Originally published by the Morning Star on 15th August 2015

ANYONE who like me grew up in the ’70s and ’80s will remember the phrase, “if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!” It was the line always delivered by the snarling baddy at the end of Scooby Doo, to highlight how they would have got away with it if Scooby and the gang hadn’t been on their tail.

Well that line’s been popping into my head more and more lately. The attacks on Jeremy Corbyn supporters, often veiled by patronising remarks, have that familiar ring to it.
To some in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), we are those meddling kids. If we hadn’t rallied to urge an anti-austerity candidate to stand, if we hadn’t petitioned, badgered, and outright begged MPs to nominate Corbyn, if we hadn’t got so fired up by his vision for a more equal, peaceful and ecologically sound Britain, none of this would be happening. It would be business as usual, with three candidates clustering round the uninspiring centre and no candidate to remind people there is an alternative. And those PLP members are right.
We, the grassroots, have steered the leadership election in the direction it’s heading in. We have fought for what we knew to be right, even when those at the top of the party we love chided us for being petulant children, suffering emotional spasms in the wake of May’s election defeat.
We are the same “meddling kids” who have packed out halls up and down this country — and often the street outside — to listen, as Jeremy Corbyn painted a picture of a country we want to live in. A country where our children have a shot at decent housing and work, a country where the deficit is cleared, yes, but not on the backs of the vulnerable, poor and disabled, a country where people come before profit, and military intervention is genuinely considered to be a last resort. And we are the same “meddling kids” who’ll be the foot soldiers of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, letting our passion and drive galvanise us to organise the biggest registration drive this country has ever seen. And that will just be the start. We are a movement now: a great body of people from all walks of life, with shared values and a common goal. We will all be fighting to make sure Labour wins in 2020.

So who are these meddling kids? What kinds of people are they? Let me tell you about two members of my own family who help make up this number. You have my mum. She’s aged 73. She owns her own house — the council house I grew up in — which she bought when my dad passed away 22 years ago. She’s grateful to have no mortgage and a secure home, but sad that my children won’t enjoy the same. She has signed up to Labour to vote for Corbyn, saying: “I’ve not been this excited about politics for years.” Then you have my 22-year-old daughter, a single parent desperate to have some hope for a better, more secure future for herself and her daughter. She’s never been interested in politics. Her eyes used to glaze over whenever it was mentioned. She sent me a text recently and it said: “I’m so excited mum! I really hope Jeremy wins!” I’m not too proud to admit this made me cry. These are just two examples of the “meddling kids” excited by Corbyn’s campaign. They are not militant Trotskyites. They are ordinary people who simply want to live in a better world.
We had hope before Jeremy threw his hat in the ring, and we have even more hope now. Hope is part of the human condition. It’s the force that always propels ordinary people to fight for social justice. Hope drove the campaign for universal suffrage. Hope drove the campaign for equal rights for women. Hope drove the civil rights campaign. Hope is always at the heart of any great campaign for change, and it lies at the heart of ours.
But just as hope drives positive change, fear holds it back. Those who fear change, who are fearful of what might happen if you rock the boat or tweak the nose of the Establishment will always try to undermine those who carry the flame of hope in their hearts. The important thing is to focus on the hope and turn your back on the fear. Never let the fear quench the flame of hope.
Our hope will spread. It truly is contagious.
I hope I will be weeping with joy on September 12, when Corbyn is declared the new leader of the Labour Party, but even if I’m not, and he doesn’t win, the flame of hope will still burn within me. Fear will never win.

‘Jeremy Corbyn might represent our views, but if we want Labour to return to power he isn’t the right man.’

This was the tweet that broke the camel’s back. After reading it I was faced with two options – either write an article on why it wound me up, or scream long and hard into a cushion – I opted for the former. So here goes.

The argument against the potential electoral success of Jeremy Corbyn as labour leader can often be summed up in three words, ‘Remember Michael Foot.’ So let us remember Foot.

After Michael Foot’s election as leader in November 1980, Labour enjoyed significant poll leads of between 9 and 15%. Understandably, the departure of Roy Jenkins et. al. in March 1981, knocked public confidence in the party, and poll leads dropped to a four or five point average – but labour kept a steady lead, under Foots leadership, until the Falklands war in the spring of 1982.

The patriotic fervour unleashed by the Falkands’ conflict gave a huge boost to both Thatcher and her party. Riding on the crest of a nationalist wave – which ‘thanks’ to a split left vote Labour could do little to stop – Thatcher won a landslide in June 1983.

So what does all this mean for the comparison between Corbyn and Foot? It means there were factors afoot – pardon the pun – in 1983, unique to that time, that meant whether on the right, left or centre of the party, 1983 was not Foot’s year.

What the establishment have cleverly done, is blame Foot’s defeat on his left wing manifesto, in the same way they have falsely but cleverly blamed the financial crash on Labour’s profligacy. With the help of their friends in the media, Tory lies quickly embed themselves in the public consciousness, rather like a splinter that is never removed, and as a result, the public have brought into the myth that left wing equals electoral defeat. What an ingenious Tory strategy this is. What better way to keep socialists out of power than to convince the socialists to ditch socialism. That way whether Labour or Tories are at the helm, the good ship Brittania always roughly heads in the same direction. Any minor detours along the way can be quickly corrected when the ship is safely returned to Tory hands. No wonder Thatcher claimed new labour was her greatest achievement, an unusual moment of candour.

The Tories are well aware of what might happen if a real socialist, like Corbyn, wins power. They only have to look back at ’45 and their blood must run cold. And no doubt they’ve had a long hard look at Foot’s 1983 manifesto and breathed a sigh of relief they’d had such a lucky escape. They know full well, had Foot won in 1983, progressive tax policies would have reversed, and staunched, the growth in inequality. Homelessness, and housing bubbles, would have been avoided. Utilities and railways would have stayed in state hands, and North Sea oil revenues wouldn’t have been squandered on tax cuts for the rich. The so called ‘longest suicide note in History’ was in fact a prescription that would have spared ‘the many’ a lot of pain.

Should I have ever met the tweeter behind the tweet, he or she would likely have warned me against voting Corbyn, not just because Foot lost, but because Blair won. Like many other Corbyn supporters, I’ve heard this argument time and time again. Blair won three elections, is the general gist of this argument, so that’s the model we need to adopt to win. Well I don’t agree, and here’s why.

Blair was of his time – just as Foot was of his – a unique time when Britain was bouncing along happily inside a credit and housing bubble, a bubble none of us could imagine would burst in the spectacular way that it did a decade later, a bubble that made people feel falsely well off. As a result aspiration was the buzz word of the time. Then there was the relatively recent demise of the Soviet Union, which had damaged the confidence of the left, and the fact Labour was opposing a stale tory government, 18 years long. And there you have it, the perfect recipe for Blair’s stunning electoral success in 97. What Blairites/centrists are less keen to explore is the aftermath of that victory.

Between 1997 and 2010 Labour lost five million core voters, and general election turn-outs fell off a cliff. People didn’t just stop voting Labour, they stopped voting full stop – a collapse in support that ultimately lost us Scotland, and put a rocket booster under UKIP, the new political home for so many ex labour voters.

Under Blair the flame of socialism was all but snuffed out, but with Jeremy Corbyn as our new leader, the flame is burning brightly again; and like a fire on a cold winters night, it is calling us home.

By Michelle (Chelley) Ryan

 

Originally published by the Morning Star on June 20th 2015

It’s been a nail-biting few weeks, but at 12.02pm on Monday June 15, the nerves turned to tears. These were not tears of shock, horror or grief, like the tears shed by so many of us on election night — they were tears of joy and relief.
If you haven’t figured out by now what I’m talking about, you are not a Corbynite, Corbynista, Jezzite, or any one of the numerous nicknames for a Jeremy Corbyn supporter that have been tested out on social media over the past few days.
Some people will undoubtedly marvel at this outpouring of emotion — he has yet to win the actual leadership. But they wouldn’t marvel if they’d travelled the entire journey with us, from losing an election we hoped to win to having a leader most of us respected and admired step down, to waiting to see who would throw their hats in the leadership ring and having those same contenders deeply disappoint.
We started petitions urging an anti-austerity candidate to stand, but lost hope it would ever happen. Then we were told Corbyn had put himself forward, only to realising how scant his support among the parliamentary Labour Party was. We began writing to, emailing and tweeting every potential nominee at least five times a day to ask for their support, taking part in spontaneous Twitter showers and organised Twitter storms.

Nominations crept up, yet we watched news presenters dismiss the idea that Corbyn could ever possibly cross the line. In those final few hours, where nominations were coming in dribs and drabs, his supporters all over the country were perched on the edge of their seats. With five minutes to go, Jeremy was still three nominations short.
Then came that magical moment where we read the first tweet or FB announcement: “He’s done it!” and still found ourselves asking, “Are you sure?” too scared to believe it could possibly be true.
Yes it’s been quite a breathless journey, but that was just the start.

The morning after his victory I woke up slightly fuzzy headed after a celebratory bottle of Prosecco and checked my Twitter feed. Someone had directed me to an article by Blairite journalist Dan Hodges. The headline was: “Jeremy Corbyn proves the lunatic wing of the Labour Party is still calling the shots.” And so it begins, I thought wryly.
Was I disheartened by this headline? Quite the contrary. It was what I had expected. Jeremy has shaken things up. His entry into the race could be humoured to some extent, but to have him on the ballot, which means he might actually become Labour leader — now that’s a different thing entirely.
And people like Dan Hodges, with a Dan Hodges perspective, are right to be scared. A momentum is gathering. A momentum started by Ed Miliband, who was also held in disdain by Hodges. When Miliband started a discussion on inequality, he ignited hope in the hearts of the membership. Pre-Ed, Labour members may have been relatively content with the candidates on offer. We may never have started a petition calling for an anti-austerity candidate to stand. Corbyn may never have stepped forward, and the ensuing campaign to get him on the ballot would never have taken place. Ed was the catalyst. He set the wheels in motion, and we, the ordinary members, were not prepared to let anyone slam on the brakes.
Now we have a candidate who takes Miliband’s message on inequality even further. He is a candidate thousands of members — members who see through the lie of austerity — can rally round. He doesn’t squirm awkwardly in interviews like the other candidates for fear of saying something that sounds too socialist. This makes him a breath of fresh air.
In every poll I’ve seen, where people are asked to select their choice for leader, from Labour List to the Labour Party Facebook forum, Jeremy is streaks ahead. This does nothing to reassure people like Hodges — people who believe the only way to win elections is to appease Murdoch. They saw how Ed was treated by the press and anticipate someone like Corbyn being savaged even more. And they are right. Corbyn will be savaged. But he has a powerful antidote at his disposal — the power to inspire and to speak over the heads of the press.

In 2015 our message on reducing inequality became muddied with talk of austerity and curbing immigration. In 2020, under Corbyn, we would be putting forward a clear, unapologetic offer of socialism. In 2015, 35 per cent of the electorate were not sufficiently inspired by Labour to vote. In 2020, if Corbyn is leader, they will vote Labour in their droves.
The Scottish referendum proved something invaluable. When real change is on offer, people vote.

Originally published by the Morning Star on June 5th 2015

“We want an Anti-Austerity Labour Leader Candidate to Stand” is the title of the petition we started 13 days ago. I say “we” because it isn’t any one person’s baby.
To ape some Ed phraseology, “let me explain why.”
Once the shock and horror of the election loss had sunk in, and Ed Miliband had stepped down, members of a 300-strong Facebook group called “Labour refocussed,” which I’d recently joined looking for solace and discussion, turned their attentions to the inevitable leadership contest.
As candidate after candidate threw their hat in the ring, members of our group began to declare their allegiances. “Umunna can connect to Middle England,” “Kendall will drag us onto the centre ground — the only place to win elections from,” “Creagh, I like her. She ‘gets’ business.”
And so on.
Personally, I leant toward Andy Burnham. I’d given him second preference in 2010 and he’d been a consistently good performer in the election campaign. That was until he said something that became a real sticking point for me.
He dismissed the mansions tax as the politics of envy. I literally shuddered when the words fell from his mouth.
I’m no economist. I’m just a middle-aged aromatherapist who left school with five mediocre O-levels.
One day I’ll get round to reading Thomas Picketty’s famous tome, Capital in the 21st Century … one day. But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’ve read about the growth of inequality. Even Barack Obama, emperor of the capitalist West, says we need to tackle it.
And I’ve seen how this growing gap between rich and poor affects people’s lives.
My ex-husband and I bought our first flat in Barnet in 1992 on a modest annual income of £11,000.
Yes, we’d needed help. Before that we’d been living in council accommodation, but due to a serious problem with homelessness, the council was offering grants of up to £13,000 to give tenants a leg up onto the housing ladder.
Without that help it would have taken us much longer, but we’d have got there eventually.
A young family hoping to buy an equivalent property in Barnet today, would have to be earning approximately £60,000 a year to be in with a shout.
Then we have the obscenity of a million people relying on foodbanks, in this, the sixth-richest economy in the world, while the wealth of those at the top grows exponentially.
This is why Miliband’s talk of tackling inequality lit the flame of hope in so many hearts — while making him the pariah of the right-wing press and big business — and why Burnham’s “politics of envy” statement killed that hope, for me, and many others. If you can’t tax wealth, you can’t tackle inequality.
It was during a back-and-forth discussion regarding the lack of leadership choice on “Labour refocussed,” that the idea for a petition was born, in part inspired by an open letter signed by 10 newly elected labour MPs.
To those people who argue we don’t need an anti-austerity candidate I say this — moving too far left didn’t cost us the election.
The same goes for a lack of focus on aspiration, anti-business rhetoric, or even nailing the lie we caused the economic crash.
We lost because we failed to inspire. Our offer to the electorate had been wishy-washy, even incongruent — for example talking about the cost of living crisis while also freezing child benefit.
We lost because we signed up to “our cuts aren’t as big as theirs” austerity.
We lost because Miliband listened to the anti-progressives in the party. And four of them are now standing for leader — four candidates who would rather pitch to the quarter of the electorate who voted Tory, than pitch to the third who weren’t inspired to vote at all.
Miliband was highly praised for keeping the party together, but at what cost?
Our petition — special thanks to Beck Barnes for her skilful wording and Naomi Fearon of Red Labour, for setting up the petition — had reached 5,016 signatures when we sent it off to the chairman of the PLP.
On the day we were due to send it off, we heard the left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn had decided to stand to give the members a choice.
This was wonderful news, our campaigning had paid off. But that wasn’t the end. A new campaign is now gathering momentum, this time to ensure Corbyn gets the nominations he needs. People are writing to their MPs asking for their support and Stuart Wheeler has started a petition on change.org which I urge everyone to sign.
The membership have made it clear they want an anti-austerity candidate to be a part of this leadership debate. The Labour party must not let them down.