West Ham delegate to Labour Party conference 2017 Report

Labour Party Conference 2017 - Report of West Ham CLP Delegate, John Whitworth

Purpose of Annual Conference
The purpose of the Annual Conference is to set Party policy and modify the way Party activity is conducted. This is done by voting on policy documents and contemporary motions and by making rule change amendments to the constitution. It should be, and I believe it is now becoming, the arena in which Party members - through their delegates – make these decisions. Conference is also a means of boosting the morale of party members and hopefully generating a good impression of the Party in the eyes of the electorate. 

Conference Policy Themes
Over Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the main policy themes were presented by the shadow ministers and debated by Conference delegates, who were chosen by the chair to speak for up to 3 minutes. 

They were:Protecting Communities; Brexit and Jobs, Living Standards and Investing in our Future     Health and Social Care

National Policy Forum Reports                                                                                           The National Policy Forum (NPF) has policy commissions working in the following eight areas: Early Years, Education and Skills; Economy, Business and Trade; Environment, Energy and Culture; Health and Care; Housing, Local Government and Transport; International; Justice and Home Affairs; Work, Pensions and Equality. Each commission’s report was presented to Conference and all of them were accepted by substantial majorities. This was only, however, after several of them had been amended according to the new ‘reference back’ procedure adopted at last year’s Conference. Previously, documents presented to Conference had to be accepted or rejected en bloc, but under ‘reference back’ a motion can be proposed to remove a particular passage and reference it back to the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC). If the latter considers this to be acceptable this amendment is then voted on by Conference before the whole amended document is considered.


Policy Commission Seminars                                                                                                Away from the Conference Hall, there were three sessions of policy seminars where the members of each Policy Commission of the NPF presented their report and took questions from the delegates. There was a one-hour session on Monday and two consecutive one-hour sessions early on Wednesday. As several seminars were held simultaneously, delegates had to choose. I went to the International; Health and Care; and Housing, Local Government and Transport seminars.

Contemporary Motions                                                                                           Contemporary motions are the means by which Party policy, as presented in the reports of the NPF Policy Commissions, can be amended in the light of events that occur in the six weeks or so before Conference. Constituencies are currently able to send to Conference either a contemporary motion related to policy or a rule change motion. As you know, West Ham CLP sent a contemporary motion on Housing. The CAC decided which motions they considered to be genuinely ‘contemporary’ and acceptable to Conference, then these contemporary motions were submitted to delegates to decide which four motions they wished to prioritise. Constituency delegates and trade union affiliates each chose four. The topics chosen were:
CLPs                                                               Trade Unions                                                    The NHS                                                       Growth and Investment                             Housing                                                   Workers’ Rights                                          Social Care                                                          Public Sector Pay                                             Rail                                                               Grenfell Tower
In the priorities ballot I voted for all four of the CLP topics that were chosen. A large number of CLPs proposed a contemporary motion on Brexit and this was accepted as eligible by the CAC. However, this topic was not given sufficient priority by delegates, partly because many wished to avoid showing division on this issue to the public.

Compositing the contemporary motions on the chosen topics                                                   As West Ham was one of the sponsors of the Housing motion, I was able to work on compositing the motion presented to Conference. Also present at this compositing meeting were the Shadow Minister of Housing, John Healey, a member of the NEC and a Labour Party official. As most of our motions were similar, with only three of them distinctly different, I had expected the majority submissions to be taken as a model while we discussed which of the additional elements from the other three motions we wished to include. However, we were presented with a text drafted by the Party office which was substantially different from any of the motions and removed much of the political coherence of these motions. At first we were led to believe that we had to accept the office’s text as the basis of the discussion but as time went on it emerged that some, though not all, sponsors wished for the form and substance of the majority of the texts to be used as the basis of the composite.
The compositing, which was expected to last for about an hour, took two and a half hours and we finished our Sunday night’s work at 10pm. My interpretation of the compositing session, shared by several other delegates present, was that the Party officials had previously led to the way with compositing and delegates had largely accepted their proposals, whereas in our case the delegates were more assertive and the officials (and the shadow minister) reluctantly gave way. When the majority view eventually prevailed, I was happy with the below compromise that was reached:

Composite 5: Housing
We call upon Councils, in areas where the need for social housing exceeds supply, to meet that need by:
directly delivering construction and maintenance services that can guarantee high quality council housing, with secure lifetime tenancies and genuinely affordable rent.               ensuring a sustainable means of meeting their local housing need by retaining ownership and control of available public land.                                                                                      prioritise (sic) providing homes at social rents and to cease disposing or transferring of public land, council estates and commercial property for the benefit of private-sector housing and investment opportunities for the few.                                                                             supporting strengthening those communities that rely on social housing by requiring at least 1:1 replacement, within the same neighbourhood of council homes sold or demolished under regeneration schemes.
We call on Labour Party to:
create a new department to tackle the housing crisis.                                                      reaffirm the vital importance of social housing in tackling the housing crisis.              reconfirm the manifesto commitment to build 100,000 council and housing association homes for genuinely affordable rent or sale.                                                                    prioritise brownfield sites for the building of new homes.                                                   pledge to ensure all new homes in the United Kingdom are built to the highest safety, environmental and construction standards.                                                                       Support full binding - ballot rights for estate residents in any ongoing and future regeneration projects. This would follow a comprehensive programme which fully involves residents and their representatives in understanding the economic, social and environmental consequences of any proposals.
Mover: Tottenham CLP                 Seconder: Gravesham CLP 
Adoption of the Housing Motion                                                                                              On the Conference floor on Tuesday, though one delegate felt that the commitment to build 100,000 homes a year was insufficient, this motion was passed overwhelmingly. I tried to speak in support of it but, despite earnestly waving my papers from the second row, I was not chosen by the chair. The seven other composited contemporary motions were passed by Conference with virtually no opposition.

Emergency Motions                                                                                                                The CAC considered 26 emergency motions, though only two of them were deemed genuinely ‘emergency’ and were admitted to the Conference.  One motion, moved by the GMB, condemned assaults on emergency service workers and called for this to be made into a specific criminal offence and the other, moved by Unite, called upon the British and Canadian governments to meet with Boeing to resolve the Bombardier crisis and thereby safeguard thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland. Both motions were passed almost unanimously.  

Constitutional Amendments                                                                                                   On Tuesday the report of the National Executive Committee (NEC) contained three proposals for constitutional amendments:
1)      Composition of the NEC: the number of NEC members will be increased from 24 to 28 with three additional members representing constituency parties and one additional trade union representative.
2)      Nomination of Leader and Deputy Leader: in the case of a vacancy for leader or deputy leader, each nomination must be supported by 10 per cent of the combined number of MPs and MEPs – reduced from the current requirement of 15 per cent.
3)      Conduct prejudicial to the Party: Chapter 2, Clause 1 Section 8, Conditions of membership shall be replaced by a text which includes the stipulation that the NEC “shall regard any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; or sexual orientation as conduct prejudicial to the Party: these shall include but not be limited to incidents involving racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic as determined by the NEC, wherever it occurs, as conduct prejudicial to the Party.”
On a card vote, I voted for these three proposals and they were largely carried.
The NEC also proposed that the below rule changes on the following topics, which had been submitted by CLPs and affiliates and accepted by the CAC to be presented to Conference, be remitted. If the movers did not agree, Conference was asked to vote against them. Conference was assured that each proposed amendment, if not covered by the NEC proposals, would be taken into consideration by the Party Democracy Review which will report back to next year’s Conference. Rule changes on the below topics were moved and seconded by 5-minute and 3-minute speeches respectively:                                                                                                Hatred and prejudicial language                                                                                     Allocation of membership fees                                                                                    Conference Delegates                                                                                              Contemporary Motions                                                                                             Constitutional Amendments                                                                                        Nomination of Leader and Deputy Leader – 5 per cent                                                                 Young Labour                                                                                                                       Local Government Committee                                                                                Accountability of Labour Groups
After speaking in favour of their rule change proposal, the movers of all the above amendments except one agreed – often reluctantly – to remit their proposal, though most said they would return with it next year if it wasn’t accepted by the Party Democracy Review. The mover of the Contemporary Motions amendment initially refused to remit it, but then returned to the podium shortly afterwards to accept. There was clearly a desire to accept compromise and avoid publicising divisions on certain aspects of how the Party is run, as well as a widespread feeling that most of the proposed constitutional amendments would be adopted by the Party Democracy Review.

Voting and Voting Procedures                                                                                          Ballots: I took part in two votes during the week which were done outside the Conference Hall in the Ballot Area by casting votes in a ballot box.
On Sunday there was the Priorities Ballot to choose the four contemporary motions to be promoted by the CLPs. As I stated above, I voted for the Housing motion – the first choice of our CLP - and the NHS, Health and Social Care and the Rail motions, all of which were chosen to be debated in the Conference Hall.
The election for the CLP representatives on the National Constitutional Committee took place on Tuesday and I voted for the candidates nominated by West Ham CLP: Anna Dyer and Emine Ibrahim. They both topped the poll with large majorities.
Hand votes: Most votes on the Conference floor are by show of hands by all delegates present, these included votes for the National Policy Forum Commission reports, contemporary motions, emergency motions and the various reference backs. When the chair judged the vote to be inconclusive, separate shows of hands were requested from CLP delegates and affiliate delegates. If the vote remained inclusive a card vote was then held to produce a decision.
Card votes: A booklet of numbered and coloured cards, each representing a vote for and against potential voting issues, was given to each delegation. One vote was therefore cast per delegation, weighted according to the membership size of the unit the delegation represented. For the scheduled card votes, as I said above, I voted for the three rule changes proposed by the NEC on: the Composition of the NEC, the Nomination of Leader and Deputy Leader, and Conduct prejudicial to the Party.

Speakers                                                                                                                                    As you know, most shadow cabinet members gave a speech as well as several leading Party officials and some trade union leaders. I was impressed by the quality of all the speeches, particularly as some of the shadow cabinet members are relatively inexperienced. I was also struck by the clarity and boldness of the commitments – of which I approved - made by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in particular. One of the highlights among the speeches for me was actually the one by visiting speaker, Naomi Klein - the Canadian writer and campaigner. I have admired her since reading several of her articles and her book, Shock Therapy. She ended a stirring speech by saying that transformational movements around the world have been inspired by the resurgence of the Labour Party in the UK.

Fringe Events attended (I was only free in the evenings)
Saturday                                                                                                                               Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) Pre-Conference Briefing.                          This was attended by several hundred people, so speeches were given once to those inside the Friends’ Meeting House, then again to those who had overflowed into the garden. These short speeches were followed by a briefing on Conference procedures by CLPD secretary, Pete Willsman.
Sunday                                                                                                                                  None – I was in the Housing contemporary motion compositing meeting until 10 pm
Monday                                                                                                                                Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East Reception.                                                                                    While I was there, a presentation was given by Party General Secretary, Iain McNicol on charity work he had done in Palestine and short speech made by Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornbury who said she was a member of both Labour Friends of Palestine and Labour Friends of Israel because she was working for a solution acceptable to the inhabitants of both territories.
BAME Labour’s Diversity Social.                                                                                        There were two impressive female acts while I was there – a fireater and a singer. I also enjoyed a tasty buffet meal, though I didn’t recognise most of its contents.
Tuesday                                                                                                                               Fabian Society Reception.                                                                                                      Wes Streeting MP was doing a question and answer session when I arrived, after which tasty small food dishes were repeatedly circulated.
Newham Drinks.                                                                                                                     This was a rare chance for me, usually confined to the Conference Hall, to have a nice chat and drink with many Newham members who had come for the whole Conference or just for the day.
World Transformed Social.                                                                                                    This was a lively, high volume, celebratory event - which included a session of rap music - to end the last full day of the Conference. I left soon after midnight, but several other West Ham members stayed till much later.

Comment                                                                                                                                  As someone who is supportive of the recent developments in the Labour Party and of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, I found the Conference experience uplifting and inspiring for the future. It was clear that a majority of Conference delegates also supported the Party’s current direction and for this reason several issues which could have appeared divisive and embarrassing for the leadership were not taken up. The Brexit contemporary motion and the rule change motion lowering the nomination threshold of Party leader candidates to five per cent were examples of contentious issues that were avoided. I was not entirely comfortable with this as I prefer open debate, but I was satisfied that this was the will of a majority of the delegates. At the same time, the presence of those who held different views on policy and the leadership was in evidence in the Conference Hall, fringe meetings and in the streets giving out literature. From what I saw, this difference of opinion did not give rise to uncomradely behaviour and I found the atmosphere at the Conference to be very cordial.
I enjoyed the privilege of representing West Ham CLP at the Annual Conference and I hope that we will consider fundraising activities and economy measures so that we can send more than one delegate in future years.

John Whitworth

       

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