Newark Constituency Labour Party in Nottinghamshire, and Newcastle East CLP, have submitted this very important motion to Labour Party conference. If your CLP has also submitted a version of this motion let us know: team@momentuminternationalists.org

To buy our new pamphlet Build Back Socialist, which discusses similar policies in greater depth, see here.

—

Build back fairer: attack poverty and inequality

The Marmot report “Build Back Fairer” says: “mismanagement during the pandemic, and the unequal way the pandemic has struck, is of a piece with what happened… in the decade from 2010… enduring social and economic inequalities… mean that public health was threatened before and during the pandemic and will be after.”

The Resolution Foundation and Wealth Tax Commission estimate that concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich is even worse than previously thought – by £800bn! We need to take
back wealth, with a wealth tax, increased corporation tax, capital gains tax and taxing very high incomes; and taking banking and finance into democratic public ownership.

We commit to “building back fairer”, campaigning for all with targeted action to increase racial, ethnic, gender, class and economic equality, campaigning for and implementing:

● Benefits increased to a liveable level. £260pw Universal Credit (demanded by the TUC).
● Extension and strengthening of furlough and self-employment schemes.
● Increase the minimum wage to £12ph, scrapping exemptions and differentials. Action to increase wages; substantial increases for public-sector workers.
● The right to isolate on full pay; improved sick pay for all, 100% of wages for all sickness periods.
● Repeal of all anti-union laws.
● Banning of zero-hours contracts.
● Reversal of all cuts since 2010, increased funding.
● Comprehensive reversal of privatisation and outsourcing; full public ownership of health and social care.
● Abolition of ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’.
● Building at least 100,000 council homes a year.
● Creation of millions of secure, well-paid, public jobs in services and green industry.

By Stephen Wood

Jess Barnard, the Chair of Young Labour, has reported that she was currently under investigation by the Labour party for tweeting her opposition to transphobia!

The two tweets highlighted are in no clear breach of Labour party rules, nor even in opposition to any existing policy. We understand the Labour party now say the investigation was “a mistake”.

Young Labour is currently in dispute regarding their own conference and the type of activity they can hold at Labour party conference. It seems likely that the party machine has chosen to attack Barnard in the run up to Labour party conference using the flimsiest of reasons. Or at least some elements of the machine. Labour HQ has now said that the notice of investigation was a mistake, and apologised.

Momentum Internationalists has been concerned by the wave of investigations and suspensions that started late 2020 and has continued following the NEC decision to proscribe four groups.

While most supporters of Momentum Internationalists would have little time for the politics of these organisations, the “guilt by association” and rush to suspend people is concerning. This includes cases like Pamela Fitzpatrick, who has been charged with “support” for Socialist Appeal because she was interviewed in their paper before they were proscribed.

Motions with the following demands have been submitted to Labour Party conference.

—

Conference notes TUC Congress 2020 agreed to “organise a special conference… on opposing the anti-union laws” and a national demonstration. The party will encourage CLPs to support and get involved in these when they become possible.

Conference reaffirms the party’s opposition to all anti-union and anti-strike legislation, its commitment to repealing all such laws when next in government, and to legislating to enshrine workers’ rights to, as per TUC policy: “join, recruit to, and be represented by an independent union; strike/take industrial action by a process, at a time, and for demands of their own choosing, including in solidarity with any other workers, and for broader social and political goals; and picket freely”.

From motion submitted by North East Bedfordshire CLP

—

Conference therefore calls the Labour Party to work closely with TUC, STUC, WTUC and individual unions to campaign for:

• an Employment Bill: Day 1 rights for all workers and repealing all anti-trade union laws
• worker status for gig economy workers; end spurious self-employment
• prohibition of fire and rehire tactics
• ban zero-hours contracts
• end outsourcing in public services
• better work-life balance, a legal right to flexible working by default, a ‘right to switch off’ so that homes don’t become 24/7 offices, and reductions in working hours without loss of pay
• increasing statutory sick pay to a living wage, to be paid from day one of absence; and for the lower earnings limit that means low paid workers are not entitled to SSP to be abolished
• £15 ph statutory minimum wage.

From motion submitted by Derby South CLP

Edinburgh Central Constituency Labour Party has decided to send the “Global Climate Justice” motion which left activists successfully put forward in Momentum’s policy primary to Labour conference (see text below).

Vijay, the the CLP’s Political Education Officer and one of its conference delegates, explained why Edinburgh Central wanted to call for democratic public control in the financial sector:

“Regulation simply isn’t enough – we need to nationalise the banks and financial sector because we cannot allow that much capital and power to remain in private hands. We must repurpose and redistribute the wealth that exists in society, and that our class creates, for our own benefit; and we must make the use of that wealth subject to democracy and accountability – not the whim of unelected bosses, landlords and shareholders. Only through massive investment and a worker-led just transition will we be able to properly tackle the climate crisis. A publicly owned banking system has been the policy of our CLP since 2018 [see here], and I will be delighted to fight for this in compositing at conference this year, as I fought for the Labour Campaign for Free Movement motion in 2019.”

Stephen, another of Edinburgh Central’s conference delegates, said:

“Climate change is a crisis that requires radical solutions, and I will be very happy to be arguing for the party to have the confidence to stand up for those radical solutions.”

—

Global Climate Justice motion

Conference notes:
• We must keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C.
• The communities hit hardest by climate change contributed least to the problem.
• The UK’s continuing fossil fuel subsidies.

Conference believes:
• We should decarbonise by 2030 with mandatory targets for every
industrial sector.
• The costs must be borne by the rich and the corporations, the benefits shared.
• Debt cancellation is essential to climate justice.

Conference resolves to support:
• Cancellation of low-income country debt held by UK institutions; legislation to prevent prosecutions in UK courts of countries stopping debt payments in order to fund their just transitions.
• Halting fossil fuel subsidies and new licenses, placing the money in a Just Transition fund for decarbonisation, creating good new green jobs.
• Sanctions on big polluters.
• A just transition for workers in high-carbon industries with an offer of training and redeployment into equally good jobs;
• Workers organising to decarbonise industries and the global supply chain
• Campaigning and educating for a Socialist Green New Deal
• All future stimulus and bailout eligibility linked to climate action
and just transition plans.
• Bringing the financial system into democratic public control to fund just transition; regulating private banking and finance for its climate impact.
• Delisting companies failing to protect the environment and uphold human rights in their global supply chains.
• Linking internationally with indigenous groups, trade unions and groups resisting ecological assault.
• Legal recognition of climate refugees’ right to asylum.

Labour’s work and pensions spokesperson Jonathan Reynolds has rightly been criticised for failing to commit to any real substantive changes to the benefits system.

Too often, however, the left also has little positive to counterpose to the Tories’ appalling policies.

Below are some ideas which claimant and Department of Worker and Pensions worker activists have developed over the last few years. For some background on how the discussion which produced them began, see here.

Please send us responses (team@momentuminternationalists.org) and use these kind of demands in the labour movement and in campaigning.

***

We want to replace the current mean and punitive benefit system with a welfare system explicitly committed to the following principles:

That the benefit system is not just a safety net but a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the working class. Especially the poorest, disabled people and those carrying out unpaid care work including as parents.

That the benefit system guarantees the universal right to decent housing, access to continuing education, access to free universal child care and a decent standard of living to all.

That the benefit system complements and supports union organisation and workers rights by not forcing people into un-unionised, casualised work, encourages union membership and provides access to the benefit system for those on strike.

To those ends we propose the following measures:

1. Abolition or dramatic shortening of the wait for the first Universal Credit payment; more frequent payments.
2. An end to benefit freezes/suppression; automatic uprating of benefits in line with inflation or earnings or a minimum amount, whichever is higher (like the basic state pension “triple lock”).
3. Reversal of all cuts and reductions in benefits; increases to a level where they can afford a comfortable, not minimum, income. The TUC’s figure for standard rate UC, £260 a week, is a good immediate demand. Abolish the lower rate for young people. Lower the “taper” through which people lose UC when they start to earn.
4. Entitlement conditions that are straightforward, inclusive and available to all, including migrants (scrap ‘No recourse to public funds’).
5. Payment of benefits for all children and dependents.
6. Abolition of all sanctions.
7. The scrapping of Work Capability and similar assessments.
8. Relevant health issues to be addressed using medical professionals with appropriate knowledge of individuals’ conditions and disabilities.
9. Delivery by adequate numbers of paid public servants, via networks accessible to everyone, including provision of face-to face support for all who need it.
10. Reversal of all DWP cuts and privatisation.
11. The right of different members of a household to divide the claiming of benefits.
12. Repeal of the longstanding Tory measure stopping access to benefits for workers on strike.

Labourlist have a useful article detailing the various motions being put forward to Labour conference by different factions within the party.

As of yet we do not know which of these motions will definitely make it to conference floor. There appears to have been a significant push for the motion on proportional representation through a number of local labour parties. Unfortunately Momentum has done a poor job at getting their motions, passed through its own policy primary, through many local parties. Read more here.

By Mohan Sen

The Labour Party’s work and pensions spokesperson Jonathan Reynolds has attacked the government’s 1 September £20pw cut to Universal Credit (UC), and called the UC system “fatally flawed” — but said vanishingly little about would what Labour would do differently.

Reynolds refused to pledge that Labour would reverse the cut, let alone indicate a higher level of Universal Credit. His defence of not being able to set a figure so far from an election is an absurd evasion.

Reynold’s “proposals” seem to focus almost exclusively on reducing the “taper” through which those in work have their benefit reduced as their income increases. However he also refused to indicate how much the taper should be changed.

Much left-wing criticism has focused on the fact that Labour is no longer calling to “scrap” Universal Credit. A better focus might be on its lack of substantial policies for transforming the benefit system, and what policies we want to see.

In addition to the absence of anything like a clear stance on the level of UC, Labour is saying nothing about “conditionality”, the mechanism through which claimants are denied benefits and more generally harassed and brow-beaten to make them more likely to stop claiming.