Rail union throws its weight behind John

Socialist Resistance no42 | page 6

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

As we go to press, John McDonnell, the principal lett challenger to Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership has hit the headlines in the Independent on Sunday's diary - with a bizarre story that he is finding it hard to get nominations from MPs. Instead, claims the Indie, he is likely to do a deal to stand as Deputy and support Michael Meacher as leader.

This seems pretty unlikely to anyone who has been following McDonnell's campaign even vaguely -and sure enough, John has issued a clear statement confirming that it is pure fantasy.

In the meantime, the real stories about the campaign are sadly absent from the press.

On February 7, the rail union ASLEF announced it had become the first national trade union to officially sponsor any candidate for election as the next Labour leader - and was throwing its weight behind McDonnell.

John McDonnell is sponsoring a private

members' bill condemning the formation of the BP's so-called 'trade union' and

continues to speak to

meetings up and down the

country on the campaign

trail.