And the rest of the rule changes

On Tuesday, we considered the remaining rule changes, which originally will have been passed by their proposing CLPs in 2017, over 18 months ago. This article summarises the debate, looking at rule changes designed to improve the auto-exclusion process and to allow CLPs to ask for permission not to run a candidate. It should be noted that rule changes to remove the “contemporary” constraint on motions at conference and to ensure that CLP rule changes re debated at the conference following their submission were passed.

Two rule changes proposed changes to Rule 2.I.4.B, the rule under which many members have been expelled/auto-excluded, two rule changes on the Deputy Leadership, (one proposing a 2nd Deputy, who must be female), a rule proposing Conference Standing orders, a rule proposing the abolition of the one year waiting period for CLP rule changes, a rule change proposing that motions need not be contemporary and a rule change proposing that CLPs could ask the NEC for permission not to run a candidate in parliamentary elections. The final rule change proposed was to change back from small, councillor dominated Local Campaign Forum’s to broader and more representative Local Government Committees; this is an issue that the NEC want’s to think about and recommended remission, which is what the CLP did.

The NEC makes recommendations on what to do, i.e. for, against or remit and rarely loses. The same was the case today. Our delegation voted with the NEC with one exception, which was the first.

The rule change proposing a change to Rule 4.I.2.B proposed changes in two way. Firstly it proposed qualifying the type of organisation that might lead to expulsion as one that conflicted with Labour’s aims and values and secondly, placed the process by which such exclusion would be undertaken under auspices of the disciplinary process. (I have written a lot on the weaknesses of the Party’s disciplinary processes much of this in this blog.) The current rule allows a secret decision and no appeal. The disciplinary process is marginally more visible than that. We have debated these rules and exclusions in our CLP and believe them to be factionally motivated and contrary to the rules of natural justice. Interestingly the CLP had allowed the rule change to be called, “Membership of other parties” which isn’t what the rule is about; it’s current words make “support for organisations other than official Labour organisations” an act that renders one liable for exclusion.

This rule is usually used against small groups in the party which leads one to ask, why not Progress, Labour First or Momentum. It was also used against three long term activists in NW Surrey who had wanted to explore running a “progressive alliance” candidate against Jeremy Hunt. It was also used against Moishe Machover although the decision was revoked as it was considered that writing an article for a newspaper couldn’t be considered “support for an organisation other than …”. This shows one of the problems with the rule; there is no certainty.

I note that if a Councillor or an MP and you wish to “cross the floor” we greet you with alacrity. We should welcome all new members with a campaigning records.

This was defeated.

The rule change on a second deputy leader was withdrawn despite NEC backing. Skwawkbox explains why!

Richmond Park, the CLP for Zac Goldsmith’s seat proposed that CLPs should be able to ask the NEC for permission not to stand a candidate. When Goldsmith forced his vanity bye-election, I suspect that the CLP considered not running a candidate and even when they did, the unfortunate Christian Woolmar, received less votes than there are members of the local Party and the LibDem’s Sarah Olney won by 1,872 votes, removing a racist, arch-brexiteer, silver spoon Tory from Parliament although Olney was a flag bearer for the orange book and it must be recognised that joining the coalition led nearly all those supporters of the social democratic tradition not in Parliament to leave. This now makes the LibDems unattractive allies in an anti-tory alliance.

We should also consider the events in North West Surrey CLP where leading activists considered supporting the National Health Action Party if the Lib Dems withdrew against Jeremy Hunt and were expelled. In NW Surrey, they donated their campaign funds and campaigners to the nearest marginal (which they should do help anyway, but it was quite a journey.) For all the virtue expressed, the Labour Party has on occasion, not run candidates in seats, in Tatton in 1997 where we supported Martin Bell as an independent and in Heltemprice & Howton (2008), we did not run a candidate in David Davies’s vanity bye-election and hinted at the Liberal there. The danger is that people get used to and like voting for a party other than Labour, and some will feel let down by not having a candidate. There were just under 1,500 who couldn’t support Olney in Richmond Park. I didn’t know about the Davies case during the delegation meeting where we voted to oppose the amendment and Conference agreed with us. …

Education, …

Dianne Abbott in several meetings observed that one of the key events for those that become Involved in youth violence and gangs is exclusion from schools, this afternoon # voted to end academy’s governance structures and take them back into local authority control. Angela Raynor, Labour’s shadow education speaker stated that one of the reasons is to take over the entry and exclusion of students. …

Schools

Today we debated Education, I had been campaigning for this to be discussed to develop strong anti-academy policy, I think we got half way there. I wrote a speech but wasn’t called.

I wanted to make two points, the first is that the purpose of the Education system is to create a public good and not a revenue stream for the private sector and secondly that the profit motive clearly conflicts wit pedagogical excellence. (Someone else did get that word into their speech and like me if I’d been called stumbled on it.)

I am sorry that the words are so weak on the FEs.

Here’s Angela’s speech,

The motion text is below or overleaf.  …

The denoument

… of the Democracy Review

This is a report on the debate at the Democracy Review. It is best read in conjunction with Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) Report 1, pages 28 to 55. This article describes the proposals, the debate and how I voted. The packages covered member’s rights, local structures, regional structures, national structures, Leadership elections, the National Constitutional Committee (structure and remit) and Westminster selections. The rest of this blog is below/overleaf …  …

Creativity and Culture

I popped into the Policy Seminar on Energy and Culture, hoping to ask why the front bench had without mandate had supported the EU’s Copyright Directive and seemed to equate the interests of creators with those of the industry. The front bench culture spokesman, there was only one, repeated the shaky statistic that the UK was a net exporter of music. We’ll see. I had to go to a delegation meeting and so was not called to speak. …

And we’re off

Voting at Labour’s conference is by weighted vote, each delegate gets a book of voting slips and some votes are decided by collecting the voting slips and counting them. Each vote is worth the number of members in the affiliate divided by the number of delegates. For instance my card vote this year was worth about 380, about 3800 members, divided by 10 delegates. This is known as the card or block vote. These booklets of votes are not sent by post but must be picked up in person at a “Regional Briefing” starting at 9:00. In previous years this meeting has been used by regional staff to influence new delegates. Two things happened at our briefing; the lack of clarity of the regional staff was not good although they almost made it clear that delegations were dispersed amongst the London block and not sitting together which makes consulting other delegates in the delegation harder than it should be.

More importantly, they had failed to have card votes printed for four of our delegates inc. me and did not have the IT available to make new ones. We were told to go to the balloting office, but the queue was immense and we would have missed the start of conference. (It’s obvious why they distribute the cards in regional briefings as they can have nine queues as opposed to one.) Anyway, I entered the Conference Hall without a card vote book. Since the first item of business is the acceptance of the CAC Report which includes the agenda, timings, the inclusion and exclusion of contemporary & emergency motions and includes any rulings on consequential changes on the agenda. i.e. if the democracy review packages pass, which of the other rule changes fall without debate. This is always controversial and this year the Chair announced that any vote would be taken by show of hands, and if unclear, by hand in parts (i.e. Unions & Affiliates separately from CLPs) and then if it remains unclear a card vote would be taken.

The CAC had proposed that the Democracy Review would be taken on the Sunday, and that the other rule changes taken on the Tuesday; they also recommended that all the rule changes on the subject of Parliamentary Candidate Selection proposed by CLPs would fall if the NEC proposal on the same subject passed. The NEC were proposing a variation of the trigger ballot reform which meant that the two rule changes proposing its abolition, i.e. open selection would fall without debate, or more accurately fall without being moved. It’s hard to predict what would happen, but it was expected that nearly all the Unions (50% of he vote) would vote with the CAC so the question was how many of the CLP would vote against them and here we were, with a bunch of London delegates without their card vote books.

As the card vote was called, I tried to move a point of order to explain some of us could not vote as we didn’t have our card votes; I was told that the chair wasn’t taking a point of order during a vote, I called out that my point of order related to the conduct of the vote but was still told to sit down; on my way back to my seat Len McCluscky asked me what the problem was, and when I explained, said “That’s not right!”. At our seats, those of us without votes made voting slips, but without much hope of them being counted. The Chair then announced that the Ballot Office now had London’s missing card votes and that the ballot boxes would be kept open for another 15 minutes, so we got our votes in.

When the results were announced the CAC Report was approved by 53.63% to 46.37%, with 36,516  (~10%) CLP votes in favour, and 41,004 (~2%) Affiliate votes against. …