- Aggressive support for strikes and workers’ struggles
- Consistent internationalism, including fighting for free movement and to reverse Brexit
- Arguing to replace capitalism with socialism, a radically new society based on common ownership and democratic and workers’ control, not profit-making
- Radical policies so the labour movement can serve working-class interests and push towards socialism
- Democratising Labour, making conference the party’s sovereign decision-making body
The election of a Labour government in July 2024 was not the end of the campaign. Labour at the grassroots must continue to campaign against the far right, to build Labour membership, branches and activity on the ground, to strengthen links with the trades unions, and to support workers’ struggles.
That the very first Labour conference after the election passed policy critical of actions of the government within its first 100 days, calling for taxation of wealth to rebuild public services not cuts to welfare provision, shows that there is an understanding that the party must hold the government to account. We need a reorganised Labour left able to take on these challenges and build for the future.
To this end, we are putting forward a programme that centres on three big themes:
1. Democracy
2. Class struggle
3. Internationalism
1. Democracy
One of the basic problems in society – in the political system and in the economy – is the lack of democracy. But at the moment, our own movement isn’t even democratic: our MPs are unaccountable to members, and policy is largely decided behind closed doors. Despite talk of about democratising Labour, little of that happened in the ‘Corbyn years’ and Momentum became an uncritical top-down mobilising vehicle for that leadership in which there was no real internal democracy. The left has incubated a lack of pluralism, and an intolerance for dissent.
We need radical change in Labour and the trade unions. This means:
Transforming Labour, including campaigning for thoroughgoing structural changes including open selection. Party conference should determine party policy and manifestos. We support campaigns to push radical policy in the party, and win back the NEC with democratically selected left candidates.
Advocating pluralism and a healthy political culture, in which dissent and disagreement are encouraged and given space.
Democratising the trade unions, pushing for bottom-up decision-making and minimal bureaucracy. Union members should decide how the union intervenes in the Labour party. Pushing for a democratisation of the British state, with decentralised power and a fairer voting system.
For a democratic Labour left, learning the lessons of past mistakes.
2. Class struggle
The 2024 Labour government has taken office in far more challenging conditions than in 1997; capitalism is tearing our climate and our societies apart. We are facing an unprecedented economic crisis. It is likely that in the period of office of this government there will be huge struggles over unemployment, housing, poverty, migration and climate refugees. Labour must support these, and Labour on the ground must do so even where the leadership fails.
The route to a better world is through working class self-organisation. This means turning Labour into a movement that can actively participate in a struggle.
For a short period in the ‘Corbyn years’ Momentum attracted and sometimes mobilised large numbers of people. But as a political organisation to educate and organise for class struggle, and to push forward the transformation of the Labour Party and wider labour movement, it was not fit for purpose.
We want to see a Labour left which works with left and democratic struggles in the trades unions and:
Stands for socialism – for replacing capitalism with a new society based on democratic social ownership of major industry, services and finance, and workers’ control. This means educating people about the difference between social democracy and socialism.
Actively fights climate change, with a Socialist Green New Deal including the full 2019 Labour Party conference policy, expanded to include public ownership of banking and finance and opposition to airport expansion.
Intervenes in the trade unions in favour of rank-and-file coordination, democracy and radical action, by giving its members the tools and data to organise themselves.
Recognises that taking a strong stand against racism, sexism, transphobia, and all other bigotry and oppression is not an optional extra in class struggle but a core part of it. Labour should lead anti-racist and anti- fascist campaigning in our communities and mobilise on the streets where necessary. We must better educate against racist and prejudiced currents within the labour movement and in wider society, such as antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Actively supports workers’ and working-class community struggles, and grassroots organising to build and transform the labour movement; and campaigns to repeal all anti-union laws.
Calls on Labour councils to join their workforces and communities in fighting cuts, and advocates tackling social problems with structural social reform rather than repressive “law and order” policies.
Takes active steps to ensure reach out and organise within underrepresented communities, in solidarity with ongoing struggles; and pushes for self-organised BAME and liberation structures in the Labour Party.
3. Internationalism
In the UK and across the world, the enemy we face is an insurgent nationalist far right, which has the support of much of the pre-existing ruling class bolstered by a right-wing press. Our answer to this threat must be unflinching: we need to challenge, not accommodate, right wing ideas about nation, race and immigration. The working class is all of us, everywhere, and we must fight against attempts to reduce it to a parochial, cultural or ethnic monolith.
While they put forward some positive rhetoric, both Labour and its left have at various points failed the test of internationalism and solidarity. The Corbyn leadership abandoned free movement and proposed harsher ‘no recourse to public funds’ policies in 2017.
The UK is a global power, and plays a deeply reactionary role in international institutions, and in the oppressive war on terror and war on drugs. The labour movement must be, and must look to build, a beacon of solidarity and hope.
We want an internationalist Labour movement and Labour left. This means:
Standing in solidarity with workers and oppressed minorities across the globe
Connecting the struggles of workers globally
Fighting unequivocally for migrants’ rights, and to defend and extend free movement, including the Labour Campaign for Free Movement platform previously won at Labour conference and against the reactionary ‘border security force’ politics that the LCFM campaigning was able to push back at 2024 conference.
Fighting Fortress Europe, welcoming refugees and challenging racist immigration policies in the UK and across the EU.
Campaigning against the effects of Boris Johnson’s Brexit – on immigration restrictions, deregulation, and regressive trade deals – and for a return to the EU.
Campaigning for, or helping to organise, an international democratic assembly and other ways to bring together socialists from across Europe together to debate and discuss common strategies.
Campaigning against a military-industrial complex which funds and supports violent border regimes and wars
Challenging British nationalism, and the politics and nostalgia of imperialism.
Fostering a politics of solidarity with indigenous struggles and oppressed people in Palestine, Kurdistan, Uyghuristan, Kashmir, Sudan and across the world, and building workers’ solidarity with the anti-war opposition in Israel such as Standing Together, and with the people of Ukraine against Putin’s imperial adventure.
Labour Left Internationalists 