Alice Mahon who has recently left the Labour party wrote us this little leaving note. I have made a few changes-mine are underlined. Feel free to comment with any further suggestions.
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It became clear to me during my insert number of years/18 years in NUS/parliament that, with the phenomenon called New Labour, two things would change the politics of the student/Labour movement forever.
One, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would adopt with great enthusiasm the free market economics pursued by Thatcher and the US neo-cons. Two, they would have to change the structures and policies of the NUS/party to achieve their goal.
A machine was put in place to crush anything remotely connected to Old Labour. Conference was changed beyond recognition, any dissent ruthlessly stamped on by the new spin masters. Delegates were sought out and pressurised into supporting New Labour policies even if they were against what the local students' unions/party had decided.
This nastiness was a hallmark of New Labour and they exercised it at every level of the movement.
I have stood for conference arrangements committee twice and the party machine has moved in and spent enormous amounts of money supporting the candidates who would always support the leadership's bidding. No expense was spared when it came to defeating an independent voice. Opposition/Party members have effectively been banned from any decision making.
For those of us on the left, the weekly parliamentary Labour Party meetings were not a happy event.
I remember asking for a motion at the NEC/two-day debate on the Iraq war and the sky almost fell in. The Blairite foot soldiers ran out to brief the press and sure enough on the front pages the following day it was reported that I and other usual suspects had been opprresive to minority students causing inaccessibility/ridiculed and "roundly booed" for opposing the Wes Streeting's/leadership position.
There are very few of what I would call real Labour candidtaes/MPs in the student movement/Parliament.
I stayed in the movement/party hoping that with a new leadership we might go back to being a really progressive and caring party. In the event I could not have been more wrong. Under Streeting/Brown things are just as bad. The decision to privatise the student fees/Royal Mail is inexplicable and simply wrong. We said in our 2005 manifesto we would not give up the fight for Free Education/privatise Royal Mail; we lied.
His/That manifesto promised real democratic change/a referendum on NUS activity/the European Constitution, we renamed it the Governance Review/Lisbon Treaty and reneged on that promise also.
Now we find out that Ednet/Facebook/NUS websites/NUS mailing lists/a website was to be set up in our name whose sole aim was to smear members of the opposition and their families. Well not in my name and, from the response I am having to my decision to resign, not in the name of many party activists either.
I have spent most of my life working for and representing the Labour Party. I always took the view that I should stay and fight within, but New Labour have done such a good job of demolishing our democratic structure (with a Governance Review) that I realised there was nothing I could say or do to change things from within.
There was only one thing for me to do and that was to resign.
==========================
It became clear to me during my insert number of years/18 years in NUS/parliament that, with the phenomenon called New Labour, two things would change the politics of the student/Labour movement forever.
One, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would adopt with great enthusiasm the free market economics pursued by Thatcher and the US neo-cons. Two, they would have to change the structures and policies of the NUS/party to achieve their goal.
A machine was put in place to crush anything remotely connected to Old Labour. Conference was changed beyond recognition, any dissent ruthlessly stamped on by the new spin masters. Delegates were sought out and pressurised into supporting New Labour policies even if they were against what the local students' unions/party had decided.
This nastiness was a hallmark of New Labour and they exercised it at every level of the movement.
I have stood for conference arrangements committee twice and the party machine has moved in and spent enormous amounts of money supporting the candidates who would always support the leadership's bidding. No expense was spared when it came to defeating an independent voice. Opposition/Party members have effectively been banned from any decision making.
For those of us on the left, the weekly parliamentary Labour Party meetings were not a happy event.
I remember asking for a motion at the NEC/two-day debate on the Iraq war and the sky almost fell in. The Blairite foot soldiers ran out to brief the press and sure enough on the front pages the following day it was reported that I and other usual suspects had been opprresive to minority students causing inaccessibility/ridiculed and "roundly booed" for opposing the Wes Streeting's/leadership position.
There are very few of what I would call real Labour candidtaes/MPs in the student movement/Parliament.
I stayed in the movement/party hoping that with a new leadership we might go back to being a really progressive and caring party. In the event I could not have been more wrong. Under Streeting/Brown things are just as bad. The decision to privatise the student fees/Royal Mail is inexplicable and simply wrong. We said in our 2005 manifesto we would not give up the fight for Free Education/privatise Royal Mail; we lied.
His/That manifesto promised real democratic change/a referendum on NUS activity/the European Constitution, we renamed it the Governance Review/Lisbon Treaty and reneged on that promise also.
Now we find out that Ednet/Facebook/NUS websites/NUS mailing lists/a website was to be set up in our name whose sole aim was to smear members of the opposition and their families. Well not in my name and, from the response I am having to my decision to resign, not in the name of many party activists either.
I have spent most of my life working for and representing the Labour Party. I always took the view that I should stay and fight within, but New Labour have done such a good job of demolishing our democratic structure (with a Governance Review) that I realised there was nothing I could say or do to change things from within.
There was only one thing for me to do and that was to resign.
1 comment:
Someone linked me to this, and i just wanted to say the comparison between the Labour Party and NUS is spot on. I joined the labour party during the John Mcdonnell leadership campaign as I was really excited about the idea of someone standing for leadership (of this country as well as the party) on a fantastically socialist manifesto. It obviouslly didn't happen, but I kept my membership anyway as I had this inexperienced idea that students and young people within the Party were far more to the left than the leadership. I still vaguelly had this idea until I went to NUS conference a few weeks ago. To see the careerists who were representing Labour there on mass was really hard to take for someone who still dreamed of Labour going back to the old 1983 Michael Foot Nationalisation Manifesto. I disagreed with almost everything the "Labour" speakers were saying, and found myself supporting and campaigning for those who were in complete opposition to them (another education...). Seeing NUS conference I realised that the future of the Labour Party is even more bleak than the present - it will be full of the New Labour carrerists, without your John McDonnell's, jeremy corbyn's, Katy Clarke's or indeed Alice Mahon - as the carrerists have forced young left wing people to other options on the left. Any hope I had for the Labour party is completly gone, and from what I saw at Conference, it's the same for NUS!
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