Outside the conference centre in Brighton, there is a huge banner with its colour morphing from red on the left, to blue on the right, a perfect metaphor for the trajectory of the party under Starmer, from the radical manifesto of 2019 to the Tory-lite of today.
As the conference assembles, rather than morphing from one colour to the other, it looks like there will be a bitter clash between the right wing – who are clearly better organised this year than before (as well as left delegates being filtered out) – and the radical rank and file in the CLPs and trade unions. The backdrop to the opening was Keir Starmer’s attempt to reduce the franchise of party members in future leadership elections.
It looks like Starmer had tried to sell his proposal to the trade union bosses in TULO, the trade union liaison organisation – on the disingenuous grounds that their members would have ‘more influence’ under the old electoral college method. This is plain wrong, of course, because their individual members already have a say as either party ‘supporters’, affiliated members or as individual members of the party. The trade union general secretaries are not as stupid as Starmer thinks they are, and turned his proposal down flat.
Trade union members are concerned about concrete issues
More to the point, the trade union leaders are concerned about all those issues that are affecting their members. As we predicted in a recent editorial, the unions are under pressure from their own members to address real issues, not constitutional changes.
It was hardly surprising therefore, that even leading figures on the right of the party refused to back Starmer’s drive to reduce the franchise. That included the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, and the Labour mayor of London. Sadiq Khan.
And so to the opening session of conference, and the first big cheer was when a delegate asked why the “lying, Tory Sun” was allowed credentials to the conference. Other than Margaret Beckett’s opening as chair, the first important keynote speaker was Angela Raynor, who referenced key workers, to loud applause. Care workers not paid for travelling between different places, were having to make a choice of more care (without pay) or cutting down on caring time. As is obligatory in all her speeches, Raynor referred to her own experiences as a care worker.
She presented a green paper on employment rights, published today, which she said (correctly) is “our most detailed set of policies to date”. That is not hard, given that so few policies have come out of Labour’s front bench.
Labour’s proposals widely trailed in the press
The proposals have been widely trailed in the press, dealing with rights at work, low pay, zero-hours contracts. “It doesn’t have to be this way”, she said, “Labour will make different choices…we will empower people to have a real say over their lives.” No-one in the hall, of course, will be opposed to real measures to relieve poor working conditions or pay, but the devil is in the detail.
It is all very well having “employers” and “employees” being obliged by government to “sit down together”, but there is also a very distinct possibility – it has happened with Labour governments in the past – where the ‘arbitrated’ figure for wage rises are simply not adequate, where the trade unions will be ‘expected’ to accept a poor settlement for their members.
It is one thing for Raynor to say that “Labour will insist on collective bargaining in every sector to stop the race to the bottom” and to have “legally enforced” standards on pay and rights at work. But it is another thing to insist that unions accept whatever it is that is being offered, which has often been the outcome of government-sponsored arbitrations in the past.
It would have been far better for the deputy Labour-leader to have given a commitment to do away with all of the anti-union legislation that the Tories have brought in to hamstring the unions. Sadly, that commitment is nowhere in sight, in the green paper or outside the green paper.
All the anti-Tory comments of Raynor were well-received.
Every one of the strong anti-Tory elements of Angela Raynor’s speech was well-received, as we would expect. There were strong anti-Tory statements on the Tories’ “one law” being “one law for us and one for them”. “And who can forget”, she asked to laughter, “the Barnard Castle eye test?”
These were all comments very well received, as were the references to the very radical Labour government of 1945. What Raynor did not say, of course, was that most right wing ‘Labour’ MPs, had they been in politics in 1945, would have found the programme of that Labour government ‘too radical’.
When it came to the report of the General Secretary, Evans’ speech was littered with interruptions. “Everyone remembered why they joined the Labour Party”, he said, “what was it for you?” To that there were shouts of “Corbyn!”. Despite this, there was a good degree of support among delegates and visitors for Evans, who was even given a standing ovation by some (clearly the right wing is far more organised), while hundreds were sitting on their hands.
Constitutional proposals
The vote on the acceptance of Evans as general secretary went straight to a card vote, without there being a show of hands (as rule says it should) and in the event, it was agreed by just under 60 per cent in favour, to just over 40 per cent against. We will see in the detailed report tomorrow how that breaks down as between the CLPs and the trade union votes.
It was only towards the end of the day that real issues began to intrude into the conference. There were some excellent resolutions from the Labour women’s annual conference, Labour International and the ASLEF union. “
For example, this is a large extract from the women’s conference resolution:
“Women are 69% of low wage earners, 54% of zero hours contract workers and have 74% of part time contracts.
In the childcare sector, 96% of workers are female and one in eight workers earns less than £5 per hour.
These inequalities grew during the years of Tory austerity and have been exacerbated by the pandemic and Government responses.
Women on furlough or who took unpaid leave for childcare reasons may be more likely to be selected for redundancy.
Poverty during the pandemic has been exacerbated for women compared to men.
Conference notes COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities experienced by women in the UK in particular BAME women, working class women, women on low-incomes, disabled women, mothers and carers.
Single parents (90% women) and mothers of children with disabilities have been seriously affected, struggling to balance full-time childcare and work”.
Real issues intruding on conference at last.
Further resolutions were move on violence against women, passionately and articulately moved, and finding little if any opposition from the floor of conference. These are very real issues that Labour will need to embrace and there were calls for domestic abuse shelters and other welfare provisions to be funded by an incoming Labour government.
This section of conference, dealing with issues held dear by many, if not all delegates, was in the same tone of the conferences in the past three years, in that it reflected real problems outside the bubble of conference hall. Whenever conference deals with real issues it will be the same. The right wing will do their utmost to push the party towards a Tory-lite strategy, but they will keep bumping up against real issues and real aspirations, and in that respect they will be found wanting.
After these resolutions were debated and agreed, the first session was focused again on constitutional issues. The NEC has brought forward (published in Conferences Arrangement Committee report 1) a large number of constitutional changes, 45 pages-worth. It is little short of disgraceful that such a widespread attempt at constitutional change should be sprung on conference without LP members or CLPs having the slightest idea what was going to brought forward.
Some of the proposals are relatively uncontentious, including (perhaps) the establishment of sections and rights for women members, BAME members and disabled members. We say ‘perhaps’ because few delegates will have had the time to read the pages and pages of detailed proposals by the time they are debated and voted on and no CLPs or members outside the conference will have even seen them.
Sinister proposals on new members
One of the proposals on membership, however, is positively sinister. The NEC is proposing that new party members serve a probationary period, during which their membership is ‘provisional’. This is how one clause would read:
“The General Secretary may at any point during the provisional membership rule that a provisional member’s application for full membership be rejected for any reason which the General Secretary sees fit, including but no limited to the provisional member’s conduct prior to their application to join the party, or on the grounds that the provisional member does not share the values of the Labour Party” (emphasis added).
There was some debate on these complex rule changes, and there were very strong feelings expressed by a number of delegates that local Labour members should be able to select candidates and that there should not be ‘central control’ of selection, even where a by-election might be called at short notice. On the membership rule change, Joe Attard was both cheered and booed by different sections of delegates when he made direct references to the witch-hunt of left delegates and Socialist Appeal by name.
‘Heavy-handedness’ of conference management
One delegate, who declared himself a support of Keir Starmer (still) nevertheless still expressed his opposition to all of the NEC proposals and the ‘heavy-handedness’ that is creeping into party procedures.
There were other rule changes proposed by CLPs, including one for the election of Labour’s general secretary. The NEC, needless to say, opposed every rule change proposed by a CLP. Fifteen card votes, on all of these constitutional changes, ended the session. The results will be out tomorrow.
It certainly looks like the defining characteristic of this conference is that it is far more split than it has been in recent years and the vote on Evans being general secretary probably gives a good approximation of the balance of forces on the floor of conference, although it remains to be seen how that breaks down between the CLPs and unions.
Finally, as an aside, there were quite strict Covid regulations in place at conference. Everyone entering the hall had to have evidence of a recent negative test or a ‘vaccination certificate’ to show they’d had two jabs. Visitors were bemused (and a few objected) to being herded into a single, narrow central section of the upstairs gallery, with the East and West galleries closed off. Two years ago in Brighton (no Covid) the entire gallery was open to visitors. This year (Covid) we’re all packed into one section. Explain that.
