By Martin Thomas

Momentum Internationalists met by Zoom on Sunday 10 October to plan activity after the 25-29 September Labour Party conference.

The discussion started with reports on the conference itself and on MI activity around it. Despite our small resources (compare Momentum, which has 20 paid staff), MI was the most active group at conference on left-wing policy issues. Momentum largely limited its comment to rule changes, explicitly eschewed comment on the several moves to refer back parts of the National Policy Forum report (some of which succeeded), and constructed its The World Transformed fringe event largely in abstraction from the conference happening less than ten minutes’ walk away.

Much of the work on policy, of course, has been done and is being done by specialised campaigns. The planning meeting decided to schedule a series of Zoom forums with speakers from left and Labour campaigns.

At the very least that will exchange information and build links. If we’re more successful it will provide a lever to give life to the policies in on-the-streets campaigning by local Labour Parties, rather than letting those local parties lapse into despair at the Starmer leadership’s stonewalling.

The first in the schedule is on housing, on Saturday 20 November, 5pm, with speakers from the Labour Homelessness Campaign and the Labour Campaign for Council Housing, plus writers David Renton and Paul Watt.

The meeting decided that MI will agitate for an alliance of left-wing Labour campaigns, something like the brief Labour Campaigns Together initiative of late 2019 but as an active coalition rather than just a joint website. Getting a formal joint committee looks unlikely for now, but links and cooperation now may open possibilities in years to come.

We will continue to be involved in Momentum activities, and debates within Momentum, but decided to change the name of the group to “Labour Left Internationalists (formerly Momentum Internationalists)” to signal that our activities reach much wider than politicking within Momentum. A big majority voted for the idea of changing the name, and then “Labour Left Internationalists” won out narrowly against “Labour and Momentum Internationalists”.

The meeting also elected a new committee for the group.

More details in the coming days as we update this website.

Momentum Internationalists daily bulletins at Labour Party conference 2021:

MI bulletin 1 (Saturday 25 September)
MI bulletin 2 (Sunday 26 September)
MI bulletin 3 (Monday 27 September)
MI bulletin 4 (Tuesday 28 September)
MI bulletin 5 (Wednesday 29 September)

Labour Party Conference Arrangements Committee reports with motions, details of votes, other conference information and updates:

All motions submitted to conference (published 16 September)
CAC report 1 (Saturday 25 September)
CAC report 2 (Sunday 26 September)
CAC report 3 (Monday 27 September)
CAC report 4 (Tuesday 28 September)
CAC report 5 (Wednesday 29 September)

There is a useful summary of the policy motions and votes on them at Labour List:

https://labourlist.org/2021/10/labour-conference-2021-the-content-of-every-policy-motion-and-how-it-passed/

and of the rule changes at
https://labourlist.org/2021/10/every-rule-change-at-labour-conference-2021-what-it-means-and-how-it-passed/

Here, also on Labour List, a summary of the policies “announced” by front-bench speakers in Brighton

https://labourlist.org/2021/10/every-new-and-old-policy-announced-in-speeches-at-labour-conference-2021/

Conference Youtube live stream links
https://www.youtube.com/labourvision/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXFtFNLWUUo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyZWKuZLtNY&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pI6_tTQs8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZpsWor40so
https://youtu.be/wcz817ubCA4

“Labour: the fightback begins”. Momentum Internationalists planning meeting Sunday 10 October, 4:30pm-6pm.
Zoomlink bit.ly/mi-after

Eventbrite bit.ly/mi-ebrite

Download it here:

https://labourleftint.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/225c6-employment-rights-green-paper.pdf

Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights Andy McDonald has resigned, citing Keir Starmer’s office telling him to oppose a £15ph minimum wage and statutory sick pay at a living-wage level.

The meeting Starmer wanted McDonald to oppose these demands at was a Labour Party conference compositing meeting. Despite this, the meeting included the demands in the workers’ rights motion going forward to conference.

The other very important demand the motion includes is repealing all the anti-trade union laws, as well as commitments to aid campaigning around this. Well done to the CLP and union delegates who fought to get these things included.

Not that long before Andy McDonald resigned, he published an official Labour Party Green Paper on “A New Deal For Working People”, including many important demands and focused on reinstating collective bargaining with unions across the economy. Download it here.

The Green Paper is woolly on the critical issue of the right to strike but it is still very worthwhile – as good as anything the party came out with under Jeremy Corbyn. It has also been promoted by Angela Rayner during Labour conference.

Is Keir Starmer now going to attack these policies too?

Includes composite motions going to conference on Sunday 26 September – on the Green New Deal, housing, public ownership and other issues; the full list of subject areas prioritised for discussion at the conference; details of votes on rule changes by CLPs and unions that took place on Saturday 25th; and other information.

(For all motions submitted to the conference originally, see here.)

This is the left-wing “composite” motion backed by various unions including the Fire Brigades Union and a large number of Constituency Labour Parties. See here for the broadly similar policy Labour conference passed in 2019. For the other, more conservative climate composite to the 2021 conference, see here.

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Conference notes:

• As with Covid, the climate crisis exposes sharply the inequalities in society in the UK and internationally and we must ensure that workers are at the heart of any future programme and that means unshackling trade unions.
• The UK faces a post-covid unemployment crisis with insecurity and lowpay rife for workers.
• Intensifying climate and environmental breakdown brings devastating threats to public health and livelihoods.
• The UN’s latest climate report states that temperatures are likely to rise by more than the vital 1.5C limit in the next two decades, bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather.
• That only immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in emissions can prevent such breakdown.
• Local communities in the UK and countries around the world are
experiencing climate change related extreme weather events, including devastating flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts. This is with
warming at 1.2°C above average pre-industrial levels. Currently, we are
headed for a 2.9°C temperature increase.
• Keir Starmer has pledged to hardwire the socialist Green New Deal into everything we do.
• The UK spends billions of pounds per year on fossil fuel subsidies and is a key jurisdiction for the enforcement of globally accrued debt.

Conference believes:

• Ahead of COP26, Labour should promote a just, green recovery
combining efforts to address unemployment, climate change, and
public health.
• The Tory government is posturing on climate change with no serious plan to meet its climate targets. It has cut Green Home Grants and paid £40bn fossil fuels subsidies since March 2020 alone.
• Privatisation has undermined decarbonisation and pandemic response measures.
• The Covid Pandemic has shown that the levers of the state are required to respond to crises.
• Debt relief is essential to achieve climate justice.

Resolves to support:

• the socialist Green New Deal that will shift power from capital into the hands of workers.
• Public ownership of energy including energy companies, creating an integrated, democratic system.
• A government program creating millions of well-paid, unionised green jobs with publicly owned entities
• Creating well-financed publicly owned national and regional green investment banks.
• Mass investment in green technologies and renewables;
• A just transition with a comprehensive re-training program and green job guarantee on union rates for affected workers.
• A just transition for British steelworkers, through sustained investment to decarbonise the steel industry
• Expansion and electrification of integrated public transport, including public ownership of our railways; free local bus networks, rail electrification, highspeed rail, sustainably powered rail freight and electric buses;
• Just climate adaptation, investing in fire and rescue services, flood
defences, and resilient infrastructure;
• Retrofitting all homes to the highest standard of energy efficiency
• The creation of a National Climate Service, similar to creation of our NHS by Labour in 1948, to now tackle the crisis facing our planet
• Subsidies to support a comprehensive investment programme in renewable energy, home retrofit and zero carbon homes, decarbonisation of industry and transport, and nature restoration.
• Universal basic services, including a national care service
• Gearing education and training to climate transition.
• Banning fracking.
• National Nature service including ten new national parks, strategic rewilding, land regeneration, and particularly the restoration of upland bogs.
• Agricultural transition with the contribution regenerative farmers make by capturing carbon, managing water and promoting biodiversity to be recognised with funding
• Repealing all anti-trade union laws so workers can freely take industrial action over wider social and political issues, for industrial action to ensure action on climate change.
• Workers organising to decarbonise industries and the global supply chain.
• Using public procurement to promote decarbonisation, environmental protections, and international justice in global supply chains.
• All future stimulus and bailout eligibility linked to climate action and just transition plans;
• A global socialist Green New Deal, debt relief for low-income country debt held by UK institutions, financially assisting the transition in developing countries and freely sharing technology and resources internationally.
• Legal recognition of climate refugees’ right to asylum.
• Linking internationally with indigenous groups, trade unions and groups resisting ecological assault.

Keir Starmer’s chief concern in his new mini-manifesto, The Road Ahead, is to persuade capitalists that he is on their side.

The text is full of anxious flattery for the “brilliant, innovative private sector”. In Starmer-thought, government, by contrast, can aspire only to be “modern, efficient”.

Even on climate change, Starmer sees “the private sector racing ahead”, just waiting for government to be more “efficient” and “catch up”. In reality, as Labour Party conference 2010 recognised, and we hope this conference reaffirms, we can mitigate and adapt to climate change only by overturning the capitalist priority of private profit, and replacing it as the yardstick by long-term social and natural welfare.

And workers? Oh, them. In Stormer-world, they can be “hard-working” and then hope for a “fair day’s wage” and their employer to keep to “the rules”. That’s all. In Starmer-world, unlike the real world, workers can’t be “brilliant” or “innovative”. Our role is humble salt-of-the-earth diligence at our jobs and at caring for our families and neighbours.

In capitalism, on the whole, and with exceptions, the more arduous a job, the worse the pay and conditions. The way to redress that and really “level up” is through workers’ trade-union organisation and laws setting minimum standards. Starmer’s text is more detailed on a “new deal for working people” than on anything else. The greater detail makes the omissions stand out more. Nothing about repealing anti-trade-union laws, the Thatcher ones or even the Trade Union Act 2016. Nothing about banning zero-hours contracts. Nothing about increasing sick pay to European levels.

The schmalz about “hard-working” workers and our families begs many questions. What about children, the elderly, the impaired, the sick, and the jobless, who can’t “work hard” for an employer? What about those who choose to work shorter or less arduous hours in order to care for others, or because we value free time?

About the only reference to Brexit is the claim that “the painful debates about leaving the EU are over”. Not even the Tories believe that. They are trying to renegotiate the Northern Ireland protocol before it is even brought into force, and look like easing entry for EU workers. Britain’s relations with Europe will be a sore issue for decades to come. Labour should press consistently for lower barriers and closer links.

The failure even to mention Labour Party conference policies runs through the text. It’s a manifesto which says: First of all, I want to woo capitalists. I must promise a few things for workers, because I need trade-union support, but I’ll keep them bland.

It’s wretched. We need to turn things round so that the Labour leaders become more concerned about what will serve and win support from workers, less concerned about what will placate capitalists.