By Neil
Harris
THE GROWING concerns of the trade
union movement about “Progress”, the wealthy Blairite faction operating inside
the Labour Party, are well founded but this is not the only threat to working
class representation in Parliament. At the
17th May 2011 National Executive Committee meeting, it
was agreed to accept funding from the Lionel Cooke Memorial Fund , “ to train
and support up to 75 people interested in standing as parliamentary
candidates”. Not surprisingly, concern was expressed when it was indicated that
this would be open to non-party members.
Had trade
unionists on the NEC been aware of the background and ideology behind the trust,
the concerns would have been greater. The fund was established in 1956,
following the death of Lionel Cooke, a prosperous Brighton
businessman and an admirer and ally of Hugh Gaitskell the right wing Labour
leader.
Gaitskell had
always been an enemy of the working class, establishing the “XYZ club” just
before the Second World War and of which he was to remain the secretary until
his death. The purpose of the “club” was to offer wealthy City businessmen the
chance to wine and dine with Gaitskell and others on the Labour right and as a
result get an opportunity to “explain” to them the concerns of the City.
In reality
this was a secret conduit funnelling money and support to Gaitskell and his
cronies, outside Labour Party democracy.
Cooke’s fund is firmly in this tradition, over the years it has gone out
of its way to avoid publicity where most trust funds try to encourage
applications from as wide a field as possible.
From 1956
until 1981 the trustees were all drawn from the traditional Labour right and
the proceeds went to their pet projects.
In 1978 for example, the money was divided between summer school
scholarships for their protégés, Socialist
Commentary (the house journal of the pro-European, Atlanticist right) and
the Campaign for a Labour Victory, a Cold War organisation aimed at fighting
communists and trotskyites in the labour and trade union movement.
In 1981 it all
changed when directors Lord Sainsbury (senior), Bill Rodgers, and David Owen
defected to the breakaway Social Democratic Party (SDP),
although they remained on the board of the trust. From that point on the money
went to the SDP and the right wing Social
Market Foundation, until 1996 and 1997 when the fund paid out £15,000 each year
to Tony Blair’s personal office in the run up to the election.
In the 1990’s
Peter Mandelson had been tramping up and down the length and breadth of the
country, attending countless selection meetings to ensure that candidates of
the left were not chosen. Today, the parliamentary Labour party reflects his
hard work.
Now that the
fund has reverted to the Labour right (with directors like Margaret Jay,
daughter of former premier James Callaghan), they are actively using it in the
same way; to select and promote a new generation of candidates acceptable to Labour’s
right wing and ready to be parachuted
into the constituencies in good time for the next election.
While the
“Future Candidates Programme”, with its snappy slogan “Champions to win”, aims
“to build and support a diverse pool of talented individuals from which local
Labour Party members can select their candidates for the next general
election”, it should be no surprise that there has been virtually no open
publicity amongst the trade union and co-operative movement, except perhaps by
word of mouth amongst the right wing.
Among
the listed requirements are that candidates should “have campaigning experience
with the Labour Party although this is preferable rather than essential”, but
nowhere is there any mention of union membership or experience. To make sure
that candidates get the point, the information pack sets it out: “To apply for
the Future Candidates Programme you do not need to be a Labour Party member but
should be willing to join should you be selected to take part”.
For the
completely clueless there is a strong hint in the guidelines for candidates:
“You may wish to visit the following web pages for further information about
the Labour Party – What is the Labour Party/ History of the Labour Party”.
The first
round was completed in July 2011, when 125 were chosen from over 1000
applications and it was considered so successful that a second application
process was started and runs until 12th
October 2012. There is now a very real danger that selection onto
the programme will become a requirement for selection as a candidate for
election both to Parliament and local councils. On the other hand,
participation on the programme may also give activists a better idea of the
real politics (or lack of politics) of potential candidates.
