Labour leaders attend party founder’s dinner
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was in Blantyre at the weekend to attend a Keir Hardie memorial dinner.
The event, at the town’s miners’ welfare on Friday, September 16, was hosted by the North and South Lanarkshire Labour groups and attracted party members and representatives, including Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale.
Held before the anniversary of the Labour party founder’s death – on September 16, 1915 – the dinner featured a range of talks, including speeches from both leaders.
Ms Dugdale said: “The politics of Hardie’s time was geographically concentrated, often around a village or town with one or two major workplaces.
“That isn’t how it works anymore. Communities of interest are just as important as communities of place.
“You might not go to a mass meeting, but you’re more than likely involved in a political discussion online or a Facebook group for your street or community council.
“In 1901, people went to the mass meeting to find out the news. Today, if we expect people to come to us to talk politics we’re only going to find the people who are already engaged.
“If we want to reach the marginalised, the busy or simply the not very interested, we need to go out and find them. We need to reach them where they are – in workplaces, in their homes, on Facebook.
“The Labour Party of the future has to be able to communicate with people online and offline and go to them where they are, not expect them to come to us.”
Hardie was born in Legbrannock, now considered as Holytown, in 1856 and worked in coal mines from the age of 10.
An active trade unionist, he was sacked by the pit owners and became a trade union official, later being the first working class socialist MP and the first leader of the Labour Party in the UK parliament.