Party democracy is under attack – Conference must defend it

It is currently unclear the precise proposals the NEC will put to Conference to change the rules in relation to Labour leadership elections and MPs reselections. Those rule changes will be discussed at ’the NEC meeting on Friday 24 September.
The Starmer leadership is expected to propose to the NEC changes to the rules on the election of Party Leader and the triggering of MPs by local parties. These issues were discussed with affiliated unions earlier this week, but at that point Starmer’s team were unable to secure agreement with the unions.

New Labour leadership election rules to stop another Jeremy Corbyn
The right wing want to end the ‘One Member, One Vote’ (OMOV) system for leadership elections. Instead of Party members being central in choosing the leader, it is being proposed to return to an ‘electoral college’ where members’ votes are reduced to one third of the total electorate and accompanied by another third for both MPs and affiliated organisations.
Granting of a one-third vote to Labour MPs would give Labour’s 200 MPs the same voting weight in any election as over 400,000 members and millions of affiliated trade union members.
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has described the move as ‘unfair, undemocratic and a backwards step for our party,’ and the TSSA’s Manuel Cortes described it as ‘gerrymandering’. Plus the General Secretaries of the CWU, FBU, ASLEF, and BFAWU are also believed to be opposed to such a proposal.

Reduce accountability of Labour MPs
The right are proposing that the trigger ballot system for reselecting Members of Parliament is altered to strengthen the position of sitting MPs in relation to both party members and trade unions. Under the current rules, an MP faces a contest if one third of CLP branches or one third of affiliate branches vote in favour. The right want to see this threshold increase to half of the total number of branches, reversing welcome democratic advances under Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership.

The removal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn is damaging the Labour Party. It has created unnecessary internal conflict at a time when the party’s focus should be on attacking the Tories and building our electoral support.

The decision to exclude Jeremy from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is completely unjust. It runs counter to the clear decision of Labour’s NEC to restore Jeremy’s party membership – which the Party leadership had suspended. Trade unions, led by Unite, tried to help the leadership resolve the conflict it had created but, as the former General Secretary Len McCluskey points out, the Party leadership reneged on the agreement to readmit Jeremy.

The Tory media would have us believe that attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, by our Party, are a good thing. They demonstrate that under our ‘new management’ we are no longer the party of our 2017 and 2019 manifestos, with those popular policies that so upset the establishment.

What the Tory media does not focus on is the harm being inflicted on Labour’s standing. Since the whip was removed from Jeremy, Labour’s support in opinion polls has significantly declined, and we have suffered electoral set backs – the predominately poor election results in May (with a notable exception in Wales, where there is a left Labour government) plus significant loss of support in the last three parliamentary by-elections.

Conference can restore the whip to Jeremy

Delegates to this month’s Labour conference have it in their power to return the whip to Jeremy. Conference is the Party’s supreme decision making body. There is a proposed constitutional amendment on the agenda (on Page 15 of the Delegates Report) that would require the PLP and Chief Whip to be accountable to Conference. If that proposal is agreed delegates would then be able to vote to return the Labour Party whip to Jeremy.

False claims

Opponents of the proposed constitutional amendment have been trying to falsely claim that the amendment would interfere in the party’s processes of disciplinary action against Labour MPs, on sexual harassment or racism, and that it would lead to such matters being inappropriately discussed by Conference. This is not the case. These opponents hope that Conference delegates can not grasp the difference between membership of the Labour Party and membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Complaints of sexual harassment, racism and other matters that bring the party into disrepute are investigated by, and handled by, the Party not the PLP, and any decision by the Party to suspend the Party membership of an MP automatically leads to their suspension from the PLP. The entirely separate powers of the Chief Whip to make a decision to suspend an MP from the PLP cover different matters.

The proposed constitutional amendment would have absolutely no impact on those disciplinary matters that the Party handles according to rules laid out in the Rule Book. The suspension of PLP members from party membership is the same as it is for any ordinary Party member. In addition, when an MP is suspended from Party membership, they are automatically suspended from their PLP membership. They lose the Labour whip automatically. It is not a decision of the Chief Whip.
Separate from the Party’s Rule Book, the Chief Whip has entirely separate powers to suspend an MP from their PLP membership. These are powers that are set out in the PLP’s Standing Orders, not in the Party’s Rule Book.

The PLP is an important sub-section of the Party and, like any other parts of the Party, its powers can, and should, be subject to the overall control of Annual Conference. The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to do that and is limited to permitting Party Conference to confirm or void the decisions of the Chief Whip to suspend an MP from the PLP – it does not propose to alter in any way the process by which MPs have their Party membership suspended in relation to disciplinary matters covered by the Party’s Rule Book. The proposed constitutional amendment would not change one single word of the disciplinary process currently set out in the Rule Book.

For further information visit here.

Support the proposed constitutional amendment to the Rule Book’s Chapter 3 (Party Conference), Clause III (Procedural rules for Party Conference) – Agenda.

The Labour Party appears to be in organisational crisis – a disciplinary process that is clearly unfit for purpose, a re-organisation programme with proposed redundancies leading to high votes for industrial action, the loss of over 100,000 members, a potential disaffiliation of one of its found trade union members and an electoral strategy that is proving disastrous – dismantling, not building on, the coalition needed for Labour to win elections. The Forde report has been buried and none of the necessary lessons learned or action taken from the leaked report or on the issues of racism, sexism and internal working against Labour election victory that it raised.

While the whole leadership must bear responsibility, Annual Conference, as the sovereign body of the Labour Party, has the opportunity to endorse, or not, the recommendation of the National Executive Committee to appoint David Evans as General Secretary (GS). Unfortunately, under his watch the overall situation has been damaging for the Party. Individual Party members and trade unions are being alienated, alongside many voters. Annual Conference therefore has a responsibility to instruct the NEC to think again.

Of particular concern:

• A series of instructions preventing CLPs from discussing important issues for the future of the Party leading to an unprecedented level of objection from over 200 CLP chairs and secretaries and multiple suspensions of key local activists, sending local organisation into a nose-dive.
• The ‘proscription’ of left organisations, and potential for more, targeting individuals with guilt by association rather than individual behaviour, and applied retrospectively and well beyond what was agreed by the NEC. Plus a series of decisions and ‘errors’ which have targeted high profile elected women such as Kate Osborne MP, Jess Barnard, Chair of Young Labour, and former PPC Pamela Fitzpatrick in the disciplinary process going way beyond the rulebook.
• An electoral strategy that appears to focus solely on winning over Tory voters (one of the least likely groups of people to switch to Labour), but alienates in particular young and Black, Asian, Ethnic Minority and Muslim voters (who are more likely to vote Labour), and fails to learn the lessons of coalition building and the need to fight the Tories from either 2017, 2019 or the successes of the Welsh Labour government.

We desperately need a Labour government, and we are currently going in the wrong direction to achieve one. Sadly it appears that under the watch of the current acting General Secretary the Party is focussed only on faction fighting against the members, with no route to building the organisation we need to win. We therefore urge delegates to vote against his endorsement.

The NEC’s recommendation should be put to a card vote on Saturday. If for any reason the Conference Chair fails to announce a card vote and makes the claim that Evans has been endorsed, every delegate should jump up and demand a card vote.

The NEC is bringing forward rule changes to create a new disciplinary process, delegates should be aware of the following points:

The proposed new disciplinary scheme is NOT GENUINELY INDEPENDENT. It allows the new bodies created to be appointed by the General Secretary.
Common law natural justice rules state that a tribunal member must be unbiased and impartial, and therefore cannot also be an accuser, or a member of a group that is the accuser. Instead the NEC is the substantive discretionary decision making body at every stage. The NEC is police, prosecution, judge, jury and executioner.

In cases involving protected characteristics, the power to determine the disciplinary rules of the Party, is vested almost entirely in the NEC Disputes Panel. The NEC effectively has a unilateral discretion to define the substantive meaning of:

– conduct that is prejudicial to the Party; acts which are grossly detrimental;

– what incidents might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on… [the listed protected characteristics];

– the meaning, interpretation and application of the Codes of Conduct;

– The extent of the right to free expression members may have based on the NEC Panels interpretation of the Party’s ‘aims and values’, ‘agreed codes of conduct’, or ‘involving prejudice towards any protected characteristic’;

– a proportionate sanction.

A new Independent Review Board (IRB) is limited to only procedural concerns i.e. compliance with Party rules, the law, and new ‘principles of independence’. The ‘new’ ‘Principles of Independence’ are almost entirely illusory. They do little more in most instances than replicate existing legal obligations. The membership of the (IRB) is controlled by the General Secretary and not by an independent appointment process.

The NEC is able to issue Codes of Conduct and can issue as many Codes as it wishes, on any subject it wishes, whenever it wishes. It makes its own Rules which it defines and applies. The NEC Disputes Panel is subject to ratification by the full NEC, including the same NEC members who conducted the NEC Panel in the first instance.
A new Independent Complaints Board (ICB) is made up of four lawyers, four lay members and four HR or regulatory experts. The General Secretary recruits the IAB members undermining its independence. A convicted member has no absolute right of appeal and the ICB must decide there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to consider an appeal.

Politics is about power, and democratic elections are about the authoritative allocation of that power. Labour needs a Parliamentary majority in order to achieve that power and to carry out a democratic socialist manifesto.

Labour is the only Parliamentary party that bases its programme on this political outlook. Under proportional representation, it would be forced to do deals with pro-free market parties thus diluting our political programme and ideals. Negotiations with other parties will inevitably take place behind closed doors and any popular electoral mandate ignored. Remember broken promises on tuition fees in 2010?

This diluting of our manifesto will impact on our ability to reduce inequality and to expand public services such as health, social care and education. First past the post ensures that voters choose governments and not MPs. In the 2011 referendum, the vote on the Alternative Vote was lost by 2-1 so Labour is unlikely to find popular support for electoral reform of the Westminster voting system.

Delegates should not vote for PR in the priorities ballot and, if debated, vote against any pro-PR motion if they want to see democratic socialist policies implemented in the country.

Under past regimes in the Party, there have been reports of staff politically interfering and telling CLP delegates how to vote on issues. This is explicitly against the code of conduct for Party staff. If any delegates come across this or other cheating please report the incidents to NEC member Gemma Bolton (email gemmabolton.labour @ gmail.com)

CLPD produces a daily guide to conference called ‘Yellow Pages’. It is handed out to delegates each day before the start of the day’s conference business.

You can also sign up to receive it by email here: https://bit.ly/CLPD-delegates.

Help is always needed to distribute the print edition Yellow Pages each morning. If you can help please come on Saturday to the front of the Hilton Metropole Hotel at 10am, and on Sunday to Wednesday to the front of the Grand Hotel at 8:30am.

Don’t miss CLPD’s Labour Party Conference Fringes at this year’s conference. We will be joined by activists, MPs, trade unionists and Labour Party committee representatives to discus the campaign for a democratic Party and a transformative Labour government.