: 21st century models of social ownership; Drowning in debt: transforming the financial system; and Defending pay, pensions and job in a global market economy.
John McDonnell MP, LEAP Chair, explains the purpose of the conference.
Tony Benn, speaking at the Beyond the Market Economy conference, emphasises the primacy of democracy.
The Credit Crunch: Learning the Lesssons is LEAP's response to the global credit crisis, which began to hit home in the UK with the collapse of Northern Rock in August 2007.
The Government said it would halve child poverty by 2010 - taking 1.7m children out of poverty. To date it has missed its targets and only removed 600,000 children from poverty.
The measures announced in the Budget will only remove a further 250,000 by 2010. Therefore we will leave over 2.5m children in poverty in 2010 (which will be nearer 3.5m once housing costs are included).
Ahead of the 2008 Budget LEAP has published its March 2008 Red Papers ‘New Labour's Moment of Truth’ which you can download for free.
John McDonnell MP, LEAP Chair, said: “The reaction in government to the economic downturn has been to simply become more reactionary. Ministers are bringing forward almost weekly ever more brutal ideas for reducing public expenditure by attacking the poor. There is another way but it would take a radical rethink and a new set of priorities and policies which are anathema to Gordon Brown and New Labour.”
The Left Economics Advisory Panel (LEAP) launched the November edition of its Red Papers: ‘Economic Problems and Socialist Answers’
‘Economic Problems and Socialist Answers’ was launched at a fringe meeting at the 2007 LRC conference chaired by Andrew Fisher (Editor of the LEAP Red Papers). Speakers at the event were Kelvin Hopkins MP, Prem Sikka, Graham Turner, Gordon Nardell, Jerry Jones, and Gerry Gold who publicised his new book House of Cards, which you can find out more about and order online.
The LRC is urging the Chancellor to break with traditional budgets, which promote
marginal changes in public expenditure, and to strike out on a much more radical budget agenda, which
focuses on taxing corporate greed to tackle public need.
John McDonnell MP, LRC Chair, said:
“The NHS flounders in deficit while the banks make obscene profit. Iraq burns
while energy companies plunder their bounty from Iraq. Those profits and our own expenditure to provide
cover for Bush's trail of death could be used to save life and improve living standards for our most
vulnerable citizens.”
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