The most recent e-mail circular from the leadership of Momentum seeks to rally support for a recall Labour Party conference. “Hard working Labour members are being unjustly suspended”, it says, “while CLPs have their rights and freedoms undermined”.
There is no doubt at all that a pall of Stalinist gloom has descended on the Labour Party since the election of Keir Starmer as leader and the subsequent appointment of David Evans as general secretary. At no time in modern history has the Labour Party membership been so much stifled and restricted about what it can and cannot discuss.
We have seen many instances where Labour Parties or individual members have been suspended for spurious reasons. The crisis of free speech in the party is such that it has become, in effect, verboten even to criticise the general secretary. National and regional officers of the Party have demanded that resolutions be ruled out of order for the ‘crime’ of calling for a vote of no confidence in David Evans.
The growing dictatorial powers of the Party apparatchiks are such that regional and national officers are now interfering in the right of local Party members to select candidates in council and mayoral contests. Increasingly, candidates are being ‘vetted’ to match the political profile of Evans/Starmer clones. Liverpool is a case in point, where all three candidates in an all-woman shortlist for mayor have been arbitrarily ruled out by Labour officials.
We have a leader who sacked his own front Shadow Cabinet member for a tweet but who refuses to call for the sacking of a Tory minister who the High Court found to be acting illegally. So, yes, there most certainly is a crisis in the Party. Particularly, as Momentum says, there is a need to “stop the crackdown and reassert the democratic principles on which our Party was founded”.
Model resolution for March NEC
The campaign aims to have a “rally in defence of Party democracy” on March 6, just before that month’s NEC meeting. The Momentum circular includes the following model resolution which it recommends should be moved and passed through CLPs as an “emergency motion” at the “first available opportunity”.
This meeting notes the escalating crisis within the Labour Party concerning freedom of debate, freedom of speech, and interference in the workings of our CLPs.
This meeting believes that the party’s crisis needs to be addressed urgently.
This meeting recognises that the supreme policy-making body of our party is our national conference, composed of delegates from the CLPs, trade unions, and other affiliated organisations. We believe that this is the only body with the necessary authority to resolve this crisis.
We therefore demand that the NEC organises an immediate national recall conference of the Labour Party, under rule Clause VI:1 of the Constitutional Rules, with the purpose of ending the impasse, restoring party democracy and achieving genuine unity as the only means for the party to achieve victory at forthcoming elections.
“The work of the party shall be under the direction and control of Party conference, which shall itself be subject to the constitution and standing orders of the Party. Party conference shall meet regularly once in every year and also at such other times as it may be convened by the NEC.”
Not a serious proposition
Supporters of Left Horizons will be happy to move and endorse this resolution at CLP meetings and at meetings of trade unions and other affiliated organisations. But at the same time, we question the point of a campaign that is demanding something that we know in advance will not be granted.
The campaign amounts to a request by the right-wing to voluntarily surrender its majority on the NEC. Resolutions might be useful as a moral statement but a recall conference just will not happen. On the assumption that the NEC will ignore any such resolutions forwarded to it, or votes down any resolutions moved in the NEC meeting itself, the question then arises, what next?
It has been suggested that in the event of the March NEC refusing to organise a recall conference – as it will – then affiliated unions, the ‘left’ and sponsors of the campaign should call the conference themselves. We have to say, in all honesty, and without in any way challenging the motives of the campaign’s sponsors, this fall-back suggestion is just not a serious proposition.
How much support would there be, even among CLPs – the hardest-hit by the new Evans/Starmer clamp-down – for a ‘conference’ four months before the real one? And what kind of ‘conference’ would it be, without USDAW, UNISON, Unite, GMB and other big, affiliated unions, who are unlikely to send delegates?
Many sponsors among trade unions
Although there are nominally many sponsors of this campaign from the trade union movement, their ‘support’ is much like support for a petition – like giving a nod to a good idea, so long as there is no commitment to do anything. Apart from a couple of left MPs like Richard Burgon, and Momentum itself, there is actually very little real activity or mobilisation going on around the left or the unions for the idea of a recall conference.
Ian Hodson, for example, is the national president of the Baker’s union, BFAWU, apparently a union sponsoring the campaign. In an excellent November blog by Ian on his union’s website – in the context of their members discussing whether or not to disaffiliate from Labour – he asks the question: who, exactly, are the current Labour leadership representing?
“The political direction of the Labour Party in recent months,” he writes, “along with the promotion of MPs who worked tirelessly to ensure that the Party lost both the 2017 and 2019 elections, has given members cause for concern”. We agree one hundred percent with what Ian has written in this blog.
But if the BFAWU as a union were really serious about campaigning for a recall Labour conference – as opposed to just signing a petition – wouldn’t there be a more recent blog or a headline or an article somewhere on the union website about it?
Unite, also apparently a supporter of the call, doesn’t feature the issue anywhere on its website either. If it is a worthwhile issue, then there should be serious campaign. But sadly, there isn’t.
Need to campaign for left NECs
We have to ask, wouldn’t the valuable time and efforts of activists be better spent on working to elect lefts on the NEC of UNISON, or the Labour NEC, or working for left gains in other affiliated unions? If there was a swing to the left on the UNISON NEC, for example, that alone would shift the balance of power on Labour’s NEC, on which there are currently two UNISON representatives voting with the right wing.
Then there are elections to the Labour NEC itself. Nominations may be some way off, but it is still an issue that needs to be discussed. Will this same Momentum leadership currently campaigning for a lost cause agree to a democratic, unified left slate for the NEC elections next time around?
Last year, Momentum participated in a disgraceful stitch-up, whereby a small group of lefts got together behind closed doors – excluding many important parts of the Labour left – and declared their six candidates to be the left slate. This closed-door decision of the so-called ‘Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance’ was the main reason why the left was unable to present a united front in last year’s NEC elections.
For a single, unified, left slate
Although Labour’s NEC elections are now conducted by a single transferable vote, it is a system designed to produce a proportional vote, and it does. It is completely wrong to argue that a unified left slate ‘doesn’t matter’. A single, left slate – for all of the nine CLP seats – would be far more effective than a variety of slates relying on voting ‘transfers’ that may or may not happen. In our opinion, it would be a far more effective use of their time for the most active lefts in the party to concentrate on having single unified slate for these Labour NEC and trade union elections.
Supporters of Left Horizons will take heed of the call coming out of Momentum for resolutions in support of a recall conference. But we will also be looking for moves by Momentum to democratise the process whereby a left NEC slate is determined – by the involvement of all sections of the left, by open hustings of candidates and some form of democratic vote. That, in our opinion, with serious work to swing the unions to the left, would be far more useful campaigns and ones that could potentially produce far more meaningful results.
