A new hope...

 

Here is this week’s final extract from my memoirs, available at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history. This concerns a meeting called, almost 16 years ago, by the best leader our party never had;

“On the day after UNISON Conference 2006 I was called to an urgent meeting in London, in my capacity (at that time) as a member of the National Committee of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) (which was approaching its second birthday and third annual Conference).

This wasn’t an official meeting, and it was private (at the time). John McDonnell, who had called the meeting, explained that, whilst the Labour Party had no tradition of throwing out sitting Leaders, and wouldn’t throw out Tony Blair (as much as we might have wished it) it was nevertheless clear that Blair would be standing down.

In these circumstances, he thought it was necessary and important that someone from the left of the Party mounted a challenge for the leadership when Blair resigned. Although - as a result of a deal done more than a decade before - it was known that Gordon Brown would stand (and obvious to all that he would win) - it was essential, John felt, that the left should be able to rally round a candidate.

He pointed out that some preliminary work had been done to build up the organisation of the left in the Party, in Parliament and the trade unions. The LRC was developing, the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs was getting better organised and - through campaigns such as “Public Services Not Private Profit” connections were being made with the left-led trade unions.

John felt that, if we sat out a leadership contest we would miss an opportunity to build from the modest plateau we had reached at this point - and that we would also leave the way open for another “left” challenger, who hadn’t been involved in trying to build organisation and didn’t have that perspective (this, it would turn out, was Michael Meacher MP).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the meeting consisted largely of people associated with the LRC and staff in John’s parliamentary office (such as Andrew Fisher and Owen Jones, both of whom would go on to become far better known than they then were) John’s willingness to stand as a candidate was met with great acclaim.

Those of us present understood the importance of the project of building the organisation of the left, in the Party, in Parliament and in the rank and file of the trade unions. We could see that having a candidate committed to this project standing for the leadership of the Party would be an opportunity to build up organisation to another level.

At this point, whilst we knew that there would be a vacancy for Labour Leader, we didn’t know when it would occur. Therefore we needed to prepare to launch John’s candidacy ahead of what would be a long campaign, the first phase of which would be to ensure that John was the undisputed challenger from the left.

It was evident that the forthcoming mass lobby of Parliament by the Public Services Not Private Profit Campaign would be an important  moment in launching the campaign.”