All-member meeting 4th October 6pm

Just a quick reminder to let you know about our first all-member meeting of the year tomorrow evening (Tues 4th October). We’re meeting at 6pm in Level 1 of the Students Union. This is a temporary meeting place – we were unable to book a classroom in the first week. We’ll meet in the entrance to the union bar upstairs so people can find us easily. It is a really good chance for new members to meet the current executive and learn about how to get more involved with events and campaigns this year. 

We hope to see as many of you there as possible! 

See you at 6pm!

2011 Events

Here are our events and dates lined up so far. More to be announced in the near future:

Wednesday 28th September 2011 – Freshers Fair Stall in the Students Union

Friday 21st October 2011 – Post Freshers Social: A chance for new DMU and Leicester University Labour members to get together and meet with existing activists and Leicester’s local MPs. The event is an informal get together for drinks and a chat. Feel free to bring a few mates down as well. We hope to see you there! RSVP at: http://on.fb.me/nCYPqZ

 Tuesday 1st November 2011 – DMU Labour meets Rt Hon Jacqui Smith: We are delighted to host the former Home Secretary and Labour MP, Jacqui Smith, for a Question and Answer session to kick off our 2011/12 calendar of events. The evening will be open to all students, staff and Labour activists. More details about the venue will be announced closer to the time. RSVP at: http://on.fb.me/nrHPdT

 

 

 

 

Join DMU Labour for Freshers 2011!

DMU Labour Club fights for a better deal for all students in Leicester, based on the principles of equality, social justice and fairness. We’d like you to join De Montfort University Labour Club. We work closely with our local Constituency Labour Parties and their MPs, MEPs and Councillors, to give students a stronger voice on the issues that concern and affect them today.  Through engaging with students, whether Labour Party members or not, we hope to gain a clear message on which to campaign. We believe that, as a whole, it is the Labour Party that can provide the fairest option for students.

In joining DMU Labour Club you will have the chance to meet with high profile politicians and politically like-minded students. Furthermore, in becoming part of the Labour movement, you will help to send a clear message to the Conservative led government that their policies are not welcome among students. 

To be part of DMU’s Labour Club simply fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. It’s free to join, and you don’t need to be a Labour Party member.

Name(required)

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Phone Number

Term Time Address(required)

Are you a Labour Party member? Yes No

Thanks for your support and interest.

All of the information that you provide us will be kept in confidence and will not be shared with any organisation unless otherwise stated. The Labour Party and it’s elected representatives may wish to contact you from time to time. If you do not wish for this to happen, please write ‘NO’ underneath your address in the text box. 

Grant Copeland goes to Compass Conference

As some of you may already know, I was in London yesterday for the annual Compass Conference, which this year was themed around ‘Building the Good Society’. For those who don’t know what Compass is, it is a centre-left pressure group, as well as think tank, which, whilst aligned to the Labour Party, is open to people from all-political parties, in particular the Greens and Lib Dems.

The Conference itself opened with the morning keynote speeches from Compass Chair Neal Lawson, Prof Francesca Klug OBE, UK Feminista Director Kay Banyard, and UK Uncut members Ellie-Mae O’Hagan & Daniel Garvin. These speeches, to me, were particularly important as not only did they cover important issues but also provided a crucial reminder of how campaigners and thinkers can affect politics in a momentous way. In addition to these speeches, there was also a video address from Ed Miliband, this was particularly notable as it was the first time a Labour leader has ever addressed a Compass Conference.

Once the morning keynote speeches had finished, it was time to go to the seminars. One of my biggest praises of the conference was the vast range of organisations that were there in attendance, both hosting seminars and manning stalls.

The first of the two seminars which I attended was focused on the practice of legal loan-sharking which is conducted by some short-term lending firms. Chaired by the Centre for Responsible Credit’s Damon Gibbons and Labour Co-Op MP Stella Creasy, this seminar provided a great insight into the business practices of short-term lending firms which charge a humongous amount of interest which force the debtor in a nearly inescapable cycle of debt. What made this seminar particularly special for me was Creasy’s terrific, as well as passionate, defence of the reforms she’s proposed when confronted with criticism, together with her condemnation of the Government for its failure in both recognising the severity of the problem and for its minimal attempt to regulate short-term lending. I would also add that this Tuesday there is a vote to add an amendment to the Finance Bill which, if passed, would finally force the Government to act on this issue. If possible, can you please lobby your MP to vote YES (here’s the link http://bit.ly/k2XZnb).

The second seminar was centred round the idea of the Green New Deal, with representatives from nef, the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, UK Uncut and 38 Degrees given their arguments as to why they support it. Whilst there was, as you would expect, minor differences in each of their arguments, all the representatives agreed on the main concepts laid out in the Green New Deals: major structural changes to national and international financial systems and sustained investment in green energy.

Once the seminars had finished it was time for what I considered to be the highlight of the conference: the Good Society Question Time. Chaired by the brilliant Mehdi Hassan, the panellists included Guardian journalists Polly Tonybee & John Harris, Green Party MP and leader Caroline Lucas, Baroness Prof Ruth Lister CBE and Labour MP and Shadow Business Minister Chuka Umunna. The Question Time provided an interesting, sometimes heated and occasionally funny debate on the very concept of the Good Society dealing with issues integral to it, such as democracy, equality and community action. Whilst some of the questions were indeed quite off-topic, for example one of the questions asked was “Do you consider yourself a Social Democrat or Democratic Socialist?”, nearly all were particularly relevant to the Good Society or other important social issues.

The conference closed in a similar style to how it opened, however this time the focus was not on the campaigner or thinker but rather the politician. Those speaking were Labour MPs Lisa Nandy & Jon Cruddas, and Lib Dem MP Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, who, despite being a senior member of the Lib Dems, was mainly well received by those attendance with frequent applause mid-speech.

Reflecting on today’s experience, I would say that I have learnt much, in addition to reinforcing my strong belief that as individuals, we can work together to help change not only economic or social policy but also the very society that we live in.

I would like to end by thanking not only Compass, but also all the organisations involved who without, today simply would not have been the same.

A message as the year draws to a close

DMU Labour Club is going through a transitional period. Under new leadership, we are moving away from our old left wing position, to what I hope will be a position that reflects the wider party, both in terms of core democratic socialist values and in an eclectic mix of views and opinions. One of the many pieces of advice I was given in the first few weeks of being chair I think particularly sums this up: ‘the chair should reflect the values and ideas of members, not the other way around’. This is not a change for the sake of it, but a necessary change in order to have a strong and legitimate voice both on campus and around the city. Perhaps more importantly, though, it is a change to reflect the make-up of our club.

As this year draws to a close, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your hard work this year. Whether it was going down to London to register our protest at the trebling of university tuition fees, or helping in what was a remarkable set of election results in Leicester last month. I am incredibly proud of the work we have put in.

I would also like to take this opportunity to update you on the progress of our plans for the next academic year. It is our hope and goal that, as a Labour Club, we can feed into Labour’s two year policy review. To do this, we will be inviting guest speakers to talk on specific issues, and then having follow up debates which will help us draw up some policy suggestions to be fed into the national debate. This will also give us an opportunity to organise campaigns on campus and get involved in campaigns off campus. We have already started inviting and booking guest speakers and topic areas. However we would like your suggestions about who you want to see coming to talk to us on campus. We also want to know about which topics matter to you, as students. This is our chance to influence the future shape of the party.
Thank you again for all your hard work,

Rob, Chair

Keep our services publicly accountable

Earlier this week I attended a meeting entitled “NHS Not for Sale”. The main theme of the meeting was that the NHS should, under no circumstances, be offered up to any willing provider and, in short; it should be kept public.

I couldn’t help but think that the point seems to have been somewhat missed. After all, a large majority of the NHS is, in fact, already private. General Practitioners currently own their own businesses; their surgeries are their companies.  What the message of the meeting perhaps should have been is not just that the NHS should be “kept public”, but that it should be kept publicly accountable. Andrew Lansley’s health reforms seem to suggest that public accountability will be lost, and that instead, it will be up to private companies to decide how the NHS operates. This is the theme which seems to be dominating much of the Conservative-led administration’s policy: we see, more and more, that public accountability is being lost.

The situation is much the same with Michael Gove’s free school plan.  Often dubbed “Academies mark II”, so called ‘free schools’ are schools which can potentially be set up by any concerned group of people. These schools are, in a sense, run as private businesses, free of LEA control and regulation. Free schools will largely have the power to teach what they want and how they want. Some choose to go down a vocational route of training, whereas others may choose to make their free school into a modern ‘grammar’ school.

People have many concerns about free schools, but I’m interested in the loss of the control of local authorities. These new free schools can accept as many, or as little, new students as they like – they can set their own quotas and admissions policy. Theoretically, we could end up entering a dangerous cycle: when these schools are full, the local authority will presumably have to build a new school using their own money to fulfil local demand for school places.  Should the head teachers and parents of this newly built school then decide to turn it in to a free school, under Michael Gove’s scheme, they would be completely entitled to do so. The local authority would have no control to stop them. Potentially, this cycle can be repeated again and again: public money would be getting poured into building new schools which, in reality, then could turn ‘private’.

I fear that Andrew Lansley’s health reforms are already at this stage; assets in which public money has been invested are being offered up to any willing provider. Of course, it was the Labour government that allowed GP’s to in effect ‘privatise’ themselves as businesses, but they were still very much accountable to PCTs and the wider public. Lansley and the Conservative led government need to realise that giving away important parts of our heritage to private companies is wrong; and will do little in the long term to help the economy.

Jack

Tackle the issue of universal accessibility to HE, rather than making an attempt to ensure that rich kids can’t fail.

When De Montfort University announced that, like most other universities, they would charge £9,000 tuition fees, we responded by criticizing the impact the government is having on social mobility. We were concerned that students who come from less well-off backgrounds would be put off from attending university, not because they aren’t clever enough, but because of the debt that will hang over their heads.

The natural assumption would be that a ‘progressive’ government would attempt to rectify this through various schemes designed to make university more appealing to students from poorer backgrounds.

Instead the government has launched a higher education initiative that seems to be offering wealthy students the right to buy themselves on to a course. This is a deeply worrying position for any government to take, especially one that has already trebled tuition fees, withdrawn the EMA and made the cost of living at university higher with a VAT increase. It is an obvious reminder that this Conservative led administration will do all it can to ensure that people with wealth can get a leg up in life.

David Willetts tires to justify the policy by arguing that “these are people who wish to go university, but who sadly are being turned away just because there aren’t enough places”. But it was this same government which last year cut university places by 10,000, affecting all students; not just those from a privileged background. What is to become of students who miss out on a place but don’t have the money to buy one? Surely this Tory led government should be tackling the issue of universal accessibility to higher education, rather than making an attempt to ensure that rich kids can’t fail.

Red Leicester: Congratulations on an epic day for Labour

DMU Labour Club would like to congratulate all those elected at yesterday’s count at Welford Road.  Jon Ashworth was elected as Leicester South MP, Sir Peter Soulsby as Leicester’s first directly elected mayor, and 52 out of 54 seats in the city council elections were taken by Labour. It’s been a pleasure campaigning with all candidates over the election, and we hope to continue to provide help and support to you all over the coming years.

If you do one thing this week, convince a friend to vote Labour in Leicester South

We, as students in Leicester South, tomorrow have an opportunity that we must take. It is an opportunity to send a clear message to Nick Clegg and David Cameron that their policies are not welcome amongst students. We should take the opportunity to tell the Conservative led government that they cannot go on kicking away the ladder of opportunity for young people by tripling tuition fees, scrapping EMAs, cancelling Building Schools for the Future, and slashing school sport. This is our chance to say, loud and clear, that we feel let down.

Nearly 20% of Leicester South’s electorate are students. Just like when many of you protested against the rise in University tuition fees back in November last year, this too is a chance to voice your protest through the ballot box, and stand up for the large amount of young people in Leicester.

Make sure that you get down to your polling station tomorrow, and please, if you do nothing else this week, convince a friend to come with you and put a cross next to the Labour Rose.  Tell the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives that they are cutting too far, too fast. Tell the Coalition government that students cannot go on bearing the brunt of unfair cuts.  Make the right choice tomorrow, and vote for Labour.

Kinnock impresses Leicester Labour

I have been a Labour Party member for just over three years, and in that time have been given many great opportunities. I have been lucky enough to attend leadership hustings, become youth and student officer in my previous constituency and, of course, become chair of the DMU Labour Club. All of these have been great experiences to which I thank the Labour Party for.  However, I think last night takes precedence over all other experiences.

Last night I, along with many Labour friends, had the privilege to hear former Party leader Neil Kinnock speak. I knew Kinnock was a great orator. Indeed I remember reading his famous “first Kinnock in a thousand years” speech for an essay I was writing on socialism last year and finding it incredibly easy to relate to. What I didn’t expect was that the man (who is after all nearly 70) would still have so much fire in his belly.

Rob (right) and Neil Kinnock

The speech was focused on how to fight the coalition government. Kinnock spoke about Cameron’s ‘fibonomics’ and gave a particularly impassioned attack on the Prime Minister for his comments to Angela Eagle MP this week. It was a genuinely inspiring speech, and I suspect everyone came away feeling uplifted.

It is this kind of event we, along with Leicester University Labour, eventually hope to be putting on. We are in the process of inviting Influential labour figures (both locally and nationally) to come to our events in the future. This has to be a goal for next year and it is something I hope we can take forward.
Rob