Norwich South Labour MP Clive Lewis on the picket line in Norwich
A comrade has sent us this model motion they are putting forward in their Labour Party. Please consider using or adapting for your Labour Party ward or CLP (or union branch). To let us know you have, or for help, email team@momentuminternationalists.org
We condemn Keir Starmer’s order not to attend picket lines and his sacking of Sam Tarry as one of the party’s transport spokespeople after he joined an RMT / TSSA picket line on 27 July. The whole party should be rallying round the rail workers and other workers in struggle: supporting demands for pay rises at least matching inflation and to defend and improve conditions and jobs, and supporting strikes – not hiding away from them and punishing people for supporting them. We call on all Labour MPs [including ours] to support the striking unions in rail and other industries, and join their picket lines. We will send and publish a message to the rail unions supporting their struggles and their strikes.
In 2020, the Forward Momentum grouping won every member-elected seat on the National Coordinating Group of Labour left organisation Momentum. It defeated the Momentum Renewal slate linked to the office faction that destroyed Momentum’s democracy in 2017.
In July 2022, Forward Momentum-rebranding Your Momentum won 14 seats to 15 for Momentum Renewal-successor Momentum Organisers (for a briefing on the two, see here). Momentum Organisers got over 50% of first preference votes, to just over 45% for Your Momentum.
Labour Left Internationalists ran three candidates in the London and Eastern region (Abel Harvie-Clark, Maisie Sanders and Andy Warren), who got 74 first-preference votes between them, behind the 111 of the last successful candidate. (For some of our campaigning and materials, see our Twitter.) The turnout and the score for the left were low because Momentum’s numbers and activity have declined, and in part also because of the rushed and undemocratic way the election was run.
The LLI candidates raised class-struggle, internationalist socialist ideas and proposals that no other candidates did.
Forward Momentum came to office in 2020 by criticising the conservative, undemocratic and destructively unpleasant politics and culture institutionalised after the office-coup of January 2017. But it operated its own exclusions; Momentum remained office-dominated, and intervened only weakly at the 2021 Labour conference. In this election the Your Momentum candidates gave the impression of not knowing what to advocate.
Momentum Organisers advocated a focus on defending the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and leftish councillors. Some better initiatives that Momentum has pursued half-heartedly, like promoting policy for Labour Party conference and deciding to hold a conference of its its own, may get downgraded.
Right up to their defeat in 2020, the office-linked faction that later became Momentum Organisers engaged in witch-hunting and slandering of critical-minded leftist opponents. This time they had quite a few new people involved, and refrained from such behaviour. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely they will make Momentum more open, let alone democratic.
The ideas Labour Left Internationalists promoted in the election, including mobilising the organisation’s members and resources in support of strikes and replacing bluster about “community wealth building” with campaigning to stop and reverse council cuts, will only become more important.
The last two Labour Party conferences, in 2019 and 2021, passed policy for public ownership of energy (in motions calling for a “Socialist Green New Deal”).
This year a motion specifically on public ownership of energy is going to conference. It has already been passed by Eastleigh Constituency Labour Party in Hampshire, and is being proposed to a number of others. See the model motion here. Considering proposing a version of it in your Labour Party.
Christian Brookes from Eastleigh CLP explained:
“The cost of living crisis is driving millions of working families into poverty and energy companies are raking in profits from the British people’s hiked energy bills. Meanwhile, our planet is facing a 1.5°C rise in temperatures compared to pre-industrial levels, while Britain experiences it’s first ever 40°C temperature.
“Our CLP strongly supported this motion to control these companies by putting energy back into public ownership. At our meeting members passionately expressed their disgust at energy companies’ greed and ignorance of people’s issues; the motion was passed with a huge majority.”
This initiative comes at a crucial time, immediately after the heatwave reminded us yet again of the urgency of serious action to tackle climate change – and as energy companies’ profits soar and fuel bills are set to leap again. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just violated conference policy by rejecting public ownership of energy (and water, and even the railways…) On the other hand the TUC has just come out for public ownership, reflecting the hard work activists have done pushing this issue over several years.
We must insist the Labour leadership respects and implements party conference policy, and fights for serious policies to defend the living standards and interests of, and shift wealth and power towards, the working class. That must include public ownership of the energy sector.
You can help build the fight: • Get your CLP to send the motion to conference (deadline for submission, Thursday 15 September, 5pm). • Mandate your delegates to vote in favour at conference. • Whether or not it’s your CLP’s motion to conference, pass a motion in favour of public ownership modelled on this one.
Get in touch to let us know if you’ve passed the motion, or to get help, or to get a speaker on these issues: team@momentuminternationalists.org
Some suggested wording below on Ukraine for Labour conference 2022. We didn’t submit wording on Ukraine to the Momentum “policy primary” earlier in 2022, because text formulated then would be likely to be out of date by the time local Labour Parties debate motions for conference, usually in July, August, or September. The deadline for submitting motions is 15 September.
Support Ukraine, support its labour movement
Conference notes 1. That Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths; nine million fleeing Ukraine and ten million internally displaced; horrendous human rights abuses by the Russian army; and a global food crisis.
Conference believes 1. That Russia’s war, waged by a power that oppressed Ukraine for centuries and only lost control of it in 1991, is imperialism in an extremely crude and brutal form. 2. That for the sake of democracy and anti-imperialism globally, Ukraine must win. 3. That Western governments have not given Ukraine enough weapons to defend itself effectively. Meanwhile the Tory government: – Has accepted few refugees and failed to support them; – Opposes cancelling Ukraine’s external debt; – Has actively promoted legislation undermining workers’ rights in Ukraine.
Conference resolves 1. To declare strong solidarity with Ukraine’s people and labour movement against Russian imperialism, and with Russia’s anti-war movement and independent labour movement. 2. That Labour will campaign for: – Self-determination for Ukraine, with any peace deal determined by Ukraine’s people and government, not foreign powers; – Increased military support for Ukraine, while opposing increased UK defence spending; – Safe routes, sanctuary and equality for refugees fleeing Ukraine and all other conflicts and persecution; – Cancellation of Ukraine’s debt; – And in solidarity with Ukraine’s labour movement and left, supporting their fight against the Ukrainian government’s and employers’ attacks on workers’ rights and for a just reconstruction; promoting Ukrainian unions’ fundraising appeals; encouraging CLPs to invite Ukrainian labour movement speakers.
From the Labour Campaign for Free Movement. This is one of three motions originating in the vicinity of Labour Left Internationalists adopted by Momentum as priorities for Labour Conference 2022. The orher two are on the police and. on public ownership of energy.
Migrant solidarity: towards a humane, internationalist and socialist immigration policy
The government’s inhumane immigration policy is illustrated by its treatment of Ukrainian and Afghan refugees, Windrush scandal victims, and everyone crossing the Channel; the Nationality and Borders Act’s assault on the right to asylum; and the brutal Rwandan deportation scheme.
Attacks on migrants are attacks on the labour movement. Making migrant workers precarious diminishes our power to resist.
Labour must build solidarity and campaign for migrants’ rights and an antiracist, internationalist alternative.
Labour will work in power, and campaign in opposition and at the grassroots, to:
Repeal the Nationality and Borders Act and all anti-migrant legislation;
Reject immigration systems based on numerical caps, minimum income/wealth requirements, or utility to employers;
Guarantee safe, legal routes for asylum seekers, day-one rights to work, education and social security, and expand family reunion rights;
Abolish “no recourse to public funds”, NHS access restrictions and all Hostile Environment policies;
Replace Settled Status with an automatic Right to Stay;
Introduce a simple process for all UK residents to gain permanent residency;
Grant all UK residents equal voting rights;
Close all detention centres; end all immigration raids, detention, and deportations, including racist “double sentencing”;
Support workers refusing to implement deportations, Hostile Environment measures and pushbacks;
Level up domestic workers’ rights to equal other workers;
Reenter Europe’s free movement area, and pursue free movement agreements with other countries, including in all future trade deals, with the goal of equal free movement for all.
This is at the word limit – 10/10 words in the title, 249/250 words in the text – so if anything more were added, the whole submission would be ruled out.The deadline for conference motions is 15 September. Most CLPs will decide their motions in July, August, or early September.
Activists in eleven Nottinghamshire CLPs are moving motions on the following lines:
“This CLP applauds the inspirational national rail strikes carried out by the RMT and calls on the Labour Party leadership to give strong and unequivocal support to this action.
We will keep our members informed of further strike action and encourage them to show solidarity by visiting picket lines and rallies such as [insert local details].
We applaud our MP for showing support by [call on our MP to show support by. etc., as appropriate] visiting RMT picket lines, and resisting reported calls from the party leadership to avoid such visits”.
LLI candidate Andy Warren is a firefighter and Fire Brigades Union activist in London. He told us:
“With the huge class fight that is starting now, in terms of prices and wages and the wider social crisis, we all know the Labour Party is doing an awful job of supporting workers. That’s something Momentum could make a huge difference with – through its own campaigning, and through pushing Labour – but it has to reorient to do it.
“In the fire service we face a potentially very serious struggle in the not too distant future to defend our right to collective bargaining, which the Tories have made it very clear they want to demolish,. We’ll need support from an engaged and mobilised Labour left.
“I also want to emphasise the question of internationalism. Ukraine has sort of fallen out the media window, and Labour is quite happy to let Johnson dominate the agenda on it. By failing to back Ukraine, sections of the left are contributing to this. We need a left that is absolutely clear that when a small country is harried by a much bigger imperial bully, we stand against that.
“LLI can’t be more than a small minority on the Momentum NCG, but there are many issues we can work with a range of people on, despite disagreeing on other issues. It will take us being there to raise many issues and struggles that are crucial.”
Labour Left Internationalists needs your supporting nomination to get its candidates into the contest and onto the ballot paper in Momentum’s National Coordinating Group elections.
Nominations have to be submitted via a personalised weblink (emailed to you) before 23:59 on Wednesday 22 June.
Candidates’ details appear on the website, and you get a chance to click to nominate them, only once their “self-nomination” has been vetted and approved by the Momentum office staff. That’s happening only on Tuesday afternoon 21 June, so time is short.
Voting will be 28 June to 6 July.
• What political basis is LLI standing on?
In a sentence – “We’re standing in the Momentum National Coordinating Group (NCG) to advocate a Momentum which mobilises, visibly and regularly, to support class and social struggles – strikes like the rail strikes and long-running food couriers’ dispute, protests like against the Police Bill.”
You can’t go straight there. You’ll get an email from Team Momentum, subject line “OPEN: Nominations for NCG election”, with a personalised link for you to make nominations.
• What if I can’t find that email?
Search your email inbox, and look in spam. If you still can’t find it, maybe your Momentum membership has lapsed, maybe there’s a glitch in Momentum’s system, maybe you never got round to joining Momentum.
to check your membership. You need to remember the e-address you signed up with. You can get a password reminder if you have forgotten your password. You don’t need to remember your Momentum membership number.
and rejoin or join. You can name your own level of financial contributions, so this isn’t expensive.
• Should I put in my nominations now, or wait until Wednesday?
You can re-use the personalised nominating link you’re sent as many times as you like.
The LLI candidates’ self-nominations have been posted up as available for supporting nominations, in London and Eastern anyway.
If you used the personalised link on Monday, you can go back again now to change your nominations.
The leadership factions, Momentum Organisers and Your Momentum, had plenty of time to prepare, so will easily get their quotas of 20. By nominating LLI candidates you can widen the debate in the election.
Don’t leave it so late that if you forget on Wednesday, or have IT difficulties then, it’s too late to mend that.
• Where do I find Momentum’s info about the NCG elections?
Momentum’s activity has dwindled over the last couple of years, as has indeed the activity of the whole Labour left. But there are still about 20,000 people out there getting the Momentum emails, even if they don’t have functioning Momentum local group meetings to attend.
LLI did quite well in that “electorate” in both the policy primaries this year and the democratic-reform ballot. There is an audience for LLI’s ideas. This NCG election is by STV, so our chances are better than were those of Momentum Internationalists in 2020.
Many, not just on the left or in the unions’ rank and file, but among union leaders and in the Labour centre and soft-right too, are visibly dissatisfied with Starmer. They are quiet now. At some point, and we don’t know when, they will start to kick back.
Sustaining and building a profile and a presence for LLI in these difficult times is important to prepare for that, just as we would have done much better in the Corbyn years if we had been able to sustain a stronger class-struggle internationalist left, operating at rank-and-file level, in the difficult years before 2015.
• Why is this all such a rush?
Evidently the two big factions in the top layers of Momentum – Your Momentum (YM, what was Forward Momentum in 2020) and Momentum Organisers (MO, what was Momentum Renewal then) knew in advance about this NCG elections, and had their operations planned. We didn’t have that inside knowledge.
The rules about supporting nominations were published only on Friday 17 June.
Please use your social-media networks to spread this call for nominations, including to Momentum members who won’t agree 100% with LLI but do want a broader contest of ideas in this NCG election.
• Is LLI saying there’s no difference between those two factions?
No. It’s an STV election. We advocate transferring to Your Momentum, and voting Your Momentum in regions where LLI has no candidates. But if you want an election with some open contest of ideas, wider than the rather code worded exchanges between YM and MO, put in your nomination to get LLI on the ballot.
Labour Left Internationalists 