On Wednesday evening our local Labour Party GC (General Committee) was held at the Jubilee Room in the House of Commons. West Ham Labour Party activists were also invited by our MP Lyn Brown for an informal meeting and thank you event for all the hard work done by members in the previous year.Lyn had provided a cold buffet spread for us and she had managed to “persuade” (whip speak) 8 Cabinet Ministers and other high profile ministers and MP’s to come and talk to us. Instead of the usual sequence in these type of events of 3 minute (and the rest!) soapbox political speeches we had John Denham; Ed Balls; Ed Miliband; Hilary Benn; Douglas Alexander, Ben Bradshaw; Liam Byrne, John Healey, Stephen Timms, Gareth Thomas, Ian Wright, Chris Mole, Dianne Abbott and fellow whip Sharon Hodgson - just mingling and chatting with Party activists about their views and concerns. Which I thought was simply marvellous. Needless to say West Ham Labour Party members were not slow to give their Parliamentary comrades the benefit of their opinions!
A very good night was had by all (I had to rush off early to take the train to Manchester for the Thursday UNISON National Housing seminar where Minister John Healey was the keynote speaker - will post soon on this).
Apologies to West Ham members who were on the optional House of Commons tour when I took the Group photo (and those I could not get in the photo or cut in half!).
2 comments:
wasnt west ham the first "socialist" council in Britain ??
Hi Anon (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Borough_of_West_Ham)
Politics
The borough was notable for having the first Labour controlled council in England. Following the London Dock Strike of 1889, a number of Socialists and Progressives were elected to the council, formally becoming the Labour Group in 1897. The Group gained a majority on the town council in 1898. In reaction to this, a Municipal Alliance was formed by the West Ham Ratepayers Association and Chamber of Commerce to oppose the Labour Party. In 1900 they gained parity with Labour on the council and in the following year they took control.[16] The Municipal Alliance retained power until 1910 when a Labour-Progressive coalition replaced it. Two years later Municipal Alliance councillors regained a narrow majority, which they held at the 1913 election.[6] Elections were suspended for the duration of the First World War, and at the 1919 elections Labour won an overall majority which it retained for the rest of the borough's existence. The Labour majority was to increase over the years, with a small group of Ratepayers Association councillors supported by the Conservative Party forming the opposition group. From 1947 the Conservatives contested elections in their own name, but after 1954 had no councillors elected. From 1954 to 1960 Labour held all the seats on the council, after which a number of Liberal Party councillors formed a minority group.[6]
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