Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Alan Griffiths for London Labour Party Regional Board

Alan is a top UNISON activist, a fellow Housing officer and West Ham CLP comrade who is standing for the London Labour Party Regional Board. The election will take place at the Biannual conference this Saturday at Stratford Town Hall. Alan is standing against a certain well known blogger from Hackney who thinks Alan is a "good" person (Er, no, not Dave).

This is from Alan's nomination address.

The third term of Labour Government is uncharted history.

We’ve a lot of hard thinking and work to do to win a fourth term. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. I believe that the electorate want to be convinced that we can protect and support them through this period of rising food and energy prices and can deliver the next new agenda.

They will want to know that we can continue the tremendous success of the Labour Government’s Economic policies. They will want to know that they will expect to benefit, and that new opportunities will open without undue risks.

In the last 3 to 5 years, we have had a succession of reminders that London is the most right-wing of the big cities. Despite the surge in Tory votes in their safest areas this May and losing the Mayor of London, the detailed figures from the counts do not show many Labour MPs loosing on the 1 May 2008 results. We need to face up to where we are fairly and squarely if we are to improve our vote it in time for the London Borough elections in May 2010 and win the fourth General election victory. Let’s do that.



Effective Campaigning

· I have been involved in about half of the Council By-elections in these nineteen constituencies.
· I was the agent in West Ham for the 2005 General Election, seeing off the waves of outside campaigners bussed in by Respect / Socialist Workers Party. In 2008, our vote was up locally.
· Interviewed on TV and Radio on subjects from Crime to Labour's Membership to Abandoned and Untaxed vehicles.
· I’ve been the person who has promoted computerised electioneering, targeted mailings and worked out delivery rounds in my constituency.
· West Ham has a Voice Over Internet phone bank, which allows multiple canvassers to use just one BT landline.
· I am the Labour Link Officer of UNISON in Waltham Forest, with the most delegates to CLPs of any UNISON Branch in London.
· I am Newham membership officer of the Co-operative Party and on the North London Party Council

Newham - leading the way

· We set out to be "Best in Class" before the Labour Government was elected, and were a Best Value pilot for everything.
· Staying in School at 16 is above the English average, despite low incomes. And so is entry to Higher Education.
· Our 12 hour, 5 day Call Centre on 020 8430 2000 offers the front-line service for all the Council's responsibilities. It has been widely copied.
· I played a leading role in getting the first agency agreement for Newham Council to enforce against untaxed vehicles as agent for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing agency, also widely copied.
· And we’ve won the International Station and the Olympic Games, which will also do wonders for neighbouring Boroughs.

The People's Priorities

· Serious improvements to public transport are now in place or on site and people are seeing the results. We must ensure that the Labour regime that began this unprecedented investment gets credit for it.
· Crime remains at he top of public concerns, but it would be only too easy for Labour to fail to get the credit for all the now powers and techniques we have made available and put to use.
· Health needs long-term investment, training and management improvements - the Tories can't be trusted, the Liberals don’t know what long-term means.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"They want to know we can continue the tremendous success of the Governments economic policies?" Are you actually living in the UK? What are you smoking?

John Gray said...

Hi Anon
Improbable as it would have seemed only a few months ago, now Brown is now the man of the moment and Britain is leading the world on economic policies to see off a depression and bring about a recover. Don’t you just love politics!