davelevy.info

Over the last week, we see that a number of Labour CLPs, including mine, reported here by Jacquie Walker have been deciding not to hold meetings to make “supporting nominations” in Labour’s Leadership election. It would seem that this is a tactic to suppress support for Corbyn, to exclude the membership from talking about it with each other, particularly in constituencies where the MP is supporting Smith. In our case, our elected executive committee, a group of 13 have decided that over 2100 won’t meet, debate and collectively influence the result. This blog looks at the legalities, implications and practical consequences of the NEC rules for the Leadership election, I conclude that the bias and factional one-sidedness of the bureaucracy, in this case validated by an NEC majority is deliberate and sustained; the only way to rectify the democratic deficit in the Labour Party is to vote for and elect the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate.

The NEC, having decided to impose a freeze date, have also borrowed a number of other rules from the chapters on selection: the prohibition of visitors, i.e. members without a vote at all members’ meetings,  the repeated advice from last year that CLPs may choose to use a General Committee[1] or an all members meeting, they have also limited the amount of debate to 30 mins (irrespective of attendance)  and I believe instructed that the doors are to be ‘locked’[2] at the commencement of the meeting. (This is to stop people hiding in the toilet to confuse factional whips).

There are genuine practical difficulties in organising these meetings since even some General Committees are pretty big, the one I attend has over 60 members; it’ll be considerably larger next year when those who joined in 2015 are represented on the General Committee. The large numbers of some Parties make room booking a problem, due to both expense or notice requirements for booking. Such practical difficulties are exacerbated where all members in good standing[3] are invited to observe (& speak at) the General Committee as is the standard custom and practice at Lewisham Deptford. This is not, as far as I understand permitted for this meeting under the NEC advice.

There is of course the question of will, the fact that a number of CLPs, especially in London have been choosing not to have supporting nomination meetings shows that many local leaderships don’t want to hear what the membership have to say. I expect I’ll find out more when we finally do meet.

I felt last year that instructing London Parties they must have all members’ meetings to make nominations for the London Mayor but could choose to make nominations to the Leadership elections from GC if they chose, was an act of cowardice[4] by the NEC. We must begin to ask, if we haven’t already, just what value the PLP and their allies on the NEC place on discussion, debate and the collective voice of the ordinary membership. I think we know the answer.

It would seem to be a compelling conclusion that the bureaucracy has been using their monopoly powers of rule interpretation to delay and minimise the impact of the new joiners and the registered supporters since May 2015. From the decision in 2015 to mandate that the branch delegations should be based on membership as at 31^st Dec 2014, (which had the effect of delaying new member’s entry to General & Executive committees), the banning of registered supporters from attending meetings, the attempted rigging of the current Leadership elections, the bogus administrative expulsion or suspension of socialists and activists (even when they are readmitted and despite the Chakrabarti Inquiry’s findings and recommendations) and the aggressive interpretation of the various probationary membership rules. This record of partisan activity strongly implies that the General Secretary, the Compliance Unit and its staff, backed by an NEC majority can no longer be considered neutral servants[5]  of the party and its membership and have become an asset in Labour’s factional strife.

Some argue they are minimising divisiveness, but it’s debate and votes that heal, at least they do if both sides believe in Clause IV’s common endeavour,

…a democratic socialist Party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone,

It means you need to take advice from other party members and lose gracefully when in a minority, not rummage around in the rules cupboard looking for something that might be what you need or to misuse legacy power to stop the membership having their say.

The problem is the NEC. Frankly it has been for years, it’s their job to run the Party on behalf of the members and to control the bureaucracy, and hold the PLP accountable.

The first step in ensuring that the members’ voices are heard and become the last word is to vote for the Centre Left Grass Roots Alliance candidates for the NEC, Black, Woolfson, Webbe, Williams, Shawcroft & Willsman and those of us who are Union activists or members[6] need to examine the accountability of our representatives on the NEC.

ooOOOoo

Footnotes

[1] A General Committee is a delegate body based on one delegate/25 members plus Union delegates, with the membership snapshot date of the 31^st Dec of the year previous to the AGM. For those CLPs who keep to the rule to have the AGM in the 2^nd half of the year, we have GC’s based on the size the Party as at 31^st Dec 2014, before the first surge in membership.

[2] Late arrivals may not participate in the meeting.

[3] Not in arrears, not under probation, not subject to freeze date exclusion or otherwise ineligible to attend.

[4] Maybe of foresight

[5] This is despite the help I was given in reversing membership rejections in 2015 by one member of the Compliance Unit.

[6] Chapter 2 Clause I 6 B states that members of the Labour Party must be members of a Union (if applicable) and must pay into the political fund of their Union, presumably if their Union has one.

See Also

1. https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.walker.3990/posts/10153885216584912
2. https://davelevy.info/the-team-we-need/
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonymck/15359452685

I have argued that the imposition of a Freeze Date on Labour’s Leadership has brought with it a couple of unpleasant corollaries such as the need to exclude all non voters from meetings that consider the election, including those who’ve joined as both members and registered supporters; the freeze date has also created a small group of people who have passed their membership probation within the rules but who do not have the vote in the Leadership elections and are to be excluded from any collective discussion.

Is the imposition of a six month freeze date on the leadership election a permitted power of the NEC?

The Rules mandate the use of Freeze Dates or an extended probation for the right to vote in Chapter 5 Selections, “rights and responsibilities of candidates for elected public office”. The NEC also have the power to waive this rule or reduce its time period. The regime/rules for managing the election of party leader, which is not a public office are covered in Chapter 4, “Elections of national officers of the Party and national committees”. Chapter 4’s only mention of a freeze date is that it must be agreed by the independent scrutineers. The argument that if Conference had wanted a freeze date, it would have established one is powerful however, the Collins Review does state that the NEC should be able to set a Freeze Date, but the Review is not the Rules. Appendix 2, “NEC procedural guidelines on membership recruitment and retention”, limits the political rights of new members for the first eight weeks or until approved by the NEC. This is important since the rules are not silent on the restrictions of membership rights. They must be interpreted in good faith.

Not quite as slam dunk as I’d hoped, and I am sure that those seeking to legally overturn the freeze date in court have read these three rules. I argued that that the freeze date should be based on administrative necessity; 6 months is designed to stop newcomers participating. The Party is being sued by a group of excluded members who have a crowd funding page, and the legal case is of course strengthened by the fact that the Party promised people who joined the vote in the Leadership election.

ooOOOoo

In the first comment I look, in I hope a balanced way at the pros and cons of the arguments for a freeze date. Possibly a bit early. …

Labour’s rules on Leadership elections, (and candidate selections) would be illegal in the US where the business of political parties is too important to be left to parties, despite the fact they write the laws. Everyone with the right to vote can register for primaries. …

Chapter 7 Clause IX 1 A of the Labour Party’s rules says that the AGM shall not (normally) be held before May. …

The GMB leadership are breaking a Congress mandate to consult members on ‘supporting nomination’ for Labour Leadership election. The usual suspects support this, members had their say when they elected delegates to Congress and it’s not a good use of money, the money would be better spent recruiting members to affiliated membership of the Labour Party, and let them take part in the decision not fanny around getting you and the CEC of the hook of an embarrassing mandate; I would be interested in hearing the full story though.

If you are a member of one of the Unions affiliated to the Labour Party, were a member before the 12th Jan., and pay the political levy you can still register to vote in the Leadership election, by using https://support.labour.org.uk/

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The Labour Party’s ban on meetings does not include CLP Executive Committees. These will often have chosen not to meet over the month of August, but they probably should even if only to approve (or more accurately, not object to) new members. …

Dave Winer posts about twitter and the free internet, at the centre is the pithy quote, “If there’s a platform vendor, it’s not the Internet; If there is no platform vendor, it is.”. He identifies the need for a vendor free messaging service and asks for some help. Personally I use wordpress, RSS and planet to stream out my messages, long and short and this blog is an attempt to locate my short messages and less formed thoughts in one place and format. I am obviously not necessarily so successful on the short bit.

One insight I can offer is that last year, I looked at pump.io  and made some notes. I was interested in a messaging solution that wasn’t SMTP, was open source and could/would be encrypted on the wire. pump.io was the successor of Laconica, a product colleagues at Sun had used to build an internal micro blog service. Last year I got diverted by docker and building a test platform. I have probably solved my functional needs initially by using ello, and latterly by establishing this blog. I plan to return to pump.io in the very near future, I wonder if it’s part of the answer to Dave Winer’s question.

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