Please forward to Labour Party members

Elections to the Labour Party
National Executive Committee 2006
VOTE for candidates supported
by the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance
 
azam
black
johston
Mohammed Azam
Ann Black
Gaye Johnston
shawcroft
willsman
wolfgang
Christine Shawcroft
Pete Willsman
Walter Wolfgang
Soon members will again have the opportunity to elect rank-and-file representatives to the constituency section of the National Executive Committee. Since 1998 the Grassroots Alliance, a body of democratic socialist groups and newspapers across the centre and left of the Labour Party, has promoted candidates who stand up for the rights of ordinary members.

Ballot papers will be distributed from the end of June and may be enclosed with the members’ magazine Labour Today. The deadline for the return of ballot papers is currently 31 July.

Candidates supported by the Grassroots Alliance believe that members must be given a real say in shaping policy. This will help to reverse declining activism, recapture broad-based support and counter growing disillusion with politics. Each candidate, while retaining freedom of judgment on specific issues, will therefore uphold the following principles:

A radical reforming Labour government
These candidates will campaign for Labour to win elections as a party of democratic socialism, committed to redistributing wealth, income and power from the few to the many. They welcome increased government spending on public services and will press for progressive taxation to fund the still much needed improvements in health, education, transport and state pensions. They believe that disputes between states should be resolved through the United Nations, not through unilateral military action.

They will:

  • resist creeping privatisation of the NHS, education and other public services;
  • urge that railways be taken back into public ownership;
  • promote policies which reduce reliance on market forces and narrow the widening poverty gap;
  • press for universal benefits to be maintained and increased;
  • seek to ensure that Labour honours its commitments to trade union recognition, employment rights, an adequate minimum wage and increased powers for local government.
Elimination of discrimination
Both inside and outside the party they will fight discrimination on grounds of gender, race, age, social class, disability, sexual orientation and religion.

Democracy, transparency and accountability
These candidates will:
  • insist that the party and its leadership operate in a democratic, accountable and transparent way. The candidates will set an example by regularly reporting back;
  • demand a wider and more genuine involvement of CLPs and affiliated organisations in the National Policy Forum (NPF) process and an increase in their ability to influence NPF documents in the final year;
  • oppose control freakery and defend one-member-one-vote in internal party selections of candidates for elected office;
  • promote the right of local and regional parties to choose their own candidates without prior or political vetting;
  • uphold the the sovereignty of annual conference as well as the existing structural links at all levels between the party and the unions.
For leaflets and more information visit www.clga.org.uk