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Momentum

Replace the Momentum steering committee!

 

Some good decisions were taken at the December 3 National Committee meeting of Momentum. However, while the Steering Committee survives intact and Jon Lansman maintains his ‘ownership’ of the organisation, Momentum is seriously flawed – as new leaks and attacks in the bourgeois media show, warns Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists

Around 60 members of the National Committee of Momentum met in Birmingham to discuss, among other things, the first Momentum conference. It was a very fractious and ill-tempered meeting.

Crucially, a motion to recall the current Steering Committee (which has a majority in support of sole Momentum company director Jon Lansman) and replace it with an interim body elected at the NC was voted down by 30 to 29 votes. Even three recounts could not change the outcome. Ironically, Nick Wrack had successfully moved to change the agenda so that this item was discussed first, as he feared it would be excluded because of time constraints. But had this vote been taken later in the day, it is likely that a majority would have voted in favour of it, as a number of pro-democracy members arrived later in the day.

There were some good decisions taken. Most importantly, there will be no OMOV (one member, one vote) voting at or after conference, despite this being the expressed will of Lansman. Conference will decide on a new constitution, a code of ethics and various policy motions – and all of these decisions will be taken by delegates at conference.

Fearing exactly such an outcome, Jon Lansman and his allies on the Steering Committee had successfully prevented the National Committee from meeting since May 2016. On October 28, they even launched a deeply undemocratic coup by cancelling the meeting of the NC scheduled for November 5 and simply declared that the conference would in fact be a livestreamed national debate, with voting then taking place online afterwards. When the national media picked up on the coup and Lansman was asked by John McDonell to ‘sort it out’, he relented and called another NC meeting for December 3.[i]

In the meantime, he has done pretty much everything in his power to stuff the NC with members who support his plans to make Momentum into nothing more than a big phone bank that sporadically sparks into life for this or that campaign. The hastily called elections of additional NC delegates from the “liberation strands” have to be seen in this context.

Ditto the presence of a number of voting delegates from “Labour organisations” who seem to have been there merely on the invitation of, yes, Mr. Jon Lansman. So we had Labour CND, Labour Against Austerity, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Labour Briefing, Labour Representation Committee, Labour Futures (Jon Lansman’s personal blog) and, farcically, Open Labour and Compass. These last two are not exactly known for their pro-Corbyn-stance, to put it mildly. Needless to say, the list of invitees did not stretch to Labour Party Marxists.

AWL and Momentum Steering Committee member Jill Mountford writes that, “with the exception of LRC delegates (Jackie Walker and Michael Calderbank) the other Labour groups’ delegates voted en-bloc for Jon’s proposals, and were in fact, the only people getting up to support any of his proposals (which were often billed as the Steering Committee’s proposals).”[ii]

Jon Lansman claimed at the meeting that it was in fact the handful of MPs who set up Momentum last year who suggested that these organisations be represented. But there is no method to take groups like Compass or Open Labour off the list of invitees or for other organisations to get involved – chiefly, because there is no official method for affiliation. Only trade unions can affiliate, pay an affiliation fee and then send two delegates to the NC – the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) are the only two organisations officially affiliated to Momentum. Clearly, this situation is untenable.

In any case, Lansman failed this time. The NC saw a tiny pro-democracy majority and most motions were passed “with majorities of 1, 2 or 3 votes”, writes AWL fellow traveller Michael Chessum (who, like Marshajane Thompson, is now still on the SC, although they both haven’t been reelected to the NC, from among which the SC is supposed to be elected).

“Regional delegates, who make up a majority of the NC, almost all arrived mandated to vote for a purely delegate based conference”, he writes in a report that can otherwise be safely ignored: He wants to “build a coalition around a mixed system of decision making” (ie, OMOV plus delegates – a system that clearly is unworkable, otherwise somebody, anybody, would have come up with a concrete proposal by now) and he calls the current debates on the structure and democracy “Mickey Mouse politics” that “need to stop”, while predictably demanding that Momentum should “turn outwards”.[iii]

Opening Momentum

In this, Chessum actually echoes those supporting Lansman’s vision for Momentum. A new Facebook page has been set up “for Momentum members disappointed in that [NC] decision, and who believe all members should be able to vote on Momentum’s future. A delegate based model was originally hoisted onto Momentum without consultation with its wider membership. Letting a small group of delegates decide to maintain their own power, at the expense of all members, isn’t a good starting point for a new political movement. Beyond February, we believe Momentum should adopt a structure that is inclusive and unbureaucratic. We are in the process of transforming the Labour Party, building a parallel organisation with the same structures and procedures of Labour would be a mistake.”

The Facebook page, called Opening Momentum, also prominently features a pretty nasty, gushingly pro-Lansman report of the NC meeting by recently elected women’s NC representative Laura Murray. She claims that, “Naively, I was excited for the National Committee”, but was to be disappointed by all the “infighting” at the meeting. “How silly I was.”

Not as naive as she pretends
Laura Murray: Not as naive as she pretends

And how dishonest. In reality, she is far from the political newcomer she pretends to be in this report. She works as adviser to Grahame Morris MP, member of the shadow cabinet. Oh, and she happens to be the daughter of Andrew Murray, member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and out and out Stalinist. Seamus Milne is a close family friend.[iv]

And look how well he has taught her. Laura writes that she “is not anti-Trotskyist per se, but thinks that “the sectarian attitude taken by Trotskyist groups within Momentum is destructive to our movement”. She has a go at the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty and then turns on those purged from the Labour Party on the most spurious grounds:

“Given that Nick Wrack, Jill Mountford and Jackie Walker are, in turn, blocked, expelled and suspended from being members of the Labour Party, it is unsurprising that they care little for reforming and democratising the Labour Party and even less so about getting it elected into government.”[v] Do we see here the beginnings of an attempt to oust those members of Momentum who have been expelled and suspended from the Labour Party?

The Guardian, who quotes generously from her article, writes that, “The development has meant that Lansman is threatening to walk away from Momentum, Labour sources said.”[vi] If only.

Quite the opposite seems to be happening. Opening Momentum looks like Lansman’s call to arms, perhaps his organisational vehicle to reinforce his grip on the organisation. Needless to say, it is more than ironic that the man who launched an outrageously undemocratic coup in Momentum is now trying to claim the mantel of democracy.

Clearly, he is very unhappy with these decisions taken by the National Committee:

  • Conference will take place on February 25 (or one week either side of that)
  • Branches select delegates (2 per 100 members or any part thereof)
  • Each local branch can submit one motion. Ditto Momentum Youth and students, each “liberation group”, each affiliated union, the national committee and each regional committee.
  • Members in areas without local Momentum groups are “to be represented at the same rate as members in groups, elected by OMOV ballot in regions”. 30 of those members can also submit a motion
  • Motions to be submitted up to three weeks before conference on aims, structures, ethics, policy and campaigning.
  • An open e-forum for all members will be set up, where motions can be discussed, amendments can be mooted and compositing processes can be arranged.
  • A Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) has been elected, which has a small left-wing majority (4 to 3). We sincerely hope that this will prevent those crucial decisions being overturned again.

Why is Lansman so powerful?

Jon Lansman
Jon Lansman: controls Momentum database and income as sole company director

But, as we all know, Jon Lansman and his allies have overturned decisions before and he basically makes up Momentum policy as he goes along. Momentum is still very much the private property of Lansman, who is the sole director of various companies that “own” the Momentum database and its income. And he treats it very much like his private property.

For example, in mid-November he launched the MxV platform, which asks members to post “proposals” (ie, motions) for conference which are ranked by how many members have clicked the “support” button featured next to each headline. There is now a long list of no less than 300 proposals, which range from the supportable to the bizarre. Clearly, nobody can read them all – and that is of course the point of the OMOV system favoured by Lansman: it is not “empowering”, as people like Paul Mason[vii] claim, it is exactly the opposite. It alienates people, makes them less engaged with Momentum, sidelines the branches – and concentrates all power in the hands of King Jon.

It is of course noteworthy that Lansman launched this platform a couple of weeks before the December 3 meeting of the NC, which was tasked with deciding on how motions should actually be submitted. Clearly, he thought he had it in the bag and that his proposals for an OMOV conference would be supported at the newly stuffed NC. (I recommend the report by Josie Runswick, LGBT rep on the NC, on this matter, as she usefully publishes Jon Lansman’s full OMOV proposal, which can only be described as a bureaucrat’s wet dream [viii]).

Also, there are enough ambiguities in the motions voted through by the NC for us to remain on our guard:

  • The NC voted in favour of an “online priorities ballot”, which can only mean that some motions submitted will not be heard at conference. Such a ballot (presumably organised via the already existing MxV platform) is also designed to bring easily digestible and short motions to the top. Who wants to read a proposal for a constitution that could actually work (and therefore would have to be of a certain length). Boring!
  • Local branches are “encouraged to composite motions (motions composited by more groups will move higher up the agenda as incentive to composite). Amendments to be circulated before the conference.”[ix] However, it is not stated which Momentum bodies can actually submit amendments or how many. The tight timeframe will also make it rather difficult for Momentum branches to meet and discuss motions or amendments.
  • The National Committee and regional committees “may send 1 motion or constitutional amendment”. The problem is that there is no constitution yet, so how can it be amended? Or does Lansman have some kind of draft constitution in his back pocket that he will surprise the organisation with just before conference? Via his SC, perhaps? Why don’t branches have the right to submit “constitutional amendments”? It is all very unclear.

Ideally, all of these issues should be resolved by the CAC soon. But the Steering Committee could again overturn it all – it has done similar things before. Also, the next NC (scheduled for January) could easily see a small majority for the Lansman wing, if a couple of pro-democracy people are absent for some reason.

In any case, the Lansman wing has the clear advantage in the current struggle. Not numerically. Needless to say, most members want democratic control over the organisation that they pay regular dues to.

But it is important to understand why Jon Lansman can command such power. After all, he is just one man. We have been told not to “personalise” things so much by placing the blame for Momentum’s inertia onto his shoulders.

But Lansman has been tasked by ‘our Jeremy’ to set up and run the organisation. There are quite a few members of the SC and NC who work for Corbyn and/or the Labour Party. Clearly, they understand that any future career in the Labour Party and parliament depends on them ‘playing nice’.

They know that Corbyn has given his okay to the deeply undemocratic set up of the organisation, which is “owned” by a couple of companies that Lansman is the director of. Momentum was never designed to be democratic or to be run by its members.

Just like the Labour Party itself, Momentum is split, though of course the fault lines do not run between those that want to keep Corbyn and those busy plotting his overthrow. Momentum is split between those who want peace with the right (justified by the mantra that any Labour government is better than a Tory government) and those who think we should be fighting for some kind of socialism.

All those pesky lefties who come to Momentum meetings and talk about mandatory selection of MPs, the need to transform the Labour Party into a real party of Labour or the fight for socialism are viewed as nothing but a diversion. In fact, branches are seen as a diversion, especially those that function well.

Momentum is supposed to be an extension of the Labour electoral machine, designed to support Corbyn in the event of the next coup (which will come sooner rather than later). It is far from impossible that Lansman will be told to close down the organisation if the left becomes too powerful or branches become too autonomous and energetic. Anybody who then continues to use Lansman’s database will make themselves liable to be sued – and probably successfully, it should be noted.

To sum up. Of course, it’s great that the left, pro-democratic wing in Momentum has managed to pull off a couple of victories on the NC. Clearly, all is still to play for in Momentum. But as long as Lansman is in charge of the organisation, it cannot become anything more than a fanclub for Jeremy Corbyn.

And not a very dynamic or effective one at that.

Notes

[i] http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/jon-lansmans-coup-in-momentum/

[ii] https://jillsmomentumblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/decisions-on-national-conference-positive-steps-forward-to-building-a-democratic-movement/

[iii] https://theclarionmag.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/michaelncforward/

[iv] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/04/thin-controller

[v] https://medium.com/@lauracatrionamurray/momentum-vs-inertia-e525c8f9e217#.e7djumgoq

[vi] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/05/trotskyist-factions-seeking-to-take-over-momentum-member-claims

[vii] https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/why-i-joined-momentum-e2e8311ea05c#.pksd32xel

[viii] https://momentumjosie.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/nc03_12_16/

[ix] https://momentumjosie.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/nc03_12_16/

Momentum

Dec 3 Momentum national committee: Mixed results

The December 3 national committee decided by the smallest of margins that Momentum’s first conference will see delegates vote on everything – structure, constitution and policy motions. There will be no OMOV (one member, one vote), despite the best efforts of Momentum company director Jon Lansman to stuff the NC with delegates favourable to his conservative outlook for Momentum.

Also, the newly elected conference arrangement committee has a small left majority, which – hopefully – should prevent those crucial decisions being overturned.

On the negative side, an early vote to replace the current steering committee and have new elections was lost with 29 to 30 votes.

Clearly, all is still to play for in Momentum.

Here are a couple of reports:

  • By Josie Runswick, one of the two LGBT+ reps on the Momentum National Committee. This usefully lists all the motions submitted, including those voted down. It shows for example the convoluted and deeply undemocratic plans Jon Lansman presented and which would have committed the organisation to an OMOV vote after conference.
  • By Steering Committee member and AWL member Jill Mountford 
  • By Ed Whitby, Northern (North East and Cumbria) regional delegate and AWL member
Nationalism and internationalism

Hillel Ticktin lambasts John McDonnell’s economic timidity

This is an edited version of a speech given by Critique founder Hillel Ticktin at a London Communist Forum on November 13

Clearly, with the election of Donald Trump, the bourgeoisie is entering a period of difficulty – as is to be expected at this stage of the decline and decay of capitalism.

However, the Corbyn wing of the Labour Party is putting forward a very weak economic programme. It is, of course, difficult for shadow chancellor John McDonnell to openly propose what he has held in the past (and may continue to hold till the grave), because he believes it to be unacceptable – the Labour right is in fact attacking him as a fantasist.

McDonnell’s programme begins, as does Trump’s, with investment in infrastructure – something like £500 billion. £250 billion would be invested directly, and £150 billion would be spent through a nationalised bank, plus £100 billion to be raised from taxing the capitalist class. To give you some idea of what £500 billion means, it is close to the total spent in the government budget every year. Trump, of course, is putting forward a figure of $600 billion, but in the context of the United States this figure is trivial. The GDP is $16-18 trillion a year; while the official arms budget alone is $700 billion.

At the present time the bourgeoisie has realised that the policy of austerity cannot continue as it is. It has been the policy since the downturn and has been enforced worldwide, whether the government imposing it is conservative or ‘socialist’. That is obviously true in France, Britain and Germany, and effectively it has been the same thing in the third world, with certain exceptions.

So a switch to infrastructure represents a change – and, of course, Trump presents it as a very big change. It is not new, however: it was in a sense Barack Obama’s policy, but he could not get it through congress, and it has been the policy of the International Monetary Fund for the last few years. Since the IMF is an institution largely controlled by the US, this is not so surprising. The IMF has been insisting on the importance of infrastructure, which should be built up in all countries. You do not need to be familiar with Keynesian economics to know that if you expand your budget and invest in the economy then you will have growth and increase the number of people employed. The result being that the tax take will grow – and it can grow very considerably. That is elementary logic – you do not need to know anything about economics to understand it.

But economics has become a huge industry in itself. Lawrence Summers, who was Bill Clinton’s treasury minister in the 1990s and is now professor of economics at Harvard, keeps writing in the Financial Times along the lines of what I have just said: there is no reason not to spend on infrastructure, since it would not cost the bourgeoisie a single penny. Employment and the tax take would rise, and consequently there would be no increase in the budget deficit, so technically it could have been done a long time ago.

But, of course, it was not really about a budget deficit at all. The reason they did not adopt such a policy was because they preferred austerity – they actually wanted large-scale unemployment. They wanted a reserve army of labour, which would hit the working class hard, in order to control it. They wanted to re-establish commodity fetishism – the eternal, permanent nature of the market. They wanted to re-establish the ideology. That was the intention. But could such a policy succeed? One could argue – and this obviously is what a section of the capitalist class, and whoever advises May, must think – that it just does not work. The working class voted for Brexit because it was antagonistic to the establishment, in the words of Nigel Farage. If that is so, clearly austerity is not actually working, or working sufficiently. That is what this government believes and what the far right has been arguing in its own, anti-establishment language – it is what Trump is arguing.

Capitalist ‘socialism’

In fact McDonnell is actually far less radical than Trump in terms of what he is proposing. And in the context of the new May government he is not that radical either. The fact that rightwing Labour says it is a fantasy shows the nature of rightwing Labour – it does not understand the system it is supporting. So there is no reason for McDonnell to back down – indeed he could go very much further. But he has not put it in this overall context. So, while Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell both talk about socialism, they are not even very radical, let alone socialist.

Indeed they both talked of socialism at the Labour Party conference in October. But it was simply amazing – deputy leader Tom Watson came out with a speech about the wonders of capitalism and afterwards was congratulated by Corbyn! This must be a new type of socialism. In a recent TV interview Corbyn was asked if he was in favour of a socialist, planned society. And he said no: that went out with the Soviet Union, and Labour was in favour of the market. So what on earth is he talking about? On the one hand he talks about socialism, and on the other hand the market. Obviously McDonnell is anxious to distance himself from Stalin’s regime, but he is not prepared to explain the difference between that and what a socialist society would be like.

The case for a socialist society starts with the abolition of abstract labour. Obviously Corbyn and McDonnell are not going to use those words, but what it amounts to is abolishing the measurement of, and control over, labour. A society where such control exists is a society marked by an economic force which socialism aims to abolish. You might put forward a demand like, ‘There should be control from below, and managers should receive the same wages as ordinary workers.’ If McDonnell did that he would be laughed at, of course. But it would be a necessary feature of socialism, which entails self-management throughout society, from top to bottom, and movement between positions, whereby people are trained to take part in the planning and management apparatus, as monotonous, soul-destroying jobs are abolished. This is not just an ultimate aim: it is one which needs to be brought into being.

Quite obviously McDonnell does not go near it. Yes, he says he will tax wealth, but it is not very clear to me why he does not propose a very heavy tax on incomes. Why should anybody get £5.5 million, the average salary of a CEO today? I looked at the income tax statistics for 2010, and what they show is that there were around 11,500 people who ‘earned’ more than £1 million a year, the average among them being £2.5 million. Since then, the average has gone up to £5.5 million – their salaries have more than doubled. If you multiply 11,500 by £5 million, you get close to £60 billion and the budget deficit is £70 billion!

So McDonnell could produce these statistics to really back up his claims for ‘higher levels of equality’. Of course, the reply would be: ‘There’d be no incentive for the wealth-creators, the entrepreneurs, those who come up with the ideas.’ One could argue in reply that such capitalists are actually a hindrance, but if he did that he would be viciously attacked and derided as an idiot.

So instead he proposes a fairly anodyne wealth tax, which is opposed using the argument that old people – usually women – who have big houses should not be penalised in that way. Along with this he has put forward a £10-an-hour minimum wage. I do not understand why he is being so miserly – the government itself is proposing £9 and there is still inflation. McDonnell clearly wants to be seen as a ‘moderate’ leftwing shadow chancellor, whom the newspapers will take seriously. But the result is just incoherent and stupid.

Even on the obvious question of the full nature of austerity, why he does not commit to restoring all benefits I do not know. The argument in 2010 was that Britain had to go for austerity because it would go bankrupt otherwise, and there were comparisons with Spain and Greece. But Britain is not actually in the same position, even though it has a huge budget deficit. In the case of Greece and Spain, the largest percentage of the deficit is owed to external lenders; in Britain two-thirds is owed internally, to various pension funds and so on. The fear was that investment in Britain would cease, but that has not happened, and was not likely to happen. There was no reason to assume that pension funds or asset management funds would go under and that is even more true today.

It is hard to see how McDonnell’s programme gets anywhere near appealing to the majority of the population. He does say that Labour would repeal the anti-trade union laws passed by Tories, but he does not go beyond that. The laws were not exactly pro-union before that. It really is a case of ‘extreme moderation’.

There is the usual statement about corporate greed and the need to deal with tax avoidance and evasion. Personally, I do not think socialists should bother with that. It is absurd. What you need to do is raise taxes, full stop. If a corporation refuses to pay tax, then you deal with it. Tax avoidance is deliberately built into the budget statement: it is 100% legal. You cannot argue against it except by arguing against the whole budget and the philosophy behind it – which is what McDonnell should do. But to talk about cracking down on tax avoidance … well you can’t: a considerable percentage of the population takes part in it. ISAs (individual savings accounts) are legal tax avoidance, built into every budget, so talk of cracking down on it is extreme reformism, of an absurd kind. If you are going to propose a budget at all, then you need very high levels of taxation on the rich. If someone has a £5.5 million salary, charge them £5.4 million in tax: if they refuse to pay it, put them in jail!

It is the same with tax havens, even though Britain itself is one of the top tax havens in the world anyway. And it is not that the Channel Islands, Bahamas, etc simply act on their own: tax havens are part of the capitalist system as a whole. The idea that an isolated Labour government can do anything about it on its own is a fantasy, but there is no attempt to look for an international response: it is just Britain and its ‘tax problems’.

However, McDonnell has never held a revolutionary position, although it is understandable that the bourgeoisie attacks him so viciously (and, in its own stupidity, the Labour right has turned Corbyn into a hero). But what they are proposing has very little to do with socialism – except in one important sense. We are living in a period of crisis for capitalism, which is why the bourgeoisie has reacted to Corbyn in the way it has. It really does not have a way out. So, even though McDonnell is a confused reformist who is not going very far, people may force him, in spite of himself, to go further. He has obviously decided to try and conciliate the people attacking him, but in time he will discover that will not work, unless he capitulates completely.

His first demand should have been for full employment; after all, the recent results of votes in the US and Britain precisely reflect current high levels of unemployment. He ought also to have made a statement on pensions, which for most people are appalling at around £8,000 a year. But some in the Labour Party seem to go along with the idea that the cost of pensions is getting too much. The Labour MP, Frank Field, has expressed this view and was not repudiated. Nor has McDonnell proposed anything near enough regarding the national health service, which is clearly cracking today.

Efficiency

And in terms of the overall system, he should have stood up and said, ‘We don’t believe in competition. Competition is not part of socialism. On the contrary, we stand for equality, including equality of power. We stand for people working because they want to work, because work has become humanity’s prime want.’ But he did not do so; he is clearly prepared to accept the overall capitalist philosophy.

Although Corbyn and McDonnell at various times have talked about control from below, now there is no mention of what some people call economic democracy. Nor, what is crucial, did he attempt to take on Tom Watson’s line, which is basically that capitalism is highly efficient, more so than any other system. He ought to have explained that only socialism is efficient, and then given examples of how inefficient capitalism is. The meaning of the socialisation of production – that he does not touch upon. Socialism is a very different system which is bound to come about, which is in the process of coming about.

Both The Economist and the Financial Times have recently made the point that today we have a level of monopoly higher than it has ever been, even though bourgeois economics disputes this. Today, according to The Economist, there are three finance-capital firms, which control 40% of the stock exchange – and that 40% accounts for 80% of output. So there are three firms effectively in control – I do not think such a situation has ever existed before. One would not expect the Labour leaders to really understand what that means, but one would expect, perhaps, that their economists will eventually catch up with reality.

Capitalism is going the way Hilferding and Lenin predicted, even if some on the left say they were wrong. That is the way it is, and yet McDonnell seems to be in some other space.

Momentum

Paul Mason’s ‘consensus democracy’: Same old ephemeral new

Paul Mason may now be championing ‘consensus democracy’, but its failings have long been established, writes Mick Last of the Labour Party Marxists

In an article published on November 1, journalist Paul Mason announced that he is joining Momentum.1)https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/why-i-joined-momentum-e2e8311ea05c#.w4d2rhk1i He gives three reasons. The first two are to support Momentum, and to support Jeremy Corbyn, against the Labour right (one reason dressed up as two). The third, much more elaborated, is to support the organisational proposals of Jon Lansman and his co-thinkers against their internal opponents. Momentum, Mason says, “faces two alternative futures: one in which all the negative, hierarchical and factionalist tendencies of the 20th century left are allowed to resurface; another in which Momentum?- and ultimately Labour itself – becomes a horizontal, consensus-based organisation, directly accountable to its mass of members.”

Mason is a fairly eminent journo (BBC2’s Newsnight business editor and then economics editor for Channel 4 News before quitting this February in order to pursue a freelance career). But his potential political weight in support of Lansman does not come from his background in “impartial” TV reporting. Rather, it has two elements.

The first is Mason’s four books, Live working or die fighting: how the working class went global (2007); Meltdown: the end of the age of greed (2009); Why it’s kicking off everywhere: the new global revolutions (2012) and Postcapitalism: a guide to our future (2015).2)I leave on one side his ‘journo China novel’, Rare earth (2012), available used at 1p or remaindered at 98p on Amazon. This fertile book production on large issues can make Mason appear as a serious theorist. (No matter for this purpose that all four books are, in fact, journalistic rather than rigorous theoretical productions, that the predictions of the first three have already been falsified, and that the illusions of the fourth in the ‘gig economy’ have been recently exposed by the industrial tribunal ruling in the Uber case.3)www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37802386.)

Second, and probably equally importantly, Mason is a ‘repentant Leninist’ like the Eurocommunists and, before them, many others (like Arthur Koestler or Roger Garaudy), though less significant than any of these. Though he tends to downplay his involvement with the semi-orthodox Trotskyist group, Workers Power, he was certainly already involved with WP in 1984 aged 24,4)www.reportdigital.co.uk/gallery/1980s/1882/2159/1286/feminism-1980s.html., as he still was in 2001, aged 41. 5)See M Larsen, ‘A tale of two campaigns’ Weekly Worker March 1 2001. In 2007 and 2008 he spoke at the weekend schools of the Permanent Revolution splinter from Workers Power (listings at www.permanentrevolution.net/search/?s=%22Paul+Mason%22), though, given that on these occasions he was plugging his 2007 book, no more than slight sympathy with the Permanent Revolution side of the split can be inferred. This is a substantial track record of involvement with one of the more dogmatic and bureaucratic-centralist among the Trotskyist groups. Work on political economy under this aegis may well account for Mason’s ability to turn himself from a ‘music and politics’ graduate and music teacher in the 1980s into an economics writer from the 1990s.

It is this substantial period of bureaucratic-centralist commitment, together with present explicit condemnation of Leninism, which qualifies Mason as a ‘repentant Leninist’ rather than merely a left Labourite with a far-left past.

Like ‘repentant Leninists’ more generally, he adopts the general line that ‘Leninism leads to Stalinism’. Like them, too, he argues for “respecting … the democratic institutions of the UK”. And, also like them, he advocates policies of exclusion: “Momentum must have the ability to immediately exclude from membership people who breach Labour Party rules, and who engage in [undefined] unacceptable behaviour.”

Mason claims, however, to offer a new alternative to discredited Leninism; not a mere repetition of the same old repentance. But it is anything but new. It is merely the same old pseudo-anarchism (with bureaucratic control supplying the real practical decision-making mechanism) of the ‘consensus’, anti-globalisation ‘social forums’ movement around 2000; and behind that, the same old ‘anti-authoritarianism’ which goes all the way back to Mikhail Bakunin.

If there is an added element, it is that ‘horizontalism’ is to mean plebiscitary ‘democracy’ without either any effective possibility of deliberation or means of unseating the authors of the plebiscite question – as practised by Louis Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini, and most recently before our very eyes by the Brexiteers and their fraudulent press.

The presentation of something old as really new is a distinctive inheritance of the post-1956 ‘new left’, and thereby of the Socialist Workers Party and related groups (Workers Power, which originated in the ‘Left Faction’ expelled from the SWP in 1975, is one); and of the Mandelite Fourth International, which adopted the idea of a ‘new vanguard’ in the 1970s. The basic idea is that the ‘old left’ is a waste of space and it is necessary to start again from scratch with ‘newly radicalising forces’. Ever since the post-1956 ‘new left’ the novelty of each ‘newly radicalising force’ has proved illusory.

What, if anything, are we to make of the more concrete arguments Mason offers in his ‘joining statement’?

Social movements

To begin with, Mason responds to discussions about “how Labour could ‘become a social movement’”. He argues that as an electoral party it cannot become a social movement as such, because “its structures have to mirror those of constituencies, councils, parliament itself”. However, he argues, Labour has to “learn from social movements”, meaning that it should “become much more clearly an alliance of groups with limited common interests: in social justice, workers’ rights, a zero-carbon energy system, the liberation of oppressed minorities, and opposition to adventurist wars”.

He makes no attempt to define what he means by a “social movement”. If what is meant is a mass movement mobilising very broad forces in society, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the Labour Party’s ‘electoral’ and affiliate structures are an obstacle to such a movement. Consider the Social Democratic Party of Germany before 1914 and its European congeners; or, for that matter, the French or Italian Communist Parties at their height. Cooperatives, trade union fractions, social clubs, local fiestas, and so on, all operated alongside and together with the electoral form of organisation.

It is reasonably clear, however, that what Mason means is not this, but rather “social movement” in the sense of the 1970s women’s liberation movement, or the 1990s-early 2000s anti-globalisation movement, or Occupy.

By comparison with the late 20th and early 21st century far-left grouplets, these phenomena are no doubt impressively large. But by comparison with the mass European social democratic or communist parties of the past, or even with the Labour Party, they are trivial.

In the first place, even by comparison with the hundreds of thousands who signed up to Labour to support Corbyn, the numbers involved in them are marginal – with the exception of the Brazilian Workers Party (the source of the “people’s budget” idea), which, Mason conveniently forgets for a moment, both was a conventional political party and, when it took office, became merely a player in the ‘social-liberal’ game, like the Blairites and so on.

Secondly, and more fundamentally, the ‘social movements’ make a big splash for a little while, but are temporally ephemeral. Where now are the social forums? Where is Occupy?

In contrast, the big mass workers’ parties were built over decades and were able to achieve real, if limited, gains. The Labour victory of 1945, celebrated by Ken Loach’s film and by many Labour left supporters, depended in part on a favourable political conjuncture – but also on 14 years’ hard slog after the spectacular defeat of 1931. Before that, the Labour Representation Committee was founded in 1900 – it took 22 years for the party it established to become a contender for power. (This is, in fact, also true of the Brazilian Workers Party, which took a decade to achieve more than 10% of the vote.)

Remodelling Labour on the basis of the “social movements” would then mean abandoning that long, hard slog in favour of a series of ephemeral campaigns and street actions, without long-term results.

Moreover, if Labour is anything useful at all, it is, as it was in 1900, a political party which seeks the political representation of labour – that is, of the wage-earning class as a class – through the means available in the electoral system. To remodel Labour as “an alliance of groups with limited common interests” would, in reality, be to achieve what Blair and his Eurocommunist allies failed to do: to liquidate Labour as a party of the working class in favour of a ‘broad democratic alliance’ coalition.

From this angle, Mason’s ‘joining statement’ is his equivalent of Georg von Vollmar’s 1891 Eldorado speeches, in which this former ultra-left and general strike advocate announced his conversion to a ‘realism’ well to the right of those like Bebel and Kautsky.6)FL Carsten, ‘Georg von Vollmar’ Journal of Contemporary History No25 (1990), pp317-22. Such conversions are commonplace: both ultra-leftism and rightist coalitionism reflect an impatience to ‘do something now’ – it is just that the option of the hard slog of building, (or in 21st century conditions rebuilding) an effective movement is excluded a priori. Then, when it becomes too obvious that ‘direct action’ is not producing results, the only remaining option is coalitionism.

The fundamental step has been taken. Mason’s view remains overtly of the left. But the logic of his view is to become a Blairite, a Clinton Democrat or a Renzi-ite.

Anti-factionalism

The demon of faction that over them hungIn accents of horror their epitaph sung

While pride and venality joined in the stave

And canting democracy wept at the grave 7)Memoirs of the life of the Rt Hon George Canning New York 1830, Vol 2, p58.

So wrote Tory politician George Canning on the 1807 fall of the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ government, which introduced the abolition of the slave trade.

For Canning, both ‘faction’ and ‘democracy’ were ‘boo words’, carrying as much negative emphasis as ‘pride’ and ‘venality’. For Mason ‘democracy’ is not a ‘boo word’; but ‘faction’ still is. This complaint about ‘factionalism’ is a feature of the underlying dominance of British high politics by Toryism (including the Cobbettian radical Toryism of the traditional Labour right). But it is also a reflection of the ‘orthodox Trotskyism’ Mason continues to inherit from his time in Workers Power – which even if it does not ban factions outright, or ban ‘permanent factions’ (as the SWP does) – still regards them as wholly exceptional and undesirable. Thus,

I am not worried about ‘entryism’. Anybody who is in a leftwing group or party right now should be allowed to join Momentum, so long as they openly and irrevocably dissolve their organisations and pledge to support Labour in all future elections.

The emphasis is in the original, so that it is the demand to dissolve groups that is Mason’s main point; not the demand for unconditional and permanent future support for Labour.8)That itself is problematic. Is it to be even if Labour was to break the links with the unions, or to launch a new aggressive war, Mr Mason?

What is involved is a deep misunderstanding of absolutely fundamental necessities of social decision-making; a misunderstanding which also supports Mason’s advocacy of plebiscitism. Anti-factionalism makes sense for Toryism, which is an oligarchical and leader-cult politics, and all the more for open anti-democrats such as the early 19th century politicians like Canning. For purported democrats, it is a complete contradiction.

Equally, for traditional Stalinists, with their monolithism and leader cults, anti-factionalism makes a bizarre sort of sense. For Trotskyists – including former Trotskyists – the inheritors of Leon Trotsky’s Third International after Lenin, it should also be an obvious contradiction.

It is just in the nature of things that human beings have disagreements. Assuming there is a straightforwardly ‘right thing to do’, what it is is rarely obvious. Very frequently, there is not only a choice to be made between option 1 or 2, but from options 1 to 7 and within these, 1 (a) (i), 1 (a) (ii), 1 (b) … and so on.

To reach a decision, then, it is necessary to reduce the range of options. This is, of course, why the Labour Party, when it functioned at all democratically, had (1) the right of constituencies to introduce amendments to proposed motions, (2) compositing procedures and (3) discussion at party conference before the vote was taken.

Factions (and, in the politics of the state, parties) are a part of the method by which, on the one hand, the full range of possible options is brought to light in discussion; and, on the other hand, the range of options is reduced to a manageable number, through individuals allying, compromising and coalescing in factional groupings, between whose proposals choices are then made.

The underlying problem does not in the least go away if factions are banned. It is still necessary that the range of possible ideas should be reduced in some process of discussion, amendment and so on.

Otherwise, let us imagine a Momentum of 200,000 members, of which every member has (a) the right to put proposals by electronic circulation to the whole organisation and (b) the right of individual veto over all such proposals (which is what is actually meant by proceeding by consensus, rather than by vote).

Then, on the one hand, I get up in the morning, switch on my computer and find 10,000 emails with individual proposals for Momentum decisions waiting to be read. However, on the other hand, actually, I need not read them, because I can be pretty certain that someone among the 200,000 members will veto any of them, so that none of them will be adopted.

The reality is that someone has to reduce the range of possible choices. Behind any consensus process, there must be some decision-making mechanism which works otherwise. Thus, in the World Social Forum, the decisive voice was of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Brazilian Workers Party; in the European Social Forum, that of Rifondazione Comunista; in the London variant, Ken Livingstone’s London mayor’s office. In the absence of freedom to organise factions which endeavour to persuade others of their ideas, it must be so.

Hence my point above about The Third International after Lenin, where Trotsky makes the point that the full-time apparatus must function as a faction. Hence, to ban factions is merely to ban all factions except the full-time apparatus.

The apparatus then functions in exactly the way as Mason claims the ‘Leninist’ left group does – as an ‘enlightened-minority’ cog driving a half-ignorant bigger group – and, by not admitting its own factional character, it befuddles the believers in a real ‘consensus process’.

The ‘zombie ideology’ (which Mason claims affects the left groups) is, then, Mason’s ideology, which is a zombie version of the ideas of the anarchists, the ‘new left’ and the ‘children of 68’. The result of this ideology is to make democratic discussion impossible. In turn, this produces demoralisation as soon as the first flush of enthusiasm fails, which is in turn the reason for the ephemeral quality of the ‘social movements’ of the past period.

References

References
↑1 https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/why-i-joined-momentum-e2e8311ea05c#.w4d2rhk1i
↑2 I leave on one side his ‘journo China novel’, Rare earth (2012), available used at 1p or remaindered at 98p on Amazon.
↑3 www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37802386.
↑4 www.reportdigital.co.uk/gallery/1980s/1882/2159/1286/feminism-1980s.html.
↑5 See M Larsen, ‘A tale of two campaigns’ Weekly Worker March 1 2001. In 2007 and 2008 he spoke at the weekend schools of the Permanent Revolution splinter from Workers Power (listings at www.permanentrevolution.net/search/?s=%22Paul+Mason%22), though, given that on these occasions he was plugging his 2007 book, no more than slight sympathy with the Permanent Revolution side of the split can be inferred.
↑6 FL Carsten, ‘Georg von Vollmar’ Journal of Contemporary History No25 (1990), pp317-22.
↑7 Memoirs of the life of the Rt Hon George Canning New York 1830, Vol 2, p58.
↑8 That itself is problematic. Is it to be even if Labour was to break the links with the unions, or to launch a new aggressive war, Mr Mason?
Momentum

A party, within a party within…? Report of the November 5 meeting of “Momentum National Committee members”

Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists reports from the November 5 meeting of members of the Momentum national committee

Thirty-four people, including observers, attended the unofficial meeting for members of Momentum’s national committee, which was held in Birmingham on November 5 on the initiative of Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union.

This a was an important attempt to stand up to the decision by a small majority at a hastily called emergency meeting of the Momentum steering committee on October 28 to cancel an official meeting of the NC, which was supposed to take place on November 5 and make decisions on how Momentum’s first ever conference in February should be run. Instead, the SC – by a vote of six to three – decided that it should also make one of the most crucial decisions on the matter: namely, that conference should be organised not on the basis of local delegates, but ‘one member, one vote’ of the entire membership. A coup, in other words.

No wonder then that Momentum regions and branches up and down the country were livid. They had, after all, held meetings to discuss and make – mostly critical – amendments to the proposals put out by the Momentum office in early October on how to run conference. In the absence of a ‘horizontal’ line of communication between Momentum members or branches, it is difficult to know precisely what all the regions and branches decided, but, judging from posts on Facebook and the occasional report or set of minutes published, it looks like most regions favoured changes to the proposals (which, it should be stressed, did not come from the elected steering committee itself, but from Jon Lansman and a couple of his allies on the SC).

For example, many regions criticised the Omov plans and instead argued either for a delegate conference or a ‘hybrid’ and there were lots of proposals to lower the threshold needed to submit motions to conference. According to Lansman’s suggestion, a motion would need the support of 1,000 members before it could be heard at conference – an impossibility for any motion that is not supported and pushed by those having access to the database. The proposals criticising such nonsense seem to be the real reason why the NC was cancelled.

Immediately after the cancellation was announced, four Momentum regional conferences, a number of branches and dozens of individual members protested loudly against the move. Bourgeois newspapers quickly picked up on the “looming split” in Momentum, which in turn led John McDonnell to call an emergency meeting between comrades Lansman and Wrack to sort out the mess and limit the damage. Together they drafted a statement that was put to the SC on November 2 and initially attracted the unanimous support of its members. (Jill Mountford has since recanted, as “I woke up in a cold sweat and thought, I shouldn’t have signed this”, she said in Birmingham – though it is probably more likely that the cold sweat was down to a phone call from the leadership of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, of which she is a member).

The new statement, which “recognises and regrets the discontent and frustration felt by Momentum members in recent days”, gives some ground to the opposition by confirming that a new NC meeting will take place on December 3 and partially retreating on the voting arrangements for conference: “There will be both a physical delegates conference to thoroughly debate proposals submitted from the membership, and then Omov voting on the proposals in the period after the conference. The details of this procedure will be determined over the coming week.”

Yes, good luck with that. There was no such recommendation forthcoming at the Birmingham meeting – and it is doubtful whether there is any way the two methods can be combined, despite half of those present on November 5 arguing for a “hybrid”. More on that below.

Mess

Although the November 2 statement undoubtedly reduced the number of those travelling to Birmingham three days later, there was clearly still a strong desire to discuss what had happened and how similar undemocratic moves by a small leadership (whose democratic credentials are shaky, to say the least) can be avoided in the future.

Eighteen of the attendees at the November 5 meeting were members of the national committee. The AWL had four comrades present and there was a member each from the Labour Representation Committee, Red Labour, Socialist Appeal and Labour Party Marxists. A journalist from Socialist Worker was shown the door before the start of the meeting and, after a brief discussion, a member of the Socialist Party in England and Wales was also barred from attending.

Four members of the Momentum steering committee were present: Jackie Walker, Matt Wrack, Jill Mountford and her AWL fellow traveller, Michael Chessum. But because of the outrageous decision by the AWL to effectively support the right’s witch-hunting of comrade Walker by demoting her from the position of vice-chair of Momentum on the initiative of Jon Lansman, there is clearly a lot of bad blood between those four ‘left’ members on the SC.

Funnily enough, as the first speaker of the day, Jill Mountford started off by saying that “we shouldn’t turn on each other and witch-hunt each other”. Clearly, that was not meant as an apology to Jackie, but was perhaps intended as an attempt to stave off criticism of the actions of her own organisation.

But Jackie made her displeasure known, complaining, “The things that have happened to me have created a culture that has made the current move possible.” Too right. She was also self-critical: “Some of us have been coerced into supporting things that we wouldn’t have otherwise supported” – for example, the “lack of democracy within Momentum has been present for a long time”.

Comrade Wrack described an organisational “mess”, with “badly planned and badly run” meetings of the SC, where “outcomes are unclear and it is even less clear who will act to implement which decision”. There is a real discrepancy between the elected officers and the staff in Momentum office, “who don’t come from a labour movement background” and don’t know “that they are supposed to put into action the decisions that the elected officers have made”. He warned that this “tyranny of structurelessness” means that “people get away with all sorts”.

Speaker after speaker shared stories about the lack of democracy and, crucially, the inefficiency of the organisation. A comrade from Worcester told us how for months he pestered the office for contact details of other Momentum members locally, so he could set up a group: “Now I know there were six of us doing exactly the same thing at the same time. We all got the same reply from Momentum: silence.” Some of them actually bumped into each other when they were distributing Momentum leaflets at the same event.

Of course, Jon Lansman and his allies on the SC have used the fact that about a third of Momentum members are currently not organised in branches as a reason to push through Omov. In fact, like so many problems with the organisation, this is the fault of the leadership of Momentum, which is clearly not facilitating the organisation of local groups. If anything, the opposite is taking place: local groups are not allowed to send out their own emails (they all have to go through Momentum nationally), they do not receive a penny from the dues of 20,000 members and are often discouraged from organising activities.

Nevertheless, despite the obvious democratic deficit at all levels, there is clearly no desire to “split Momentum”, as had been reported. “I am here because I am convinced we still have everything to play for within the organisation”, said Matt Wrack. “We can’t throw this opportunity away and this assessment colours my whole tactical approach.”

A range of proposals were put forward in a useful if rather wide-ranging brainstorming session on how to democratise the organisation in the run-up to conference: they ranged from the need to publish the SC’s minutes and to clarify that the steering committee is subordinate to the national committee; that a new SC should be elected at the next NC meeting; that the Momentum office should help setting up local groups; to, crucially, the need to challenge the current company set-up, which gives Jon Lansman as the sole director total control over Momentum’s database – and money. Michael Chessum told the meeting that he happened to be in the office when he “overheard that Momentum had given a substantial donation to the Jeremy for Leader campaign and had seconded staff and equipment”. Chessum is the treasurer of Momentum, we should add. He should – at least – have been informed of such a decision.

It seemed to me obvious that the four members of the SC who were present should take a lead in cohering these proposals into a range of motions that regions and branches could move locally in order to give direction to those calling for more democracy. However, there is so much bad blood between the four that this is not going to happen. So the proposals are now being shared online in rough format by those who attended the meeting, with people naturally stressing those things that they found most important. An unsatisfactory outcome.

OMOV

Very interesting – though with an even less concrete outcome – was the discussion on ‘Omov versus delegate structure’ for conference. Speakers correctly identified that there are “two distinct visions” for Momentum: One, personified by Jon Lansman, is the idea that getting Jeremy Corbyn elected was the main thing that Momentum should do. From now on, it should exist as a centrally controlled organisation with lots of money and lots of staff that can organise lovely Facebook campaigns. Members of such an organisation can occasionally be activated to organise phone banks when the next coup or general election comes – but otherwise are nothing but “silent foot soldiers”, as Jackie Walker put it. Omov probably does look attractive to all those members who have so far been denied a real voice in running the organisation as a direct result of the lack of democracy in Momentum, as one speaker put it.

The other vision was supported by pretty much everybody in the room. This understands that “we are not a Jeremy Corbyn fan club”, as Matt Wrack put it. According to this outlook, Labour lefts need to actively organise in every ward and every Constituency Labour Party in order to remake the whole party from top to bottom if we are serious about fighting for a socialist future. Jeremy Corbyn is not going to do it for us.

A top down conference, followed by an Omov vote some time later, is, of course, designed to support vision 1, whereas a delegate structure is based on the need for active branches, discussion and debate amongst members – vision 2. These two visions are now openly clashing, with Jill Mountford warning that “Jon Lansman could not be more dismissive of local groups. He utterly rubbishes them at every opportunity – that is no secret.”

Her fellow AWL traveller, Michael Chessum, unsuccessfully tried to calm the waters by insisting that “I don’t think a lot of it is an active conspiracy, but there are also a lot of genuine mistakes and cock-ups. I don’t want this to become too personalised around Jon Lansman, who is not just a control-freak. Let’s show some good will.” He was openly laughed at and stopped talking after noticing that “everybody is rolling their eyes at me!” “You are kidding yourself if you think that Jon Lansman has learned a lesson,” warned Jackie Walker.

She is right. Vision 1 and vision 2 are clearly incompatible. Which is why it is a shame that about half the attendees in Birmingham supported the idea that conference could be run on a “hybrid” between Omov and a delegate system. A few seem actual fans of Omov, though most seem to think that “the genie is now out of the bottle”, as the SC had already agreed on such a method. “Now we have to make it work, otherwise we will have an insurgency on our hands if we try to overturn this decision at the next national committee”, said comrade Chessum (to the disdain of some AWL members, who heckled him).

The devil, of course, is in the detail – how on earth would it work? Would those at the “physical delegates conference” vote on the proposals before them on the day? If so, what if the ‘clicktavists’ at home subsequently overturned the decision of those they had delegated, many of whom are actually running Momentum locally? Who is going to implement such decisions? Would that not make Momentum even more undemocratic and ineffective? Everybody at our meeting argued against such a use of Omov.

Overall, this was a useful gathering, but it painfully underlined the need for the left within Momentum to start organising. The recent ‘mass amnesty’ of those suspended by Labour and the real possibility of an early general election make it imperative that the left gets its own house in order. This is still somewhat hampered by the fear of some in the room that this could be seen as a “split” within Momentum (which nobody argued for) or the forming of ‘a party within a party within a party’ (which is, in fact, just what is needed).

Momentum

Nov 2 unanimous statement of Momentum steering committee

Every steering committee member was in attendance and the following statement was agreed unanimously at a meeting on November 2:

The Steering Committee recognises and regrets the discontent and frustration felt by Momentum members in recent days. Momentum’s democratic structures were always intended to develop. Unfortunately, this summer’s leadership election delayed that development, with all our energy being diverted into ensuring Jeremy Corbyn’s reelection.

The Committee recognises the need for a greater level of accountability and transparency from the leadership and administration of the organisation and will work to deliver that over the coming weeks.

Our path to democratisation, through our first National Conference in the new year, has not been sufficiently effectively communicated, leading, at times, to a breakdown in trust between different sections of our movement. There was not enough consultation and discussion with the diverse political and organisational traditions that exist in our movement. Pluralism is our strength, and all views must be properly engaged with.

After further discussion, the Steering Committee has agreed unanimously the following path for Momentum’s democratisation, which places unity, pluralism and member-control at its heart.

The National Committee, postponed from this Saturday, will take place on 3 December. We will ensure that this meeting is properly representative, including new elections for our liberation strands where necessary. A plan for ensuring this will be submitted and approved by the Steering Committee at the latest by 11 November.

A further National Committee meeting will be held in January before our Conference in February. Our Conference, involving all members of Momentum, groups and affiliated organisations, will decide our organisation’s long-term structure.

Taking into account the strong views on both sides of the OMOV (one member, one vote) vs. delegate for Conference votes, the Steering Committee has agreed on a recommendation to the National Committee of a suitable format. There will be both a physical delegates conference to thoroughly debate proposals submitted from the membership, and then OMOV voting on the proposals in the period after the conference. The details of this procedure will be determined over the coming weeks.

We know all levels of Momentum are committed to a truly inclusive and democratic structure and will make it succeed over the next few months.