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NATIONAL CONFERENCE 2016: NC STATEMENT

3rd October 2016

NATIONAL CONFERENCE 2016: NC STATEMENT

TRANSFORMING OUR PARTY TO TRANSFORM OUR SOCIETY

Contents

1. The Domestic Situation
2-3. Corbyn – A victory for class politics
4-5. The Battle inside Labour

6-8. Achieving Our Goal

9-10. Fighting Tory Austerity

11-13. EU Exit, Wars and Immigration
14. Preparing for 2020, or 2017?
15-20. The Labour Party

• Fighting the Purge

• Rule changes

• Challenging Prejudice and Bigotry

• Re-selection

• Labour’s Policy Process

• The Trades Unions

21-24. Prospects for the Labour Left

• Momentum

• Labour Briefing

THE DOMESTIC SITUATION
1. The UK is in the midst of a wholly new political situation - one with profound opportunities but also risks for the left. The vote to leave the EU in June 2016 has seen the fall of the Cameron government and the end of Osborne, coupled with the installation of a more right-wing Conservative government under Theresa May, in a broader context of deepening social divisions, not least over the vote to leave the EU, and rising overt racism and intolerance.  Yet the ascendancy of the Tories is very fragile. Their parliamentary majority is small, they have the electoral support of less than a quarter of the electorate and they are riven by internal struggles, as shown by opposition within their own ranks to grammar schools. They can be beaten.

CORBYN – A VICTORY FOR CLASS POLITICS
2. The re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader is of profound significance. The campaign engaged the activity of tens of thousands of activists in a party whose membership has trebled since the 2015 General Election. The focus of Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents on personality rather than policy underlines the extent to which the battle over policy issues is being won. It is too unpopular for Labour’s right-wing to openly attack the ideas of Jeremy Corbyn; hence the emphasis on leadership qualities, the people who support him, their alleged tactics, etc.
3. Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat of his opponents was a victory for class politics against a project mounted by the right-wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party, their many friends in the media and millionaire donors. As Paul Mason wrote: “Ranged against us are all the people listed as donors to Progress, Saving Labour and Labour Tomorrow: the hedge funds, supermarket bosses and City types who thought the Labour Party was going to be a vehicle for a compassionate form of neoliberalism. What they’re facing is the permanent loss of the Labour Party as an institution supporting the economic system of the past 30 years. That’s why they’re fighting so hard to undermine us.” https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/find-each-other-and-act-dd566b812732#.9iz10j8n9

THE BATTLE INSIDE LABOUR
4. Now, for all the talk of new parties and factions, the diehard right-wing has nowhere to go: the old political centre has collapsed and few Labour members would follow them away from the Party. For the immediate future, Corbyn’s leadership, re-established with an increased majority, is unassailable.  But this will not be a permanent state of affairs. Despite the current talk of Party unity, Progress and Labour First supporters do not rule out further leadership challenges. The finely balanced NEC may continue to make life extremely difficult for the leadership.  The mixed results of Labour’s 2016 conference show that the left has yet to secure control of the Party and its decision-making bodies at a local and national level. There is a continuing guerrilla war by the right-wing and the bureaucracy against Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda. The sniping, purges and sabotage have not stopped.
5. At the time of writing we simply do not know how many of the ‘soft left’ in the PLP are prepared to accept the Corbyn agenda and work alongside Jeremy in Parliament – leaving the irreconcilable right-wing in permanent opposition to his leadership. Moreover, an early election could lead to a Labour defeat and the downfall of the entire project. The left has a unique opportunity – a real chance to make a difference – but one that may be short-lived. Given this, we must be clear about our objectives - and our priorities.

ACHIEVING OUR GOAL
6. The LRC wants to see a Corbyn-led Labour government committed to socialist policies.  This must be the goal of all our work.  The democratisation of the Labour Party, the building of a broad social movement and even the LRC itself are all necessary but, ultimately, secondary to the achievement of this overriding objective. The priority of the left over the next period must be to take the battle for policy out into society, to win the hearts and minds of voters, and create the majority which will elect a socialist Labour government.
7. The challenge in doing this is to recognise – as Labour’s right-wing fails or refuses to do – that the left is now the mainstream. What was once dismissable as “extreme” is today the new centre and our socialist ideas now speak, not just for the majority, but for the overwhelming majority – the 99% pitted against an out of touch elite. The left must seize this opportunity to address an audience far, far wider than it has reached since the Second World War, but it must find the language and the forms necessary to do so effectively. This is a project not just for the Labour Party but for a much broader movement behind and beyond Corbyn – trades unions, community organisations, students and other campaigns.
8. The trebling of Labour’s membership also promises new activism within the Party itself and the left will need to refine the ways it engages with those newly engaged with our ideas. To lay lasting foundations for a new kind of party it will be necessary to break with the routinism and defensiveness that has characterised much of the left’s activity in the Party in recent years.

FIGHTING TORY AUSTERITY
9. None of this activity takes place in a political vacuum. Opinion polls in current conditions are not especially trustworthy, but there is no doubt that Labour’s leadership contest has damaged its standing at a time of national crisis – when the Party should have been concentrating its fire on a Tory government which revealed itself to be utterly clueless in dealing with the vote to leave the EU. Labour’s internal conflicts contrast with the ruthless and undemocratic way the Conservative leadership vacancy was filled.  The details of austerity may have changed but Theresa May’s government can be expected to push forward an aggressively neoliberal agenda, as was made clear by the post-referendum statement of the Centre for Policy Studies, which hailed “a unique political opportunity to drive through a wide ranging supply-side revolution on a scale similar to that of the 1980s. This must include removing unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses, such as those related to climate directives and investment fund regulations.”  For all the talk of “compassionate Conservatism” the Tories continue with merciless divide and rule politics.  The left must counter this with class-based unity.
10. Clearly Labour and the left will continue to oppose austerity and defend from Tory attacks what remains of the public sector and our welfare state, including social housing, comprehensive education, the NHS and living wages. But if we are to create a social hegemony that can win a parliamentary majority and outlast Corbyn’s leadership, we shall need to move beyond our traditional comfort zone and articulate popular policies, including on energy and the environment, immigration, defence and foreign affairs. A credible and radical programme of economic investment and regeneration will be central to this.

EU EXIT, WARS and IMMIGRATION
11. Above all, it is clear that only the left has the ideas that can negotiate the most favourable terms for the UK’s exit from the EU. This includes a commitment to free movement and migrants’ rights, the protection of human and social rights, strong climate change and sustainable food targets and a rejection of unfair trade deals. Bilateral trade agreements, let alone service agreements, are highly likely to be on terms less favourable than the single market provides – hence the need to preserve access to this market.  We should be prepared to fight a General Election on the terms of EU exit.  These events are out of our hands and we are certainly not calling for a second referendum.  Until the Tory government has worked out a coherent strategy for the UK’s exit from the EU, all we can do is draw up basic red lines opposing any privatisation, and in defence of workers’ rights, environmental protection, consumer protection and human rights.
12. We know of no evidence that British or other military intervention has prevented the spread of terrorism, but it has contributed to the growing refugee crisis across Europe today.  The left must continue to demand an immediate end to Britain’s bombing of Syria and Iraq, and demand a comprehensive Europe-wide plan to provide humanitarian assistance to the increased number of refugees displaced by wars and bombing. 
13. To cut across the anti-immigrant mood which has been whipped up by the vote to leave the EU, and the consequent surge of violence and confidence for right-wing forces across British society, the left must show that wealth and power can be harnessed to build a decent future for all within a Europe inspired by Labour’s democratic and socialist values.  Immigrants, regardless of their country of origin, must not pay the price of Cameron’s referendum.  The left must defend the principle of the free movement of people across Europe, including the UK; and oppose prejudice, intolerance and hatred whenever and wherever we find it.

PREPARING FOR 2020, or 2017?
14. Given the proposed gerrymandered redrawing of constituency boundaries – which will, if implemented, remove a significant number of hitherto Labour seats – Labour must work with community groups, trades unions, tenants, and other campaigns, from the bottom up, on key fronts in the fight against the Tories. On some core issues there will be strong supporters among other progressive parties and informal non-electoral alliances against Tory policy may need to be considered in individual circumstances.  However, the left must always maintain a class basis to our politics and view any parliamentary tactics, including proposed alliances, through that prism.  The left can isolate and expose right-wing leadership elements in all parties and informally co-operate against the Tory government’s offensive without giving lasting credence to those whose ultimate aim is to undermine our politics.  By deciding our short-term priorities and working with all those prepared to fight for them we can marginalise even the super-funded right-wing in our Party.

THE LABOUR PARTY
Fighting the Purge
15. We must also work to make lasting democratic changes in Labour’s structures.  All paid officials of the Party must be properly accountable to the membership through appropriate governance arrangements, and the strongest principles of natural justice must be upheld when any disciplinary action is taken, either against individual members or supporters, or local units of the Party. The culture of the purge which has been overseen by Labour’s Compliance Unit must be ended and the principles of the Chakrabarti Report should be fully implemented.  All LRC members should actively campaign for this re-democratisation of the Labour Party, as outlined in the LRC’s statement of 1 September 2016 - http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/lrc-statement-against-the-membership-purge/. Various campaigns sprang-up in response to the purge.  It is to be hoped that these will combine fraternally into one national anti-purge campaign.

Rule changes
16. The left must organise to reverse the anti-democratic rule changes within the package of NEC-proposed measures successfully managed through 2016 Labour conference by the right-wing.  Attention has been focused on the new NEC representatives for Scottish and Welsh Labour, and clearly NEC representatives must be elected not appointed.  This must not overshadow another new Party rule which stipulates that Labour councillors cannot set an illegal budget and compels Labour councillors to vote for a legal budget.  Thus what was already general Party policy has been concreted into Labour’s rule book.  The purpose can only be to discipline councillors who speak out against cuts.  The left must organise to oppose and rescind this rule at the first opportunity.  Meanwhile, we must stand in solidarity with anti-cuts Labour councillors disciplined under it.

Challenging Prejudice and Bigotry
17. The left has led the way in implementing the Equalities Act.  We must do the same with implementing the Act’s protocols and improve upon putting these into practice.  We must be careful not to deny that people on the left can ever be guilty of abuse or downplay the vital and decisive importance of challenging sexism, homophobia, disabilism and all racism in the Labour Party, the labour movement and left organisations.  It is not enough to point out the hypocrisy of some on the right.  We need to pro-actively stand against prejudice and bigotry in our political organisations, wherever it comes from, just as we do in wider society.  Aided by their media friends, Labour’s right-wing is exploiting issues of prejudice, intolerance and hatred against the left.  The left must resist being divided either from each other or wider society, and persist in exposing the sickening and dangerous mis-use of hate issues as weapons against us.

Re-selection
18. While it is not necessarily appropriate for the Party leadership to lead a campaign for mandatory reselection of MPs, we do need to extend a debate about the accountability of our representatives at all levels of the Party and its affiliated bodies.  The selection of candidates is rightly a matter for members and supporters of the Party at local level.  No one has an automatic right to remain a Labour candidate in perpetuity.
 
Labour’s Policy Process
19. We also need to discuss and push for additional mechanisms to encourage popular participation in policy making. These could be citizens’ assemblies or Podemos-style online circles but, within Labour, these must always enhance member-led democracy and collective decision-making. The aim would be to ensure that not just the Leader but the whole leadership team has a mandate, as does every policy.  We should argue for local parties, both CLPs and branches, to play a key role in reaching out to ensure these frameworks have a real place in local political activity.

The Trades Unions
20. This process also needs to be extended into the affiliates. The support of many unions for Corbyn in his re-election campaign was welcome and will have significantly contributed to his victory, but we need to be alert to the fact that some General Secretaries only gave their support under pressure and some have been working behind the scenes since his first election for a watering down of his stance on several issues. Just as in the Labour Party, we need to work at every level in the unions to encourage participation, democracy and transparency, with policies which can defend workers against the ongoing attacks of employers and government. We have to encourage union members and branches to join/affiliate to the Party and not simply leave support to national executives.

PROSPECTS FOR THE LABOUR LEFT
21. The organisational and political tasks facing the pro-Corbyn forces far outweigh the individual capacity of the left’s existing organisations, including the LRC.  No single group is in a position to undertake all of the necessary work in building influence at every level of the Labour Party and turning outwards to win a majority of the public to our side.  We must calibrate carefully what further tasks the LRC is best placed to undertake, neither setting our organisation unrealistic goals, nor hanging back where there is a need to address areas of serious deficiency

Momentum
22. The LRC was party to and welcomed the launch of Momentum.  We continue to help build it and politically shape its character.  Crucially, we must ensure and insist that it becomes a democratic membership body with union involvement.  Working alongside others we can provide political input to turn the slogans and sentiments, which have emerged as the main achievement of Corbyn’s transformation of Labour so far, into a programme of policies for electoral success and a change in government.  We want to share the political strengths of the LRC tradition with Momentum and encourage it in the most fruitful direction possible – outgoing political activity and effective, democratic organisation. 
23. Currently Momentum is a work in progress, with an uneven character depending on specific circumstances in each area.  Where existing LRC branches have a real presence in local political life we must maintain and build them; and, in areas where Momentum lacks serious organisation inside Labour Party structures, we should support Labour activists to develop new LRC branches to rectify this.  However, we recognise that Momentum remains the most promising framework for uniting the Labour left and articulating a more transparent approach to the construction of slates for leadership positions, such as the NEC. 

Labour Briefing
24. The publication of Labour Briefing as a regular source of information and analysis about developments in the movement is another instance where the LRC is helping to fill an obvious gap.  Briefing must increase its distribution and promotional networks to widen the readership of the journal, while also recognising the urgent need to continue to improve its online and social media presence.

National Committee of the Labour Representation Committee
October 2016