The December National Committee has to make decisions that will shape how the organisation develops over the next period.
The central debates are over how Momentum’s conference should be organised and proposals about our democratic structures.
This will be the first time the NC has met for seven months, and unfortunately it takes place in the context of a series of postponements and decisions by the Steering Committee that call into question the NC’s purpose.
These include the decision to elect new delegates to the NC at two weeks’ notice. The results show that just 478 people voted on a national turnout of 13 per cent. Some delegates have been elected on fewer votes than the average turnout of a local Momentum branch.
More problematically, the principal purpose of this NC, to decide how to organise the overdue national conference, has been largely pre-empted by the office’s decision to launch ‘MxV’, which sets out an obscure, unaccountable and in accessible method of submitting proposals to conference.
Most members of the National Committee have been recently elected as delegates from regions. A small minority of NC members have either no or at best questionable democratic mandate.
It’s important that the NC takes decisions which give the members who have built the local groups and campaigns that are the root of Momentum’s success, the greatest possible input and control over the conference.
Campaigns
The SC’s failure to convene the NC for more than half a year is the principal reason that the ‘campaigns report’ is so sparse. Although good work was done through developing the phone app, a more critical note must be sounded on the rest. The intervention at conference failed to include providing a leaflet to delegates, instead focusing on the interesting but ultimately peripheral The World Transformed event.
Whether there is real mileage for Momentum in focussing on the NHS when this is already a major focus of the Labour Party’s work and there are numerous long-established specialised NHS campaigns is dubious if we simply end up duplicating work done by others. Despite the prominence given to the NHS, there is no mention of the success achieved by Momentum NHS campaigners in promoting a contemporary motion to Labour Party conference on this subject.
The future of the ‘Party reform campaign’ is in doubt following the Labour Party NEC’s decision not to discuss reforms at its recent NEC. In any case, the only concrete demands are for “self-organisation of liberation groups and young members” and equal representation with trade unions on the NEC.
So the actual balance sheet for national campaigns since the end of the leadership election amounts to launching a website, emailing out a couple of model motions, organising a rally outside Parliament and encouraging people to participate in actions organised by the Labour Party or other campaigns.
The ‘structures debate’
The debate around what structures Momentum should adopt is really a debate about what Momentum is for. Organisations with different aims and purposes clearly need to adopt specific internal structures suited to their activities.
All are agreed that Momentum has an important role to play in creating a Labour Party that opposes austerity and war. Everyone wants to use the huge amount of data collected in Corbyn’s leadership campaigns to ask people to vote in Labour’s internal elections and help with the next general election.
But the debate is coming down to two fundamental and counterposed positions: those who want Momentum to be an activist force that independently generates policy and strategy and implements it and those who want it to be an auxiliary of the Leader’s Office, using social media, cultural events and rallies to promote Corbyn’s policies and defend him from the right.
Different types of organisation need different methods of making decisions. That is why the arguments over Momentum’s internal structures, dismissed by some as a ‘distraction’, are actually important. It’s true that we are still at the stage of deciding how to decide how to decide what we stand for, but that doesn’t make it any less important.
Organising conference
The most important item on the agenda is the proposals on what the conference should look like.
Option A from the Steering Committee is that it be exclusively about Momentum’s aims, ethics and structures. Option B incorporates proposals from Jill Mountford, Nick Wrack and three regions, proposes to “establish and amend the constitution… broad political and campaigning priorities… and questions of strategy and tactics relating to our involvement in the Labour Party.”
Red Flag favours the second proposal because we think it is better that a genuinely representative conference decides the general political and campaigning focus and priorities rather than leaving these in the hands of the office or the committees. This is the only way to ensure the members of the national organisation as a whole get to decide what we do.
There will also be a debate about when the conference will be held. Option A, proposed by the Steering Committee proposes 25 February 2017 and Option B from the West Midlands region have proposed April. This conference has already been delayed and on past form “events” will always be found to provide an excuse for delaying it still further. A February conference will mean a tight timetable but we are better sticking with that and at least making some preliminary decisions to work with.
The meeting will then need to decide how proposals get to conference.
Option A from Jon Lansman essentially allow anyone to upload a proposal under the subjects purpose, ethics and structure. Members can indicate ‘support’ for proposals and the six most popular proposals in each section will be debated at conference.
Option B, from London, North East and Cumbria, and West Midlands regions replaces individual proposals with motions that can be submitted by branches, Momentum Youth and Students, liberation caucuses, affiliated unions, regional and national committees.
We favour Option B because it encourages people to come to branches where political argument must be used to convince people to make a choice.
Option A relies on people wading through every proposal and interminable online discussions before making a decision. It creates an organisation of passive clicktivists.
Option A simply allows organised tendencies who to use individual profile and social media to monopolise the discussion. Option B means all members have an equal opportunity to convince their fellow members and lets everyone see the support that motions have from around the country.
There are three proposals on how votes are decided at conference. There are a whole range of ideas about how Momentum will decide on the proposals that are made.
Option A (Jon Lansman) allows conference delegates to vote on proposals. The top three proposals in each category will then be put to a OMOV vote of the membership (watching the conference debate before voting will be optional).
Option B (Michael Chessum) is an unhappy and completely unsuitable attempt at a compromise that is baffling even to experienced political activists.
Option C from London region simply and sensibly suggests that delegates to conference listen to the debate, then vote.
Option D for Yorkshire and Humber makes an interesting proposal which suggests only proposals narrowly passed or defeated are put to the membership.
For decisions to be carried out they must have the support of the active members. We need those members to discuss the proposals, persuade each other and create a real, collective organisation for the best decisions to be made. The isolation of an online referendum will not produce the same results.
The Conference should be as large as practically possible, with delegates elected from local branches. A system of allowing delegates from areas without branches sounds nice, but people are unlikely to know who they are voting for and the recent NC elections show this system is open to abuse.
Our ambition should be that every effort is made to register unregistered groups and that regional committees should be tasked with helping members create local Momentum groups where there are none, so that every member has the chance of full participation in voting for delegates before conference.
There is a proposal that a Conference Arrangements Committee is elected by the National Committee to organise the conference. This is absolutely essential for a successful conference.
The National Committee will also decide whether the delegates to the conference will be chosen by an online ballot or whether they will be decided at a meeting. Local groups should ensure that there are no barriers to attendance at such meetings by arranging a crèche and facilities for members to take part by Skype or similar but it would be preferable for the delegates to be decided at a meeting. In the same way as the decisions should be made at a conference, a physical meeting allows people for proper discussion before a decision is made.
Motions from regions
Finally, last on the agenda and in danger (as usual) of being run out of time, are motions submitted from regional committees.
These cover policy, Momentum’s structures, the Momentum SC and NC and Jackie Walker.
Since the conference is going to adopt a constitution the motions on Momentum’s NC and SC will only be valid until they are superseded by conference decisions. They are nevertheless important.
We urge delegates to vote for Motion 10 from the London region that reaffirms that the Steering Committee is subordinate to and elected by the National Committee and carries out its decisions between meetings and calls for the Steering Committee to be re-elected on 3 December. The Steering Committee is well over its sell-by date and should have been re-elected months ago and more worryingly has tried to make decisions unilaterally so the need for an election is obvious. At the very least those who voted against holding the December NC ought not to be re-elected to the SC.
Conclusion
There are two different ideas about what Momentum should become taking shape.
One side of the debate wants Momentum to make decisions by online referendum which they refer to as “one member one vote” (OMOV). Jon Lansman, the current Chair of Momentum, is on this side along with a majority of the Steering Committee. The rest of the Steering Committee and the vast majority of local Momentum groups want either delegate democracy or a mixture of delegates and OMOV. Red Flag is on this side of the members in this debate.
It boils down to what we want Momentum to be. If we just want to exist as an online pressure group then OMOV would suffice, and online petition sites like 38 Degrees occasionally conduct referenda of their supporters to decide campaigning priorities. The leadership could also send emails asking us to vote in NEC elections, share articles with us and ask us to use an app to call people about our campaigns.
There are two practical problems with this approach: the first is that you can only answer the question you’re asked. If you’re not asked about ‘Taking Back Control’ then you can’t decide whether Momentum should have launched a campaign under UKIP’s slogan. The second is that one the question has been answered by the membership there’s no way of adjusting or reversing course if life shows the question or the answer to have been wrong. Brexit shows the very real dangers of using referenda to decide complex political questions.
If we also want to be a force for change in society and secure democratic changes in the Labour Party then we need to have clarity of purpose, a shared vision and an effective strategy for carrying it out. We need to be as organised and single minded as our opponents. We don’t have the money or media profile of the professional right wing think tanks and factions.
But we do have the commitment, enthusiasm and experience of thousands of members. To harness the potential of thousands of individuals we need to bring them into a collective, so that we become more than the sum of our parts.
Whatever the views of the individual members of the National Committee, they should vote for proposals that ensure that the members are allowed meaningful debate that helps to build the organisation in the real world, given the chance to make the final decisions and to defend the democratic integrity of the NC.
