By John Pickard
We reported yesterday that the ‘affiliate’ vote at the conference – which has a 50% weighting in card votes – overwhelmingly supported the NEC against the aspirations and views of the constituency delegates. A closer inspection of the results of Saturday’s card votes, as published on the Sunday morning, emphasise this split very well.
In the results of the eleven card votes that were published, the solidarity of the affiliate vote – principally the big trades unions – was clear. The affiliate vote never fell below 99% in favour of the NEC recommendation and was often 100%. (At least a few of these delegations were voting against their own union policies, to ‘protect’ the NEC). The CLP vote, on the other hand, varied, sometimes supporting the NEC and sometimes against. On the two key card votes 6 (fast-track disciplinary processes) and 9 (restoration of Clause IV), the CLP majority opposed the NEC. Quite clearly, the Labour Party membership is to the left of the trade union delegations and the NEC.
In the first main debate of the day, Angela Raynor, Shadow Education minister pointed out some of the important elements of a Labour programme that can appeal to young voters, especially Labour’s commitment to the abolition of tuition fees. In the National Education Service, she pointed out, “there will be no opt-outs”. Angela promised, to great applause and cheering, to scrap Ofsted, to be replaced by a new national body to guarantee standards and provision. The scandal of expensive school uniforms, sex education and other issues were mentioned by Angela. To great applause, she finished saying, “The Tories have broken the system and we intend to repair it.”
In the debate on education, delegates were able to move ‘reference back’ of key sections of the National Policy Forum (NPF) report on Education. Moving a reference back is a way of expressing disagreement with the NPF report because of a particular policy or the absence of a key element of policy.
Calls for the abolition of the 11-plus and grammar schools
One delegate moving reference back, for example, pointed out that, surprisingly, there was no commitment in Labour’s policy to abolishing the 11-plus, even though some Tory local authorities still implement it. There is little point doing away with “high-stakes” testing at Key Stages 1 and 2 in the education system, she explained, if the highest stake test of all, the 11-plus, is still applied in some authorities. Another delegate, also from a Tory local authority area, urged that there be a clear commitment to the abolition of grammar schools that entrench and reinforce an elitist system in secondary education.
This was a call repeated by several delegates from the floor, including members deemed “a failure” as an 11-year old, but able to follow through with a very successful, high-level education. Similarly, there were impassioned speeches in favour of the abolition of private education, the means by which the Establishment maintains its position and continues its new line of ‘leaders’ generation after generation. Eton ‘posh boys’, not surprisingly, were part of the process of dividing the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’ as one delegate put it.
Key elements in education motions included the restoration of academies to local authority control, but with added democratic accountability systems so that schools really did represent local communities, including parents, teachers and students. “The Attlee government won a landslide with a message of hope”, one delegate said, “And we need to get back to some of that passion and hope”. For the record, Labour policy on these issues is as follows:
Composite 1 on education: conference resolves
· To include in the next Labour Party general election manifesto a commitment to integrate all private schools into the state sector. This would include, but is not limited to:
· Withdrawal of charitable status and all other public subsidies and tax privileges, including business rate exemption,
· Ensure universities admit the same proportion of private school students as in the wider population (currently 7 %)
· Endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically and fairly across the country’s educational institutions.
Composite 2: conference resolves to
· Stop all academisations and the opening of academies and free schools
· Ensure local authorities establish reformed, democratically accountable local education committees with stakeholder representation
· Ensure all publicly-funded schools be brought back under the control of these new local education committees.
· Ensure the newly-empowered local education committees will be the default providers of services and will be appropriately funded.
Following the Education debate, the fraternal speaker from the TUC was Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union and himself a member of the Labour Party. Mark made a rousing and very radical speech, without a doubt the best speech from the platform so far, and bringing delegates to their feet.
Talking on the value of the NHS, he pointed out that he had had four life-saving operations and was celebrating 1000 days since his heart transplant. We have to say to the Tories and Donald Trump, “keep your dirty mitts off our NHS.” He also pointed out how much the NHS relies on the hard work and dedication of workers from all parts of the world, denigrated day in and day out as ‘immigrants’ and made to feel unwelcome by the government.
Overwhelming support for the NHS
The discussion on the NHS was relatively uncontentious, with easily the big majority of union and CLP delegates able to bring their own experiences of NHS cuts, privatisations and PFI to the rostrum. Hardly a person in the conference hall would have been unaware of the role of Labour in setting up the NHS and its central role in the well-being of the working class as a world-leading service free at the point of use.
When it came to the voting on reference back, you would have thought that socialists would be in favour of the abolition of the 11-plus and grammar schools, but the NEC recommendation was to oppose reference back. A show of hands was clearly in favour, with (disgracefully) some union delegates voting as a block to support the NEC. There was a lot of confusion and a little booing at this point as the chair tried hard to get the NEC recommendation through, but given the massive show of hands against, it had to go to a card vote later in the day (see below).
On Sunday afternoon, Diane Abbot, Shadow Home Secretary, was extremely well-received, mauling the hypocrisy of the Lib-Dems over austerity and many other issues and promising an end to the ‘hostile environment’ and other racist Tory policies. She also promised official enquiries into the blacklisting scandal and the battle or Orgreave during the miners’ strike. Looking forward to the coming general election, “I say to Boris Johnson,” she said, “Bring it on!”
In the same session, a very important resolution was taken from the Labour women’s conference deploring the situation in which many destitute and impoverished women from migrant communities were being charged for NHS services. It meant that many women were afraid of asking for or receiving necessary treatment and in some cases where they have been treated, receive huge bills of thousands of pounds, often to be settled in weeks.
Resolution from Labour Women’s conference
Domestic abuse and the inadequacy of service provision was another important issue and often this overlapped with concerns about NHS provisions and charges. One woman, it was reported by and NHS worker who had been close to the case, was even charged for an ambulance ride as she was driven from hospital where she had been treated, back to the abuser.
There were very strong feelings expressed on these issues and a determination that Labour must offer proper services, in freedom and dignity, to all women, irrespective of their national status. In relation to the detention of migrant women the resolution that was passed committed Labour to
· End the detention of asylum-seeking women
· End the detention of survivors of gender-based violence
· End the detention of pregnant women
· Put a 28-day limit on all immigration detention.
Resolutions on the NHS and social care were passed overwhelmingly, perhaps unanimously, by a show of hands, but in the voting on referencing back parts of the NPF report, there was a huge amount of confusion. It is a strange custom at LP conference – not that delegates are all happy with it – to have all the votes at the end of each session. That means that a reference back moved at, say 2.15, may not be voted on until three hours later and the terms and reasons for the reference back may not always be clear. Unlike a resolution or composite, which is published, the reasons for the reference back are not.
The whole arcane process threw many delegates into complete confusion. It all stems from the idiotic process of developing policies through the ‘National Policy Forum’ and not just leaving it to conference, as it used to be before the Blair years. So the NPF comes forward with a policy, and part of this, say a paragraph on schools, is criticised by delegates because it isn’t perfect. Hence, some CLPs move ‘reference back’. Sometimes there are serious omissions – like not calling for the abolition of the 11-plus – but sometimes also the omissions are less serious and the frequency of references back clearly irks some delegates. One CLP moved seven or eight on one day alone.
Add to this chaotic picture the growing antipathy (or so it seemed) between the trade union delegations, backing everything the NEC wanted, and the CLP delegates wanting to kick over the traces and it was a recipe for some difficulties in the voting. What was more, the voting power of the trades unions – 50%, remember – was not matched by the actual numbers on the floor of the conference, where they were outnumbered about four to one.
Consequently, at the end of this long day, delegates were not prepared to take the chair’s view on a show of hands and every single reference back came down to a card vote. Tuesday, therefore, ended with a dozen consecutive card votes, the results of which we will get the following day.
September 22, 2019
