Our New Microsite for Freshers

The academic year is coming to an end and now our attention turns to the next one.

This week Manchester Labour Students launched a microsite to promote our activities during Freshers’ week and beyond. It is meant to give information to any freshers-to-be that might start looking at what societies they would like to join when they arrive in Manchester over the summer.

At the moment /freshers has some basic information and an FAQs section. As the summer goes on we hope to add more to it about why students should consider joining and more about the events we have planned during the first few weeks of the new academic year.

We look forward to welcome new members to Manchester Labour Students next year and for those who are taking or about take their exams – good luck!

The website address is http://www.manchesterlabourstudents.org/freshers although shortly the microsite will become the website’s homepage linking through to the main site.

To all those current members of Manchester Labour Students, don’t forget you’ll need to re-join us next year if you want to keep your membership. You should get an email about this before the start of the new semester.

Panic is Defeatist

Well this is our first blog post since the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. No one is pretending that the result was good for the Labour Party but I think there are few important things to note.

Firstly mid-term by-elections are always bumpy for the sitting government which often leads to wild swings that are never replicated in General Elections. Secondly we were not really defending a 7,078 Labour majority; we were defending a 7,078 Gwyneth Dunwoody majority. There are many voters in that constituency that would have voted for Gwyneth regardless of the party. After her sad death, many voters would have felt more open to vote for other parties. This is something that will not be repeated on a national scale. This by-election by no means represented the end of the Labour Government.

I would like to say that Tamsin Dunwoody was an excellent candidate and it is a real shame that the people of Crewe and Nantwich do not have her as their MP. Many Manchester Labour Students spent a lot of time in Crewe campaigning for her and we were very impressed by her energy and drive.

The Sunday papers would have you believe that Gordon Brown is soon to be unseated as leader. I cannot help but feel they are blowing this whole thing clear out of proportion. Granted there are some Labour MPs that can be clouded by their own majority statistics which leads them to somehow believe that changing our leader would improve our election prospects. In my opinion, this is ridiculous.

If you cast your mind back to the 2005 General Election, you might remember the Labour Party’s slogan: “forward, not back”. This could not be more appropriate now. We could spend all our time talking about what was right or wrong about the campaign in Crewe, we could spend all our time considering the benefits or issues with our Prime Minister’s personality, or, here’s an idea, we could focus on getting the message to voters that the Government is getting on with the job and has the policies for the future.

May 2008 has not been the Labour Party’s finest hour, however we must move on.

The next General Election will be won or lost on policy. But we as a party will have no chance at all of presenting any policy if we spend all our time destroying ourselves.

Path to Victory

Mining through the columnists and commentators in recent days is gloomy stuff. Here are 7 ideas that are radical but not too offensive to those who are flirting with a vote for the Tories. This is not the time for an obvious lurch left, that was in the second term, but it is still time to look angry for change. I hasten to add, none of these ideas are my own but I believe they cohere around a general direction.

1)Elected House of Lords

This one is obvious, the reform needs to be completed and such a change will be one of a major legacy of New Labour.

2)NHS Constitution

An attitude and faith in the public sector should be finalized through an NHS constitution. This will entrench the public sector value system into the organization: one available at the point of need, democratic and decentralized, with an ethos of community that recognizes the motivation of public sector workers. This could truly help mould the social fabric of society, embedding Labour's greatest achievement even further into the national psyche.

3)Electoral Change

Some form of STV or AV to create a system that boosts the plurality of views and the interchange of ideas; and ensures a liberal majority. For those who disagree with the latter point and believe the anti-Labour vote will be bigger than the anti-Tory vote, we should remember that we are a 'democratic' socialist party.

4)A renewed attitude to Equality

Over-zealous old-style redistribution would stink of the retrograde socialism that the media hates even more that the EU and Heather Mills. We need to further arguments surrounding social cohesion: that we have a stake in eachother, that we have a shared sense of collective well-being and common humanity.

One idea is that we could introduce a wealth tax based on overall assets for the super rich that is: a) partially voluntary, encouraging the richest to publicly show social responsibility; tapping into the huge scale philanthropy prevalent in the States, and b) directed in its entirety towards a transparent scheme to provide opportunities for the poorest. E.g. baby bonds, or higher-education grants.

5)Decentralization of Public Services

The major problem with emphasising choice and localization of services has been the articulation of why it is crucial to making Britain a liberal Social Democracy. Decentralization ensures that communities have a stake in their own services, and can make staff feel less like a target-focused machine, and more like a public servant following targeting for social betterment.

6)Citizenship Initiation

Young people feel alienated in modern Britain, lost in the often cold-hearted post-modern wasteland of the knowledge and service economy; think how few students (even those studying politics) failed to vote on May the 1^st. This is through a large mix of factors: the ideological squeeze, the cynical media, the electoral system, and the general apathetic malaise that has followed affluence. To integrate the young into society, to make being a British citizen an understandable balance of duties and rights, we need to introduce a citizenship initiation period. This should come at the end of year 13 (or equivalent), in line with a continual citizenship programme, well-funded and taught by appropriately educated teachers. Included should be the bestowal of the vote as a duty, in line with the streamlining of adult rights: smoking, marriage, drinking, and driving.

7)Make the environment entirely our ground

Unlike many of the above points, this is an area which does get a lot of people passionate, and one where we can really call the Tories bluff (as well as bringing back Lib-Dem voters from the 1997 coalition). CO2 emissions have increased by around 3% since 1997, they shouldn't have.

I think an agenda following these ideas will make us look like a government on the move, eager for change and not despondent to our constituents. It puts us on the attack. Shaping the public discourse not responding to it. I believe this will help us seize a progressive majority and launch us into a fourth term. If not we'll go down fighting for what we, as creatures of the left, believe in.

Please tell me why i'm wrong, i wrote this purely to stimulate debate!

Manchester Labour: No Crisis Here

Despite results elsewhere in the country being less than healthy the Labour vote has held up remarkably well across Manchester. The two main seats where the Labour Club campaigned hard were Chorlton (which Mike will talk about in a separate post) and Old Moat, both of which were comfortably held in the face of hard campaigns put in by the Liberal Democrats. These two seats are key for the general election campaign, where the Labour club I’m sure will be spending a lot of time campaigning as they form two key battlegrounds for the city’s most marginal seat, Lib-Dem held Manchester Withington.

The latter ward, Old Moat, is a seat which acts as a bit of a microcosm of the wider constituency: there may be large swathes of social housing but the changing nature of the area has seen more owner/occupiers move in plus an increasing amount of young professionals and students living in the area for a limited period (between one and five years). As a result it was fantastic to see Andrew Fender, a councillor here for 25 years now, hold the ward by 444 votes. Particularly encouraging is the fact the Labour vote actually increased across the ward compared to last year. On a night where traditional Labour voters didn’t vote in quite the solid numbers we are used to, Cllr Fender can be very happy with his result.

The 259 majority victory in Chorlton is also of important note for students of Manchester politics. The ward is perhaps unlike any other ward I have ever campaigned in: it holds the greatest number of Guardian readers per capita anywhere in Britain (somewhere approaching 1.0 I would imagine!). The bohemian nature of the Beech Road area coupled with the urban-intelligentsia which reside in the private community of Chorltonville deserted Labour in the wake of Iraq, foundation hospitals and the introduction of tuition fees. These areas are slowly coming back to Labour and this must bode well for the Guardian-reading Labour vote turning out in other areas of the constituency - such as the two Didsbury wards - for the next general election. Incumbent MP John Leech did his best to micro-manage his chosen candidate’s campaign without success and this will come as a personal blow to him, particularly as the Liberals failed to make any in-roads into Old Moat.

Elsewhere in Manchester it was a very mixed night. Labour made gains in Hulme - by wiping out the Greens from the council, though not by anywhere near as much as was expected - and in Longsight. The latter saw an outstanding result, turning a loss last year into a massive 1,200 majority for the young local lad, Luthfur Rahman. In the City Centre ward - a target for a committed Labour team with small resources - Anthony McCaul narrowly failed to beat the high-profile incumbent Lib Dem, Marc Ramsbottom, after running a energetic and fantastic campaign. Anthony must be disappointed personally but in reflection he'll be proud of such a hard fought campaign in a ward where Labour have not previously run credible active campaigns. It was not so great news elsewhere however. Labour missed its target of Whalley Range by a distant margin (it proved not to be the three-way race the Tories had predicted, and they came a distant third). Worse was to come however in the Northenden seat where Mike Kane lost his seat to the Lib-Dems by a heart-breaking eight votes and in Miles Platting/Newton Heath where former UKIP member and Labour councillor Damien O’Connor was elected as a Lib Dem by a comfortable margin of 815 votes.

Despite the two losses in Northenden and Miles Platting/Newton Heath, Labour should be very happy that they have managed to ‘buck the trend’ for each of the three years of the electoral cycle; Manchester City Council remains - and should remain - comfortably within the hands of Manchester Labour. The ‘Manchester Labour’ brand remains strong across the city and the councillors and its executive members must be praised for that. A final well done though should go to Dr Leif Jerram, history lecturer at the University of Manchester, and candidate for the Withington ward (the ward where I was agent last year). Leif managed to gain nine more votes than last year’s candidate, Andrew Simcock, and cut the Lib Dem majority to a mere 759. At this rate Leif should finally become a Withington councillor in the middle of the next millennium!

Manchester Local Elections: Chorlton Ward

May 1st was a bad day for the Labour Party up and down this country but despite all the doom and gloom in the media in Manchester we achieved some very good results, bucking the national trends and securing some well-fought victories that bode very well for Labour in Manchester.

This was achieved by hard and intelligent campaigning against tough opposition and is a lesson to other Labour Groups across the country that we can win if we work hard and we work well. We need to run targeted campaigns on the issues people care about and we need to talk to as many people as we possibly can. Never can we take people's votes as a given; we need to fight for every single one, and in Manchester we did just that and in Manchester we achieved.

Manchester Labour Students worked tirelessly in the run up to the local elections I personally worked every single day in April to make sure that the Liberal Democrats did not make any gains in Manchester.

Manchester Labour Students have been putting a lot of focus into Chorlton Ward with between 5 and 10 activists out on a regular basis in the area. Chorlton was and remains really vital for the chances of Labour's Parliamentary Candidate, Lucy Powell, in gaining Withington for the Party from Lib Dem MP John Leech. At the last local elections in 2007 the Liberal Democrat Councillor Paul Ankers beat off the sitting Labour councillor with a majority of 42.

Both parties realised the stakes involved in this election and both parties put a huge amount of effort into Chorlton with the Liberal Democrats putting out 3 leaflets a week at times and John Leech MP sending personalised hand written letters saying his credibility was on the line. Labour brought in activists from across the city and worked tirelessly to ensure that a councillor that believes in our values of social justice, equality and opportunity was elected.

Well John Leech's candidate lost. She lost by 250. Hardworking incumbent Labour Councillor Sheila Newman saw off the Lib Dem challenger Lianne Williams, who works in John Leech's office and doesn't even live in the ward, by a sizeable majority.

The Liberal Democrats attacked everything. They said Labour would close the post offices. When we aren't. They said that Sheila voted in favour of a planning application. When she didn't. She even said Sheila personally was going to close a post office. When she won't. The Liberal Democrats attacked everything, but didn't propose anything. It was the same old politics of fear from Mr Leech.

The Liberal Democrats at times even resorted to claiming Labour achievements as their own and throwing absurd attacks at Sheila. Mr Leech didn't just throw the kitchen sink at us, he ripped out his entire office and then his house and threw it at us in an unrelenting campaign.

Yet Mr Leech still lost. And why did he lose? Because Labour's intelligent campaign really chimed with local people and local people really responded to it by resoundingly voting Labour. Mr Leech's politics of fear didn't work here and I will ensure it doesn't work anywhere else.

Lucy Powell has got a very good chance of winning the seat in next general election in Withington for Labour and I think John Leech should be scared. Very scared.