7pm Thursday 24th October
Second City Suite, at the bottom of Hurst Street – 100 Sherlock St, Birmingham, West Midlands B5 6LT
Speakers include:
Len McCluskey, general secretary UNITE
Paul Nowak, assistant general secretary TUC
Salma Yaqoob
By Nicky Dempsey
The broad movement against austerity is warming up. A host of unions have either organised national strike action or are about to strike in the near future. These include firefighters, post workers, teachers, lecturers and others. The continued fall in living standards takes place while the government and its supporters complacently talk about recovery. As a result workers are increasingly angry and confident that they can win concessions.
By Paul Roberts and Jane West
As expected Labour conference fired the starting gun for the 2015 election. What was not so anticipated was the Miliband leadership’s announcement of a series of popular policies that are widely perceived as constituting a shift to the left.
The strategy rolled out was for Labour to position itself as the party that defends the living standards of ordinary people. This was a shift in strategy and a welcome one. It is based on a correct understanding that the mass of the population is now more animated by contracting real incomes – the ‘cost of living crisis’ – than the ideology of ‘deficit reduction’.
By Nicky Dempsey and Jane West
It is little more than a year and a half until the next general election and already the main issues in each party’s campaign are being delineated.
Labour is still virtually certain to be the largest party after the next election as the long-term decline in the Tory vote will be further depressed by five years of austerity. Electorally the main question is whether Labour wins a majority – and of what size – or whether it is forced into coalition with the Lib Dems.
By Nicky Dempsey
Talk of economic recovery and even boom is entirely misplaced, but it may have a very positive effect on the movement against austerity.
By Jane West
In recent months the true character of the Miliband leadership of the Labour Party has been more clearly revealed.
The combination of its commitment to maintain austerity and implement the Tory cuts, attacks on the union role in the Party and nasty and vituperative campaigns against the employment of East European migrant labour marks out the contours of the coming Labour or Labour-led government after 2015.
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