Quotes of the month
"The main progressive political party in this country is pandering to the worst kind of regressive politics. The failures we see notched up daily by Starmer's team aren't just political - they are moral"- Aditya Chakrabortty
Guardian, 8th July
"It is rare for an opposition leader to shoot up like a firework and tumble down like a stick."- Andrew Rawnsley
Observer, 13th June
"Jeremy Corbyn hugely motivated the under 30s to vote. In 2017 we achieved the largest swing to Labour since 1945. Sadly the present leadership seems to motivate very few. And the latest talk of building party unity is cheap. Unity requires the whip being restored to Jeremy Corbyn."- Freddie Demuth,
CLPD Activist, 11th May
"The Labour Party's strategists will need to learn from Corbynism's strengths, rather than ignoring them and insisting it had only weaknesses."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, 9th April
"The pledge to keep Labour's radical policies of 2017 and 2019 binned, replaced by policies made up on the hoof, without reference to Conference or the National Policy Forum....Reports suggest industrial-scale cheating has returned to local government selections"- Labour Briefing Co-op, March, 2021
"[Labour's] combination of top-down leadership and taking leftwing voters for granted is reminiscent of the party under Neil Kinnock."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, , 12th February
"For a long time much of the country hasn't resembled tabloid England. At a Jeremy Corbyn rally, you saw a different England to the one idealised by the tabloids."- Andy Beckett
Guardian, 8th January
"Suspending members without explanation is no way to treat people who give everything to our party."- Dan Carden MP (Liverpool Walton)
On the recent bout of suspensions of local CLP Officers , December 16th
"When you're elected and you're in that seat in Westminster, you take a position, you don't abstain. You take part in the match. You're the opposition, don't sit in the stand. They sat in the stand whilst the home team had a clear run."- Gary Neville
Sophie Ridge Show, Sky News, 6th December
“To be honest, removing the whip from well regarded Tory MPs that have served their party for years amounts to Johnson and Cummings destroying their own party. That will not end well.”- Sir Keir Starmer
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 4th September 2019
"During the 1990s, 'New Labour' accepted the neoliberal argument that the Unions had been too strong in the post-war decades. That has led directly to todays precarious so-called 'Labour Market', with its ever expanding bogus self-employment. We need a united Trade Union Movement committed to a campaign for collective bargaining legislation."Stevie Stevenson
CLPD EC member, Morning Star, October
"Increasingly our MPs are drawn from professional backgrounds - now only some 3% are from manual occupational backgrounds (in 1951 this was 37%). And yet at least 30% of employees are in jobs classed as manual. Our Party and the unions must address this glaring disparity."- Cllr Mandy Clare,
CLPD EC member, , September 2020
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."- Aneurin Bevan
"It's an abuse of members' money. It's as though a huge sign has been put up outside the Labour Party with 'Queue here with your writ and get your payment over there'"- Len McCluskey,
speaking about the Panorama "damages", Observer, , 2nd August 2020
"I'll tell you what happens with meaningless promises. You start with a bunch of abstract nouns. They are then pickled into a rigid centrist dogma - a code, irrelevant to the needs of one of the most unequal boroughs in Britain. And you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council - Tower Hamlets - threatening to sack its entire workforce"- Freddie Demuth,
CLPD Activist, 1st July 2020
"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned."- Antonio Gramsci
"In the 1980s Tory minister Norman Tebbit organised against craft unionism, seeking to replace collectivism with individualism. He praised the corrupt practice known as lump Labour and promoted what then became bogus self-employment. Crucially, this was accepted in the electrical contracting industry by the EETPU leadership. Bogus self-employment was then gradually forced on other trades in building and maintenance. The neoliberal onslaught since the 1980s has totally transformed British trade unionism".- Stevie Stevenson,
CLPD EC member and former member of the EETPU, 20th June 2020
"We now have had 51 days of unbelievable levels of abuse... I simply say this; if you wish to inhabit the gutter, I will not be joining you there"- Jeremy Corbyn,
eve of election speech, Guardian , 12th December 2019
"The more I hear Tory MPs fawn over NHS staff, the more I think of those same MPs in 2017 cheering as they voted down a proper pay rise for nurses"- Dr. Rachel Clarke,
palliative care doctor, , Observer 3rd May 2020
"The callous neglect of older people in nursing homes is a national scandal, but it is the predictable result of the long-term neglect of the care sector, compounded by the cuts to local authorities under Tory austerity"- Prof. Alan Walker,
Guardian, , 14th April 2020