By Mohan Sen

We should welcome the ten policy demands made to Keir Starmer by the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) of left-wing MPs in the run up to Labour conference.

There are a number of points I would have posed differently and other things I would have included. However, a couple of issues in particular really leapt out at me.

Firstly, the SCG statement makes no attempt to relate its demands to policies democratically agreed by Labour conference and to debates and motions at the upcoming conference. This is a problem in general democratic terms, and it also means neglecting an important base of support and authority from which to challenge the leadership.

In fact, explaining the letter, SCG Secretary Richard Burgon calls on the leadership to “put forward” policies – playing into the undemocratic way Starmer and co. behave.

No doubt the SCG would say it wants a democratic Labour Party. So why, in this important statement, does it ignore what should be a democratic party’s supreme decision-making body?

In terms of the demands themselves, one omission stands out.

There is a relatively detailed section on workers’ rights, with six demands. But these demands include nothing about the right to strike or repealing the laws which severely limit it. Not even the 2016 Trade Union Act, let alone the many others which preceded it.

All the other demands, both on workers’ rights and more broadly, are important. But if we do not assert workers’ right to strike, including by challenging and fighting to repeal the anti-union laws, we will be fighting for all of them with one hand tied behind our back.

28 CLPs and two key left-wing unions (the FBU and the BFAWU) have submitted motions to this conference calling for the repeal of all anti-union laws and their replacement with strong legal rights to strike and picket. It’s disappointing that the Socialist Campaign Group has again failed to take up this crucial demand.

Asserting labour movement democracy and the right to strike should be two essential weapons in the left’s arsenal.

• For a letter (February 2021) to the SCG on the same issue from Riccardo la Torre of the FBU and the Free Our Unions campaign, see here.

We have produced this briefing for Labour conference 2021 (25-9 September, Brighton). It will be the first of several bulletins we distribute at the conference. If you’d like to help us there or meet up with us, get in touch: 07775 763 750 or team@momentuminternationalists.org

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Who are Momentum Internationalists?

Momentum Internationalists was formed by activists from the left anti-Brexit campaign Labour for a Socialist Europe, L4SE, in early 2020 to continue the fight for left-wing and internationalist politics after the Tories finally forced through Brexit. We ran candidates in the Momentum NCG elections of 2020 and promoted motions in the Momentum policy priorities ballot of 2021. We are not just a caucus within Momentum. We have been active on the streets, for example in the Black Lives Matter and NHS pay protests of 2020. We have run public Zoom meetings on the farmers’ movement in India, on the resistance in Myanmar, and on the EHRC report and antisemitism in Labour (we reckon there is a real problem there, not just a concocted smear). At this Brighton conference we are organising activities to support Afghan refugees, as well as pushing our favoured motions on conference floor. We have worked with a range of other campaigns, including the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign, the Hong Kong campaign LMSHKUK, Free Our Unions, the UK support group for the Jewish-Arab movement for equality and justice in Israel-Palestine Standing Together, the Labour Homelessness Campaign, and Neurodivergent Labour.

Democracy, exclusions

As too often before, the National Executive Committee (NEC) will seek to ram through large rule changes at this conference at short notice. Many are presented as responses to the EHRC report on antisemitism. But that called for an independent disciplinary procedure. The rule changes set up procedures run by the NEC and “Boards” appointed by committees appointed by the General Secretary. We call on delegates to oppose those rule changes. We want due process, and disciplinary committees elected and operating independently of the NEC and the General Secretary: see more here. The issues here are part of the broader battle to push back the “auto-exclusions” and arbitrary and indefinite suspensions which have hit the party in waves since 2015. The Labour HQ machine have been forced to apologise recently after overreaching themselves with spurious warning letters to Young Labour chair Jess Barnard and to Kate Osborne MP. Now Labour List editor Sienna Rodgers reports a similar letter sent to a housemate by mistake for someone else who had anyway quit the party…

Making Parliamentary Labour Party accountable, and other rule changes

There will be other regressive rule-changes from the NEC, possibly including a return to giving MPs one-third of the voting power in leadership elections, increasing the “trigger” threshold for open parliamentary selections where there are sitting Labour MPs, and increasing the threshold for forcing leadership challenges. LabourList reports Starmer saying that he wants policy decided by other than “endless motions at conference”, and may want to limit the number of motions debated. There will also be good rule changes proposed by CLPs. The biggest is one to make the Parliamentary Labour Party accountable to conference. It’s a good change anyway, and will give conference the power to reinstate Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour whip.

Approving David Evans as General Secretary?

The rulebook says: “The General Secretary shall be elected by Party conference on the recommendation of the NEC… Should a vacancy… occur… between Party conferences, the NEC shall have full power to fill the vacancy subject to the approval of Party conference”. That “approval” has in the past been given “on the nod”, but no previous General Secretary has scattered suspensions and exclusions and prohibitions like Evans. Unite, CWU, FBU and other unions are against “approving” Evans. We need to force a card vote on this.

Referring back the National Policy Forum report

Neurodivergent Labour will move a reference-back on the National Policy Forum report because it contains nothing on neurodiversity, despite ND Labour’s submission being the second most popular in its section. Oddly, Momentum has been saying (without explanation) that it will take no position on reference-backs.

Motions ruled out

The Labour for a Green New Deal motion, and the Build Back Fairer motion prioritised by Momentum (about social and economic reconstruction), were initially ruled out by the Conference Arrangements Committee, on grounds that they fail to be “on one subject”, as the rulebook requires. Motions on the “single subjects” of climate and on reconstruction in pandemic and after have to be wide-ranging. The criterion is slippery, and in 2019, for example, many equally wide-ranging motions were debated. The LGND motion has been reinstated on appeal.

Climate

A compositing meeting will decide two or three alternative “composite” texts for conference to debate. Delegates must make sure that public ownership of energy industries, transport, and high finance, contained in the Fire Brigades Union text, do not get lost in compositing.

Uyghurs and Hong Kong

Versions of a motion drafted by the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign and Labour Solidarity with Hong Kong have been submitted by East and South East Asians for Labour and Finchley and Golders Green CLP. The Hong Kong labour movement is being forced underground, with the HK Confederation of Trade Unions and the HK Professional Teachers’ Union both pressured into disbanding by threats that otherwise their leaders still at liberty would join the several trade unionists already in jail.

Social care

The conference has many motions on social care. We want to see text reaching conference floor which calls for social care to be run as a publicly-owned public service, free to those needing care, and for care workers to be on at least NHS-level pay and conditions.

Borders Bill, Afghanistan

Lewes CLP (at least) has a motion against the Tories’ Borders Bill. Putney CLP has one for an open door for Afghan refugees.

Anti-union laws

Labour conferences 2015, 2017, and 2019 voted for the repeal of all anti-union laws, the Thatcher-era ones as well as the Trade Union Act. 2019 conference even voted to refer back a section of the National Policy Forum report on the issue. In July Shadow Employment Secretary Andy McDonald said “Labour is committed to repealing anti-union laws”, but that tweet is almost all we’ve heard from the Labour leadership on this since early 2020. Several motions to conference will seek to reaffirm the commitment.

Trans rights

Edinburgh Central CLP has submitted an emergency motion.

Proportional representation

144 motions call for Labour to support Proportional Representation. And, yes, PR is more democratic. Under FPTP voters in marginal seats have more sway than those in “safe” seats, voters are pushed into “tactical voting” (e.g. for Lib Dems when they seem more likely to beat the Tories in a particular seat), and regionally-based minorities are favoured over more evenly-spread ones. But we worry about PR being seen as a short-cut enabling Labour to shelve the task of winning a positive majority for socialist policies in favour of the apparently easier route (to what?) of a centrist “anti-Tory” majority via alliance with the Lib-Dems.

“Zero Covid”

Birmingham Hall Green CLP calls for Labour to back a “Zero Covid” (ZC) policy of “eliminating” the virus. (The motion doesn’t say how, but the ZC campaign looks to longer and stricter lockdowns). Some may want to vote for ZC as a rebuke to the Labour leaders’ weakness. That would be wrong. The York Central motion for a Covid inquiry is better. Elimination is not possible any time soon, any more than elimination of flu. Lockdowns have their place, but long strict lockdowns (like Argentina, eight months in 2020) do not work in countries whose geography precludes rigidly closing borders. To focus on police measures (lockdowns, rigid border closures) ignores the fact that the best predictor of lower Covid tolls, between areas and countries, is lower social inequality. One of us debated with the “Zero Covid” campaign back in February 2021 here.

“The right-wing press’s war on trans people and their rights”

Conference notes: 

1. The front page of the Sunday Times on 19th September 2021 referred to people who speak out in favour of trans rights as “militant transgender activists” and “extremists.” 

2. On 17th September, Vice News released audio of Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch mocking LGBTQ rights and calling trans women, “men”. This was condemned by Angela Rayner MP as “disgusting,” adding that we must “not add fuel to the fire of abuse and discrimination faced by LGBT+ people.”

3. Transphobic hate crimes have quadrupled in Britain from 2015-2020 and trans people continue to face significant barriers in society.

4. There has been growing pressure to strip trans people from rights protected under law in recent years.

Conference believes: 

1. Advocating for the rights of trans people is not extremism and should not be treated as such. We must challenge this harmful narrative.

2. The Labour Party should be a welcoming environment; transphobia must not be tolerated.

3. There is no ‘conflict’ between the rights of trans and cis women – our movement must defend all women and resist attempts to erode the protections trans people currently enjoy.

Conference resolves:

1. To stand in unconditional solidarity with our trans comrades.

2. To use our collective voice as the Labour Party to counter the representation of trans rights advocacy as extremism and to show zero tolerance to transphobia in our party.

3. To call on the government to uphold trans peoples’ rights currently in law including equal access to services and spaces..

Here are all the motions to Labour conference 2021 including those ruled “out of order” by the Conference Arrangements Committee.

https://labourleftint.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/4e756-cac160921-03-motions-to-conference-1.pdf

Google form to keep in touch

The failure to evacuate and give sanctuary to many Afghans to whom the UK owes a direct duty of care and whose lives now hang in the balance, throws into sharp relief the wider failures of the Home Office. In particular it demonstrates the cruelty and illogicality of the proposed two-tier system.
In February of this year, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) published a Guide to Asylum Reform in the United Kingdom.
However, rather than implementing improvements proposed by UNHCR which could lead to a more effective and humane system, Priti Patel’s Nationality and Borders Bill will slow the process down further, criminalise asylum seeking, undermine the 1951 International Refugee Convention, increase detention, destitution and mental illness, and will cost the country more while it destroys lives.
Draconian immigration legislation is usually preceded by negative reporting in the press, with media coverage given to racists and hatemongers.
The Labour Party must stand against this vilification of asylum seekers and refugees.
Conference calls on the Party and the Leadership to:
Strongly oppose the Nationality and Borders Bill
Consistently promote solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers and defend their rights set in international law
Challenge the racist representation of refugees and asylum seekers as criminals and scroungers
Recognise and disseminate knowledge of the contribution that refugees and migrant workers make to our society and economy
Call for the implementation of UNHCR’s recommendations on asylum reform in the UK as a positive alternative to the Nationality and Borders Bill.

Labour’s Conference Arrangements Committee has ruled out the Momentum priority motion on “Build Back Fairer”, and Labour for a Green New Deal motions on climate, on grounds of dealing with more than one subject. Delegates will be protesting on the Saturday of conference, 25 September, 1:30pm outside the conference centre: join them!

Other left-wing climate justice motions, notably a version submitted by Edinburgh Central CLP, have been ruled in.

Climate justice and the pandemic do not fit neatly into small “single-issue” boxes, so any good motion on either issue is always vulnerable to the “dealing-with-more-than-one-subject” ploy.

The ploy is an old one. It faded in the Blair-Brown years, because very few motions were allowed to get to conference floor then (none in 2007-9), was used on a large scale in the Miliband years, and had faded again in the Corbyn years.