Ann Black’s report from the 23 July 2024 meeting of Labour’s National Executive tells us:
“Some members argued that the guidance on contemporary motions was unduly restrictive, limiting them to events after July 4th, but Parliamentary Labour Party representatives said that CLP delegates do not want big arguments or new policies”.
However, the NEC withdrew its previous statement that the motions must be on issues that cannot have been considered by the National Policy Forum. That restriction is now lifted.
But already:
In one CLP, the chair barred all motions submitted for conference from discussion in the CLP on the grounds that they were “out of order”. Even at the worst of the previous period of the rule that motions must be “contemporary”, CLP chairs left such “ruling out” to the Conference Arrangements Committee, and attempted no such “pre-censorship”.
In another CLP, a motion for decriminalisation of abortion, citing events since 5 July, was passed, but with many members seeming resigned to it being ruled out of order.
The “contemporary motions” rule is slippery. At times it has been used to rule hundreds of motions out of order; at other times, motions get to conference floor with little more trouble than adding a token reference to recent events.
Ann Black’s report indicates that this year the Labour Party apparatus is set on using the rule to exclude anything that might generate “big argument”.
Two conclusions follow.
CLPs should be bold about submitting motions which comply with any sensible interpretation of the rule but do raise “big arguments”. Even the current Labour regime will feel embarrassed and under pressure if it ends up ruling out almost all the motions submitted.
Affiliated unions should pay attention. In recent years, unions have pressed the Labour leadership on worker and union rights (the “New Deal”), but, as a tacit or explicit quid-pro-quo, have been quiet about other issues, even those of most urgent interest to union and working-class households such as the two-child benefit cap and the NHS.
The unions have seen leadership moves to silence the CLPs before: in 1997, with the Partnership in Power rule changes, and in 2007, with Gordon Brown’s move to abolish motions to conference altogether. Each time the unions eventually came round to restoring CLP rights, at least partially – with the 2003 rule change which restored a CLP say in conference debates after 1997, with the 2009 rule change which restored motions after 2007, and with the rule change in the Ed Miliband years which enabled conference to “refer back” sections of a National Policy Forum report.
The unions need to watch out for the new drive to suppress CLP voices.
Ann Black’s report also comments on Labour’s use of centralised control of IT to stop Labour members doing election work in some constituencies (reckoned safe), with the aim of forcing them to work instead in more marginal “target” seats.
No amount of such manipulation of members, Ann Black comments, will “move them en masse 50 miles [or more] down the road. Instead, some did nothing, and will do less when we need them in future. Local parties particularly resented losing access to [centrally-controlled IT for campaigning] without warning, even when they were fully meeting their twinning obligations.
“One CLP officer, prevented from organising any polling day activity, reported 25 members who were over 80 and would sit outside polling stations, but not make three-hour round trips…
“Some CLPs kept local activity below the radar, and even won through their own enterprise without party IT tools…”