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Labour Representation Committee
We will be posting regular blogs on this page. Please feel free to comment.
16 July 2007
Closing Down Democracy
John McDonnell MP
At the next Labour Party Conference, party members and the affiliated Trade Unions face one of the most important decisions in the history of the party since its foundation over a century ago.
In only weeks since becoming leader Gordon Brown has moved very swiftly to undermine one of the last vestiges of direct democracy left in the party. Amongst a fairly innocuous set of proposals for encouraging wider involvement in the party's policy discussions, the new leader of the party has moved to remove the right of party members and our trade union supporters to determine the party's policy position on key issues of the day through the annual party conference.
Why is this being proposed?
Partly it stems from a statement Gordon Brown made to trade union leaders last year when discussions were taking place over the need for legislation on trade union rights. At that stage it was made clear that if there was no movement by the Government the campaign for the restoration of basic trade union rights would inevitably and repeatedly spill onto to the floor of Labour Party conference. Much as the same way the Defend Council Housing resolution was passed overwhelmingly at successive conferences, it was suggested that trade union rights would not go away as an issue.
Worryingly to some of us at the time, Gordon Brown responded by saying that under his leadership we can't have Labour Party conference defeating a Labour leader in office on policy issues in this way.
This response increased anxieties that far from changing and breaking with the trend commenced by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson for ignoring the views of the party Gordon Brown would actually go further in excluding members from decision making. In effect this is what this proposal would do.
In recent years many party members have felt that their voice has been ignored. One of the reasons for the exodus of party members from the party has been the implementation of policies to which many party members have not only been opposed but also have had no valid opportunity to have a say over.
The ability of Labour Party conference to discuss and determine the policies of the party has been eroded over the last 15 years. Nevertheless the ability of Labour Party conference to decide by resolution the policy of the party on a number of key questions meant that at least there still remained some opportunity for members to participate in a process of direct democracy.
To deny them this right by adopting Gordon Brown's proposals for party conference sends out a message to party members and our trade union supporters that their views are irrelevant. Downgrading the concerns of our members by referring them to the long winded process of the five year rolling policy forum programme will be seen as a means of shelving their views and avoiding their issues.
If we look back over the last 10 years we see that many of the mistakes which have cost our party support have been made when the Government has ignored the views of its members expressed at party conference.
If allowed, democracy does actually work. The message to Gordon Brown is give democracy a chance and trust our members. Let's not let anyone undermine any further the democratic procedures of our party that we need in place to ensure our party and our government keeps in touch with our grassroots and its feet on the ground.
You can respond to the consultation online via your MpURL, Labour members' net at www.labour.org.uk/membersnet or by writing to to the Labour Party, 39 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0HA by noon on Friday 14th September 2007.
posted by John at
7 Comments:
said...
The first time I skimmed through the consultation document I missed the part about removing CLPs ability to submit resolutions - but there it is on page 7. If you just read the seven-point summary it looks pretty innocuous.
Anyway, what are we going to do about this? Any suggestions? Perhaps someone could write a template letter for people to send explaining why it's a bad idea.
17 July 2007 00:10
said...
if Brown thinks we will be happy with something as slow as the NPF process in this day and age of high speed internet connections etc he must be living in cloud cuckoo land!! It's bad enough at the moment that if a CLP wants to submit a rule change to conference it is not voted on until the following year! We need annual conference's ability to discuss the urgent issues of the day which CLPs can raise through emergency motions and Brown should remember that the world is watching us for signs of hypocrisy and first we had a coronation instead of a leadership election at his behest so that was completely undemocratic and now he's going down this road of controlling the conference agenda to such an sxtent that it will by the sound of it be even worse than the American national conventions for making policy into a rubber stamoing exercise. We can't keep saying "do as I say but not what I do" to other countries such as for example on the nuclear issue or we will have no credibility left in the world.
Is this blog replacing the "Another World is Possible" one or to run concurrently?
17 July 2007 00:23
said...
Good to see the LRC is working with CLPD and STLP to organise a meeting at the TUC on this.
It's also a good sign that Tony Woodley's speaking at it - shows the Big 4 aren't going to roll over on this.
17 July 2007 00:34
Steve Brown said...
I have been abscent from my LP meetings in recent years because of undemocratic behaviour (being told to shut up and having motions tampered with etc) so the question of Policy Forums is something I am just beggining to grapple with. As far as I can see these "Forums" were always a means to an end for the Blairite Tendency. They were always a way to manipulate opinion and control the flow of ideas into areas which suited the leadership and have, in effect, laid the foundations for the latest attacks from Brown. I was also always under the immpression that we had well established Policy Forums anyway. They were the branches, where democratic debates could take place in an air of tollerance and mutual respect, and that the branch decisions could then be discussed by the local, wider movement at the GMC's. The regional conferences for instance, where are they now? Another layer of democracy gone! The National Conference of any organisation is it's soverign body, it's decision making forum. I say abolish the policy forums and restore party democracy to what it once was: a reflection of the organic processes taking place within the working class. After all, party democracy evolved out of the needs of working people to have a say in the political life of society. The branch meetings act as the capillaries and the CLP's as the lungs of the party, the means whereby the oxygen of ideas and the struggles of working people breathed life into the movement. The branches are dying because this process has been interfered with in many different ways and is causing the body of the party to die! Having gone to my first meeting in 4 years last month, what is evident is the utter crisis my local party is in! It has lost direction, lost it's soul, lost it's ideas and is dying a slow death. The struggle to reinstate democracy is also the struggle for ideas, the struggle for socialism. No-one will join the party when it is in this state. Only by embracing a socialist programme will the party inspire people to join. Again, the struggle for democracy is the struggle for socialism, nothing more and nothing less!
17 July 2007 11:23
Doctor Dunc said...
Brown is clearly determined to remind everyone that he was one of the founders of the New Labour project - indeed, probably the only intellectual in the original inner-circle of New Labour. It is clearly his contention that the project was blown off course by events and personal disagreements, and he is now getting it 'back on course'. This is a terrible thing for the Labour Party, because it means a full-blooded return to what is essentially the dissolution of the Labour movement (following tories in the government and the further hamstringing of conference, expect to see an all-out assault on the union link) but it is going to be music to the ears of the some of the compassite faux lefties whose primary beef with Blair was precisely that the 'project' was blown off course. Sorry to sound an almost sectarian note, but I think we need to be ready for what's coming.
18 July 2007 13:54
said...
Dennis Kucinich was spot on on why we should get out of Iraq and not attack Iran tonight.
08 August 2007 23:40
said...
Naoimi Wolf said that democracy was closing down-the same processes happened with Stalin and Hitler prior to the end of the democracy and the mass change of social order
07 October 2008 16:02
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