Nottingham Labour Corbyn rally: Independents out – Blairites out!

Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster, photo RevolutionBahrain/CC

Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster, photo RevolutionBahrain/CC   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Nathan Sharpe, Nottingham Socialist Party

Nottingham has two MPs in the pro-austerity Independent Group. Chris Leslie, previously Labour, and Anna Soubry, previously Tory.

The Labour Party in Soubry’s constituency, Broxtowe, called a rally in Beeston with hundreds attending on 22 February.

Soubry won the seat from New Labour in 2010, and held it with a slim majority of 863 in 2017.

Broxtowe Labour’s parliamentary candidate, Greg Marshall, correctly called on Soubry to “do the right thing and call a by-election.”

But most of the parliamentary speakers talked about how “saddened”, “shocked” and “disappointed” they were at seeing MPs who had consistently voted for cuts leave Labour.

Nottingham Socialist Party thinks it should be “cheers not tears!” This is no time for timidity. But there was no call from the platform for mandatory reselection to boot out the rest of the Blairites.

Jeremy Corbyn’s closing speech talked about “class lines” and rightly said “the environment is a class issue.”

On the school strikes against climate change, he thanked students “for educating all of us that day.”

Corbyn promised a Labour government would scrap tuition fees, but made no call for action. However, the enthusiasm for this pledge in the 2017 snap election, and the recent climate strikes, show the potential for building a mass student movement to fight for free education.

We sold 14 copies of the Socialist, and chatted with many people about our ideas.