By John Pickard
We can be grateful for an article on the website ‘Opendemocracy’ yesterday, which lifted a veil on the kind of people the right wing of the Labour Party put into full-time positions. They are often careerists with no real connection to, or history of, activity in the labour movement – and even less loyalty to it. The Opendemocracy article focuses on Harry Burns, aka Harry Gregson, who was for a time Labour’s Regional Director in the South East.
For too many Labour bureaucrats, working for the Party is just a ‘job’, and they can wear any political coat they choose, depending only on the needs of their career path. The article in question in OpenDemocracy is about one such functionary, Burns, who used to work for Labour, but is now helping the Tories sell their poisonous Rwanda policy.
That this former Labour staffer is now helping the Tories’ Rwanda strategy seems beyond doubt. When OpenDemocracy contacted the Rwandan government over allegations that housing for asylum seekers in Kigali was actually being sold privately, they, instead, “received a response from Burns at Crestview’s London office”, Crestview being a PR firm.
Opendemocracy reported that a senior Home Office spokesperson working on the Rwanda deal confirmed that, although Burns’ role was not “directly” funded by the Home Office, it said that “we both work together on the partnership”.
The Open Democracy article on Burns suggests, “It is not clear how either London-based Chelgate or Canadian firm Crestview won the Rwandan PR contract; neither appears to have a significant history of UK public sector work, suggesting Burns’s political credentials may have played a part”.
Burns’ personal Linkedin profile actually boasts about his links with the Labour Party: “I spent a decade working in UK politics”, it reads, “serving as Head of Elections and Campaign Support for the UK Labour Party for the 2017 General Election, playing an integral role in delivering one of the most unexpected election results in recent times”.
“Corbyn getting [too] close to government”
That the 2017 election result was far better than expected was due to the Corbyn movement, and the hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic Party members supporting it, and not in the least due to the Party apparatus. In fact, what Burns does not say, is that like the rest of the Labour right wing, he was appalled by the result, and he was subsequently instrumental in getting a number of Labour MPs to jump ship to form their own party, Change UK. Burns only adds, coyly, “After leaving the Labour Party, I was instrumental in establishing a new political party, serving as their Head of Campaigns.”
In his Linkedin profile, Burns may not explain why he left the Labour Party, but interviewed on the right-wing propaganda channel GBNews in October, he was more open about it. “…the party [in 2017] did better than expected in the polls”, he said, and “it became clear that Corbyn was getting close to government”. Burns’ response to this result? “I left the Labour Party and then I tried to do everything I can to bring Corbyn down.”
According to Linkedin, Burns is now Vice President UK at Crestview Strategy, one of those kinds of firms that provide public relations advice to anyone prepared to pay for it. Just as Burns worked for the Labour Party, for the money, he now works indirectly for the Tory government, no doubt for more money. “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others I can sell you.”
How many Regional Directors are in the same mould?
During his time as an ‘organiser’ for the Labour Party, Burns – under a different name (it’s not clear why), Harry Gregson, he was for a time acting Regional Director of the Labour Party in the South East Region. Labour Party members will be astonished at this. We should be asking how a creature like this gets to become any sort of Party official, let alone a Regional Director.
We should also be asking how many other ‘Regional Directors’ (what we used to call Regional Secretaries) are in the same mould, as they happily go about suspending Labour Parties, expelling people and generally trashing the democratic norms and traditions of the Labour movement, all no doubt at the behest of General Secretary, David Evans.
Perhaps not that many Labour Party members will read the article in Open Democracy or follow the ‘career’ of this or that bureaucrat. In fact, the right wing get away with as much as they do – in the trade unions as well as the Labour Party – precisely by keeping their activities out of sight of the ordinary members.
But what this particular revelation shows is that there needs to be much more discussion on Labour Party democracy. That should not only mean we have the right to discuss whatever we want to discuss – like Gaza, for example – and select candidates openly and democratically. It should also mean that officials, and particularly Regional ‘Directors’ and the General Secretary, should be elected by the members, so that we can have people in place who have some background and track record in the movement.
The article in OpenDemocracy can be found here.
