Patrick Cullen

The Media Workers Against the War held a half-day conference at the LSE entitled 'The First Casualty? War, Truth and the Media Today', last Saturday, with the express aim of identifying "...the main sources of pro-war bias as a first step to providing media workers with tools and resources for combating it."

The conference was one of four such events taking place across London, with the others being held by the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), RESPECT and George Galloway’s breakaway party RESPECT Renewal. The four conferences were an attempt to organise the left wing at the grassroots and "retake the reins of power", according to Crosswalk News.

John McDonnell, a left-wing Labour MP and member of the LRC, told Crosswalk News that "the fight back is beginning". Dr Cullen of Warwick University, a political historian, told The Beaver that "the Labour movement urgently needs to develop a viable alternative to the liberal market, and neo-imperialist policies that currently dominate all mainstream British politics. Hopefully for British democracy the LRC will be able to fill this ideological and political gap."

A third year Government student who wished to remain anonymous told The Beaver that "it can only be a good thing if British political life gets away from the idea that disagreement is bad ... 'consensus politics is a joke."