Listening to the people is vital for Labour Party politics

The late Anthony Wedgewood Benn once said that the Labour Party is not a socialist party but is a party with socialists in it. I guess I would subscribe to this comment.

Since our inception we have been a melting pot of different ideas hence being a broad church.

The only time socialism was mentioned in our ordinances was when a certain Tony Blair advocated a change of Clause 4 from what it had been since 1917 when Sydney Webb drafted the original " To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service" to what it is today.

I do think at times political parties need to look at themselves and to work out what is their purpose and indeed last year it was suggested by one of the then Labour leadership candidates that perhaps we needed to look again at our aims and values in light of changing times.

When that was suggested it spurred me into writing a new clause 4 which I promptly deposited with a certain person.

However it is not the most important thing on the agenda.

One of my big criticisms of the Party was that it lacked a grassroots organisation where there could be a cross fertilization of ideas on how we could rebuild a collapsing society.

No doubt whatever ideas I had put forward to the Party ended up in the shredder.

Under previous leaders we were very top down and we adopted a clunking first approach that the leader is all knowing.

Although I campaigned in 2015 in my limited way for Labour in support of the local candidate I was under no illusions having informed the party back in 2014 that we were not going to win, again my thoughts at that time were put in the shredder, and after the defeat in 2015 I wrote a long explanation on why we were defeated again - that was put into the shredder.

We have a leadership now whom I believe are willing to listen to the shop floor because they don't have the answers to everything but together we can come to that point where the answers are in front of us.

Finally we came into being to be the voice of working class opinion in the legislature and the great challenge for us today is to reconnect with the working class and to understand their needs, their wants, their hopes and their desires and if we can do that I believe we will form the next government.

However if we display an arrogance, which I believe we did under previous leaders then I am sorry to say we will be defeated in 2020 or whenever the next general election occurs, because a party that doesn't listen to the people doesn't deserve to be in government.

​Thanks to our regular contributor Ferederick James

​http://www.independent.co.uk/news/defining-moment-as-blair-wins-backing-for-clause-iv-1611135.html