By Jeremy Dewar
IT IS ironic perhaps that the Democracy Review, which is to be voted on at conference, will not be published until probably a day before the event. With a whole year to complete the business and plan deadlines, it lacks a certain prerequisite of democracy, transparency, in delaying till the last minute.
In the 80-page document there are likely to be some welcome improvements. On the central question of policy, the 100-strong, unwieldy, opaque and ineffective National Policy Forum will be scrapped.
The NPF was founded by Neil Kinnock and served as a fig leaf for policy decision-making by the leaders’ office. No one should mourn its death. But all too often we have seen policy decisions repeatedly announced by the frontbench without any discussion by the party. Hopefully this will go with the fig leaf.
It is welcome that all CLPs will have Policy Officers, who can coordinate policy debates and feed ideas into an NEC sub-committee – so long as the NEC’s deliberations themselves are transparent, its minutes published and conference has the final say.
So too is the lifting of the “contemporary” criteria for resolutions and the “three year rule”, which kills the issue if its is defeated, along with the cramped timetable for the submission of CLP and affiliate motions to conference. This will allow plenty of time for debate before conference opens and compositing, and for all motions to be debated in full.
The Review, as leaked to the Huffington Post, optimistically says, “Historically when Conference was a motions-based Conference this was possible so there is no reason why this should not be possible particularly with the assistance of new technology.”
However, it should go further. Conference motions, even from last year, have gathered dust on Labour HQ’s bookshelves, never acted upon. They need to become a living part of what we do as a party. All those with government policy implications should be included in the manifesto.
The shortest section in the review is on Westminster Selection. It’s worth quoting it in full:
“Should boundary changes take place there will be a need to review the selection procedures relating to Parliamentary candidates.”
The best that can be said about this dreadful caving in to the disloyal elements in the PLP is that it at least would not contradict Labour International’s contemporary motion on Open Selections. This must surely now be selected as one of the motions from the floor to be tabled for debate.
On the vital area of local government, there are some notable improvements. The bureaucratic and opaque Local Campaign Forums will be replaced by Local Government Committees with 75% drawn from CLPs, 25% from affiliates, with no voting role for councillors. District Labour Parties are not outlawed but manifestos will be drawn up by the LGCs and the Labour Group, with the final manifesto voted on by the membership.
An organisational change from the GMB union to allow members to elect the Labour Group council leader was shelved after councillors on the NEC vetoed it, though it will be piloted. All councillors will face open selection meetings, though shortlisting remains, which is often used to weed out more left wing candidates. Why not simply allow branches to nominate their candidates?
So there is much work still to be done here too. Meaningful conferences at city, borough and county level have to be able to direct the work of the councillors we helped get elected to represent our party, including the capacity to deselect them and force a by-election.
There are other useful changes, like NEC by-elections, a national youth network and a BAME conference, among others. But this needs to be the start of the process of democratising the Labour Party, not the endpoint.
Until the membership, not officials, MPs or Councillors, are able to debate all the major issues, decide in democratic bodies on policy and manifestos, and call their representatives and leaders to account, up to and including recalling and replacing them, then the fight to democratise our party remains a top issue.
