Amnesty

As you may know, I am a supporter of Stop the Purge campaign as the rule under which these exclusions have been taken taken offends the principles of natural justice. After the election last year, the CLP Chair, in a speech to the General Committee observed that we had all worked well together during the election and wouldn’t it be great if this could continue. I agreed, and so I wrote the following motion as several people, that I know of, who joined the CLP have been excluded.

It calls for the lifting of all exclusion decisions taken under this Rule.

The motion was carried at my branch meeting last night.

All supporters of Labour Party welcome in Labour Party

This meeting notes

The Labour Party Rule Book 2017, Chapter 2 Membership rules, Clause I Conditions of membership, sub clause 4 Exclusions, (B) reads as follows:

‘A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.’

This rule has been used to exclude LP members with no defence, no appeal and no public review of the evidence.

This meeting believes

1. Labour’s membership should be open to all who share our values and support Labour’s election campaigns.
2. In the spirit of post-election unity, this branch calls for the reinstatement of automatically excluded members.

This meeting calls/GC instructs on the CLP Secretary to write to the General Secretary and the NEC calling for the reinstatement of those auto-excluded under Rule 4.I.2.B

This meeting instructs the branch secretary to submit this motion to the CLP Secretary for consideration at the next GC .

So now it goes to the General Committee.

ooOOOoo

There were two points raised which are interesting and deserve reply.

The first is that if we delete the rule, how can we defend ourselves against electoral opponents, The answer to that is simple, there are plenty of other rules that define that offence, but even then such actions should be considered under a process that includes a defence, and right of appeal.

The motion is not a rule change, its an appeal for amnesty but I have written about what I’d like the rule to look like elsewhere on this blog.