On 18 March the leadership of Momentum launched a “strategy document” called “Socialist Organising for a New Era”, laying out a path for what Momentum should do over the next three years. But despite running to 24 pages, it doesn’t really say.

There is plenty in the document that is not controversial and even good – that socialists should intervene in the Labour Party and try to democratise it and involve it in social struggles; that more extensive programmes of political education should be rolled out; that there should be more socialists in local government. But none of these things are new. In fact they are said by Momentum regularly, so it isn’t really clear why they needed to be said again in a strategy document released with great fanfare. There aren’t any new proposals in here; neither is there really any detail about how to achieve these things, or reflecting on how Momentum’s attempts at doing these things has gone so far. But the document does surely say a lot about the outlook of its current leadership.

Information

In a way the longest part of this 24-page document is all the things that are left unsaid. A strategy document might begin by laying out some information about how it was drawn up, where it was debated and drafted and by whom. But we don’t get any of that. As of late March 2021, Momentum’s National Co-ordinating Group has not published any minutes since early December 2020. In a democratic organisation, a strategy document establishing the organisation’s plans and orientation for a period of three years would be debated by the membership prior to being adopted and published. This hasn’t happened here. Members didn’t know the report was coming; no-one knew how to express a view about what should be in it. That raises another question: is the report supposed to be binding? Or is it just an opinion piece by some members? Why not invite debate about it?

A process of activists debating and amending a roadmap would be lengthy, and, in an organisation of about 40,000 members, it would be fairly public and noisy. But this document was drawn up in private and launched without warning. It’s a model of behaviour that fits an NGO which exists to issue reports written by a central staff or by an inner circle who are “in the know”.

Momentum is not in great health right now. This isn’t the fault of the current leadership: the pandemic and the 2019 election defeat weigh heavy. Even before the 2019 election the farcically top-down, anti-democratic way in which Momentum was run, perhaps at the behest of the Corbyn leadership, had cost Momentum much moral authority with its grassroots. These things are no secret, so there is no harm addressing them openly. Momentum’s new leadership has been conducting “Refounding” meetings – attempts to rally, re-organise and re-orient local Momentum groups. It would be useful for members to know how this has been going.

Even if the facts aren’t good, giving some facts about the current health of the organisation would create confidence. It would dispel speculation that things are worse than they really are. NGOs, charities and bourgeois parties who live and die by “optics” and can’t see further ahead than one news cycle would obviously not publish less-than-flattering information about themselves. But in a democratic labour movement organisation, whose strength relies on the confidence that the membership has in its leaders, giving the impression that the leadership is hiding bad news is damaging.

Momentum democracy

When the current leadership stood for election in 2020 as the “Forward Momentum” slate, they did so on a pledge of making Momentum more democratic. It is harder for an organisation to be democratic when it doesn’t have a thriving internal life and is beset with difficulties like the pandemic. But transparency is free, and you can do it any time. There is mention in this document of “democratising Momentum” but it only runs to a few lines:

“This summer we’ll also launch a process to collectively determine how we improve Momentum’s constitution and democracy, with deliberation conducted in local groups and proposals voted on by all Momentum members. We’ll be collectively thinking about the ways we can re-design Momentum so we can better deliver on the strategic priorities here outlined.”

The current leadership was elected on a pledge of organising a “Refounding Convention” – online, if not in person, to be held by May 2021. That was vague, but this is vaguer: “a process”, “in the summer”. It’s important for democracy that members are given proper information well in advance about exactly how they can make their voice heard. In a 24-page document about the future of Momentum, no more information is offered to members about how Momentum’s very constitution is going to be re-written. Again, the outlook of whoever wrote this is technocratic: telling members, “don’t worry, we are handling it”. If Keir Starmer sent out a circular saying “I’m going to re-write the Labour Party rulebook this summer sometime, I’ll ask you all what should go in it”, possibly the current Momentum NCG members would object.

The other noteworthy thing here is that whatever this “process” of re-writing the constitution decides, its political purpose has been fixed in advance. It’s all about delivering on the strategic priorities outlined in this document. So it turns out that this “strategy document” that you didn’t get to vote on is binding. Again: if Starmer said “Labour Party Conference this year is all going to be about the best way to campaign for a programme that I have just come up with”, people might ask: “Can’t we also change that programme?”

When Momentum was first founded in 2015, immediately the leadership started working to shut down democracy, discourage activists from organising together locally and asserting themselves. This culminated with the almost completely shutdown of democracy at the start of 2017. This was to do with making sure that there was no leftward pressure on the Labour leadership, but also a neoliberal-technocratic, NGO-style management philosophy that has become pervasive in the left. An argument we heard at the time was that Momentum doesn’t need to be democratic – all the “democratising” that needs to happen is in the Labour Party itself. We would answer: people learn by doing. If Momentum itself doesn’t model good democratic practice, what hope does it have of democratising Labour? If we want Momentum to be a force for democracy, it needs to get transparency, information and democracy right, and drop its current top-down NGO-style attitude that runs right through this document: “Your leaders will fix everything for you: await further instructions and do not bother us”.

Local government

Winning selections and getting more socialists into local government is one of the headline objectives outlined in this document. Under the header “Transforming local government”, the document says:

“As we’ve seen in Preston and Salford, committed socialists can use local government to make a real difference to people’s lives, and Momentum will support and encourage this new municipal socialist movement. We’re also assisting Momentum members to develop the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the selection process and campaign to become a councillor. We’ll continue the Future Councillors Programme and we’ll relaunch Momentum’s Councillors’ Network – a home for socialist councillors across the country, where they can debate and develop policy and explore how Labour councils can engage with and support local communities.”

There is no space here for a full assessment of Salford and Preston Labour councils. Momentum Internationalists will publish something more detailed about them at a later date. But no assessment is offered in the strategy document either (although it is 24 pages long). Salford Council does deserve credit for having extended isolation pay to workers in care homes. But it is putting up council tax and is only making no cuts this year because it has passed cuts budgets for ten years running, cutting a majority of its workforce. The much-trumpeted “Preston model” is about managing decline. That doesn’t sound much like “transforming” local government. A transformative approach to local government might involve refusing to co-operate with the government’s cuts agenda or learning from other “models”, like the Labour council in Clay Cross in the 1970s. At the very least it would involve active campaigning to stop cuts and win restored funding.

Instead, the Momentum leadership seem to take it as read that resistance is futile. That’s not an assumption that the leadership of a socialist movement should make lightly. (For more on Momentum’s approach to local government, see here.)

The rest of what this passage says focuses on the individuals who may become councillors: training and coaching them to “navigate” selection procedures. Of course councillors need training. But from a socialist perspective, when you’re talking about local government, the most important person isn’t the councillor. It’s the movement around them.

How might councillors be held accountable to Momentum and what might a “Momentum councillor” stand for? That’s an important question and it’s not addressed. There is a “Momentum Council” – Haringey Council. Since a big Momentum-driven campaign to select and elect lefties, Haringey’s Momentum council has alienated much of its grassroots leftwing support by doing things like shutting the popular Latin Village market in Tottenham, overriding the concerns of the local working-class community and many small traders.

Coaching people to act like that isn’t a winning proposition. We should coach prospective candidates to do something else instead – but what? We might suggest – building a united movement to back up the local council to defy central government; using the platform of local government to launch organising drives to build local unions and bring workers into the Labour Party; solving local problems by campaigning and mobilising people power. In short, socialist councillors should not view their power as coming from the council chamber but from the working class. They should be more afraid of disappointing the local left and workers’ movement than of central government or having the Labour whip withdrawn.

More important than “coaching” councillors is finding mechanisms of holding them accountable. Momentum councillors should set a standard of accountability to the local party – and to Momentum’s local supporters. Aside from Labour Party members, the other key constituency who should be involved in making local government policy is local government workers and trade union activists. But they aren’t mentioned.

Why write a pamphlet about Momentum’s strategy that runs to 24 pages, make “getting more left councillors” a headline theme, and then say nothing about what standards of left-wing-ness or of accountability a “left councillor” should be held to? A common way of proceeding on the Labour left is for lefties to pick a candidate on the basis of who talks left in the selection meeting, or who hangs around with the right people enough to be considered “one of us”. There’s a certain resignation that underlies these habits – everyone involved regards it as inevitable that the candidates chosen by the left in this way will eventually sell out. Momentum’s leaders should lead the way in dispelling this resignation. What the emphasis in this strategy document suggests is that the Momentum leadership share this resignation. They might “coach” some people to stand who otherwise would not have. Or they might, through “coaching”, woo some self-promoter into standing as a nominally “left” candidate. But in either case, there doesn’t seem much indication that they expect these people to have a different relationship to the broader movement once in office.

The Momentum Councillors’ Network doesn’t meet or deliberate. The reason for that is probably that any honest conversation about the record of “left” councillors in the UK would be too embarrassing for any of the participants to bear. But creating a body like that, even one that met regularly, should not be a priority. Councillors should not be encouraged to organise their own little trade union in Momentum to protect them from the membership. They should be held to account. If they want to discuss issues of policy, they can discuss them with the rest of us plebs who turn up to local Momentum meetings, or who are members of local government trade union branches. Bad enough that there is a whole bit of the Momentum NCG reserved for “elected officers”: that was always a right-wing gerrymander. Officials should be reminded at every turn that they serve the movement. A councillor has more power than an ordinary person. To also give a Momentum councillor more say in Momentum than ordinary members points in the wrong direction.

Momentum trade union network

The best idea in the document is a Momentum trade union network. Organising a left-wing network of shop-floor trade union activists is a very good idea. The Corbyn project started with that “surge” of new members into the Labour Party in 2015, bringing more left-wing politics and a desire for more activism and greater democracy. It was always a strategic weakness of the Corbyn movement that the trade unions were not similarly transformed and democratised at the same time. In the Corbyn period, this mismatch between renewed leftwing life in CLPs and an entrenched, unchallenged bureaucracy in the trade union movement meant that the trade unions returned to their traditional role as the most right wing block against leftwing changes getting voted through at Conference. It was during Corbyn’s tenure as Labour Party leader, paradoxically, that strike figures fell to their lowest recorded level. In order for the movement to be able to “use both hands”, a radical democratisation of and infusion of activist energy into the trade unions needs to come alongside a socialist political transformation of Labour.

Momentum’s strategy document talks about “working with trade unions”. That’s a common enough phrase in the movement. But it’s not precise. “Working with” the senior officials of a big union (generally unelected and on management-sized salaries) is a very different proposition from “working with” the workers they represent. Obviously, the latter is more important: but also the process of democratising and changing trade unions will entail a conflict with the existing trade union bureaucracies similar in its intensity to the fighting with the old regime that Corbynism sparked in Labour. Any trade union organisation that Momentum builds will need to be set up with that in mind.

There’s a further issue here, again to do with democracy. Most trade unions are at least as undemocratic as the Labour Party. But most trade unions, and Labour, nevertheless have much more democratic constitutions than Momentum does. It is hard to “bring democracy” into an organisation that is already more democratic than you are.

The Walton model

A note on the “Walton model”. There’s a bit in the strategy document where it says: “We’ll work to popularise organising models in Momentum and the Labour Party that prioritise working class solidarity and agency – such as the ‘Walton Model’”. Google reveals only one hit for “Walton Model”: a blogpost by NCG member Alan Gibbons written in May 2020 about how the Labour Party in Walton is active in lots of community campaigns and has held some lively cultural events. That’s good. But that doesn’t add up to a “model” that could be “popularised”. And shorthand for an idea is only of any use if people are likely to know what it means – i.e. if it gets more than one hit on Google. So why mention it at all? All it does is make the casual reader feel thick because they’ve not heard of this super-sophisticated “model”. You don’t want the leadership of a democratic organisation to sound like they’re trying to make up fancy new concepts to impress you with. It doesn’t instil confidence.

The overall impression given by the Momentum strategy document is one of vagueness and a lot of habits of thought and activity imported from liberal NGO politics, rather than labour movement organising. Vagueness almost always means going with the flow. But more than at any time in its history, Momentum needs to go against the flow. It faces a hostile Labour leadership, great pressure in local government, and a trade union movement that’s not fit for purpose. Between the lines, this document reveals a leadership hiding its intentions, hiding bad news, and keeping all of its decision-making cloistered in processes that can be micro-managed from the office. A bolder, more self-confident, more political approach is needed.

On 30 March we held a meeting in solidarity with the Indian farmers’ struggle, addressed by London Fire Brigades Union black and ethnic minority members officer Amit Malde and left-wing economist and close ally of the farmers’ movement Pritam Singh.

Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome was due to speak but had to cancel due to illness. She sent a statement to the meeting which we republish below. Videos from the meeting and more information and updates soon. Meanwhile:

• Please sign this statement of solidarity
• Ask your MP to sign this parliamentary Early Day Motion (1278), on the criminalisation of dissent in India.

***

Statement from Nadia Whittome MP

I’m so sorry I can’t be with you today, due to illness. The Indian farmers’ movement feels very close to my heart as my grandparents were farmers in Punjab.

The protests have come about because of the new exploitative farm laws. These laws will allow big companies to drive down crop prices. They threaten to leave families and entire communities without the means to live. More than 40% of people in India work in agriculture, so this is a huge issue.

But the protests also cut much deeper than just the farm laws. They have also become about the BJP and their divisive Hindu-nationalist politics and neo-liberal policies. The farmers’ movement is an anathema to their bigoted regime – it transcends caste, religious, and regional differences. Many women are at the forefront. A few months ago 250 million workers went on strike alongside the farmers. This movement provides a vision of a different India – one which can be united in its diversity.

So it is no surprise Modi’s government is doing everything it can to suppress the movement. Indian government-controlled media has demonised farmers. The government ordered Twitter to suspend accounts that tweeted support for the farmers or criticism of its treatment of them. It has shut down the internet around the protest sites, and arrested protesters, sympathetic activists and even journalists. Water cannons, tear gas and brute force have all been used against farmers.

Here in the UK, the Conservative Government is a close ally of Modi’s regime. Modi spoke alongside David Cameron when he visited the UK, our Home Secretary is an active supporter of the BJP and there are billionaire donors who bankroll both parties. In the 2019 election, Hindu nationalists mobilised for the Tories, and the Tories are responsive to their bigoted agenda, like their opposition to banning caste discrimination.

We have to expose these links and put pressure on the government over this issue. So thank you to everyone attending – we need to keep on raising the profile of the protests and showing our solidarity. Victory to the farmers!

A public meeting to support the growing protests in India organised by Momentum Internationalists

Tuesday 30 March, 6pm to 8pm

Speakers:

• Nadia Whittome, Labour Member of Parliament for Nottingham East

• Dr Pritam Singh, Oxford Brookes University

• Amit Malde, Fire Brigades Union London black and ethnic minority members rep

More tbc

Narendra Modi’s neo-liberal, Hindu-nationalist regime is being shaken by mass farmers’ protests against its pro-corporate agricultural reforms – protests which are mobilising many hundreds of thousands, women as well as men, and building new solidarities across divisions of religion, caste and region. Modi is responding with heavy repression.

Join this discussion to learn about the Indian farmers’ uprising and the workers’, women’s and other movements fighting in solidarity with it, and how the left and labour movement in Britain can build solidarity.

Zoom link for attendees

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83717779466?pwd=NVRUb2FlY2R0NkFwSDZoZjFjWFZmUT09

By Sacha Ismail

In the last decade local authorities, consistently disempowered by central government since the 1980s, have been subjected to sustained and vicious attack. It is not too much exaggeration to say that local government, certainly as we knew it in the recent past, is being destroyed.

Since “austerity” began in 2010, councils have lost something like 60pc of their central government funding – and are now facing further cuts. The cuts have fallen disproportionately on poorer communities and on Labour local authorities. The flip side of the staggering statistics is the growth of human suffering as local services and jobs people relied on disappear. The gutting of local government has been an absolutely central to the Tories’ assault on working-class rights and living standards over the last decade.

Momentum’s new strategy document, “Socialist Organising in a New Era” (https://peoplesmomentum.com/updates/socialist-organising-in-a-new-era) refers to local government a fair bit. Among other things, it says:

“Deepen alliances with… socialist… councillors.”

“Our aim is to build a well-organised socialist current at every level of the Party, in local government…”

“As we’ve seen in Preston and Salford, committed socialists can use local government to make a real difference to people’s lives, and Momentum will support and encourage this new municipal socialist movement. We’re also assisting Momentum members to develop the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the selection process and campaign to become a councillor. We’ll continue the Future Councillors Programme and we’ll relaunch Momentum’s Councillors’ Network – a home for socialist councillors across the country, where they can debate and develop policy and explore how Labour councils can engage with and support local communities.”

But the document says virtually nothing about what “socialist” or “left” councillors or councils should be doing, and nothing about the fundamental issue of council cuts.

(In other words, rather than seeking to push Labour councillors or raise the political level among them, Momentum is reflecting and reproducing their general lack of fight. It is not at all clear what the Momentum Councillors’ Network does, or even that it actually functions as a meaningful network, even to the extent of its “members” being collectively in touch with each other.)

At the 18 March meeting about the strategy document, questions about these issues got relatively little response.

In the break out group about local government, a Momentum full-timer responded by saying that the key issue was how councils can make up funding lost from central government (ie by raising money themselves, locally) and that “community wealth building” as practiced in Preston is a good model.

This is not the place for an indepth criticism of the “Preston model”. Often “Preston” and “Salford” seem to be brandished as magic solutions without those doing so explaining – or perhaps even knowing – much about what has been done in those authorities. What is clear is that Preston and Salford councils have, like others, made deep cuts, and that neither has done or is doing much of anything to generate campaigning against cuts and to win restored funding from the government.

For whatever reasons, Momentum seems to have got into a political “space” where it seems to regard fighting over council funding as impossible or undesirable, even on the level of just verbally raising it as a demand. (This despite the fact that the demand to reverse all council cuts was included in the 2019 Labour manifesto.)

Without fighting on that, talk about “muncipal socialism”, “socialist strategy” in local government, “left” or “pro-working class” policies and so on, seems pretty hollow. Trying to find ways to make up money locally cannot possibly reverse cuts or even prevent further ones; and it in practice far more regressive in terms of where money is raised from and funding for poorer areas. It essentially means accepting defeat.

Even if what is being done in, for instance, Salford is genuinely clearly better than most Labour councils – and Momentum doesn’t really explain what it has involved – it must be very limited in the context of the lost funding. In an article in Tribune https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/01/sensible-socialism-the-salford-model advocating the “Salford model”, council leader Paul Dennett says the council has cut a majority of its workforce, but done so in relatively humane way, with few compulsory redundancies. The article says nothing about fighting cuts.

Shortly before “Socialist organising for a new era” came out, Momentum did promote a meeting called by Lambeth local government Unison to discuss building a union and Labour network to fight council cuts. An NCG member attended the meeting and spoke positively about developing an initiative on these issues. Yet none of that is reflected in the document or what Momentum is saying and doing.

Given its weight and connections across the Labour Party and beyond, Momentum could make a major difference to generating a fight back. However, it it continues to advocate getting more “left” councillors while saying nothing about cuts and local government struggles more generally, it will instead play a fundamentally negative role.

The first most basic question is: does Momentum want to see a fight to stop further cuts and win restored funding from central government, or not? If it does, the first thing is to publicly and clearly advocate it.

By Mohan Sen

About 200 people attended the Momentum meeting on its new strategy document on 18 March. Not so big, but to be fair it was at the same time as huge anti-Policing Bill meeting organised by Sisters Uncut.

The discussion was interesting and there were some useful points made, but it was all rather meandering and unfocused. I did not get a clear picture of what Momentum’s leadership and organisers want.

A few things jumped out at me:

Someone asked about “democratising” Momentum, and whether this means having a national decision-making conference. A National Coordinating Group member who essentially said it was up to the members whether they wanted that. This reaffirmed my impression that most or much of the new, post-2020 Momentum leadership (“Forward Momentum”) are not keen on establishing such a democratic sovereign body.

To be fair, the meeting reinforced my picture of a problem which would make a well-functioning national conference difficult, namely that most local groups no longer function. Another NCG member made big claims about the recent revival of groups. What is the situation in your area?

A number of speakers talked about the soon-to-be-launched Momentum trade unionists network. It wasn’t made clear what this network will be for. An NCG member reported that there are (reasonably enough I’d say) differences on whether Momentum should take stances in internal union elections (and presumably other internal debates and arguments). Useful things a Momentum trade unionists network might do included helping mobilise Labour Parties and party members in support of workers’ struggles, and working with Free Our Unions to establish clear Labour policy and campaigning on the right to strike and repealing the anti-union laws.

Last but in a way most importantly there was – as in the strategy document itself – quite a lot of mention of local government, but a complete lack of substantive proposals about what Momentum should actually advocate and campaign for. The focus seems to be predominantly on getting more “left” councillors.

Pushed on this a bit at the meeting, several Momentum organisers advocated Preston and Salford councils as a model. But neither of these councils is doing anything to fight and reverse cuts, despite the increasingly apocalyptic financial situation councils face. In a break out session on local government, I asked about the lack of even a mention of fighting cuts. A Momentum staff member replied, very tellingly I thought, that the key thing was how to make up money lost from central government funding by other means, such as Preston’s “community wealth building”.

In other words, Momentum has no perspective of even advocating the restoration of government funding for councils, let alone fighting for it. (This despite the organisation sponsoring the meeting on this organised by Lambeth Unison and other trade unionists last month.)

There were a number of mentions of the Momentum councillors network, but it’s not clear if this network does anything or even really exists as something coherent.

Momentum really needs shaking up on this point.

• More: ‘An open letter to my fellow Labour councillors, by Hertfordshire councillor Josh Lovell

Ballot 24-31 March 2021: vote here. See our events calendar for Zoom meetings over the period 24-31 March 2021 explaining and promoting some of the motions below.

Momentum Internationalists welcomed Momentum’s decision to hold a policy primary to allow local groups and campaigns to feed in to deciding which motions Momentum should support at Labour Party conference.

We have supported the following motions, which reflect Momentum Internationalists’ programme around democracy, class struggle and internationalism, and encourage members to vote for them in the all-member ballot. 

• Build back fairer: attack poverty and inequality
• China, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs: solidarity, peace, democracy and liberation
• Migrants welcome: end deportations and the racist Hostile Environment
• Unshackling workers from draconian anti-trade union laws
• Global climate justice

Title: 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.

Submitted by: North East Momentum, Stevenage Momentum and Southampton Momentum

Title: China, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs: solidarity, peace, democracy and liberation

Conference notes:

● Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim peoples in Xinjiang/East Turkestan suffer genocidal persecution including racist surveillance; political, cultural and religious

repression; forced contraception and sterilisation; forced labour in global corporate supply chains; children removed from families; and concentration camps.

● A violent, corporate-backed crackdown has attacked Hong Kong’s movement for democracy and civil liberties. Independent unions like the HKCTU are surging but under assault. British colonial-era anti-union and anti-democratic laws facilitate this.

● Throughout China, worker exploitation is rampant. Wealth inequality approaches US levels. Independent unions and protests are suppressed while corporations and state bureaucrats profit. But workers, women, minorities and dissidents continue to resist.

Conference believes:

● Socialism means political and economic democracy. Despite pretences, China’s authoritarian state represents neither.

Conference resolves that Labour will:

● Build solidarity with independent labour, democratic and liberatory movements, protests and strikes in China.

● Resist hijacking of this cause by nationalists and hawks promoting anti-Chinese racism, superpower rivalry, trade wars and militarisation.

● Support freedom and human rights for the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang/East Turkestan and Tibet, and their right to democratically determine their futures.

● Support universal suffrage for Hong Kong, release of political prisoners and repeal of the National Security Law.

● Propose Magnitsky sanctions against officials involved in these abuses;

● Support protests and worker action against businesses complicit in these abuses;

● Propose laws requiring big businesses to transparently audit supply chains to source worldwide, and cut ties to rights abuses.

● Welcome unconditionally all refugees who seek sanctuary here from tyranny and persecution.

Submitted by Uyghur Solidarity Campaign

Title: Migrants welcome: end deportations and the racist Hostile Environment

Covid-19 has underlined how Hostile Environment policies hurt us all. Excluded from social and medical support, migrants have been left hyper-vulnerable to employers. Many EU citizens are falling through gaps in the Settled Status scheme.

The Stansted 15’s exoneration, appalling conditions at Napier Barracks, deaths in the Channel and closing of safe routes for child refugees highlight the cruelty of Tory migration policy. The Windrush Lessons Learned review has been ignored by the government.

Attacks on migrants are attacks on the labour movement. Making migrant workers precarious diminishes our power to unionise and fight back. Labour must reject divisive “good migrant/bad migrant” narratives and oppose all legislation that undermines migrants’ rights.

Conference resolves that Labour will work at all government levels, and campaign at the grassroots, to:

● Re-enter Europe’s free movement area, and pursue free movement with other countries, including in all future trade deals.

● Reject immigration systems based on migrants’ incomes, savings or utility to employers;

● Abolish “no recourse to public funds”, minimum income requirements, and all Hostile Environment policies including restrictions on NHS access.

● Introduce an easy process for all UK residents to gain permanent residency with equal rights.

● Introduce equal voting rights for all UK residents.

● Guarantee safe routes for asylum seekers and rights to family reunion, work and social security.

● End all immigration raids, detention and deportation, especially childhood-arrival deportations and racist “double sentencing”.

● Replace Settled Status with an automatic Right to Stay.

● Support workers who refuse to implement deportations or Hostile Environment Measures.

Submitted by: Labour Campaign for Free Movement, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, Momentum Stevenage, Momentum Oxfordshire, Momentum Watford, Three Rivers and Hertsmere

Title: Unshackling workers from draconian anti-trade union laws

The pandemic has amplified the need for workers to guarantee their safety and working conditions. Draconian cuts and lack of investment in public services have undermined resilience and caused workers to be further exposed to the effects of the ‘free’ market.

Waves of job cuts, attacks on terms and conditions (e.g., “fire and rehire”) and plans to scrap sectoral collective bargaining, including in the fire and rescue service, have continued throughout this crisis.

Conference notes TUC policy that workers should 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”.

Conference reaffirms the commitment to repealing all anti-union laws to ensure that workers have power in their workplaces.

This commitment includes repealing anti-strike laws, such as the ban on striking in solidarity with other workers or over political issues – an affront to democracy. These laws prevent workers from taking action directly over issues such as climate change, equality issues, and the NHS.

Conference denounces the Tories’ plan to impose new restrictions on transport workers through a “minimum service requirement”- it seems likely they will extend this to other groups of key workers.

Conference resolves that the party will actively drive trade union membership amongst all party members, campaign for the repeal of all anti-trade union laws, and that the next Labour government will repeal all anti-trade union laws.

Submitted by The Fire Brigades Union, Southampton Momentum, Brent Momentum and Free Our Unions

Title: Global climate justice

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 spends billions of pounds per year on fossil fuel subsidies and is a key jurisdiction for the enforcement of globally accrued debt.

Conference believes:

● Labour should make the case for rapid decarbonisation by 2030.

● The cost of decarbonisation must be borne by the rich.

● Debt cancellation is essential to achieve climate justice.

Conference resolves to support:

● Cancellation of all low-income country debt held by UK institutions; legislation to prevent UK courts prosecuting countries stopping debt payments.

● Immediately halting all fossil fuel subsidies, placing the money in a Just Transition fund. Sanctions on big polluters; incentives to rapidly reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

● Phase out of high-carbon industries with a just transition and support workers organising with unions and taking action to decarbonise industries and the global supply chain, while campaigning and educating for a Socialist Green New Deal

● All future stimulus and bailout eligibility linked to climate action and a just transition for workers.

● Bringing the banking and financial system into democratic public control to fund a just transition; regulating private banking and finance for its climate impact.

● Delisting of companies failing to protect the environment and uphold human rights in the global supply chain.

● Linking internationally with indigenous groups, trade unions and groups resisting ecological assault.

● Legal recognition of climate refugees’ right to asylum.

Submitted by: Momentum Norfolk, Momentum South Staffordshire, Momentum International, Momentum Southwark, Momentum North East

By Pat Markey

A well-attended online organising meeting on 9 March discussed Tracy McGuire’s victimisation by Rydal Academy, Darlington, and since then there have been three days of strikes by NEU [National Education Union] members at Shrewsbury College in defence of NEU rep John Boken. Their strike action is to run for three days every week, over three weeks.

The online meeting, hosted by Darlington Trades Council, heard from local and national trade unionists and Labour Party members about the current victimisation cases, and how they can be seen in the wider context of some school bosses clamping down on the space for discussion and union organising that has been opening up during the pandemic.

Victimised NEU reps Tracy McGuire, John Boken, Louise Lewis, and Kirstie Paton all participated, and it is good that the different campaigns have made links and are working together. The NEU nationally needs to step up and urgently develop strategy to ensure our workplace reps are better supported from management victimisation. The Darlington meeting agreed to reconvene soon to discuss local campaigning to seek justice for Tracy.

Campaigning has started for the local elections on 6 May, which in one form or another cover almost every area, since they combine polls due in 2021 with those postponed from May 2020. Official rules already allow canvassing as long as we abide by the 2-metre distancing rule.

From 29 March, when people will be allowed to gather socially in groups of six or two households outdoors, the same rules will apply to political campaigning. Campaign literature must be collected or dropped off, however, without people meeting indoors, and planning meetings must be virtual.

A first thing to talk about is the series of online meetings, poplar100.com, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Labour council in Poplar, east London, defying the government over social spending and winning.

The National Audit Office reports that 94% of councils are cutting services in 2021-2, and two dozen or so are in or near financial meltdown like Croydon council. Despite huge government spending on items like private-sector Test and Trace, central government funding will not cover councils’ extra spending and reduced income in the pandemic.

Some local campaigns are developing against particular cuts, like the one against the closure of John Carroll Leisure Centre in Nottingham. Often, however, cuts budgets and poor local Labour manifestos have gone through over the heads of local Labour Parties. Even in Leeds, with some left-wing local Labour Parties and big cuts by the Labour council, a general alternative to cuts and an adequate Labour democracy remain to be fought for.

Dozens of local Labour Party officers, across the country, were suspended in and around December for allowing debate on issues like the removal of the Labour whip from Jeremy Corbyn. A few have been reinstated, but most are still in limbo. According to LabourList their cases will be heard by NEC panels by the end of March.