“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.

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.