As 15 Camden Labour councillors and Keir Starmer MP turn on their party leader, who's pulling their strings?

Exposing the 'dependency culture' of Jeremy Corbyn's right wing opponents within the Parliamentary Labour Party and Camden Council

The Camden New Journal has reported that 15 Camden Labour councillors have called upon Jeremy Corbyn to resign as Labour Party leader, even after he was elected with a substantial majority in 2015 on a 'one member, one vote' basis.(1) (2) 

Those Labour councillors are "Rishi Madlani, Pat Callaghan, Maeve McCormack, Richard Olszewski, Julian Fulbrook, Georgia Gould, Adam Harrison, Abdul Quadir, Abi Wood, Danny Beales, Lady Kelly, Theo Blackwell, Sarah Hayward, Jonathan Simpson and Phil Jones." Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group members of varying political parties and none wonder what those councillors have ever done to support us in the face of 'austerity' government attacks such as 'bedroom tax', 'overall benefit cap', etc.?(3)

Had they stood up to 'social cleansing' of poor people from the borough, they would have been in very good standing with poor people to the point of poor people not really needing to be prompted to support them at council elections. Maybe they are not looking to poor people's votes at all, but to mainstream voters? Maybe they do not mind the abstention or none turnout of poor people at elections, as long as they can get a majority of the electorate to vote for them?

In such circumstances where these and other opponents of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership are out of touch with poor people, they become unduly dependent upon handouts from very wealthy donors such as ex-Camden Labour Councillor, John Mills, who now heads JML Direct, a Kentish Town (within LB Camden) based company the advertising strap line of which is, "making every day easier" [with products made in China].(4) Do the capitalist profit-oriented economics of having products made in China and transported to the UK make every day easier for the Chinese producers of JML Direct products?

Johann Hari has commented:

"Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories that they have a word for it: guolaosi. China Daily estimates that 600,000 people are killed this way every year, mostly making goods for us."(5)

What kind of conditions are producers of JML Direct products working under? Jeremy Corbyn MP is against workforce exploitation, and has an excellent track record on attacking Chinese human rights and trade abuses.(6)

Against such a backdrop, multimillionaire and major Labour donor John Mills declared that Corbyn's leadership would make Labour 'unelectable'.(7) 

Maybe the Labour councillors and MPs who attack Corbyn's 'lack of leadership' are most concerned about the cessation of John Mills' handouts that feed their electioneering? I have heard that Labour in Camden is especially dependent upon the use of JML Direct HQ telephone call centre for their electoral canvassing even. What care they about cheap labour and how their funding is sourced?

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/momentum-camden-labour
2. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2015/sep/corbyn-wins-labour-leadership-contest-nearly-60-cent-vote
3. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bedroom+tax+benefit+cap+public+meeting&btnG=Search+Site&domains=http://www.camdennewjournal.com&sitesearch=http://www.camdennewjournal.com&gws_rd=cr,ssl&ei=HbCEV7-jNMT8Uq_UhZAN
4. http://www.jmldirect.com
5. http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/guolaosi/?_r=0
6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280795/Corbyn-challenge-China-s-strongman-president-Xi-Jinping-human-rights-abuse-private-one-one-talks-today.html
7. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/23/jeremy-corbyn-win-could-cause-sdp-style-labour-split-says-donor

Perhaps we should give our Labour MPs something more worthwhile to do than pick on the elected Leader of the Labour Party?

The Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG — affectionately known as 'Kwug') includes members of various political parties, including Labour. Kwug's 'heartland' is focused on the London Boroughs of Brent and Camden, separated as these are by the Kilburn High Road and Edgware Road; and all the Members of Parliament for the Parliamentary constituencies in these two boroughs are Labour:

• Tulip Sidiq is MP for Hampstead & Kilburn, which takes in the Kilburn wards of both boroughs and other wards from each borough, though mainly focused on the Camden side(1)
• Dawn Butler is Labour MP for Brent Central(2)
• Barry Gardiner is Labour MP for Brent North(3) and
• Keir Starmer is Labour MP for Holborn & St Pancras — the seat that comprises the rest of LB Camden.(4)

Declaring 'no confidence' in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Keir Starmer — with backing from Camden Council Leader Sarah Hayward — resigned from Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet; they and "a groundswell of Labour MPs" accuse Corbyn of "weak leadership" regarding the Remain vote in the UK's EU Referendum when he was only telling the truth regarding the demerits of a capitalist EU. Hampstead & Kilburn MP Tulip Siddiq has said that there must be another election for Labour Party Leader to take Labour into the next General Election.(5)

I am a Green Party of England & Wales member myself, but believe I speak for my Labour Party comrades within the KUWG in saying that Labour MPs would be much better occupied standing up for our rights than involving themselves in a coup against Jeremy Corbyn MP who was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015 by a very popular vote made up mainly of ordinary party members, including Kwug activists. That contrasts with the weighting of votes in favour of what members of the Parliamentary Labour Party over ordinary party members, and the weighting of incomes between Members of Parliament on £120K salaries compared with those on benefit level incomes.

The Camden New Journal (CNJ) comment observes that "the coup against Corbyn will leave a bitter taste."(6)

There is more to life than the Punch & Judy Show of political pantomime and MPs stabbing their leaders in the back

All that political pantomime within the Parliamentary Labour Party is a real distraction from representing the people these Members of Parliament are supposed to serve, as I am not the only person to observe. Kate Belgrave puts it very bluntly: While politicians amuse themselves, austerity runs rampant, etc ....(7) The CNJ reveals further that £150m worth of Camden Council homes [are] to be sold off every year under housing reforms.(8)

Against this backdrop, Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty gives priority to our democratically elected representatives securing 

• social security
• affordable homes and
• adequate incomes in work and unemployment,

and proposes a template for drafting "a letter to our MPs and the Councillors of Councils which are taxing social security with Council Tax."(9) Those who live in the boroughs of Brent or Camden have website addresses on this page to facilitate the MP correspondence bit. 

Regarding 

• Brent Council members and (10)
• Camden Council members, (11)

Web address details are given below. For everywhere else within the UK, there is They Work For You.com(12)

A few finer points regarding emailing your MP

• Getting your MP's email address via the Parliament website may have added advantages, in, say allowing you to Cc in Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader — leader@labour.org.uk (13)
• Remember, when writing your constituency MP, to include your postal address with postcode to help verify that you are one of their constituents! (14)

Link addresses

1. http://www.tulipsiddiq.com
2. http://www.dawnbutler.org.uk
3. http://www.barrygardiner.com
4. http://www.keirstarmer.com
5. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/corbyn-labour-crisis
6. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/comment-corbyn-coup
7. http://www.katebelgrave.com/2016/06/while-politicians-amuse-themselves-austerity-continues-rampant-etc/
8. http://www.camdennewjournal.com/council-home-sales
9. http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/news/draft-letter-to-mps.-may-i-suggest-we-all-send-a-letter-like-this-to-our-mp
10. http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
11. http://democracy.camden.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
12. http://www.theyworkforyou.com
13. http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/
14. http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode

University and College Union City & Islington College Branch statement of support for Corbyn

City & Islington College is based largely in Jeremy Corbyn's very multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan Islington North. Their statement of support for his Labour Party leadership can be found at

http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=74b04c5e36a4b7382cc03ede3&id=ecb746e430&e=246ba611cc

PR as public relations in politics and the selling of jobcentre-funded training in the Tony Blair era

In a blog post 'On the Lost Art of Intellectual Honesty', Craig Murray states:

.... One of the arguments the Blairites use against Corbyn is that he had the temerity to employ nuance and intellectual honesty in discussing the EU. Intellectual honesty is certainly not something Tony Blair ever employed.Politics has become a branch of PR. It is just about selling. The party, candidate or policy you are selling must be portrayed as the absolute epitome of excellence, with no flaws whatsoever. Political discourse has therefore become juvenile. It is about expensively dressed, well groomed salesmen with perfect teeth. Thought is positively frowned upon.(1)

I especially concur with Murray's conclusions about politics becoming a branch of PR. It goes back to a song I first heard and read the background to in about 1973 on a Joe McDonald (ex-Country Joe & The Fish at a time when he just wanted to be known as ‘Joe McDonald’) live album, 'Tricky Dickey'(2)

The song is based on the New York Times best seller by Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President.(3) The song is especially good at highlighting how PR focuses on ‘solutions’ without particularly investigating the kind of juvenile political discourse that has preceded the current situation.

And I would argue that the transition of Bill Gates from ‘software developer’ to 'global philanthro-captialist' has been marked by manipulation of contract law, business acumen and substantial PR.(4)

Window 95 and 'welfare to work' schemes with government-funded training

When Windows 95 emerged on the scenes from 1995, for example, it became the ‘standard platform’ for desktop computing in the conventional office world; and government-funded computer skills training schemes became a means for ‘training companies’ then focused on that as a ‘welfare to work’ avenue.

Some of those companies were better than others in terms of my own experience of ‘user-outcomes’, yet the worst tended to go in for over-subscription at the expense of under-provision. Four class loads of trainees in the latter were whisked through one training room in a day, maximising the amount of profit and minimising ‘user-friendly access to equipment’. In my experience, the better companies had the disadvantage that the Training & Enterprise Councils ruled against trainees — even with learning difficulties — returning to them. I was told patronisingly that they would not send me back to a training company that I was satisfied with for consolidation in the same kind and level of training. “We don’t want you to become institutionalised,” the Focus TEC for Central London told me when I asked for help in getting Level 1 training in Microsoft Office beyond word processing.

One of the shoddier standard companies tended to shunt trainees for half the day of a 5-day week into ‘open learning’ that was supposed to be devoted to ‘jobsearch’. We were told by Head of Jobsearch to submit photocopies of our CV for each job, and to do a minimum of 16 job applications per week, recorded in a ‘jobsearch portfolio’ to be submitted each week. I got told off for “not devoting enough time for job search.” In fact after spending most of the week skimping what spare Personal Computer access I could get at that company in customising my CV to the job application in hand. I had also spent a whole weekend perfecting the required handwritten letter, making six drafts before sending off my application. Crucially in terms of results though, that one written job application got me an interview; most other ‘trainees’ had no interviews to record. That was in 1998.

By June 2000, a home PC bought for by my mum on the advice of my earlier, excellent Information Communications Technology trainer who had helped me achieve my NVQ Level 1 about 5 months after the initial, funded training, helped me acquire the ‘underpinning knowledge’ to pass the entry test for a Web Development training course with a ‘Positive About Disabled People’ and ‘Investor in People’ award winning charity in SE London. Yet Blairite politics reared its ugly head when I challenged their administrator over the extent of the curriculum vs the six-week duration and no guarantee of a work placement. “I agree with you,” she told me; but the Government has told us to halve the length of training so as to double the amount of throughput.”

In September 2000, having decided to turn down the offer of a place on that course, I was one of several disgruntled ex-jobcentre funded trainees to contact the then BBC2 Working Lunch programme following Immigration Minister Barbara Roache MP’s speech to Labour Party Autumn Conference announcing ‘special green card status’ for people with special skills from abroad.

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Link addresses

1. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/07/lost-art-intellectual-honesty/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmp9gRsncuY
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_McGinniss#The_Selling_of_the_President
4. http://londongreenleft.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/save-us-bill-gates-video-game-satirises.html