Our bulletin distributed to delegates and visitors at the Labour women’s conference 7 October 2023 and the Labour conference 8-11 October 2023

https://labourleftint.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/c2bda-lli-2023-bulletin.pdf

A statement and template motion, produced by some activists in the Unite union, for CLPs to express opposition to the Tories’ rush to issue licences for further fossil-fuel fields including the giant Rosebank field and to “max out” the North Sea, and the Labour leaders’ pledge “not to revoke” those licences.

Even the conservative International Energy Agency calls for no “new long lead time conventional oil and gas projects”.

At Labour Party conference (8-11 October 2023), sadly none of the “Climate change and ecology” or “Energy” motions contains a clear statement on this. Labour Left Internationalists circulated a template, but didn’t have the strength to get take-up. But we can get take-up for the statement at conference and build up pressure in the months following.

Labour’s commitment not to issue new licences becomes ineffective if fossil-fuel corporations know they need only get their application rushed through in the last days of Tory rule, and then, even if they have done no work to develop the new extraction, Labour will honour the Tories’ offers.

Read and sign here.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFCyv1W7C7SGvI7MegIrDJmvY__aRWSKU325dsfym65mAUUg/viewform

The Conference Arrangements Committee has published its list of motions for Labour conference 8-11 October 2023, though so far only “confidentially”.

The CAC sorts the 300-odd motions under subject headings. In ballots at the start of conference the unions prioritise six headings for debate, and the CLPs six. Motions under the chosen heading are then composited for debate, the snare being that Labour Party officials often press to “lose” spikier wording in the compositing and to get everyone to go in with one bland composite.

FBU and the CWU have submitted motions to tighten Labour’s “New Deal for Working People” commitments, and can hope to get the topic prioritised. “Workers’ rights” is classified as a separate topic, with motions from eight CLPs including two which call for repeal of the Thatcher anti-strike laws.

Most union motions are bland. Spikier motions from Aslef and TSSA calling for the restoration of rail ticket offices and a Unite motion for public ownership of the energy industry are classified under “Critical infrastructure” (even though Unite’s might better fit under “Climate change”, “Energy”, or “Public ownership”).

46 CLPs have submitted motions on housing. It failed to get prioritised in 2022, but it must this year. Key ideas in many of the motions are 100,000 new council homes a year, abolition of the “right to buy” scam, and rent controls for private tenants.

20 CLPs have motions classified as “reform of universal credit”, almost all calling for the abolition of the two-child benefit cap.

16 CLPs have motions classified as “the UK and Europe”. Most are bland, but one, from Edinburgh Central, includes clear calls for return to European free movement, to the Single Market, and to the Customs Union, and an aim to rejoin the EU.

Ten CLPs have motions on Asylum and Immigration. The strongest are from Southampton Test, Oldham East, and Huntingdon, calling for repeal of Tory Illegal Migration Act and the Borders Act, safe and legal routes for seeking asylum, allowing asylum seekers to work, scrapping “No Recourse to Public Funds” and NHS charges for migrants, and voting rights for all UK residents.

13 CLPs have motions classified under “climate change and ecology”, many calling for public ownership of the whole energy industry. That call also appears in a motion from Unite classified under “critical infrastructure” and in some of the 13 CLP motion under “public ownership”, mostly calling for public ownership of all utilities. Of 12 CLP motions classified under “water”, nine call for public ownership. There is also an “Energy” heading (eight motions, mostly blander).

A call to scrap tuition fees is in the Young Labour motion, one of six classified under “Education”, but not in the few motions under “Higher education”.

Nine CLPs have motions classified under “Health funding and structure”, with Calder Valley’s the strongest. Three weaker motions are classified separately under “An NHS fit for the future”.

Seven CLPs have motions under “Economic change”; two call for a wealth tax.

13 CLPs have come back again with motions on electoral reform.

Six CLPs have motions on “Equalities”, with the Leeds East motion calling for gender self-ID as already legislated in many countries.

Nine CLPs have motions on free school meals, most calling for them to be universal.

Six CLPs have motions on social care, and nine, motions on violence against women and girls, sadly none very strong. There are two weak motions on abortion rights, so getting something strong depends on women’s conference deciding to prioritise a good motion to go forward.

Sign this statement to demand Labour includes pledges on neurodiversity in its manifesto.

In 2021, the NPF failed to include neurodiversity at all in its report, despite ample submissions to it, and that year’s Party Conference voted to refer back the report because of this omission. By again failing to include the issue at all in its “final” report, the NPF has disregarded the democratic decision of Labour conference.

Read and sign here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1oDxVLyIGCSpc-LOnECBCNHOZ6svSMMzubTrYfA9wF6I/viewform

Read online here

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Here are some quick personal comments from one LLI supporter. Probably they miss some important inclusions and omissions in the report, so please add further comments.

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The “final” National Policy Forum report going to Labour Party conference in Liverpool, 8-11 October 2023, is mostly 112 pages of warm words evading clear commitments.

The conference Delegates’ Briefing says that the usual facility to “refer back” items from the NPF report will not be available, because this is a “final” report and so there is nowhere to “refer back” to. The only ways to remonstrate will be to vote against sections of the report, and to pass motions stating clear commitments or contradicting the report.

The sharper language in the report is mostly about commitments to big business.

It is “non-negotiable”, the document says, that “Labour will not borrow to fund day-to-day spending, and we will reduce national debt as a share of the economy”. There will be “no return to freedom of movement”, i.e. immigrant workers will depend on employer goodwill for visas. “Labour will not return to the [EU] single market or customs union”.

The supposedly razor-sharp fiscal rules are fortunately not as sharp as they seem. The gist, however, is that the Labour leaders plan neither to raise taxes on the rich (bar closing the “non-domiciled” loophole and a couple of others – tax exemptions for private schools, “carried interest”) nor to raise borrowing to cover such tasks as restoring the NHS. And not to cut military spending, either. So, almost no cash for public services other than possible tax revenues from hoped-for “growth”.

The clearest things remaining are:

• ramp up public capital investment into the green economy to £28 billion a year in the second half of the Parliament at the latest

• more than double onshore wind capacity, triple solar capacity and quadruple offshore wind capacity

• upgrading every home that needs it to EPC (energy efficiency) standard C within a decade

• bring railways into public ownership as contracts with existing operators expire or are broken

• repeal the Trade Union Act 2016 and the Minimum Service law; allow electronic balloting for disputes.

There is a hint of legislation to decriminalise abortion, in presumably studiedly vague words: “Labour believes that abortion is an essential part of health care which is highly regulated and should not be subjected to custodial sanctions”.

For the NHS there is really only warm words. The document makes much of better preventive medicine, which could indeed reduce the burden on acute medical care, but scarcely promises new resources.

The document commits to a “Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector, empowering workers and the trade unions that represent them to negotiate fair pay and conditions… underpinned by rights for trade unions to access workplaces”. (That is about all that remains of the talk of new legislation to force bosses into collective bargaining, touted as a better alternative to the policy repeatedly reaffirmed by Labour and TUC conferences, of repealing the Thatcher anti-union laws. The talk wasn’t good anyway: Australia has laws forcing employers to negotiate with unions, but also anti-strike laws sharper than the UK’s, so union density has fallen to 12%).

Beyond that, the talk of a National Care Service lacks specifics.

Many of the items from New Deal for Working People now have softer language. The document does promise “basic individual rights from day one for all workers”, but only to “strengthenmove towards a single status of worker” (covering gig-economy people), to “ban exploitative zero hours contracts”. It does talk of “ensuring everyone has the right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, based on a twelve-week reference period”.

In a welcome specific, presumably a sop to the GMB union, the document promises a review into the jailing of Cammell Laird workers (after the 1984 shipyard occupation in which Lol Duffy, a longstanding Marxist and Labour candidate in Wallasey in 1987, played a big part).

Supposedly “Labour will reform the water industry so that it delivers for consumers and the natural environment by using regulatory powers”. No comment to take utilities, or Royal Mail, back into public ownership, let alone to take the whole energy industry (extraction, generation, wholesale, retail) into public ownership to enable planning and to harness for social spending the ultra-profits made by better-placed energy companies from recent retail price rises.

Instead of committing to repeal the Illegal Migration Act, the Police Act, and the Public Order Act, the document notes only that “measures in the Public Order Act like suspicionless stop and search and the offence of being equipped to lock on and argued they should be removed by the government. In government, Labour would seek to change these provisions”. Only “seek to”?

There is a heading in the document about “legal routes” for asylum-seekers, but under that heading no indication of how those “legal routes” for reaching the UK will be established. Mostly, the document just promises to process asylum applications faster.

The document promises “the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”, but without specifics. It notes that councils have been crushed by Tory cuts, but promises only that “as Labour grows our economy and improves our public finances, we will ensure that councils are enabled”.

Nothing much beyond warm words is offered on benefits. Outside the document, Labour leaders have said that they plan to continue the Tory two-child benefit cap which they previously denounced.

Instead of pledging to end the “Right to Buy” scam which is still depleting council housing faster than new units are built, the document says “Labour will seek to decrease the number of social homes being rapidly sold off through right to buy without like-for-like new social housing being built to replace them”.

The document promises (as the Tories have already promised) to “abolish ‘no fault’ Section 21 evictions” of private renters, and a “Renter’s Charter”, but drops previous talk of legally limiting rent rises.

It says that “Labour has defended the triple lock [on pensions] when the Conservatives have sought to break their promises”, but since the document was published Labour leaders have made clear that they make no commitment to stick by the triple lock either.

The document promises to “end discrimination against trans people, non-binary and gender diverse people, and ensure they are treated with respect and dignity in society” and says that “the current process of gender recognition is intrusive, outdated, and humiliating”, but follows up with nothing more specific than that Labour will “modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law”. That replaces previous talk of gender recognition by “self-identification” (as already in place in eleven countries in Europe, and in Argentina, Colombia, etc., without bad results), and Labour leaders have indicated a process involving only one doctor instead of two.

The document says nothing about transgender health care, where provision is thin and waiting lists are enormous and getting longer.

The document promises to “end the system of headline grades” from Ofsted, but not to return academies and free schools to democratic local authority control, nor to reverse cuts, nor to end the destructive “exam factory” orientation of schooling.

It says “Labour will fix the current broken tuition fees and loans structure”, but nothing is clear here except that we know from other sources that the Labour leaders intend to scrap Labour’s previous commitment to abolish tuition fees.

In 2021 Labour conference voted to “refer back” a section of the NPF report because the document said nothing about neurodiversity. This final text still says nothing, not even vague warm words.

There are warm words about adopting the “social model” rather than the “medical model” of disability, but neurodiversity is not disability.

You may want to consider this amended version of the Labour Green New Deal model motion, which adds in references to the plans for new oil and gas development in the North Sea. (Some other wording has been pruned to keep the whole text within the 250 word limit).

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Notes

· Labour’s plan for Great British Energy (GBE): a public company investing in clean energy generation to de-risk and crowd-in private finance

· The rate of return on oil and gas (10-15%) exceeds renewables (4-8%)

· In 2022, only 5% of oil and gas company capital expenditure went to renewables

· Fossil fuel companies make record profits while they exacerbate the climate crisis

· The public strongly back public ownership of energy (66%)

Believes:

· Privatisation is a massive barrier to a rapid energy transition and decarbonisation, with investment directed towards highly profitable fossil fuels

· Public ownership of the energy system would maximise energy security and reduce energy prices

· Workers and communities must be involved in developing energy transition plans.

Resolves to support:

Democratic public ownership of the whole energy system, including:

· Nationalisation of energy transmission and distribution; energy supply; the UK operations and infrastructure of fossil fuel companies.

· Creating a National Energy Agency to set standards and targets; own industries of national importance (e.g., oil and gas, offshore wind, nuclear); coordinate energy transition, including workforce planning.

· Creating Public Energy Agencies to own, invest in, and operate distribution networks; decarbonise heat and electricity; supply energy to households.

· Capitalising GBE to completely supplant the private energy sector.

· Block new oil and gas development in the North Sea, with a workers’ transition plan creating good new jobs such as sketched in the ‘Our Power’ report.

· Cancel new oil and gas development licences handed out by the Tory regime in its dying days.

This CLP

Believes that the two child limit unfairly penalises children for the size of the families into which they are born, something which is no fault of their own.

Notes that maintaining the two child limit is estimated by the Child Poverty Action Group to be responsible for keeping 250,000 children below the poverty line.

Believes that the two child limit is discriminatory towards members of minority ethnic and faith groups who traditionally have large family sizes, and is damaging to the financial position of women (including single mothers) who have been pressured into having more than two children.

Agrees with the Deputy Leader of the Party Angela Rayner when she called the two child limit “obscene” and the Shadow DWP Secretary Jon Ashworth when he referred to it as “heinous”.

Is appalled by the announcement by Sir Keir Starmer that Labour would retain the two child limit in any reform of the welfare system on the grounds of “affordability” and “fiscal credibility”, and notes that it is estimated that this would push 250,000 children into poverty.

Observes that this policy announcement was made without reference to previous decisions of Annual Conference and in anticipation of the National Policy Forum meeting.

And therefore calls on Sir Keir Starmer to reverse this ludicrous and damaging position, and instead to develop tax policies which raise revenue from those most able to afford it, and reiterate Labour’s unequivocal commitment to scrapping the two child limit and ending child poverty in the UK.

Template ordinary motion on Labour Party bans, referring to the Neal Lawson case

Template motion for Labour Party conference on Brexit. (Deadline for CLP motions to conference is 21 September, but many CLPs are deciding motions in July. Conference is 8-11 October in Liverpool)

Template motion for Labour Party conference on the right to strike

Template motion on abortion rights for Labour Party women’s conference, based on text passed by Heeley CLP in June 2023 but abbreviated for the 250-word limit for motions to conference. (Motions for women’s conference are decided by Women’s Branches, if formally constituted, and by CLPs if not. The deadline is 14 September. Women’s conference is 7 October in Liverpool)

Labour Campaign for Free Movement template motion, and a long list of template motions from Momentum, including a curtailed version of that LCFM text. See below for more on this.

Labour Campaign for Council Housing template motion

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The following version of the LCFM template motion has been submitted by Oldham East CLP. We understand something similar has been submitted by Southampton Test CLP. It will be very useful in compositing if a CLP submits the full version of the LCFM template motion, including the final line stating the principle of free movement.

‘Towards a humane and internationalist immigration policy’

Conference calls for safe asylum routes for those fleeing war and all other plights covered by our responsibilities under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The government’s inhumane immigration policy is illustrated by its betrayal of Afghan refugees, Windrush scandal victims, and everyone crossing the Channel; its legislative assault on the right to seek asylum; and the brutal Rwandan deportation scheme.

Restricting migrant workers’ rights and making them precarious undermines all workers’ power to push back against exploitation together.

Conference applauds PCS trade unionists, whose strike threats and legal action defeated maritime “pushback” plans.

Labour will commit in power, and campaign in opposition and at the grassroots, to:

1. repeal the Nationality and Borders Act, Illegal Migration Bill and anti-migrant legislation;
2. reject immigration systems based on numerical caps, minimum income/wealth requirements, or utility to employers;
3. ensure safe, legal routes for asylum seekers, day-one rights to work, education and social security, and expand family reunion rights;
4. abolish “no recourse to public funds”, NHS charges & restrictions, and all Hostile Environment policies;
5. introduce a simple process for all UK residents to gain permanent residency;
6. grant equal voting rights for all with leave to remain;
7. close all immigration detention centres;
8. support workers refusing to implement deportations, Hostile Environment measures and pushbacks;
9. re-enter Europe’s free movement area, and pursue free movement agreements with other countries, including in future trade deals, with the goal of equal free movement for all.