Labour

Labour

Since learning about GE2017 the Institute have been campaigning for Corbyn and have now been elected as Walton CLP Political Education Officers and Executive Committee delegates.

Our first Political Education event was a trip to the theatre to see Reverend Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir and their new show The Trump Depression Hotline. The performance took place on 23 October at Creative Campus, Liverpool Hope University.

This amazing group of activists based in New York have been working both inside the theatre auditorium and outside on the streets across the world since the early 2000s. True to their performance making strategy, they got involved in our local campaigning issues. They visited Unite the Union where Dave Kelly informed them about the ISS sick pay policy for the service staff at Liverpool Royal Hospital. Walton CLP together with Liverpool Hope students took to the streets at the Clayton Square in the morning and paid a visit to the Royal after the show in the evening, singing and dancing ‘We will not be privatsed’. Rev Billy wrote for the New Internationalist about his experiences in Liverpool.

Pies & Politics, our second Political Education event, took place on 7 December at Homebaked. This reading forum asked members to introduce themselves through sharing their favourite excerpts from what they’ve read in the past. We talked about what books made us into the political beings we are today. The event also engaged in collective devising for the Political Education curriculum for the CLP in 2018.

Our list of books:

Selected Poems by Tony Harrison
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Hillsborough – The Truth by Phil Scraton
Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin
Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell
The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson
The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power by Alex Nunns
DIY Survival by C6
Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History by Louise Raw
Out of the Ghetto: My Youth in the East End, Communism and Fascism, 1913-39 by Joe Jacobs
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx
The Iron Heel by Jack London
Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida by John D. Caputo
Revolutionary Women pamphlet by Anarchist Federation
Dare to be Different: Women in Trade Unions, Past and Present by Bernadette Hyland and Michel Herbert
The Rise of the Labour Party 1893-1931 pamphlet by Gordon Phillips
How to Start a Revolution by Lucy-Anne Holmes

It all started in late April when we attened the Momentum meeting at Unite, met up with Liverpool Walton Labour constituency members, went to the Labour Rally at St George’s Hall and listened to John McDonnell.