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Sixth Form Mercury Wilson’s School’s newest student-run
publication Volume 3, Issue 1, September 2013
The Labour Party is in com-plete disarray. Facing inter-nal
strife over the strength of its shadow cabinet, a poor showing in
the May 2013 County Council elec-tions and, most notably, turmoil
over its relation-ship with the trade unions, Ed Miliband’s
position is becoming increasingly un-stable. Indeed so low is
Labour’s lead in opinion polls for a party in opposition that a
general election victory seems ex-tremely unlikely. Labour has had
a long, historical bond with the trade union movement. In 1906, it
was the trade unions who founded the Labour Party to ensure
parliamentary candidates received financial support to represent
the needs of the working classes. The link with the trade unions,
how-ever, has become so controlling over the Labour Party that they
now con-trol its direction. Indeed, Ed Miliband’s election as
leader was in-debted to the union block vote, the Falkirk
Parliamentary selection was allegedly interfered with by the un
ions and, significantly, the Unite un-ion provides £3.25 million
to the par-ty every year. But this amicable historical bond has
evolved into a hostile and undemo-cratic hold over the soul of the
La-bour Party. Already, Labour has lost over £1.2 million in annual
funding from the Unison and GMB unions in the past week alone, as
the row over the un-ions escalates. But despite the furore, Ed
Miliband has continued to allow the union block vote and has
refused to alter Labour’s relationship with the unions. In doing
so, Miliband has buckled under pressure: the trade unions still
have a disproportionate influence over Labour.
Consequently, Ed Miliband faces a serious image prob-lem. The
Union debacle taints him as a weak party leader, unable to tame the
power of the unions. Indeed, according to an Ipsos Mori survey,
more than one in six voters do not like Ed Miliband and two fifths
of Labour supporters say they do not know what he stands for. Ed
Miliband’s satisfac-
tion rating is at just 28 per cent, com-parable to the levels of
the disastrous leadership of Gordon Brown. The Labour Party must
completely revolutionise their relationship with the unions to even
have a chance of competing in the 2015 general elec-tion. A divided
party facing internal disputes will not compete against the
Conservative Party, whose record in government includes cutting the
defi-cit by a third; creating 1.25 million new jobs in the private
sector; freez-ing council tax for three years in a row; and cutting
net immigration by a third.
Inside: Tim Sharpe responds
Where next for Labour? By Benjamin Flook
Want to write for the Sixth Form Mercury?
It is open to all sixth formers with an interest in writing!
Contact either Nick Page or Jack Taperell for more
information:
Email: [email protected]
[email protected]
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Sixth Form Mercury, September 2013 2
Is it better to be funded by multi-millionaires or by ordinary
working class people? It seems like a ques-tion often ignored in
the wake of the ‘Falkirk voting interference scandal’. Despite both
the policy and an internal Labour party en-quiry clearing Unite of
all wrongdo-ing, the accusations rumble on.
But even if true, is the accusation that Labour are controlled
by the unions necessarily a bad thing? The role of a trade union is
to represent the otherwise unrepresented in their chosen field.
Though their in-fluence has declined since the heights of the 1960s
and 70s, un-ions such as those representing rail-way drivers and
postmen protect the wages and working conditions of their members,
as well as cam-paigning against unpopular privati-sation
drives.
Labour's shift to the right is well-documented. Under the
leadership of Tony Blair, the party abandoned clause 4 of the
party's constitution, which had previously committed them to common
ownership. Even Margaret Thatcher, a champion of the
neo-conservative right, said that New Labour was her ‘greatest
achievement’. Now let's imagine the party didn't have to rely on
trade union funding. Imagine they could cut their link with the
unions entirely. Imagine who they would represent then.
In fact, we needn't look too far for a plausible model. The
modern Con-servative party is funded by the privileged few and
their policies reflect it. More than two thirds of the £1.04m
pounds donated in the second quarter of 2013 came from the City of
London - from the bank-ers and hedge fund bosses whose taxes David
Cameron cut. Since
2010, several individuals have made million-pound donations,
with Mi-chael Farmer (the founder of the hedge fund RK Capital
Manage-ment) alone donating £2.1m. This is in comparison to the
figure of £8m donated to the Labour party by the union Unite, who
represent over 1.4 million people. What do the Conservative donors
get for their money? Those who give over £50,000 get privileged
access to the ‘Leader's Group’, where they meet for dinner and
drinks with senior Conservatives, including the Prime Minister,
Philip Hammond and Theresa May. Such access is, needless to say,
not possi-ble without money. If the assertion that the unions
control Labour's policies through donations is true, it follows
that the same is true about Conservative policy, especially when a
mechanism such this is so readily provided. The only differ-ence is
the scale of representation. So which is better - to have policy
dictated by the privileged few or the representatives of the
hard-working many? The latter is surely more reasonable.
Hi all, A new year, new students and of course, new editors. It
will be tough to fill the boots of last year’s excellent duo,
Nikhil Vyas and Kane Walpole, but we hope that, with your help, the
task will not be so difficult. In this issue, we have politicians,
top hats and Gareth Bale! Enjoy! Jack and Nick
Contents
Article Page
Where next for Labour? 1
A message from the editors 2
Is Labour really in trouble? 2
Top Hat review 3
Football, athletics and self Improvement 4
Is Labour really in trouble? By Tim Sharpe
Even if true, is the
accusation that Labour are
controlled by the unions
necessarily a bad thing?
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Sixth Form Mercury, September 2013 3
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. For those of you with an
interest in musical films - more often than not in black and white
with lots of singing and dancing in them - these names will
certainly stir some memories in your minds. Even for those who
haven’t had the oppor-tunity to be introduced to the delightful
dancing duo, I’m sure you have heard the names, even in passing
from your parents or maybe grand-parents. Back in the 1930s they
released a film called Top Hat which was an absolute runaway
success. Being an extremely big fan of the film and Fred and Ginger
themselves, when I heard that it was being adapted to the stage, it
could be said that I was apprehensive at the very least. However,
as the amazing reviews flooded in, my expectations grew to an
insurmountable size and my desire to see the show myself began to
overflow until, finally, I went to see it. The grandeur of the
Ald-wych Theatre did nothing but complement the gran-deur of the
performance
that we were expecting. Right from the word go the audience is
bombarded with arrays of bril-liant costumes and sets; with the
familiar music and with extraor-dinary dancing.
Apart from this visual and aural treat, we are also served with
classic comedy and acting that really emulates the actual film.
What made it even better was that it was all happening live and
just a few rows in front of us. Playing the roles of the main
characters were Gavin Lee as Jer-ry Travers and the lovely
Ameri-
can actress Kristin Beth Williams as Dale Tremont - lovely in
the show and lovely in real life, I might add, as I had the
privilege of meeting both the principal actor and actress backstage
after the show. Lost for words though
I was, I managed to repeat how “amazing” they were a number of
times; dumb-struck was how the performance had left me.
The show itself is the story of a tap-dancer from the USA who is
brought across by a producer to star in his new
show in London. One thing leads to another and the dancer meets
a beautiful lady with whom he falls in love. A case of mistaken
identity leads their love on a very rocky road and before we end up
in Italy at the end of the show, we see a lot of drama unfurl
be-fore our eyes. But I shan’t reveal the ending of the story
because this musical is too good to miss!
Saying that, there are ru-mours that it does have a limited time
in the West End now, so unless you feel like waiting another year
or so for the tour to be begin, I suggest a trip down to the
Aldwych Theatre would def-initely be a trip to London well
spent.
Putting on my Top Hat By Satchit Srikanth
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Sixth Form Mercury, September 2013 4
The lone player curling free kick after free kick over a wall of
mannequins into an empty net after training is an all too common
trope of footballers’ memoirs. “He’s a real professional,”
colleagues and broadcasters will later say of the likes of
Chelsea’s Frank Lampard. Speaking recently about how he made the
transition from a 12-hour day as a plasterer to two hours’ training
a day as a pro footballer, ex-Palace and Arsenal striker Ian Wright
said he spent his new-found leisure “just practising”. “I could
have ten balls here, ten balls there and ten balls over there;
right foot, left foot…”, he went on. This continual pursuit of
sporting excel-lence, to be as good as you can be, is what is
desperately lacking in profession-al football today. This summer
saw the IAAF World Cham-pionships staged in Moscow and it is in the
sport of athletics that I think we still see the flame of
self-improvement burn-ing brightest. Athletes typically compete in
no more than two or three events and these events rarely span any
more than two disciplines. This narrowness of discipline means that
the honing of one’s skill is that much straightforward.
Compare this to footballers: ‘being a footballer’ is a far more
multifarious thing than ‘being a sprinter’ is. Without diminishing
the hours of training a sprinter does, the discipline of sprinting
is quintessentially about speed, whereas the discipline of
footballing is about speed, brawn, shooting, passing and much else
besides in varying amounts, depending on what type of footballer
you’re talking about. Whether this is really why self-improvement
is more noticeable in athletics, I don’t know: it’s just one idea.
Another popular argument is that there’s simply too much money in
football now-adays. That isn’t to say that there’s no money in
athletics – Usain Bolt is per-haps the most globally recognised
sporting celebrity of our time – but there’s fewer of those
celebrities in ath-letics than in football. Even incredible
athletes like Tirunesh Dibaba, who has won 15 gold medals on the
track at Olympic, world and continental level, have struggled to
attain celebrity status beyond their sport. But is it really
celebrity that’s killing the desire to be as good one can be in
foot-ball or is it something more? I believe it’s the latter.
Whilst monetary reward in athletics relies so heavily on
performance due to the primary source of income being prize
money rather than a wage, footballers’ salaries become more and
more alienated from perfor-mance. Money in athletics serves as an
incentive, as a catalyst for self-improvement. Sadly not so in
football. Do I object to the huge amounts of mon-ey in football
today? No. Football is an entertainment industry as well as a
sporting pursuit. I’m sure Hollywood isn’t hounded for its
overflowing bank vaults and I’m sure a big-budget blockbuster is
enormously more enticing than the local am-dram club’s latest
production. If Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is willing to
spend a word record fee on Gareth Bale in the hope that Carlo
Ance-lotti’s team becomes a smash hit, good luck to him. The
difference is that Holly-wood, like athletics, retains a sense of
money being the reward of good work, hence the appeal of making a
box-office smash.
Perhaps if footballers’ salaries were to become more dependent
on their per-formances, we’d see more box-office displays in the
Premier League every weekend.
Sideline scoop By Harry Curtis
Football, athletics and self-improvement
