Land of Hope and Glory, a UK-based political RP (OOC)

[Agarntrop]

I just put up a desired positions list

I don't think I'd be anywhere near experienced in this sort of roleplay to take on a role that would be as large and important as someone like Not-Corbyn.

You could do a libdem. We need some libdems.

[Ideal Britain]

NS Nation Name: Ideal Britain
Character Name: Muhammad Khan
Character Gender: Male
Character Age: 28
Character Height: 6 feet tall
Character Weight: 140 LB
Character Position/Role/Job: Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton
Appearance: Tall and muscular with light brown skin, hazel eyes and jet black hair, Muhammad Khan is the stereotype of a young Pashtun male.
Character Cons. of Origin: Ealing Central and Acton
Character Cons. of Residence: the same
Character Party Affiliation: Labour
Main Strengths: Intelligent, hard-working, charismatic and protective of women
Main Weaknesses: too honest (providing constant ammunition for the process, especially the Tabloids) and overly idealistic
Biography: Born in Ealing to an Afghani bus driver as his father and a Pakistani Pashtun women as his mother. He studied law and became a barrister (advocate) specialising in human rights cases which won him the respect of many in his diverse community but also the ire of right-wing tabloids due to some of his immigration cases. He married another Pakistani Muslim after an arranged introduction by his parents though he also fell in love with her. He has a three year daughter and has outspoken views on women’s rights and child protection, his harsh views on the punishment of child abusers are controversial within his left-wing party but earn him respect from the average voter. He courted controversy in feminist circles for re-tweeting an article about chivalry in Islam and was branded a “benevolent sexist.”
He is respected across Muslim communities and more broadly across the London working-class as well as the left-wing intelligentsia. He is known for his support of labour unions. He is a divisive figure in police circles, liked by some due to trying to increase their pay whilst being disliked by others due to his history in legal action against the Metropolitan Police. Despite being admired by all classes in London he is disliked by many working-class people on both sides of the political spectrum due to his support of the Remain campaign and opposition to a hard Brexit. He has received intimidation from both the far-right and extremist elements within the Muslim community. National Action said he “should be exterminated” whilst Daesh issued a fatwa against him due to his outspoken support for female education and employment opportunities.
Other Info: he is a devout Muslim who is deeply sensitive to social justice issue (including workers rights) and is very caring to his wife (a final year law student who is also a devout Muslim)

I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: (Ideal Britain)

Final version

[Agarntrop]

NS Nation Name: Ideal Britain
Character Name: Muhammad Khan
Character Gender: Male
Character Age: 28
Character Height: 6 feet tall
Character Weight: 140 LB
Character Position/Role/Job: Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton
Appearance: Tall and muscular with light brown skin, hazel eyes and jet black hair, Muhammad Khan is the stereotype of a young Pashtun male.
Character Cons. of Origin: Ealing Central and Acton
Character Cons. of Residence: the same
Character Party Affiliation: Labour
Main Strengths: Intelligent, hard-working, charismatic and protective of women
Main Weaknesses: too honest (providing constant ammunition for the process, especially the Tabloids) and overly idealistic
Biography: Born in Ealing to an Afghani bus driver as his father and a Pakistani Pashtun women as his mother. He studied law and became a barrister (advocate) specialising in human rights cases which won him the respect of many in his diverse community but also the ire of right-wing tabloids due to some of his immigration cases. He married another Pakistani Muslim after an arranged introduction by his parents though he also fell in love with her. He has a three year daughter and has outspoken views on women’s rights and child protection, his harsh views on the punishment of child abusers are controversial within his left-wing party but earn him respect from the average voter. He courted controversy in feminist circles for re-tweeting an article about chivalry in Islam and was branded a “benevolent sexist.”
He is respected across Muslim communities and more broadly across the London working-class as well as the left-wing intelligentsia. He is known for his support of labour unions. He is a divisive figure in police circles, liked by some due to trying to increase their pay whilst being disliked by others due to his history in legal action against the Metropolitan Police. Despite being admired by all classes in London he is disliked by many working-class people on both sides of the political spectrum due to his support of the Remain campaign and opposition to a hard Brexit. He has received intimidation from both the far-right and extremist elements within the Muslim community. National Action said he “should be exterminated” whilst Daesh issued a fatwa against him due to his outspoken support for female education and employment opportunities.
Other Info: he is a devout Muslim who is deeply sensitive to social justice issue (including workers rights) and is very caring to his wife (a final year law student who is also a devout Muslim)

I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: (Ideal Britain)

Final version

he seems like a hotshot to me

[Emazia]

I don't think I'd be anywhere near experienced in this sort of roleplay to take on a role that would be as large and important as someone like Not-Corbyn.

You could do a libdem. We need some libdems.

Nobody ever needs Lib Dems, Agarn.

[Istoreya]

You could do a libdem. We need some libdems.

Nobody ever needs Lib Dems, Agarn.

I'm inclined to agree, lol

[Agarntrop]

argh we still need more people

[Irona]

You could do a libdem. We need some libdems.

Nobody ever needs Lib Dems, Agarn.

[Agarntrop]

gah

[Latvijas Otra Republika]

Hello friends, Im exicted to join the Bri-ish political RP re-boot number thirty-three

[Agarntrop]

Hello friends, Im exicted to join the Bri-ish political RP re-boot number thirty-three

Haha

[Agarntrop]

I may start up the ic early to get some extra interest here

[The Alpine Union Of Central Europe]

Hello

[Kargintinia]

Hello

Hello there

[Irona]

---

Character Information Sheet

NS Nation Name: Irona
Character Name: 'Red' Ralph Bowan
Character Gender: Male
Character Age: 54
Character Height: 5'5
Character Weight: 71 KG
Character Position/Role/Job: General Secretary of Unite

(Mark Serwotka)

Character Cons. of Origin: Newport East
Character Cons. of Residence: West Ham
Character Party Affiliation: Labour Party

Main Strengths:
[*]Powerful influence in the Trade Union movement
[*]Long history of successful labour organising
[*]Maintains strong links in Wales

Main Weaknesses:
[*]Enemies in the press
[*]Associated with the past leadership of not-Corbyn
[*]Taken to court, and only just acquitted, for violent disorder during the Battle of Orgreave.

Biography: Growing up in the shadow of the Newport Docks is to see the beauty of Wales while living the poverty of English industrialism. Ralph Bowan still tells the tales of how his brothers and him got up to trouble on those muddy town streets, while their father worked long hours at the dockyard and their mother spent the days as a cleaner for the landlady. He was always the smallest of the four brothers, but he made up for it with an uncanny ability to talk his way out of unpleasant situations. "Wait, wait! Leave off will ya. Look I admit we borrowed ta bike, but I can make it up, I swear. I know you want to go Rodney Parade, well I know a guy who'll fix you up with some tickets, cheap like. If you let me go it'll only be two bob for one."

He never bothered studying in school because every boy from his part of Newport ended up doing the same thing as a dockworker. That was life and it was one Ralph immediately loved. He was just a teenager but already he felt part of something. People trusted him on the docks, they laughed with him in the pub after work, and they'd walk off site for him if he asked. The union was everywhere in those days. If someone ran up the dockway shouting "Everybody out!", the entire dockyard would stop at once. People'd try to find out what it was about, debate it with their steward, and if they thought it was legitimate they'd go to the pub until the company did right by their workmate. Those were the days.

When things got tough for the coal miners under Thatcher, Ralph would travel up to the South Wales Coal Field with his Dad to join the protests and give out donations raised in the dockers local. It was grim. It was radicalising. He joined the CPGB. In June organisers were headed north to support the miners at Orgreave in South Yorkshire, where the police were trying to break picket lines to get scabs through to the pit. Ralph went up north expecting trouble. He was eager for a fight. When he arrived there were some 5000 other picketers. They were going to overwhelm the police. Only those men in blue kept arriving. More and more, equipped for riot, with shields, horses and dogs. Then it hit Ralph: "there are more of them than us." Moments later, the police charged.

Ralph was blue and bloody, running through the streets of Orgreave. On either side, the quintessential terraced housing of an English town. Behind, a copper on a horse with a gored baton. Ralph dodged a blow and dashed down an alley, straight into the arms of an overweight policeman. The bully wacked Ralph across the head, then drove his foot into his stomach for good measure, before hauling him to the waiting police van. Ralph was charged with violent disorder alongside 23 other picketers. They said he'd thrown a rock at the police, and hit one across the face. He was held until 1985, when the trail collapsed and he was finally let home.

All was not well for those he'd left behind in Newport. Truly the profession of Longshoreman had been in decline since the beginnings of containerisation in the 1960s. By 1986 reality had set in for those dockers in Newport. The miners were defeated, and now it was time to modernise the shipyards too. Ralph, now a figure of some prestige among the dockers for his brief stint in jail, was a prominent opponent of the modernisation despite being just shy of 21. The battle was tough and losing. In the end the dockers saved just a handful of jobs, but won a sizable severance package and guaranteed retraining for those who wanted it. Ralphs father and brothers combined their money with savings to buy out the local pub. Ralph took retaining to be a dockyard crane operator but was elected to be a South Welsh regional organiser for the Docks Group of the TGWU before he finished training in the spring of 1987. He was involved in intense factional struggles within the CPGB as the Euro-Communists and the Marxist-Leninists tore the party apart. Disillusioned he left the Communists for Labour following the CPGB's split in 1988.

During the 90s Ralph was influential in saving numerous jobs at the Milford Haven Waterway by organising the dockyard to strike alongside petrochemical workers. The threat to simultaneously shut down the UK's third largest port, and a fifth of its oil production, was enough to get Ralph's face onto the front of the Sun as 'Red Ralph, the Welsh Wrecker', even though a deal saving the jobs was pushed through before the strike could actually be carried out. This was the beginning of a ever hostile relationship between Ralph and the press. Even the liberal Guardian paper published op-eds describing him as 'a militant union leader more suited to 1917 than to the post-soviet 90s'. Still his ability to navigate cut-throat union politics while securing major concessions from employers set Ralph on a course for success within the TGWU.

By the time of Labour's victory in the 1997 election Ralph was leader of the TGWU in Wales. Though he was an enthusiastic supporter of devolution and the minimum wage, he became notorious in New Labour circles for briefing against the Labour leadership on their failure to undo Thatcher era Trade Union Laws. In 2003 he once again made headlines for organizing a trip of several hundred Welsh activists to attend the STOP THE WAR march. It was during involvement in the anti-war movement that he made personal friendships with several Socialist Campaign Groups figures in the PLP, and with left-wing English activists outside the TGWU. These contacts proved important when as Deputy Chair of the TGWU he masterminded the merger of TGWU and Amicus, to form UNITE the Union in 2006 as the biggest Trade Union in Britain. Ralph took the position of Assistant General Secretary in 2008.

The Great Recession proved a serious challenge to the new union. In one of his first actions as Assistant General Secretary Ralph organised one of the biggest industrial disputes in British Airline history when UNITE members working for BA were threatened with 1700 job losses and remaining staff were placed on a two-year pay freeze. Red Ralph once again became the papers enemy number 1 as the person they deemed responsible for cancelling their holidays. The industrial dispute lasted some 18 months before a deal was finally reached. Through austerity Ralph was always a major figure leading Trade Union resistance to public sector cuts, though the biggest victory for UNITE during this time was their legal action in 2014 that forced employers to account for overtime in holiday pay. Ralph made headlines again for putting a motion supporting a General Strike against austerity through the Trade Union Congress.

After Labours defeat in 2015 Ralph was a key early backer of the SCG candidate for labour leader. UNITE backing, ensured by Ralph and the sympathetic General Secretary, was important in upsetting British politics by securing the Labour leadership for the SCG. Ralph became a close ally of the Shadow Chancellor during the internal struggles through 2015-'17, and travelled back home to Wales to campaign in the 2016 EU referendum for Remain, abet half-heartedly. UNITE was a key part of the electoral strategy of the Labour Party in 2017, with campaigners using UNITE offices and activists across the country. That labour denied the Tories a majority in the 2017 election was a highpoint of Ralphs career, and encouraged him to fight for UNITES deeper involvement in electoralism. However anti-semitism and brexit ensured the next few years were incredibly brutal period of party infighting. As Ralph was a closer ally of the Shadow Chancellor than the Leader of the Party, he found himself increasingly pushed out of the inner circle, but with the 2019 election came a return to a united façade and Ralph was brought back to co-ordinate the party with UNITE once more.

The disastrous outcome stained UNITES General-Secretary more than Ralph but inside the old union man still feels partially responsible for the collapse of the cause. With the labour party shifting onto a more moderate footing Ralph has returned his focus to UNITE. His election as the new General-Secretary has been met by the familiar stories from the press. "No change in UNITE," "Red Ralph still Wrecking", "The One Looney that's Left". We'll see.



Other Info: Ralph is married to Ellen Tempest, an English children's author he met at STOP THE WAR, and has three girls.

I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: (Irona)

Do Not Remove: 84721

[American Patriots PAC]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

[American Patriots PAC]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

Oh this is Emazia btw, I just forgot to switch alts and I cba now

[Irona]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

Ralph obviously isn't going for labour leadership, given he's UNITES Gen Sec rather than a MP.

[American Patriots PAC]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

Ralph obviously isn't going for labour leadership, given he's UNITES Gen Sec rather than a MP.

Oh yep it seems he is

[Agarntrop]

(Image)

---

Character Information Sheet

NS Nation Name: Irona
Character Name: 'Red' Ralph Bowan
Character Gender: Male
Character Age: 54
Character Height: 5'5
Character Weight: 71 KG
Character Position/Role/Job: General Secretary of Unite

(Image)

Character Cons. of Origin: Newport East
Character Cons. of Residence: West Ham
Character Party Affiliation: Labour Party

Main Strengths:
[*]Powerful influence in the Trade Union movement
[*]Long history of successful labour organising
[*]Maintains strong links in Wales

Main Weaknesses:
[*]Enemies in the press
[*]Associated with the past leadership of not-Corbyn
[*]Taken to court, and only just acquitted, for violent disorder during the Battle of Orgreave.

Biography: Growing up in the shadow of the Newport Docks is to see the beauty of Wales while living the poverty of English industrialism. Ralph Bowan still tells the tales of how his brothers and him got up to trouble on those muddy town streets, while their father worked long hours at the dockyard and their mother spent the days as a cleaner for the landlady. He was always the smallest of the four brothers, but he made up for it with an uncanny ability to talk his way out of unpleasant situations. "Wait, wait! Leave off will ya. Look I admit we borrowed ta bike, but I can make it up, I swear. I know you want to go Rodney Parade, well I know a guy who'll fix you up with some tickets, cheap like. If you let me go it'll only be two bob for one."

He never bothered studying in school because every boy from his part of Newport ended up doing the same thing as a dockworker. That was life and it was one Ralph immediately loved. He was just a teenager but already he felt part of something. People trusted him on the docks, they laughed with him in the pub after work, and they'd walk off site for him if he asked. The union was everywhere in those days. If someone ran up the dockway shouting "Everybody out!", the entire dockyard would stop at once. People'd try to find out what it was about, debate it with their steward, and if they thought it was legitimate they'd go to the pub until the company did right by their workmate. Those were the days.

When things got tough for the coal miners under Thatcher, Ralph would travel up to the South Wales Coal Field with his Dad to join the protests and give out donations raised in the dockers local. It was grim. It was radicalising. He joined the CPGB. In June organisers were headed north to support the miners at Orgreave in South Yorkshire, where the police were trying to break picket lines to get scabs through to the pit. Ralph went up north expecting trouble. He was eager for a fight. When he arrived there were some 5000 other picketers. They were going to overwhelm the police. Only those men in blue kept arriving. More and more, equipped for riot, with shields, horses and dogs. Then it hit Ralph: "there are more of them than us." Moments later, the police charged.

Ralph was blue and bloody, running through the streets of Orgreave. On either side, the quintessential terraced housing of an English town. Behind, a copper on a horse with a gored baton. Ralph dodged a blow and dashed down an alley, straight into the arms of an overweight policeman. The bully wacked Ralph across the head, then drove his foot into his stomach for good measure, before hauling him to the waiting police van. Ralph was charged with violent disorder alongside 23 other picketers. They said he'd thrown a rock at the police, and hit one across the face. He was held until 1985, when the trail collapsed and he was finally let home.

All was not well for those he'd left behind in Newport. Truly the profession of Longshoreman had been in decline since the beginnings of containerisation in the 1960s. By 1986 reality had set in for those dockers in Newport. The miners were defeated, and now it was time to modernise the shipyards too. Ralph, now a figure of some prestige among the dockers for his brief stint in jail, was a prominent opponent of the modernisation despite being just shy of 21. The battle was tough and losing. In the end the dockers saved just a handful of jobs, but won a sizable severance package and guaranteed retraining for those who wanted it. Ralphs father and brothers combined their money with savings to buy out the local pub. Ralph took retaining to be a dockyard crane operator but was elected to be a South Welsh regional organiser for the Docks Group of the TGWU before he finished training in the spring of 1987. He was involved in intense factional struggles within the CPGB as the Euro-Communists and the Marxist-Leninists tore the party apart. Disillusioned he left the Communists for Labour following the CPGB's split in 1988.

During the 90s Ralph was influential in saving numerous jobs at the Milford Haven Waterway by organising the dockyard to strike alongside petrochemical workers. The threat to simultaneously shut down the UK's third largest port, and a fifth of its oil production, was enough to get Ralph's face onto the front of the Sun as 'Red Ralph, the Welsh Wrecker', even though a deal saving the jobs was pushed through before the strike could actually be carried out. This was the beginning of a ever hostile relationship between Ralph and the press. Even the liberal Guardian paper published op-eds describing him as 'a militant union leader more suited to 1917 than to the post-soviet 90s'. Still his ability to navigate cut-throat union politics while securing major concessions from employers set Ralph on a course for success within the TGWU.

By the time of Labour's victory in the 1997 election Ralph was leader of the TGWU in Wales. Though he was an enthusiastic supporter of devolution and the minimum wage, he became notorious in New Labour circles for briefing against the Labour leadership on their failure to undo Thatcher era Trade Union Laws. In 2003 he once again made headlines for organizing a trip of several hundred Welsh activists to attend the STOP THE WAR march. It was during involvement in the anti-war movement that he made personal friendships with several Socialist Campaign Groups figures in the PLP, and with left-wing English activists outside the TGWU. These contacts proved important when as Deputy Chair of the TGWU he masterminded the merger of TGWU and Amicus, to form UNITE the Union in 2006 as the biggest Trade Union in Britain. Ralph took the position of Assistant General Secretary in 2008.

The Great Recession proved a serious challenge to the new union. In one of his first actions as Assistant General Secretary Ralph organised one of the biggest industrial disputes in British Airline history when UNITE members working for BA were threatened with 1700 job losses and remaining staff were placed on a two-year pay freeze. Red Ralph once again became the papers enemy number 1 as the person they deemed responsible for cancelling their holidays. The industrial dispute lasted some 18 months before a deal was finally reached. Through austerity Ralph was always a major figure leading Trade Union resistance to public sector cuts, though the biggest victory for UNITE during this time was their legal action in 2014 that forced employers to account for overtime in holiday pay. Ralph made headlines again for putting a motion supporting a General Strike against austerity through the Trade Union Congress.

After Labours defeat in 2015 Ralph was a key early backer of the SCG candidate for labour leader. UNITE backing, ensured by Ralph and the sympathetic General Secretary, was important in upsetting British politics by securing the Labour leadership for the SCG. Ralph became a close ally of the Shadow Chancellor during the internal struggles through 2015-'17, and travelled back home to Wales to campaign in the 2016 EU referendum for Remain, abet half-heartedly. UNITE was a key part of the electoral strategy of the Labour Party in 2017, with campaigners using UNITE offices and activists across the country. That labour denied the Tories a majority in the 2017 election was a highpoint of Ralphs career, and encouraged him to fight for UNITES deeper involvement in electoralism. However anti-semitism and brexit ensured the next few years were incredibly brutal period of party infighting. As Ralph was a closer ally of the Shadow Chancellor than the Leader of the Party, he found himself increasingly pushed out of the inner circle, but with the 2019 election came a return to a united façade and Ralph was brought back to co-ordinate the party with UNITE once more.

The disastrous outcome stained UNITES General-Secretary more than Ralph but inside the old union man still feels partially responsible for the collapse of the cause. With the labour party shifting onto a more moderate footing Ralph has returned his focus to UNITE. His election as the new General-Secretary has been met by the familiar stories from the press. "No change in UNITE," "Red Ralph still Wrecking", "The One Looney that's Left". We'll see.



Other Info: Ralph is married to Ellen Tempest, an English children's author he met at STOP THE WAR, and has three girls.

I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: (Irona)

Do Not Remove: 84721

Accepted. Welcome aboard.

[Puertollano]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

I'll have Stellar give it a shot.

[Agarntrop]

Bet that the top field of Labour's leadership race is just going to be lefties playing other lefties

I'll have Stellar give it a shot.

based

[Irona]

Accepted. Welcome aboard.

Great! Looking forward to the game

[Agarntrop]

We can open up ic when Karg has finished editing hansen.

Parliament can open when we have not-Bercow and not-Corbyn at the very least

[Sarenium]

To app or not to app hmm

[Agarntrop]

To app or not to app hmm

Please do.

You are actually in an ideal position to app as not-Corbyn, as he is going out in 3 months ic (which is like 2 months ooc), and he will still be dormant until that point so you can still focus on dayton.