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on 29th August 2009 at 05:13, Steve Brown said:

We are campaigning for socialist policies! It just so happens that many in the LRC are LP members.  It is the traditions of the party which keeps us there, the fact that political power has been usurped from the working class does not mean that the LP is a lost cause.  Millions of working people, who don’t think of the LP in the same way as the activists, still look toward “their” party and still feel the sense of being working class and Labour through and through despite the crimes of the leaders.  So we go on the door step with the policies of the LRC, socialist policies, and encourage people to engage in the political discissions which will rage inside the LP after the next election when Brown will be routed (this is the most likely scenario).  It’s a very easy thing to explain to working people, that their party has been infiltrated by alien ideas and that the most important task is to take the struggles of working people back into the party, to do battle with these forces and win it back for working people once again.  It’s all well and good that the LP can try and scare people into voting for them by pointing at the Tories, but what is the alternative they are posing?  Well, if the truth be known, it’s not that much different from the Tories.  So, we go on the doorstep with socialist ideas and draw people toward the fight for those ideas inside the ranks of the party.

on 17th September 2009 at 21:32, Michael Chewter said:

I don’t disagree with what you say Steve, but there are issues you do not address. Hopefully we will be able to attract new Labour Party socialists into the fold, but there is now no democratic mechanism whereby we may hope eventually to replace New Labour with real Labour. I don’t know how many LRC MPs there will be after the next general election, but what will be their role, as a marginal group within parliament. We need more strategy.

on 11th October 2009 at 13:17, Jeremy Benstead said:

Personally i think that the “new” labour experiment is in its death throes anyway, and we as socialists shouldnt get too sidetracked in fighting something when a Labour Party victory at the next general election gives the left its best opportunity of real change for twenty years.
Last week, in a by election held in the March West division of Fenland District Council, Labour polled 30%.
Admittedly, the Tories still won,but this a by election in an authority where Labour has ONE councillor.
So, why the (relatively) good support?
Well, today,March is a typical Fenland Market town. Its two biggest employers are either agriculture, in its many forms, and the high security Whitemoor Prison.
But, thirty years ago, March was a major marshalling hub on the east coast mainline.
Trades unionist and the children of trades unionists still make up a goodly proportion of the population. They want to be able to voye for a Labour Party that isnt a pale immitation of Thatchers Tories. They want to vote for a Labour Party of real equality.A socialist Labour Party, and I tink that we should take heart from that 30% in March West. There is only one political Party of the left that can win a general election, and thats the Labour Party. If we focus on fighting “new” labour, we lose the opportunity of taking the Labour Party where its supporters, our people, want it to go.
Labour wasted much of its last two terms. Lets not waste the future?