Welcome to the Spennymoor & District Branch of the Labour Party New
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Welcome to the Spennymoor & District Branch of the Labour Party New Member Booklet The Labour Party needs members – members like you! The Labour Party nationally and locally will try to communicate with you, mainly by email. If you are not getting emails on a fairly regular basis please get in touch, because it probably means with have an error on your address. Call the Labour Party on 0345 092 2299. You can meet lots of other people just like you at one of our meetings or social events. But, going to a meeting can be an off-putting experience if you don’t know the ropes. Please don’t worry about this. It isn’t hard to learn who, what and how, and no one expects you to read and digest the entire rule book before you can take part. Most of us haven’t read all of it ourselves anyway. You will receive an invitation from your branch membership coordinator inviting you to a social to get to know people as soon as they receive your contact details. The thing is, you can learn it as you go along, and bit by bit you’ll become more familiar with the structures, procedures and wording. Not being entirely sure of how it works shouldn’t stop you from expressing your opinion. Ask questions if you need to, and remember that it’s your party as much as anyone else’s. LABOUR is a great movement for national and international campaigning, social justice and economic opportunity, fairness and democracy. LABOUR is also a great grassroots movement, working for change at local level, through campaigns on such issues as our health services, our schools and housing, the environment and climate change. LABOUR is looking to win, to gain greater influence on local authorities as well as Parliamentary power. YOU can help, because people together in the Labour Party can really make things happen. We can fight economic and social inequality. There's an electoral mountain to climb, and you can help Labour to reach the top. THE LOCAL PARTY Branches and Wards Bishop Auckland Constituency Labour Party includes branches in Bishop Auckland & Coundon, Gaunless Valley, Shildon & Dene Valley, Teasdale and Spennymoor & District. The Spennymoor & District branch is a recent (March 2018) amalgamation of the Spennymoor and Tudhoe branches. Most branches meet once a month on a weekday evening for a couple of hours to talk about what’s going on in your village or town, to debate politics and policy, to organise campaign and fundraising activities and hear reports from local councillors. Sometimes there is a speaker, but not always. If you are lucky the meeting will end with people going to the pub! You belong to the Spennymoor & District Branch and we meet monthly on the second Wednesday of each month (the third Wednesday in July and no meeting in August) in the Annex of the Spennymoor Settlement, The Everyman Theatre, O'Hanlon Street (Off King Street), DL16 6RY. Meetings commence at 7pm and a meeting notice, agenda and minutes from the previous meeting plus any accompanying documents will be circulated at least 7 days in advance by the branch secretary, Lynn Gibson, who can be contacted on [email protected] or 07724 817069. The AGM is held annually in June. Our monthly meetings are friendly and varied and there is usually a guest ‘political education’ speaker and some ‘social time’ at the end so that members can get to know each other. We collect £1 from each member at the end of meetings to pay for the hire of the room and we also hold a raffle, where the winner of the previous raffle donates something to be raffled at the end of the next meeting. We also hold fundraising events to raise funds for the branch and have quarterly social events in the Spennymoor WMC where we welcome members new and old in an informal setting. 2 New Members Booklet September 2018 Branch Officers Your elected officers and coordinators in Spennymoor from the AGM in June are: Chair Ian Geldard Vice Chair Campaigns Martin Harmer Secretary Lynn Gibson Treasurer Barbara Graham Women’s Officer Amy Sellers Youth Officer Eva Moore Business Committee Observer Lynn Gibson Membership Co-ordinator Alan Grainger Fundraising Co-ordinator Steven Jones IT, Social Media & Community Liaison Co-ordinator Martin Harmer Auditors Neville Dart Jeff O’Hehir Websites and Social Media You can be kept up to date on local issues via the Spennymoor & District Labour website https://spennymoorlabour.org.uk/ We are always on the lookout for members willing to provide news items for the website, if you have suggestions for content, please contact Martin Harmer, our branch IT Coordinator through the secretary at [email protected]). We also have a closed group Facebook account https://www.facebook.com/groups/spennymoorlabour/ which is for members of the Spennymoor & District Branch and its supporters and invited members from other branches. We also have a Twitter account (@spennymoorblp) and a public facing FB group https://www.facebook.com/SpennymoorBLP/. The CLP also have 2 Facebook accounts, one which is public facing www.facebook.com/Bishop-Auckland- Constituency-Labour-Party-1802336480091849/ and one which is a closed group for BA CLP members and supporters www.facebook.com/groups/Bishop4Labour/. The CLP website can be found at http://bishopaucklandlabour.org.uk/site/ . Constituency Labour Party (CLP) The Labour Party has a CLP for each constituency, and you are now a member of Bishop Auckland CLP. The constituency has its south-western end high in the Pennines and the former colliery village of Tudhoe, just 4 miles south of Durham City at its north-eastern end. Most of its population lives in the vicinity of Bishop Auckland, Spennymoor and Shildon, but most of its area is rural, predominantly in the upper Tees valley with historic Barnard Castle as its centre. We are represented in parliament by our MP Helen Goodman and our CLP Secretary is Dawn McArdle 07973 869889 or [email protected]. Your elected officers from the AGM on 11 September 2018 are: Chair Frank Roche Vice Chair Policy Ros Evans Vice Chair Membership Samantha Townsend Secretary Dawn McArdle Treasurer Ian McArdle Campaign Coordinator Harley Bower-Howieson Youth Officer Martha Airey Community Liaison Officer Vacant Women’s Officer Emma Rowell Fundraising Officer Lynn Gibson Political Education Officer Frank Roche 3 New Members Booklet September 2018 Business Liaison John Conroy Trade Union Liaison Officer (TULO) Chris Blenkin IT & Social Media Officer Martin Harmer Press Officer Martin Harmer Disability Officer Gerald Ward LGBT+ & BAME Officer Darren Newton-Woods Auditors Tanya Tucker Agneta Pallinder All Member Meetings Bishop Auckland Labour Party makes its big decisions and debates policy at All Member Meetings (AMM). These are what they are called; meetings open to all members who live within the constituency. At the moment we have an All Member Meeting every two months, normally on the second Saturday of January, March, May, July (third Saturday), September and November at different venues round the constituency. All members are encouraged to attend and the meetings run from 10.00 am to 12 noon. We use this time for discussion and debate; there is sometimes a speaker and Helen Goodman MP gives a Parliamentary Report and takes questions. We may well also debate a policy issue and other events going on in the Labour Party or the wider political world. Other times we may decide who to nominate for positions like the National Executive Committee or who we are going to send to Annual and Regional Conference. You can raise any issues you like at an All Member Meeting. It helps to plan the meeting if you let the Secretary know a couple of weeks in advance, but that’s not always possible so you can raise a matter under Any Other Business or submit an Emergency Motion in writing to the Chair ahead of the meeting. If you have a more formal piece of business where you want the party to express its views to another body or to another section of the Labour Party you can move a “Resolution” or “Motion”. Resolutions/Motions Any member can submit a resolution/motion to the All Member Meeting. It should be sent to the secretary 14 days in advance it can be circulated to all members so they can study it before the meeting. In some circumstances it’s possible to debate something which has not been circulated in advance. You may wish to move the motion first through your branch however to gauge support for the motion. A resolution/motion is read out at the meeting and must be moved and seconded before it is thrown open for discussion and a vote. If passed by a majority of those present it is forwarded to the relevant bodies. Anyone can move an amendment to a resolution/motion during the debate. Business Committee (or BC) The Business Committee deals with issues of running the constituency, like money and fundraising, organising campaigning, sorting out procedures for electing people, etc, and also with other issues that crop up between All Member Meetings. It consists of the officers elected each year at the Annual General Meeting, plus an observer elected by our local branches (currently Lynn Gibson, branch secretary for the Spennymoor & District branch). Those with voting rights in meetings are the Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Vice-Chair Membership, Women’s Officer and Treasurer. GETTING INVOLVED There are plenty of opportunities to get involved at this local level. The two big tasks people always link to politics (particularly at elections) are: Leafleting..