Frantic phone round erodes Cruddas lead?

Last night's TV Deputy Leader debate may have little influence on the real voting, but it appears that web savvy, night owl, Jon Cruddas supporters have alarmed and galvanised the other candidate's back up teams to spend the day drumming up support in the Newsnight poll.

From a peak of almost 44% with 526 votes cast in the wee small hours, Jon's share had shrunk to 35% with 3103 votes by 1700 hours tonight.

This was still marginally ahead of the combined votes of Harman [20.05%] and Johnson[14.63%] with Blears, Benn and Hain propping up the poll.

It will be interesting to see if teams well versed in the mysteries of ensuring "bums on seats" can produce sufficient fingers on mice to bridge the gap
in the few hours before Newsnight reveal the results.

The BBC point out that
"Results are indicative and may not reflect public opinion"
and we can hope that their poll software excludes any "vote early and vote often tactics"

The Cruddas performance seems to have impressed a self selecting sub-group of Newsnight afficionados, but what of those who opted for Alan Yentob and surrealism, or E-17 Reunited?
The real job - in the real election - will be to persuade Unite members to use their vote -or votes if they are individual Labour Party members -in sufficient numbers to more than counterbalance the expected MP vote.

Unite - and then there were 6

The contest for deputy leader of the Labour Party is now underway and, unlike Gordon Brown's lonely triumph, it's pretty crowded.

Unite [both Amicus and T&G sections] have agreed to support Jon Cruddas.

Each political levy paying member now has to decide

1. Whether they can be bothered to vote, or salve their conscience by writing off this election as a waste of time and money.
Before adopting this position, close your eyes, imagine yourself down the pub with your mates and rehearse a sentence beginning "Well I don't normally agree with John Spellar but---"


2. Whether or not to accept the recommendation of the union's elected leadership.
Being a thrawn oppositionist by temperament, and a retired political geek with too much time on my hands by dint of the passing years, I have spent the last few days ploughing through the Labour party site together with TULO, the candidates blogs, and little trodden paths such as Compass and Unions 21.
My conclusion? Unite was right all along.
The 2007 Parliamentary Labour Party was never going to yield a choice between intellectual giants of impeccable socialist probity. Instead we are faced with a choice between 6 flawed human beings, each driven by a varied mixture of idealism and ambition. I can find much to disagree with in all of their platforms, but Jon Cruddas seems the least constrained by the last ten years,and the most likely to provide the necessary grit in the oyster.


3. [and here's where things get complicated]
Should you take the time to rank all 6 candidates in order to scupper the worst?

The Labour Party explain the process thus
--------------------------------------
How will votes be cast in the election?

In accordance with the Labour Party Rulebook, a third of the votes will go to each of the following sections:

MPs and MEPs;
Individual party members;
affiliated organisations (4B.2c(ii)).

The vote, provided there are more than two candidates, will be a transferable eliminating ballot.
Voters will mark the candidates 1,2, 3 etc.
Each round will be published as 100%, with votes not cast or transferred being eliminated from the calculations.
-----------------------
Whether or not the unions have given any thought to the intricacies of a preference voting system I do not know, but I reckon, if they have, the probable judgement was to keep the message uncluttered and plug one name only.
No such inhibitions apply to the, much smaller, parliamentary electorate, and if this article in the Independent is to be believed, the spirit of Machiavelli continues to stalk the Palace of Westminster.

Unite - Who said What?

MICHAEL OVITZ 1946- ; President, Walt Disney Company
The new media age lowers barriers to entry. It unleashes vast energy but also potentially undermines standards of reliability, accountability, trust and accuracy. • 1998?

Judge for yourself.
Below are a selection of quotes following the launch of Unite.
[You can click on the headings to see the complete articles.]



Organisation and solidarity across frontiers are the future
A revived trade unionism requires much more than consolidation. Neither of us wants to be running a union that is big but shrinking from the outset.


Global firms, be warned: new giant and powerful unions are on their way
If they bring this off - the Unite-USW merger is still a year away and subject to all the complications of American law - we will have, for the first time, a union capable of taking on the multinationals on their own turf. The question is: which way will the new body jump politically?




NEW SUPER UNION WITH POWER TO CRIPPLE BRITAIN
In a warning that will ignite fears of a return to the “Winter of Discontent” strife of the ’70s, the new union called Unite also declared it would not be afraid to take on big employers if it had to


United again
"Amalgamate! Be united in Heart, Hand and Deed and set up an organisation for Heroes to fight with," proclaimed Harry Gosling, secretary of the London Society of Watermen, Lightermen and Bargemen in 1922 as fourteen unions merged to form the 350,000 strong Transport and General Workers union. More than 80 years later, the unions are embarking into equally unknown territory, hoping that the call centre workers, the IT employees and the vast service economy will join up in the way that the watermen and bargees did in the last century to keep a red flag still fluttering on May Day.



Merger creates new Unite union
ATGWU regional secretary in Ireland Mick O'Reilly said the new union will be "progressive and organising" and would "fight back" against the focus on "industrial giants".



Millions Unite Under New Union Banner
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "The pooled resources of the two unions offer a real opportunity for the movement to grow in both influence and membership in the years ahead."




Noble ideal of a global workers' union may be too little, too late
The barriers to more fundamental transatlantic co-operation are substantial, including different labour laws, political systems and employers.



Unite, in One Big Union

It’s far too early to tell whether this will be a positive or negative for Irish workers. On the one hand, larger unions can be less responsive to democratic control and more bureaucratic. Both unions have paid little attention to developing in Ireland over the years in comparison to their work in England, Scotland and Wales.





Unions try global tact

It won’t be easy, just as it was not easy to organize unions in Great Britain or the United States. And there are substantial cultural issues even between American, Canadian and British unions. But a global approach, in response to increasing global dispersion of capital, stands a much better chance of success than trying to put the capitalist genie back in the bottle.



UNION TELLS LABOUR TO FIND ROOTS

Tony Woodley said the party was struggling in this week's elections and there needed to be a change of direction once a new leader took over.

PRETTY PICTURES

The visual identity is simple and clear and will be accompanied by a set of brand guidelines to ensure continuity in its application across the entire union

Unite - if you don't like beige

The logo is now on the T&G main site. How long before Amicus catch up?

So far the media response to the launch has been sparse, although the Guardian managed 3 articles,including that from the Joint General Secretaries.

Personnel Today ran a peevish, "does-the-new-super-union-have-anything-to-be-bullish-about", but as yet I can find nothing from the right wing heavies.

More links tomorrow - promise.

Unite, the union:under a bushel.

Two quotes from the Amicus diary:-

"The Amicus website --- is the primary communication channel for members - and non-members, that want to know what is happening in the union"
&
"The Communications department is the guardian of the image and brand that is asssociated with Amicus, controlling the use of the logo and images, together with published material by third parties."

We are told " Picture desks: a variety of Unite logo images and projections are available to the media on request either by calling the press office numbers above or by emailing media@tgwu.org.uk; ".

Alerting our own webmasters to the brand recognition opportunity in unveiling today's shiny new image to our members seems to have got missed out.

The attached image comes from this site.

The choice is simple, launch a leak enquiry, or congratulate them on the first step towards ensuring that an image search for "unite" puts us in first place on Google and Alta Vista.

UK's largest union set to launch with global vision

All will be revealed at the May Day launch, half an hour after high noon.

I look forward with interest to see the volume and content of the media coverage.

Perhaps if the Joint General Secretaries favoured the gentlemen of the press with a song we might gain some column inches.

Yes: I know the proposal in the first verse is stunningly inappropriate but I can't get it it out of my head.

An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

It appears that the authors of the anti-trot site flagged up previously have withdrawn further into the shadows.

Revised whois details now show the registrant to be one "Peter Smith", but the combination of a unrecognised postcode and an unlikely PO Box number, might elicit some doubt as to how informative the entry might be.

Obsessive seekers after truth could always try the phone number.