I liked and admired Bob Crow who died today. He represented his members brilliantly. He was true to his cause and he wanted us out of the EU. I reproduce Wikipedia on his 2009 campaign below.
No to EU – Yes to DemocracyIn March 2009, Crow announced that the RMT would be fronting the No to EU – Yes to Democracy platform with an array of socialist organisations and individuals for the 2009 European Parliament elections. No2EU — Yes to Democracy stood for a Europe of "independent, democratic states that value its public services and does not offer them to profiteers; a Europe that guarantees the rights of workers and does not put the interests of big business above that of ordinary people".
As the party leader and lead candidate in London has said, Crow was "not against workers coming into the country", unlike other Eurosceptic groupings, but he is against "two workers from different countries competing against each other on different rates of pay" and added that "Our main role will be out there among working people, giving them our support and helping to save their industries from privatisation".
No2EU secured 153,236 votes, compared to an RMT membership of 80,000. The party achieved 1% of the popular vote in Britain, giving them the 12th largest share of the vote, behind Scargill's Socialist Labour Party and the far-right British National Party. This was insufficient for a seat in the European Parliament.[20] In London, where Crow was a candidate, the party secured 17,758 votes, equating to the tenth largest share of the vote. In this region, No2EU secured a larger share of the popular vote than the Socialist Labour Party.[21]
He was the sort of guy who would have been a great asset to UKIP but of course the egocentric Farage could never have tolerated a talent in the party so much bigger than his own. Crow could have delivered a huge working class vote for UKIP but his price would have been the expulsion of old Tories like Hamilton, Helmer and the whole of Farage's cabal.
That is why UKIP can never get us out of the EU. It has to be a broad based party not a cult. As long as UKIP remains a Farage personality cult it will fail to worry the political elite of the UK & EU
2 comments:
As Party Nominating Officer I got a bollicking from Lord Farage for not objecting to this party as the NO TO EU was part of the 10 UKIP "names".
They created this party at the last minute presumably to spike UKIP guns especially in the North West.
It was an illegal Party Name because it had more than 6 words; "E" and "U" counting as 2 words in previous correspondence with the Electoral Commission.
The Commission stalled me for days because they had broken their own rules for allowing the name and it would have cost a re-run of the election if UKIP had gone to court and won.
In the end they fudged it by claiming that they had found a dictionary with EU being a word meaning European Union.
The Commission were on the TV today discussing voting by post.
Poisonous bastards with too much power.
Crow was a good negotiator - appreciating well his bargaining position. Would have had Maggie Thatcher choking on her Scotch !
I agree. Voting by post is a corruption of our electoral system. Certainly the Electoral Commission has far too much power.
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