The following resolutions were debated at LRC conference on September 5 2020:
The Covid crisis and the huge economic downturn we now face expose sharply the inequalities and injustices in society. It has been workers, in Britain and internationally, who have borne the brunt of Covid infections and deaths. It is workers who have ensured the basic functioning of society. But it is also workers who will face the attacks of employers and governments in the aftermath of the pandemic as jobs, wages and public services face a further round of attacks.
In the face of this, we need a campaign of resistance from the Labour movement, building unity around defence of jobs and living standard, workers’ rights; making the case for fundamental change and for socialist policies.
We call for no retreat on the policy agenda won by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s leadership – if anything recent times have strengthened the case for socialist policies. We demand that the Socialist Green New Deal moved by the FBU at Labour Party conference 2019 is implemented in full, as it can lay the foundations for a socialist answer to climate crisis.
We call for revolution in workers’ rights including the repeal of all anti-trade union laws, the Labour Party must not allow trade unions to become the embarrassing relative again. Trade unionists and public sector workers have been treated appallingly over consecutive decades and they deserve not just applause every week but a pay rise and investment in jobs and services.
We call for equality and liberation for all workers and support our comrades in the Black Lives Matter movement. Labour should be at the centre of building a united, working class, anti-racist movement.
We demand that the Labour Party maintains its support for an internationalist foreign policy based on the common interests of workers across the world; for peace, human rights, justice, and cooperation to end war and emancipation for all. There can be no return to imperialist, war-mongering expeditions.
Proposed by FBU, seconded by ?
Agreed
This conference notes
1. The Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance, which failed so badly in the February NEC by-election, has once again been resurrected in order to select a slate of six candidates for the October NEC elections. Even some of the 13 organisations involved in the CLGA have complained about the secretive nature of back-room negotiations, the failure to consult members, and the lack of proper political scrutiny of the candidates selected.
2. The two main organisations running the CLGA, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and, now to a lesser degree, the ‘new’ Momentum, blocked Jo Bird from being a candidate on the left slate, despite the fact that she was one of the most popular left candidates in the February NEC by-election. She was blocked because she was deemed “too controversial” over her public opposition to the witch-hunt in the Labour movement.
3. The Labour Left Alliance has initiated an open and democratic hustings and ballot campaign for the NEC elections. It has asked all left-wing candidates their views on a range of important political questions: Will the candidate campaign for open selection, for party conference to become sovereign, for the Labour Party to drop its commitment to the IHRA mis-definition of antisemitism, against the implementation of the Board of Deputies’ 10 Pledges etc. The answers have been published online here: https://labourleft.org/labour-party-nec-elections-2020/. The LLA has invited a number of non-CLGA organisations to participate in its ballot to choose the best candidates.
We believe that:
4. The process to select left-wing candidates needs to become democratic, transparent and political. The defeat of Jeremy Corbyn has shown how important it is that left-wing candidates speak out against efforts to further expand the witch-hunt and to drag the Labour Party to the right.
We therefore resolve that:
5. The LRC shall withdraw from the CLGA and encourage other organisations to do likewise, including Jewish Voice for Labour, Red Labour and Momentum.
6. The LRC shall get together with organisations like LLA, JVL and others to formulate a truly democratic, transparent and accountable method to choose left wing candidates in the future - a method which must chiefly be based on the politics of the candidates chosen.
7. In the meantime, the LRC shall participate in the ongoing ballot and hustings campaign of the LLA for this year’s NEC election. As voting only starts on October 19, there is yet time to engage in a more democratic process that takes into account the candidates’ political platforms, their public commitments to fight against the witch-hunt as well as the number of CLP nominations they have received.
Proposed by Tina Werkmann, seconded by
Not agreed
This LRC AGM recognises that:
there is a need for significant changes in the way that left slates for internal Labour Party elections are drawn up;
that the existing Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) is not fit for purpose;
that it needs to be replaced by structures that are transparent, democratic and participatory and which need to embrace the entire Labour left;
that such new structures need to try to unify the Labour left, reach Labour’s mass membership, and look outwards to, and be based on, all those in struggle within the trade unions and beyond;
that our selection of candidates must reflect the diversity of Labour’s membership and also be based on firm and, where necessary, intransigent socialist principles.
and further we recognise that we must campaign both within and outside the CLGA to achieve these changes.
This AGM regrets particularly the exclusion of Jo Bird from the slate for CLP places but resolves to campaign in the forthcoming NEC elections for the CLGA slate and for those socialist councillors, including Jo, who are standing in the councillors’ section.
We recognise that building new ways of selecting slates is part of our struggle to rebuild the Labour left.
Proposed by Graham Bash, seconded by?
Agreed
This conference of the LRC agrees to support the campaign initiated by the Labour Campaign for Council Housing for cancellation of local authority debt. This would give local authorities an extra £4.5 billion spending power a year.
The financial crisis of local authorities is spiralling out of control. Without radical action there will be a return to austerity in local government, possibly worse than Osborne's version.
Labour needs to demand of the government that it
1) Honours its commitment to support councils when they do 'whatever is needed' to tackle the pandemic. This means covering the cost of increased expenditure and the loss of income resulting from the lock-down.
2) Cancel the local authority debt held by the Public Works Loans Board.
3) Hold urgent discussions on a return to a system of funding for local authorities based on an annual assessment of social needs in each locality.
4) Provide £10 billion grant a year for building social rent council housing, 100,000 a year, which will help to put back to work people who lose their jobs as a result of the economic impact of the pandemic.
Local government unions have a particular responsibility to pick up this issue since it is their members who are carrying out critical work under the most difficult of circumstances. Without debt cancellation some of these members will find themselves redundant and more service users are likely have a service withdrawn. The LRC calls on its supporters in these unions to organise to win them to support for these four demands.
Without a serious campaign to provide the funding necessary to prevent a new phase of austerity in local government (and elsewhere) then Labour councils will implement job and service cuts as those in Luton and Croydon have already begun. Labour's anti-austerity words are meaningless if its councils implement austerity. Blaming the Tories will not wash with its victims. You cannot expect to worsen the plight of the very people who are your supporters and expect them to vote for you because “they have no other choice”.
Proposed Martin Wicks, seconded
Agreed
Conference notes
Despite adverse policy changes, our National Health Service has to date stood as an enduring example of a caring, compassionate and socialist society.
Conference deplores
Despite millions of people expressing their solidarity with NHS workers during the C-19 crisis, a healthcare Americanisation project begun by Thatcher continues apace, supported by a restored cross-party consensus:
Only under shadow health secretary Diane Abbott did Labour begin to oppose the move (then called “STPs”). Only a strong Labour left movement can defend our NHS from a project that the Labour right remains committed to.
Boris Johnson is about to enshrine in law a US system to pay people to take away our NHS so we go private.
The purpose, here as in the US, is to expose us to, and thus grow the private market.
Johnson’s legislation would complete a project initiated by Thatcher’s US-inspired ‘internal market’, expanded by every government since, including New Labour, working closely with US corporations throughout.
Despite Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and years of explicit conference decisions to the contrary, our current shadow health team still supports this US-imported system.
This is what would be sealed-in by Johnson’s pursuit of a US “trade deal” while exploitative US pharmaceutical giants could also open us up to American-style price gouging for basic medicines.
As part of this process, which empowers profit over people, the Tories have left nurses and other health care staff out of a public sector pay deal after hundreds of them lost their lives in service to patients during this pandemic, despite having had to cope with real terms pay decreases over the past ten years.
The Covid pandemic has been used to increase the rate of privatisation without proper scrutiny, resulting in billions of pounds of public money paid out to disgraced private firms, often close to ministers or those making the decisions to award contracts. Contracting to mates (“preferred providers”[1]) without tender is set to be part of the new law.
This follows in particular 6 years of restructuring towards the US model by the NHS England quango. This, continuing the direction set by previous governments, is behind hospital, GP surgery and bed cuts, piece-by-piece privatisation. All has worked towards the specific system now set to be enshrined in law (see point 1 above).
Stopping this wilful, mercenary destruction needs a sharply-focused, educational, inclusive, collaborative and sustained campaign to retrieve our National Health Service, in law, from this profiteering system, ensuring social care is social, not commercial.
Conference welcomes
The recent 10-point plan from Richard Burgon, in particular the section on the NHS that states: “Millions of people showed their solidarity with the NHS during this crisis. On the Left we need to build on this, fight for our NHS to be properly funded – not least to deal with coming waves of coronavirus – and win the argument for NHS privatisation to be halted and reversed and pay rises for all NHS staff. As well as campaigning to prevent our NHS being part of any negotiations for a trade deal with the USA, we must step up the call for the full repeal of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 [plus the Long-Term Plan and all previous Americanisation]. Our privatised, inadequate social care system, where private equity and hedge funds play a significant role, must be replaced by a National Care Service based upon the same principles as those which founded our NHS and where the staff are paid decent salaries worthy of the vital work they do.[2]”
Conference resolves
• As Jeremy Corbyn suggests in this video, the LRC will coordinate with other campaigns on this specific issue – locally through Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) and similar groups, as well as nationally, alongside Red Labour, the left of the Socialist Health Association (SHA) and the NHS (Reinstatement) Bill campaign. Explicitly linking local attacks on our NHS to relevant national policy (e.g. tracing back a local A&E closure to the national A&E closures scheme embodied in the Tories’ destructive ‘Long Term Plan’ for the NHS
• That the LRC works closely with our own trade union affiliates to support NHS campaigning by KONP, We Own It, War On Want and other groups working in collaboration.
• That the LRC approaches Unison and Unite, both directly through branches and through Health Campaigns Together TU liaison group, to express our support for Richard Burgon’s demands.
[1] You may recognize “preferred providers” as contracts for mates has long been Labour’s position too.
[2] Throughout the Corbyn years, the shadow social care minister resisted any suggestion of publicly-provided social care. Such a thing would defeat the purpose of the US system now to be legalised, which (see link above) has remained Labour policy despite conference and Corbyn.
Proposed by Stephen Smith for Oxfordshire LRC, seconded by ammended by Nico Csergo
Agreed
Conference agrees
The C-19 health crisis has demonstrated that we are all connected and depend on each other. This crisis has exposed what many of us already knew – the system is not fit for purpose. We need a new way, built on fairness and equality. We cannot go back to business as usual and we must not allow those who have carried the burden of austerity to shoulder that burden again.
Conference recognises
It's only by standing together and taking action together that we can make the changes needed to say “never again”.
Politics is not just about Parliament or the leadership of parties. Politics is about our everyday lives and the way we choose to either build a better future or accept the status quo.
It is only by working people standing up and raising our voices that politicians will take our views seriously. We are stronger when we do that together - no matter what our identity, no matter our gender or our race, what unites us is our class.
For the LRC to play a role in this we need to develop a strategy around community and workplace engagement which can assist in helping spread the message around the importance of political engagement and provide credible solutions to the problems we face.
Conference resolves
That the LRC NEC works with members and affiliates to develop a recruitment and engagement strategy to build our strength and reach
That the LRC works with trade union affiliates on recruitment campaigns to identify and train a new generation of activists
That the LRC agrees to campaign and support the call for the minimum wage for all workers to be raised to £15ph
That the LRC works with Don’t Leave, Organise to identify and support other broad and inclusive campaigns that deliver on the aims above
Proposed BFAWU, seconded ?
Agreed
It was right to condemn the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey from Labour’s shadow cabinet, another example of the ongoing anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism witch-hunt.
However, instead of calling for her reinstatement, the socialist left should use her sacking as an opportunity to discuss, debate and agree our attitude to participation in Keir Starmer's shadow cabinet. It is, after all, committed to running capitalism, not replacing it. In effect, the shadow cabinet is a capitalist government in waiting.
RLB calls herself a socialist - she is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. We oppose the participation of socialist MPs in capitalist governments. Likewise we should oppose socialist MPs being members of shadow cabinets which do not aspire to challenge the rule of capitalism.
The place for socialist MPs is on the backbenches as the extreme opposition, directing their fire not only against the Tory capitalist government but also against Labour’s capitalist government in waiting. Socialist MPs should act as tribunes of the people, championing extra-parliamentary struggles and fighting for the replacement of the rule of the capitalist class by the rule of the working class - socialism.
As Keir Hardie famously said in 1910, we need Labour MPs, “not to keep governments in office or to turn them out, but to organise the working class into a great, independent political power to fight for the coming of socialism”.
Proposed Stan Keable, seconded ?
Not agreed