Two big fights set for Labour conference floor

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Many issues have been swept under the carpet at Labour conference 2024 through the “priorities ballots” deciding which “topics” reach the floor, and by bureaucratic manipulation. (78 motions ruled out, not all under the reintroduced “contemporary motions” requirement, and not all left wing, but including among them the text proposed by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement and submitted by Rushcliffe CLP).

But as we write it looks like the platform will be unable to avoid two big political fights.

One is on Winter Fuel Payments and taxing wealth, around a composite from the Unite and CWU unions.

The latest guess is that the conference organisers will seek to downplay it by relegating it to the final session of conference on Wednesday morning. They may try other tricks, too.

The other is on migration and asylum, or, as it is headlined in the agenda, “Border Security Command”, which looks like being debated on Tuesday 24 September.

There is a sharply right-wing composite from a few CLPs, endorsing Labour government asylum and migration policy and stressing its most punitive and indeed murderous aspects. The alternative, from Rushcliffe CLP has, as noted above, been ruled out of order on spurious grounds (“covering more than one subject”).

But latest reports are that the Fire Brigades Union, Unison, and Unite are set to vote against. Vigorous speeches from those unions could well mobilise many delegates from CLPs and other unions, including right-wingers with some moral sense, to vote against. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement and Labour Left Internationalists are leafleting conference on Monday afternoon (despite driving rain) and Tuesday morning (forecast to be dry).

In 2022 and 2023 the right won the CLPs’ Priorities Ballot on topics for debate by telling delegates to prefer bland “topics” in order to maximise “unity” and minimise unfavourable media coverage.

In 2021 the right had attempted to get their own motions onto conference agenda, and failed badly. Getting policy through conference is not usually the right’s “thing”. They prefer to focus on getting the leadership to carry out right-wing policies, and the conference to shut up and be compliant.

This year, however, the right, or a section of the right, are bolder. They are seeking a debate on clear-cut right-wing motions. With an effort, it is possible that they will be defeated, or at least that a big protest vote will be cast.

The motions under the “Growth Mission” topics are also very right-wing, but in a blander way than the “Borders” motions.

The 2024 Labour conference priorities ballot analysed

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On Monday 23 September 2024 the Conference Arrangements Committee published the voting figures for the Priorities Ballots which decide the topics to reach the floor of conference (six chosen by the unions, six by the Constituency Labour Parties [CLPs]).

The headline result was that the right wing (Labour To Win) swept the board on CLP priorities, with six topics mostly chosen to be bland and get little debate. The right still commands a large chunk of CLP delegates who may not be hardbitten right-wingers, but who accept the argument that (because of “the media”) the conference best not make trouble for the Labour leaders.

In more detail:

  • The right’s victory was not overwhelming. The top left-recommended priority, housing, was only 11,000 votes short of the bottom right-recommended priority, “opportunity” (108,000 to 119,000).
  • The right’s total priorities vote was 47% of the CLP aggregate, and maybe 42% of CLPs voted the full right-wing “slate” of priorities. With a more concentrated vote by left and middle-of-the-road CLPs, we could get spikier topics onto the floor of conference.
  • The non-right priorities, however, was very scattered. Many of the top non-right priority votes went to topics not pushed by the left. I guess those topics got votes because they cover important issues (violence against women and girls, social care, mental health). The left didn’t push them because close examination of the motions submitted showed to be bland. There was less than there was back in the day of CLPs “wasting” their priorities votes by voting for topics already prioritised by the unions, but there was some of that (for example, 21,000 CLP votes for “the future of local government”, already prioritised by the unions).
  • I don’t know, but I’d guess many CLP delegates voted on priorities without reading the motions, or at least without reading them closely. Presumably through deliberate delay, the codelegates didn’t get the motions until the morning when they voted on priorities. And this is the Labour Party, not some high-voltage Marxist operation. Close reading and close study are not part of the culture. (Example: the motion from my own CLP, on social care, has disappeared. It wasn’t in the motions book, and it wasn’t in the list of motions ruled out. I’ve talked with one of our delegates, a left-winger, and with our CLP chair, an Open Labour person. Neither had noticed that the motion had disappeared until I told them, both were baffled, and I’ve heard back from neither).
  • The total CLP vote on priorities was 1,710,969. Divide by six because each CLP could vote for six priorities, and by 600 because that is the rough average membership for a CLP, and that gives 475 CLPs voting. Probably fewer, because smaller CLPs are less likely to send delegates. Probably a fair number of CLPs didn’t vote in the priorities ballot.
  • The left “operation” on the CLPs priorities ballot was poor. The “patient safety” topic – not an obvious top priority, but important because it was where the CAC had hived off the Socialist Health Association motion – got only 13,662 votes (20-odd CLPs?). “Equalities” (in fact trans rights) got only 16,357, and was not even recommended at all by the CLPD and Momentum, only by LLI. It’s difficult, because we too get the list of “topics” and motions only at the last minute. Labour Left Internationalists has since 2021 not mobilised the resources to do “instant” bulletins at conference, rather than distribute a general bulletin produced in advance. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy still has its daily “Yellow Pages”, but not even the keenest CLPDer would deny that it is a pale shadow of what it was
  • A better left “operation” would help. So would a “common-sense” reform: to have the Conference Arrangements Committee list the topics in advance, and require CLPs to slot their motions under one or another. This would also prevent the CAC quelling debate by dispersing motions in an artificial multiplication of topics (four in this conference for health, for example).

Labour conference 2024: an interim personal view

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The sparkiest debate, possibly the only sparky floor debate, at this year’s Labour conference (22-25 September), will come under the “Economy for the Future Topic”, around two good motions from the CWU and the Unite union calling for restoration of the winter fuel payment to pensioners and taxes on wealth and capital gains.

It looks like other sparky debates will be kept off conference floor by a combination of weakness in input from Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), bureaucratic “management” by the Conference Arrangements Committee, and (probably) willingness by CLP delegates, as in 2022 and 2023, to follow right-wing advice to prioritise “safe” topics for debate.

The results of the National Executive Committee (CLP seats) and NPF elections indicate weak morale. The left did better than its poor results in getting CLP nominations suggested we would, but we lost one seat (Mish Rahman’s) and went down from four representatives to three. Ann Black, a “centre-left” figure, and Cat Arnold, a “Labour Women” maverick, won seats, and the right won four. The turnout was poor – 13% of eligible members voted, down from 16% in 2022 and 25% in 2020 (so the right wing’s NEC vote is probably going down, too).

That doesn’t mean the conference is dead. Despite rain, left-wing protests outside conference by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement and by the People’s Assembly have just taken place as I write, and more are to come. There are probably more left fringe meetings than in other recent years, partly thanks to the The World Transformed festival no longer happening and thus not siphoning off interest. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) “pre-conference briefing” on Saturday 21 September, long a pivotal event in conference timetables, was as big or bigger than in any recent year, though much less lively than the “briefings” were back in the day.

Labour Left Internationalists, CLPD, and Momentum bulletin-distributors outside conference have had a good response. This year Solidarity is the only left paper on sale at conference), but we hear it has sold well. The new issue of Women’s Fightback is likely to arrive in Liverpool before the end of conference, and is likely to sell well, too.

But there are few motions: 116 printed for circulation to delegates (counting the same text submitted by two organisation as two motions). That is few from 600-odd Constituency Labour Parties, 11 affiliated unions, and 20 affiliated “socialist societies”.

Anecdotally, many CLPs have sent delegates but not got round to sending motions. The process was a bit more difficult this year, because of meeting schedules being disrupted by local government elections and then the general election. It wouldn’t have been a huge effort for CLPs to overcome those difficulties, but many didn’t summon up the energy.

Some motions seem just to have disappeared. For example, Islington South CLP’s (not-very-sparky) motion on social care is neither on the agenda nor listed as ruled out. Maybe the CLP secretary fouled up, but he is known usually to be efficient. Neither the Islington South (left-wing) delegate I talked with, nor the (middle-of-the-road) CLP chair, were even aware of the motion’s disappearance when I talked with them.

The motions submitted include a quota of very bland ones, and a few outright right-wing ones backing the worst parts of government policy. Generally, however, they bend to the left, and about as much as usual. What will keep the conference mostly “quiet” is the selection of “priority” topics for floor .

The rule now is that six topics are prioritised by unions and six by CLPs get to conference floor. The unions decide by consultation among themselves. The result of the CLPs vote on priorities will not be known until later today (22 Sep), but even left-wingers expect it to be swayed, as in 2022 and 2023, by the right campaigning to prioritise “safe” topics so as not to highlight “divisions which the media can exploit”.

So two of the three issues getting (by far) most motions – child poverty (i.e. two-child benefit cap) and housing – are unlikely to be debated. The third, winter fuel payment (CLP motions on which have been classed under “pensioners”) will get debated only thanks to two big unions prioritising it.

The list of motions was made available, even to delegates, only the day before their vote on topics to prioritise to reach conference floor.

The unions, I assume, exchange information among themselves about their motions and caucused on what to prioritise. Many constituency delegates will be voting on priority topics without even skim-reading the motions.

The voting is further skewed by the Conference Arrangements Committee’s categorisation of motions under “topics”. Often odd, it is especially odd this year. 25 of the 40 “topics” cover only one or two motions.

The Socialist Health Association challenged Conference Arrangements Committee over the segregation of their motion under a “Patient Safety” topic separate from other health motions (themselves scattered over three other “topics”).

Some of the strange categorisation seems designed to separate CLP motions on a subject from union motions on the same subject, and thus keep them off conference floor while the union motions reach the floor. But some is not so explicable; and some of the CLP motions so separated off look to me entirely harmless even to the most loyalist CAC.

The unions have prioritised AI, “infrastructure” (mostly rail), economy (as above), local government (sadly, a weak lead motion from Unison), “public services”, and “procurement”.

Labour Left Internationalists backed priority for child poverty, housing, “equalities” (in fact trans rights), Israel-Palestine, “tax reform” (in fact wealth and capital gains taxes), and “patient safety” (see above). CLPD and Momentum had the same recommendations, except for proposing “pensioners” instead of “equalities”. “Pensioners” got more CLP motions than “equalities”, but the sparky bit in those motions, winter fuel payments, is already covered in Unite’s and CWU’s motions under “economy”.

The right (Labour to Win) has recommended “Border Security”, “clean energy”, crime, growth, “Health Mission” (one of the four “topics” into which the CAC has divided motions about healthcare), and “opportunity”. All are chosen for being bland, other than “Border Security”, where the motions are outright right-wing, and “growth”, where the motions are clearly right-wing but less abrasive than the “border” ones.

Rushcliffe CLP submitted a motion for asylum and migrant rights originating from the Labour Campaign for Free Movement. The CAC barred it, not on the newly-reintroduced “contemporary motions” rule, but on the very old (but notoriously slippery) “covers more than one subject” criterion.

An appeal from conference floor against the CAC by Rushcliffe delegate Theodora Polenta failed (as such challenges almost always do: they are taken very fast, at the beginning of conference, before most delegates are up to speed).

77 other motions were ruled out. The CAC gives no details of why, other than that three of them were on the old grounds of being about an organisational rather than political question, and no other CLP except Rushcliffe protested against ruling-out, so we don’t know how heavily the CAC used the newly-reintroduced “contemporary” criterion. Nor how many of the 77 ruled out were at all left-wing: some came from CLPs known as “safely” right-wing.