DEXTER WHITFIELD argues that by marketising our public services Labour is eroding democratic accountability The Labour government has launched a series of ‘reforms’, which place a new emphasis on market-based modernisation of public services. Democratic accountability and transparency will be further eroded. Although there is euphoria for ‘citizen engagement’ this is participation limited to...
Marketisation and its effects
WILL BROWN reports on the ILP’s weekend of discussions on the privatisation of public services What is the privatisation of public services? Where is it coming from and with what consequences? And what should our political response be? These are the issues which formed the central focus of the ILP’s successful weekend school in...
Impassable impasse?
As the Northern Ireland peace process lurches into another crisis, PAUL DIXON asks, what next? When the IRA announced its ceasefire in September 1994 it was always difficult to see what kind of agreement could be reached between loyalists and republicans. The propaganda war and real (physical) war between unionists and nationalists over the years...
Pushed into enemy hands
One of the sad aspects of Labour’s farcical London mayoral selection contest, argues BERNARD HUGHES, is how the leadership is turning even some of its closest friends into foes. When Glenda Jackson announced on 19 January that she would ballot her constituency party on how she should cast her second vote in the London...
London Labours
DAVID CONNOLLY wonders what happened to Tony Blair’s once passionate support for one member one vote. In his book, The Unfinished Revolution, the new Labour strategist Philip Gould comments on the rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the time of John Smith’s death in 1994. Of Blair he says that “it was...
Republicans and the choreography of peace
The Good Friday Agreement has been described as “Sunningdale for slow learners”, reports PAUL DIXON. So how have the Republican leaders managed to sell it to their supporters? The peace process is back on track but still precariously balanced. The Good Friday Agreement is far from safe and probably won’t be for the next...
From third way to one way
DAVID CONNOLLY ponders the latest examples of new Labour style democracy. With the best will in the world it is difficult to take Philip Gould seriously. Anyone who has read his book The Unfinished Revolution will know that his political starting point is a deeply felt hostility to the Tories. He is genuinely desperate...
Theatres of conflict
JONATHAN TIMBERS rallies to remember the October revolution and spends a day at Millbank and Number 10 – all in one very bizarre week in November. When Harold Wilson said ‘a week is a long time in politics’, perhaps he should have added that sometimes an hour can seem even longer when you’re stuck...
Underground manoeuvres
ANN BLACK sees the forces of conservatism flourishing behind the closed doors of the National Policy Forum. Five years ago I attended my first conference. I haggled over benefits and human rights in compositing meetings, on equal footing with union grandees and delegates from constituencies across the country. Because of that participation, those contacts,...
New Labour, new Democrats?
GARY KENT wonders about a little discussed aspect of Blair’s international intentions. We should know by now that Tony Blair often claims to be bold but is as sly as a fox. He has the habit of smuggling important policy shifts past unsuspecting Labour Party members. It’s not so much “say what you mean...
Traitor or whistle blower?
GARY KENT reviews Liz Davies’ recent book on the politics inside new Labour. Liz Davies is an embittered traitor spilling the beans on party business. Or she has done us all a service by blowing the whistle on new Labour’s “twists, turns, machinations and doublespeak” and the “paranoia and pointlessness” of the party’s ruling...
The ILP and social change
The ILP’s Weekend School took place in Scarborough at the beginning of May. BARRY WINTER outlined the ILP’s perspective and explained why it had to change. There are four major points that need to be made about the ILP’s perspective. First, in the early 1990s we came to recognise that we had to remake...