Labour Conference – Report Day One

By Ray Goodspeed, Leyton and Wanstead CLP delegate

The take-away message from the first day of Labour Party conference, is that the right wing are utterly dominant and they know it. On the Saturday, at Women’s conference, the elections to the Women’s Executive saw the right wing win by more than two to one.

Much was the same on the first day of full conference on the Sunday. As was expected, the right wing successfully rigged the agenda so that there were two separate sections on the NHS. This was in order to shuffle more ‘awkward’ resolutions off the agenda, a move anticipated by the Socialist Health Association, who had already opposed it and was seeking union support to overturn it.

But the manner in which the Conference arrangements were arrived at was unprecedented. The Conference Arrangements Committee itself wanted to have one session on the NHS and it only through the intervention of officers from the NEC that it was changed to two. The right wing, in other words, have introduced a new rule, that the NEC can overrule the CAC.

On top of these manoeuvres, we had outright incompetence. The Conference delegates have a ‘priorities’ ballot early on, to determine which issues can appear on the agenda. (This was the means of removing awkward NHS motions).

Delegates from London – the biggest region of the Labour Party – had one voting sheet with numbers 1 to 49 to vote for, but didn’t get the second sheet which linked the numbers on the ballot to particular subjects! Other regions did get the second sheet, so it was only by scrabbling around and looking for posters and clues that London delegates were able to cast an informed ballot.

Constitutional amendments likely all to be carried

In the ‘debate’ on the many constitutional amendments put forward by the NEC, there was only 20 minutes put aside for discussion, with less than half a dozen speakers for or against. The right wing speakers could have been predicted, mostly councillors and Prospective Parliamentary candidates, but those speaking against, to their credit, included delegates from Unite and the FBU, as well as a disabled speaker protesting against the elimination of an appropriate post for disabled members on CLP executives.

Because these were rule changes, they had to be agreed by card votes and the results of these will be published by the CAC tomorrow. We can report on those when that report comes out.

Another of the main features of the day was the set speech from deputy leader, Angela Rayner, who reminded delegates for the umpteenth time that she was once a sixteen year-old living in a council house. She plays a clever role, by acting as the ‘left shield’ of Labour’s right wing. She did, appear, however, to make cast-iron assurances that an incoming Labour government would not water down policies on improving workers’ rights and do away with zero-hours contracts as well as ‘no-fault’ evictions.

Overall, the left at the conference was very weak. The left may still exist, but many have not bothered to come along to what is mostly a stage-managed event. Even the ‘rally’ of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, was small, with perhaps a few of dozen attendees at their meeting the night before conference started.

In contrast, the Labour Assembly against Austerity/Socialist Campaign Group meeting had around 200 in attendance, with quite a few unable to get in, including me. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with their meetings, there were sixteen speakers on the platform, and no opportunity for discussion.