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Israel-Palestine debate

Two emergency motions, #1, with warm words, but designed to express approval of Government policy, and #2 (moved by Unison), were debated on the morning of 29 September. #2 included the call for a full arms embargo. LLI advocated delegates vote against #1 and for #2. And that is what conference did!
We guess the leadership will use their regular fallback tactic of just ignoring #2. Didn’t work on Winter Fuel Allowance! We could make it “not work” on this too (and on wealth tax).
We could have wished for more in motion #2. Notably, Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and support for Standing Together and the anti-war movement in Israel. Also, clear differentiation from the counterproductive policy of “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions”, which has been used in Britain to try to “outlaw” support for and links with Standing Together and other anti-war activists in Israel.
But the passing of #2 should spark a strong campaign within Labour to stop all arms exports to Israel until it withdraws from Gaza and the West Bank.
The Labour Left Internationalists meeting on 29 Sep heard an organiser from UK Friends of Standing Together, ukfost.co.uk, a group which organises help for Standing Together.
Standing Together is an Israeli grassroots movement mobilising Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation and for peace, equality, and social justice. Since 7 October 2023, they have become Israel’s leading anti-war campaigning group.
Their work since 7 October 2023 includes
• forming anti-racist Solidarity Guards in mixed cities, to resist racist incitement by the far right
• forming a Humanitarian Guard which successfully defeated settler attacks on aid to Gaza
• organising anti-war protests, and anti-war/anti-occupation blocs in the mass anti-government protests
• organising defence campaigns for victimised Palestinian workers
• organising an aid convoy to Gaza made up of donations from Palestinian citizens of Israel
• and most recently they have called on Israelis to refuse to serve in the war on Gaza.
In our Monday bulletin we reported a rumour that the chair would say that #2 fell if #1 was passed. We were wrong. Evidently, if the officials wanted to do that, they decided they couldn’t.

Tax the rich, end fire and rehire, stop Commissioners union-bashing

Public spending: Passed Monday pm (though with a good few CLP votes against). CWU and Unite called for “a system of progressive taxation” and “a wealth tax on the richest”.
Public sector workers: Passed Monday pm. Unite included support for Birmingham bin workers, but only in muffled terms. It does say: scrap all legislative loopholes that allow local authority and other employers to use “fire and rehire” against their own workforce; and make it a duty for Government appointed Local Authority Commissioners to ensure that disputes are resolved.
Industrial energy prices: was also passed Monday am. It had no mention of reducing energy prices by reshaping the grid under public ownership; expanding renewables and nuclear; reshaping household energy by redesign, insulation, installing heat pumps. The GMB latches on to the real issue that UK’s industrial energy prices are higher than most countries’ (mostly because of imported LNG) to boost a drive to keep gas in play, with speculative hopes that adapting gas infrastructure to use hydrogen will work well some time in future.

Pushback on migrant rights

Staffing in adult social care (Composite 13). Unison and GMB demand “retain the 5-year route to Indefinite Leave to Remain” (i.e. don’t extend the qualifying period) and a “visa scheme in social care enabling workers to challenge bad employers without the threat of deportation”. (We’d say for all workers, not just care workers). The composite is our best chance at this conference to push back against a policy of appeasing Reform on migrant rights.

Priorities ballot result

This year those of us seeking real debate at conference, rather than a series of sessions with no contest between motions, lost the priorities ballot by a landslide.
Last year Housing only just failed to get prioritised, but this year the highest vote for a “disapproved” topic was “Supporting Families”, 57,588, and the lowest “approved” topic vote was 151,764 for “Animal Welfare”.
Also, all the successful motions at this conference proposing and suggesting a new course have come essentially from the unions, not the CLPs.
Why? Not enthusiasm in the CLPs for the Government’s current course. The CLP revolt on disability benefit cuts shows that. Maybe the problem is what the USA calls the “go fight City Hall” spirit: despondency about contesting entrenched power.
But even in the USA workers can sometimes beat “City Hall”. If the unions and CLPs mobilise, we can beat “the Starmer symptom”. If we don’t, the threat looms large: a Reform or Reform-Tory government.

EU Youth Mobility Scheme

When the EU first proposed a “youth mobility scheme” between the UK and the EU, the word from our Labour leaders was “no”. On Monday Rachel Reeves said she wanted an “ambitious agreement”. A welcome shift. But we really need a comprehensive rolling-back of Brexit, and a restoration and extension of free movement. Andy Burnham said on 29 Sep that he wants the UK to rejoin the EU “in his lifetime”. Good. He is 55. What is he going to do about it in the next 30 years or so?

Andy Burnham and Mainstream

Andy Burnham has been putting himself about as a king over the water. Since he has been backing an end to the 2-child benefit cap, nationalisation of utilities, taxing the wealthy, a more democratic Labour regime, (eventual) rejoining the EU, etc., we have to be glad about that, and about the polls showing him far ahead of Wes Streeting and others in a hypothetical leader contest. And, on the whole, glad about the launch of Mainstream.
But… First, there is the old joke. A Blairite, a Brownite, and a Corbynite go into a bar. And the bar worker says: Hello, Andy!
Second, what is Mainstream doing? It made only a token effort to get the 2-child benefit cap motion (under “Support for Families”) voted as a priority for debate. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and ourselves did what we could by leafleting on that, but Mainstream surely had the money and resources (which neither CLPD nor we have) to do much more, to mobilise a few dozen people with leaflets, placards, megaphones, etc. outside the conference on Sunday morning.
Anyway, it didn’t. The only thing Mainstream has organised at conference was a social on Monday evening. It was crowded (over a hundred?). It heard feisty speeches from Neal Lawson, Alex Sobel, Dawn Butler, Simon Opher, and Paul Fleming, secretary of the Equity trade union, about taking back the Labour Party, but with no real detail. No show by, and no mention of, Andy Burnham. There were people at the social with whom we might have expected the initiators of Mainstream to have talked in some detail, but when we asked them, they said they had heard nothing and knew nothing.
We’ll help Mainstream whenever and wherever it opens up to real organising. Maybe local Mainstream groups can be a forum for the left to reassemble itself in some CLPs. Alongside that we will continue to build a solid left-internationalist voice in Labour.

Yvette Cooper and the monarchy

Yvette Cooper: “You will hear people in every continent talk with admiration about our Royal Family and our Parliament, our heritage and our culture, our armed forces”. So, with hindsight, Chinese people admire the Opium Wars, Indian people the Raj, Irish people the Black and Tans, Ghanaian people the Poll Tax…? There is much to inspire us in British labour movement history, and even in elements of bourgeois culture originated in Britain. But the “best” elements were often those who resisted the Royal Family and the Establishment. It is no business of socialists in different countries to compete to claim to have the world’s “best” ruling class. Workers of the world, unite!

Conference diary

A few choices for Tuesday:
12.30 – Labour for Trans Rights rally, ACC 3A
4:30 – Pride in Labour fringe meeting, Central Library
5:30 – Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, the Liverpool Pub, 14 James St L2 7PQ (sponsored by LLI with Chartist and Open Labour)
6:30 – CLPD-Momentum rally, Friends’ Meeting House, followed by Momentum social at the Denbigh Castle

Labour Left Internationalists

Labour Left Internationalists is a network of Labour Party members founded in 2020 by supporters of left anti-Brexit campaign Labour for a Socialist Europe. We stand for:
• Active Labour support for strikes and workers’ struggles;
• Consistent internationalism, including fighting for free movement and to reverse Brexit, and support for Ukraine against Russian imperialism;
• Arguing to replace capitalism with socialism, a radically new society based on common ownership and democratic and workers’ control, not profit-making;
• Radical policies so the labour movement can serve working-class interests and push towards socialism;
• Democratising Labour and making conference the party’s sovereign decision-making body. labourleftint.uk
Find us distributing bulletins at the entrances to the cordon, or meet us at the Costa cafe in the Albert Dock.

Our fringe meeting

Our fringe meeting on Monday 29th heard from Maria Exall, former TUC president; Carol Hayton, Labour Campaign for Council Housing; Avery Greatorex, co-chair of Pride in Labour; and Dave Barter, speaking for LLI. There was lively discussion from the floor. Closing the meeting, Dave Barter argued for tenacity; internationalism; a fight for labour-movement democracy; a will to question “left common-sense” where necessary; and a drive to organise. We have produced this bulletin daily during conference, and will produce further bulletins monthly for distribution in CLPs. We regularly circulate template motions, and we work to pull local Labour Parties into strike support, anti-racist and anti-cuts activity, international solidarity, etc.