Labour membership falls to 'lowest level for 70 years'

[Khephra]

Labour party membership has fallen to its lowest level since Tony Blair became leader, according to figures released yesterday.

The party's annual accounts showed membership stood at 214,952 at the end of December after a year wracked by internal rows over Iraq and plans to modernise public services.

This represents the lowest membership total since Ramsay MacDonald was leader in the 1930s, according to the pressure group, Save the Labour Party.

Members of Labour's ruling national executive were briefed yesterday that membership had fallen further to around 208,000 this year, although it was thought to have stabilised.

more.............

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=536647

[rocketdem]

1. Congrats Poodle Boy

What an idiot.

[Prodemsouth]

2. Looks like Tony Blair is going to damage the Labour Party even more

than Clinton damaged the Democratic Party here in the states.

[Dirk39]

3. And the winner is:

Germany!
Blairist Schröder, who did write the third-way paper together with Blair in 1999,has managed to completely ruin the Socialdemocrats.

30.000 members left the party in 2003
10.000 in January 2004

Since 1993 they have lost 211,000 members.

During the elections for the european parliament, they just got little more than 20% of the voters.
But corporate-whore Schröder is still our Federal Chancellor.

Neoliberalism is the most stupid ideology, capitalism has produced so far during the last 200 years or more. Before they at least had to offer some funny ideologists, some funny philosophers...
Capitalism was cruel as ever, but entertaining.
Now they took the fun out of it.
Without their media-whores and PR-agencies they would fall apart in a minute.
I'm so tired of this sh*t.

But at least it seems, more and more people in Europe wake up.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[struggle4progress]

4. I hope you're right about Europe waking up. eom

[Dirk39]

5. Some good reasons:

Busdrivers were striking in the netherlands. O.K. workers strike all the times. What's special about it: they didn't refuse to transport people, they refused to collect ticket money.
Result: they archieved their goal to get 6% more a monthly paying.

In France, the postmen were striking.
What's special about them? The unemployed received their monthly check. The business post got lost.


In France, there was a protest movement against the privatisation of their electricity-companies last month. A lot of workers did organise a strike: what did they do:

They did cut the power for some of the most powerfull neoliberal influential people in France, while at the same time sending electricity to households in France, who couldn't afford to pay their energy bills the months before.

Forget Blair, forget Schroeder, forget Clinton: we need more people like this to put an end to that neoliberal nightmare.

That's what I call democrazy,
Dirk

[struggle4progress]

6. I wish America would have such strikes and protests!

Here the notion "solidarity" is almost forgotten. :(

[anarchy1999]

9. Thank you Dirk. Your reports are dead on. We can only hope that

the people of the US wake up soon. "DEMOCRAZY"!! I like it. The end is near and Europe will save us, we can only hope.

[Kellanved]

7. You might add that Schroeder has 69% Job Approval

And "lost" 211,000 members? hardly. Yes, membership is down, yes ten of thousands have left the party, but the 200000 number is bogus. It includes people leaving due to old age, and death.
The totally arbitrary 1993 date shows that it isn't a serious statistic.

And the European Election offers little information, due to the low turnout.

[Oggy]

8. Well that's what happens

When you are a Union//workers party, but you ignore Unions and workers in favour of big business.

[IndianaGreen]

10. New Labour betrayed the working class as...

New Democrats have betrayed theirs.

I don't think Gordon Brown will be that much better than Blair in terms of policy.

[Oggy]

11. In some ways worse in some ways better

Gordon Brown is very US orientated and big business friendly, more so even than Bliar. He is however a believer in Labour, and he is much more in favour of redistribution of wealth. There is still a strong core of Labour value holding MP's, it is just the New Labour MP's are in the ascendancy for the moment (IMHO). So I agree he will not be much better, but I think he would be better, and he could cause a shift back to Labour's core values by virtue of the the loss of Blairites from the Government.