Que sera, SERA? Is this the Labour right’s latest bid to stifle Jeremy Corbyn?
![[Image: Skwawkbox blog.]](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/161024-Progress-Trojan-horse.png)
[Image: Skwawkbox blog.]
The latest scheme, if you can believe it, involves infiltration of Constituency Labour Parties via third-party organisations such as – in the example suggested by the Skwawkbox blog, SERA (Socialist Environment and Resources Association, now styling itself SERA Labour Environment Campaign).
The idea, it seems, is to pack this organisation, which is affiliated to Labour, with people who oppose Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, policies and followers – and then embed representatives of it into each CLP in order to obtain an automatic seat on the CLP executive.
This would give them influence over, for example, the selection of council and Parliamentary candidates.
Labour is an umbrella organisation with many different unions and socialist societies (like SERA) affiliated to it. It is possible to be delegated to a CLP from local branches of these affiliated organisations.
SERA is already packed with members of Progress, the representative organisation for Labour’s hard right-wingers.
So instead of harmless, uncontentious environmentalist members, it seems SERA may be a front for the right-wing, pro-austerity, anti-Socialist Progress party-within-a-party.
Skwawkbox has this to say:
[Source: Next big threat from #Labour right – the Trojan Horse you’ve never heard of | The SKWAWKBOX Blog]‘Forewarned is fore-armed’, as the saying goes. With a huge majority among Labour’s grassroots membership supporting Jeremy Corbyn, Progress’ successful use of SERA as a ‘trojan horse’ to access the levers of local power and selection depends on those members remaining ignorant of the plan. If they can pose as harmless, uncontentious environmentalist members looking for influence for wholly benign purposes, there is little to prevent SERA CLP affiliates from winning approval for attempts to gain permanent places on CLP executives.
But if those same members are aware that SERA is becoming/has become a front for the right-wing, pro-austerity Progress ‘party within a party’, those attempts can be fought and defeated.
So two things are key: inform and combat. Share this information so that people are ‘forewarned and fore-armed’; and if/when SERA initiates moves to gain influence over local Labour groups and committees, prevent them.
An additional article adds:
[Source: Important: more info on Labour right SERA threat and what to do about it | The SKWAWKBOX Blog]To counter this, it is important that Corbyn supporters in the party also do this. Go along to your local union branch and get yourself delegated to your constituency party. Some CLPs have regular delegate-based General Committees that run the CLP and select the MP. Others have ‘all member meetings’ that are open to any member, with just one delegate-based AGM per year. But that AGM is vital to electing the CLP officers and ONLY DELEGATES from Branch (ward) Labour Parties and affiliated unions and Socialist Societies can vote or select the MP.
If your union is NOT affiliated to Labour (mainly white collar unions like NUT), the traditional route for getting delegated to your CLP is via one of the Labour-affiliated Socialist Societies such as SERA. Join one of them and get delegated to your CLP from the local branch. For example, members of the NUT cannot get delegated to their CLP because this union is not affiliated to Labour. NUT members traditionally get around this problem by getting delegated to their CLP via the Labour affiliated society the Socialist Education Association which IS affiliated to Labour.
To find out if your union is affiliated to Labour see here:
http://www.labour.org.uk/pages/trade-union-and-labour-party-liaison-organisation-tuloA full list of Labour-affiliated Socialist Societies is here:
http://www.labour.org.uk/pages/affiliated-organisationsPractical steps that supporters of Labour as a genuine alternative to the toxic right-wing consensus can take to neutralise yet another Progress attempt to commandeer the party away from the burgeoning democratic movement.
This may be a false alarm.
But if you are a left-leaning member of Labour, can you afford to ignore it?
As the Skwawkbox says, forewarned is fore-armed.
If you are a Labour member, please share this with your colleagues.
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No one and no Political Party can Win fighting with their hands tied behind their back, also Mr Corbyn is the Last Hope this Country has not for us oldies but the Children the Youth and the middle aged, rise up against these liars and power mad money grabbing trough licking disciples of Blairs new labour, and start at the top with Watson, Benn, ummuna the backstabber, harman,,eagle, smith, and all the rest of the cheating lying right wingers, fight back stop them or this Country is finished the scum newspaper once published a headline if kinnock and labour win will the last person to leave Britain put the lights out and a working class country ended up with thatcher who is now a pussy cat in comparison to Britains own Right Wing Dystopian Prime Minister and her Nazi Party Theresa May aka HITLER reincarnated “ACT NOW OR IT WILL BE TO LATE”
I was very surprised by the things that the SERA chair was saying at a recent meeting but all seems a little clearer now. Her contention was that Jeremy Corbyn’s team were not interested in environmental matters whereas the Blair/Brown governments were much better. To my certain knowledge the reverse is true.
I mentioned this theory to an MP I know and he said that we need to be suspicious about any affiliated organisations that start producing expensive glossy materials because it always indicates that they are being backed by big money for a reason. As we know, Progress has access to a lot of outside financial backing.
So you haven’t realized yet that Corbyn will never become a PM?
A bit of dose from reality
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/
Yes, Corbyn, if there is a drop of shame left in himself, should resign and apologize for the mess he created. Look where the party is going. 20% almost below the Tories. Are you happy with this?
The polls have very little to do with reality.
Remember when you said Owen Smith led Corbyn by 24 points among the general public when the leadership election was going on?
Corbyn won.
Remember when you said Corbyn would sink and Labour would die, while David Cameron’s popularity would soar?
Cameron has left politics.
Still, cling to your polls if you want.
” Remember when you said Owen Smith led Corbyn by 24 points among the general public when the leadership election was going on?”
And I am still saying it. If Smith had won the percentages of the LP would be much higher right now. Corbyn won, of course, because the people who are registered with the LP voted for him. The rest of the LP voters didn’t turn up to vote. There is a vast difference between the population of voters and the paty’s members.
“Remember when you said Corbyn would sink and Labour would die, while David Cameron’s popularity would soar?
Cameron has left politics.”
And I am still saying it. The LP will soon belong to the history books. David Cameron quit because he lost the referendum. Instead of David Cameron we have Teresa May, whose popularity is soaring. Hence, the Conservatives are performing exceptionally good, even after a period of mess created between the two fractions: the eurosceptics and the europhiles. Hence I was wrong about David Cameron, but correct about the Conservative future.
And yes, polls DO reflect the real world. Unless you want to bury your head into the sand and just see reality from a perspective that suits your views. Please see reality as it is and not as you want it to be.
If Smith had won, Labour’s percentages might be higher. But that just illustrates the falsehood of the polling system – Smith would be a disaster for Labour, and for the UK. He would have dropped Corbyn’s good, Labour policies in exchange for weak, faux-Tory triangulations that would not have convinced the public. Also his personality left much to be desired. Labour made the right choice in turning him down. Corbyn won in every category of eligible voter, despite a campaign of vote denial, suspensions and expulsions – don’t try to spread lies.
Theresa May’s popularity is not soaring. She is a busted flush who cannot even hold her self-chosen cabinet members together. The honeymoon is over and soon even the pollsters, despite working hard to provide the results for which they are paid, will have to admit it. Tory popularity in the polls was also based on a fake boost due to the Labour right-wingers foisting an unwanted, unnecessary and (in the end) utterly pointless leadership election on the party when they should have been attacking Tory failure.
Polls don’t reflect the real world because they are skewed to reflected certain biases. Currently we’re told they are altered to reflect the fact that many people who said they would vote Labour in May 2015 didn’t bother. But we now live in a vastly different country, politically. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined the Labour Party and will campaign for it, and many, many more will vote for it, now they see it promoting policies they can support.
Still, if you want to bury your head in the sand, that’s your business.
Did you ever answer the claim that you were a Tory with an agenda?
Excuse me, you say that if Smith had won and the popularity of the LP would be higher, that would be a disaster for the party, just because he would drop Corbyn’s socialist policies in favour of Tory austerity! But what makes you think that Corbyn will not implement austerity policies? Just because he says so? Politicians promise the earth once they are not in power whilst they do the opposite when they are elected. This is pragmatism. Take Khan as an example: everyone was obsessed with his victory. When he dropped all his pre-election promises and ”betrayed” Corbyn, everyone is moaning like “Khan is a traitor”.
Theresa May’s popularity is not soaring? Really? So you turn down evidences that don’t suit your views? How do you explain then the fact that the Conservatives are almost 18% above the LP? Another conspiracy theory I suppose? How do you explain the fact that May is much more preferred, even by LP voters, than Corbyn, as the polls claim? Most of the Corbynistas say “it is honeymoon”. But as you said honeymoon is over and yet, she still very popular. Hence, it is very real that May is the most preferred person by the electorate at the moment, and that Corbyn is heading into nowhere.
“Tory popularity in the polls was also based on a fake boost due to the Labour right-wingers foisting an unwanted, unnecessary and (in the end) utterly pointless leadership election on the party when they should have been attacking Tory failure.”
Fake booost, fake polls… blah blah blah… So you resort to conspiracy theories then! And you think this will help? Besides, don’t you see that the so called ‘anti-Corbyn coup’ on which you attribute LP’s poor performance, is a result of Corbyn’s low popularity? I will explain to you: if Corbyn was not so unpopular then the Blairites would not force him into another leadership contest. The Blairies don’t care about ideology. They are careerists. They want to come back into power. And they know that with Corbyn as a leader this will never happen. Hence, the so called ‘anti-Corbyn coup’ is not responsible for LP’s low performance, but the contrary it was Corbyn’s low popularity what triggered the ‘coup’.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have joined the Labour Party and will campaign for it, and many, many more will vote for it, now they see it promoting policies they can support.”
Still this means nothing! A few hundreds of thousands joined the party, mostly the converted, but parties attract millions of voters. Again you confuse the electorate base of the party with it’s membership population. What I predict to happen is LP’s percentages to drop dramatically, and finally the party will be supported only by those hundreds of thousands who joined it.
Please acknowledge reality as it is. Ad hominem attacks will not help you.
That’s right, Jeremy Corbyn will not implement austerity policies – he does what he says. Look at his record.
Anybody in their right mind will tell you not to trust the polls right now – that great pillar of society Jeremy Paxman said it on TV last week – do you count him as a conspiracy theorist? Your comment that the Tories are 18 per cent above Labour in those polls is meaningless.
It isn’t a conspiracy theory that Labour right-wingers forced a leadership election on their party, nor is it a conspiracy theory that it was unwanted, unnecessary and pointless – the evidence, available to everybody, clearly demonstrates these statements to be accurate.
Let me explain something to you: Blairites (as you describe them) will continue attacking Corbyn on any pretext they can find because they are ideologically opposed to his policies. It is about ideology – they know that if his policies are allowed to gain traction with the general public, they will be out of a job sooner or later. It has nothing to do with his popularity – he is the most popular Labour leader in decades.
Yes, hundreds of thousands of people joined the Labour Party. It now has more members than all the other main parties put together – if not all the other parties in the UK. No, I’m not confusing the electorate with the party membership; an increased, campaigning membership means it is far more likely the electorate will be persuaded.
So it is you who should acknowledge reality as it is.
Do you remember the trouble that befell the pollsters after the General Election… because they got the result spectacularly wrong?
“Corbyn won, of course, because the people who are registered with the LP voted for him. The rest of the LP voters didn’t turn up to vote.” I and all of the Party members who I know DID vote for Mr. Corbyn. Are you not forgetting that hundreds of thousands of members and supporters were denied their vote? Also, if Owen Smith was such a great choice, why did those members, of whom you speak, not vote for him?
Remember that our M.P.s have done everything that they can to undermine him, since he was NOMINATED, instead of doing the job of opposing the government. Why attack your leader, instead of the opposition? Why stage the coup when they did? Highly irresponsible!
You know that our media have also done everything in their power to undermine him. The question that you should be asking is why. Why is a man whom the Establishment (politicians, media etc.) are doing their level best to remove is so popular with ordinary people? Our Party has more members than the Tories, the £iberal Democrats and U.K.I.P. COMBINED! Why are people joining? You seem to be asking the wrong questions.
Its about time there was a real rout of the blairits and thatcherits and fifth columnists, this can’t go on if we want to go forwards and fight the enemy we need every one to the barricades I for one want them kicking out of once and for all get the pain over, every miner will tell you you want people with you you can trust lives depend on it
There is also the danger of them using this tactic to prevent trigger ballots re deselection. There is no limit to the number of branches that an affiliated organisation can have. ( USDAW for instance might claim that each shop had its own branch). Each branch can have a delegate. Only delegates vote on the initial selection procedure which “triggers” a ballot of all the clp members. If a candidate gets 50%of the delegates vote, no ballot of the clp takes place.