Tag Archives: CLPD

Conference 2018, Democracy and the Labour Party, Trade unions

All-members-meetings or General Committees?

Labour First, the LRC and the CLPD all vigorously oppose all-members meetings, while Momentum is in favour. But it really is a question of tactics, argues Carla Roberts 

A rule change snuck through at last year’s Labour conference has led to some rather heated debates. It allows Constituency Labour Parties to switch easily from a delegate-based general committee (GC) to an all-members meeting format (AMM) – and vice versa. A number of CLPs have recently used the rule to abandon their GC and establish meetings where every single member can show up and vote. Many more CLPs are in line to follow soon, as it is immensely popular, seen by many as a measure to support the Corbyn leadership.

Critics warn, however, that the AMM structure “undermines the rules of trade unions, abandons the spirit of collectivism and breaks the principle of representative democracy that Labour has held dear for a century”. This could have been written by the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) or the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), which both oppose the rule. But it is actually part of an article by Matt Pound, organiser of Labour’s most rightwing faction, Labour First. Something that unites the extreme right of the Labour Party with traditional Labour left organisations certainly deserves a closer examination.

At the 2018 conference, few people paid much attention to this rule change. That was mainly down to the fact that delegates and visitors had little time to study in full detail the proposals contained within the Democracy Review: the party’s national executive committee, meeting a week before conference, had gutted the document of most of the constitutional changes originally proposed by Katy Clark (ie, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies). The first that delegates saw of the proposed rule change was on the morning of the first full day of conference: it was one of the 57 such proposals presented over 35 pages in the report of the conference arrangements committee (CAC). A travesty of the kind of democracy we need in the workers’ movement.

The focus at conference was very much on the proposals to reduce the nominations needed to stand in any leadership election and, crucially, the question of how parliamentary candidates are selected. While the vast majority of delegates were clearly in favour of the reintroduction of a system of mandatory reselection of all candidates (aka open selection), the NEC pushed for a far less democratic reform of the trigger ballot instead.

Now even this reform seems too radical for the NEC to actually implement. In January, Jennie Formby was commissioned to produce guidelines and a timetable, without which no such ballots can take place. But then Chuka Umunna and co split from the party and the leadership got cold feet. Despite the fact that the departure of Umunna et al can hardly be described as unfortunate, the mere possibility of further splits, perhaps led by Tom Watson, is regarded as a threat by Corbyn. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he still seems to believe that he can win over the right.

In our view, the sooner those saboteurs in the Parliamentary Labour Party are gone, the better. As long as they dominate the PLP, Corbyn has very little chance of doing anything. More importantly, we need to get rid of the right if we actually want to be able to make some of the radical and democratic changes that are so desperately needed to transform the party into a powerful weapon of the working class.

However, it seems that this is not the only one of its own rule changes that the NEC has had second thoughts about.

For decades, CLPs were organised exclusively on the basis of the general committee, which is still how about half of them operate today (we are guessing here, as there are no official figures on this): local Labour branches elect delegates according to their membership figures, while trade unions and socialist societies can send one delegate for each of the branches that is affiliated locally. Trade unions have made full use of this rule, affiliating several of their branches, even if they do not actually meet or do anything – it seems that sometimes such branches have been set up explicitly for this sole purpose.

For example, since Corbyn’s election, the GMB has made huge efforts to affiliate at least one of its branches to every single Labour branch in the country, while the Jewish Labour Movement is trying to affiliate to every CLP. The purpose is clear: to oppose the left at every opportunity and support those MPs and local politicians who support the affiliate’s particular political agenda. The GC structure gives affiliates a good deal of power.

This started to change under Tony Blair in the late 1990s. Proposals to introduce all-members meetings were presented as a way to “empower the members”, when in reality they were part of the efforts to curtail the power of the unions throughout the party. Understandably, the unions strongly opposed the proposals – in this they were supported by Tony Benn and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD).

In 2012, Ed Miliband introduced reforms that allowed a CLP to switch between CG and AMM at its annual general meeting, where the change to the local constitution was subject to a two-thirds majority vote. This was mainly down to the fact that under Tony Blair the Labour Party not only lost tens of thousands of members; but many of those who had retained their membership did not bother showing up at meetings any more. Most CLP meetings were poorly attended, boring and utterly uninviting (yes, they were even worse than today’s).

The survey carried out by Katy Clark at the beginning of the Democracy Review in 2018 showed that, out of the 208 CLPs who participated, 141 already had an all-members structure, while 67 were based on a general committee. She reported that, “In general, in most cities” CLPs tend to have a GC structure, while “in some areas where there are AMM structures” no local branches exist.1)http://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Democracy-Review_.pdf, p33

Delegates

According to the rule change passed at the 2018 conference then, any party unit (ie, either a branch or an affiliated organisation) can move a motion proposing to change the method of organisation – ie, to switch either to AMM or GC (the Labour Party rulebook actually allows for alternative methods beyond that, but that is very uncommon). A special CLP meeting then has to be called, in which all local members and delegates of affiliated organisations can participate. The decision to switch now requires only a simple majority of all those present. 2)Labour Party rule book 2019, clause IV, point 1.C (p40)

The vast majority of union delegates at conference 2018 – as always, under strict orders from their leaderships – voted in favour of this rule change, as part of the NEC’s tame reform package. However, it seems that it then started to slowly dawn on the unions that this was, in fact, potentially a rule change that could reform them out of any meaningful existence, when it comes to CLPs.

And it is true: in all-members meetings, the role and power of a delegate from a local union is dramatically reduced, compared to their role in a delegate-based GC. In fact, a union delegate has the same rights and voting power as any local party member, when previously a single union delegate could hold as much power as a whole Labour branch.

In November 2018, two months after conference, Unions Together (previously the Trade Union and Labour Partly Liaison Organisation – TULO), which represents the 12 affiliated unions, came out against the rule change in a short statement:

Trade unions support delegate-based structures for CLPs, because they allow TU branches that have affiliated to a CLP to be formally represented and take part in the CLP’s decision-making processes. All-member meetings do not allow affiliated TUs to be represented in CLP decision-making, and this weakens the relationship between the party and the unions at the local level.

We also believe that the unions are playing a part in delaying the implementation of the reformed trigger ballot, as this would further reduce their power in the party. For the first time, the trigger ballot has been split into two – one for all organisations affiliated to the CLP and one for all branches. That means Labour members can choose to challenge the sitting MP (if one third of all local branches vote in favour of doing so) and cannot be blocked by delegates from local affiliates. However, affiliated organisations are unlikely to initiate a trigger ballot. Their role in this process has tended to be mainly a negative one – ie, often it has been local union bureaucrats who have voted against challenging a sitting MP.

This does rather beg the question as to how, firstly, those two rule changes made it into Katy Clark’s Democracy Review and then, secondly, got past the NEC, which gutted it of many other suggestions. After all, 13 of the 39 members of the NEC are representatives from the affiliated unions, with a couple of other members (like treasurer Diana Holland) having been ‘seconded’ by them. They represent a hugely important bloc and usually vote together (just as they do at conference). Did they simply take their eye off the ball?

And who had been pushing for these changes in the first place? Katy Clark was working closely with Jeremy Corbyn – did they really set out to take on the unions? Yes, the union bloc has often acted as a barrier to progressive change in the party. But the biggest affiliate is still Unite and Len McCluskey remains a loyal supporter of Corbyn. Corbyn and Clark surely would not have pushed for these two changes without McCluskey’s say-so.

Perhaps this move indicates a split within the unions between those who support Corbyn and those who are currently led by rightwingers, such as the GMB, Unison and Community. That would be very welcome indeed. But we are guessing here. As is unfortunately often the case in the labour movement, these arguments are not fought out in the open, in front of the membership, but treated like a dirty secret and kept away from the working class.

We do know, however, that a certain Jon Lansman has certainly set out to curb the power of the unions in the party – no doubt in order to increase his own. The less power the unions have, the larger Momentum looms. This became most obvious when his then ally, Christine Shawcroft (whom he made director of Momentum on January 10 2017: ie, the day of his coup within the organisation), publicly supported his short-lived campaign to run against Unite’s Jennie Formby for the position of general secretary:

I was supporting Jon Lansman for general secretary before today’s NEC subcommittee meetings, but after today I am even more determined. Only someone from his tradition will support the rights of rank-and-file members in the CLPs. It is time to support disaffiliation of the unions from the Labour Party.

The reason she gave for that last comment was because they “always stick it to the rank-and-file members, time after time after time.”

Shawcroft clearly thought she was doing Lansman a favour by repeating what he had no doubt been going on about behind the scenes. Our Jon, however, was not best pleased and – despite dumping her like a hot potato straightaway (like he has done with so many former political friends and allies) – he was forced to withdraw his candidacy.

Momentum is, as far as we can see, the only Labour organisation that is supporting the move towards AMMs. True, among the pro-Corbyn membership this is considered ‘common sense’ – after all, the members should be in charge, right? Many local members who are pushing for AMMs are undoubtedly on the left and are doing so out of a real desire to support Corbyn’s leadership and break the ongoing hold of the right over many CLPs. In many areas, the same old bureaucracy has been running things for years and seems to have an unbreakable hold over the branches.

Local branch meetings, which select the CLP delegates, are often so boring and bureaucratic, without any debates or real life to them, that many of those inspired by Corbyn turn up once – and cannot bring themselves to go again. It is very difficult to turn around a rightwing branch that has been run by the same local clique for decades; it takes patient work and a huge amount of effort to organise the local left.

Pros and cons

The AMM structure does seem the easier way to turn things around. After all, CLP meetings are larger, you only have to attend a meeting once a month and they are more likely to feature a political discussion of some sort. It is much easier to persuade disconnected, atomised Corbyn supporters to come to a monthly AMM. This is, of course, exactly the reason why Labour First opposes the move (although Matt Pound tries to pretend that it has to do with its concern for the “gender balance” of CLP delegates, which would not be guaranteed in AMMs). In other words, in some areas it can be a good idea to push for AMMs – especially in smaller CLPs.

But there are very good reasons to be critical of them too:

  •  AMMs can further atomise the membership. The average size of a CLP is 850 members, but the actual local membership figures vary massively. In a small CLP, an AMM structure can allow you to meet and organise with other lefties when there might not be many or any in your branch (if there even is a branch). But in CLPs with many hundreds of members, AMMs can easily become too big to allow for any real democratic debate or decision-making. If the chair is on the right, they may not be willing to call in somebody from the left to speak, for example, making discussions very one-sided. The AGM is likely to turn into a huge jamboree, where members are supposed to vote for candidates that many might not have even heard of. This structure has the potential to make the CLP executive incredibly powerful and almost untouchable for the rest of the year. Not surprisingly, in some areas it is the local right that argues in favour of AMMs. Any AMM that involves more than, say, 70 members is clearly too big.
  • AMMs undermine representative democracy. Jon Lansman is a big fan of ‘digital democracy’ and online decision-making using ‘One member, one vote’. That should tell you why real democrats must oppose it. These methods might look democratic on paper, but dig a little deeper and you will find that they are designed to keep members atomised and the leadership all-powerful. CLP delegates, like conference delegates, are – at least in theory – accountable to the people who elected them. They are supposed to represent and argue for a particular political point of view. Good delegates report back on how they voted and are then faced with criticism or support, which allows for good political debate and the education of the whole membership.
  • AMM structures can demobilise the membership. They may make it more difficult for members to get involved in the day-to-day decision-making within the party. If you go to an AMM, you do not need to get involved in the local branch structures, you do not need to stand for delegate elections, you do not need to defend your voting records or your point of view. But we need our comrades to learn how to run things, to take charge, to organise and to be accountable and hold others to account. This is a crucial part of training our side up to run society in the not-so-distant future.
  • AMM structures weaken the trade union link. This is where the LRC focuses its criticism: It “seriously dilutes the input of union delegates into CLPs, a dangerous step … With some on the left even questioning the union-party link at any level, it is incumbent on socialists to argue for retaining that link, while taking up the cudgels for democratisation of that union input.”

While LRC comrades are wrong to elevate support for GC structures into a principle, they are quite right to raise the need to campaign for the “democratisation of the union input”, as they put it. In fact, the whole union movement – just like the Labour Party itself – is in need of a radical, democratic transformation. Many delegates from affiliated unions and socialist societies are playing such a negative role – for example, by supporting the local rightwing MP or stopping the CLP from supporting progressive campaigns – that many Corbyn supporters are understandably tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This issue really underlines how weak the left is in its campaign to democratise the unions. This is visibly demonstrated by the fact that both the CLPD and LRC have managed merely to come out against AMMs: they are not in a position to campaign against it.

References

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Pete Willsman’s suspension: all part of the coup against Corbyn

Pete Willsman is the victim of a well-timed sting – yet his own CLPD comrades will not stand in solidarity with him. Carla Roberts reports

On May 31, Labour Party general secretary Jennie Formby informed other members of the national executive committee that she had put Pete Willsman under “administrative suspension” after having “received a number of complaints, including from NEC members”, about his latest comments”.

Comrade Willsman, who has been serving on the NEC since 1981 (1994 was the only year he was not re-elected), was caught by the Israeli-American author, Tuvia Tenenbom, making a number of unguarded comments on the so-called ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ in the party. Unaware of being recorded, Willsman apparently boasted that he is “Peter. Red Pete. They call me Corbyn’s enforcer”. But that cannot actually be heard in the heavily edited clip that runs for 102 seconds on LBC radio’s website and forms – so far – the only evidence. Here is a full transcript of the clip:

The rich control the papers, the rich control everything else and the rich know he’s going to make them pay taxes [edited gap].

One of these things about anti-Semitism is they’re using that to whip people up – they use anything, any lies. It’s all total lies and they whip it up. [Tenenbom makes positive grunting noises.] I’ll tell you what and this is off the record: it is almost certain who is behind all of this anti-Semitism against Jeremy. Almost certainly it was the Israeli embassy. [Tenenbom encouragingly says, “Really?”] Yes, they caught somebody in the Labour Party it turns out was an agent in the embassy [edited gap].

The people in the Labour Party doing it, they are people who are linked – one of them works indirectly for the Israeli embassy. I wouldn’t want to be bothered to find out, but my guess would be that they’re the ones whipping it up all the time [edited gap].

In The Guardian not long ago we had 69 rabbis, obviously organised by the Israeli embassy, saying anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is widespread and severe. Is 70 out of 600,000 [members] really widespread and severe? Is it widespread and severe? [Tenenbom can be heard murmuring, “No”.] From here [Oxford] to London it is 70 kilometres and 600,000 kilometres is 14 times around the whole world. They’re saying from here to London is widespread and severe compared to 14 times around the whole world. That is the rubbish they’re coming out with.

And that is it. Clearly, nothing Willsman said here is either anti-Semitic or warrants suspension. Unaware that he was being recorded, he might otherwise have been a little more vague when it comes to a number of details. The 69 rabbis, for example, might well have been organised by the Board of Deputies (though there is little doubt that they also have close links to the embassy). Also, we are not quite sure who it is he means who worked “indirectly for the Israeli embassy”. He was probably referring to Ella Rose, who used to work there – pretty directly – as a public affairs officer, before becoming director of the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the Labour Party.

Throughout the short clip, Willsman must obviously have referred to the fascinating documentary, The lobby, which has been wilfully ignored by the mainstream media. The documentary revealed the systematic efforts by the Israeli embassy to involve itself in the internal battles in the Labour Party. It also revealed the campaign by the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs to label opponents of Israel as anti-Semites. Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement have quite clearly been acting as the embassy’s ‘political arm in the Labour Party’. Ella Rose is shown in The lobby boasting about JLM’s relationship with Shai Masot: “We work with Shai, we know him very well.” Masot was the Israeli embassy spy forced out of his job (and the UK) after Al Jazeera exposed him plotting to “take down” various politicians.

Naturally, political interference via secret services, embassies, media outlets and many other avenues is widespread and commonplace (the reason we pay our taxes!). But the Israeli government’s campaign to topple Jeremy Corbyn has been particularly blatant and obvious. It is this campaign of interference that should be the subject of an overdue investigation rather than Pete Willsman. And this is what Jeremy Corbyn actually publicly demanded when The lobby was first aired in 2017.

But it is fair to say that the party has gone a bit quiet on the issue. We know why, of course: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Corbyn and his advisors still seem to believe that they can appease the right, many of whom have close relationships with LFI and the JLM. How else do you explain the proposed appointment of Tony Blair’s buddy, Lord Charlie Falconer, to head up yet another party investigation into anti-Semitism? Luckily for Corbyn, Falconer declined. A few days ago he explained to BBC Radio 4 about how Willsman had “attacked the Jewish embassy”. Is he really suggesting that this is the embassy for all Jews? What a suicidal appointment that would have been!

Michael Moore of the Zionist right

The carefully timed and choreographed ‘expose’ of Willsman should prove to Corbyn once and for all how futile is his ongoing campaign to try and appease the right. Willsman was recorded in January, but Tenenbom (and LBC radio) waited almost six months to publish the audio recording – no doubt so that it could coincide nicely with the pressure building up over a second Brexit referendum, the bad EU election results, the investigation into ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ by the Equality Commission (see below) and the attacks on Labour’s Peterborough by-election candidate, Lisa Forbes. The aim is clear: the Labour right – in cahoots with much of the establishment and the media – want to weaken and isolate Jeremy Corbyn in order to get rid of him. Willsman is – like so many others – nothing but collateral damage.

Contrary to the picture painted in the mainstream media of Tuvia Tenenbom as some kind of respectable and neutral ‘journalist’ who just happened to run into Willsman in a hotel bar (and whose sound engineer just happened to leave a microphone switched on and set to ‘record’), this has more than the whiff of a sting operation about it. Tenenbom, clearly a convinced Zionist, has published a number of books in which he uses exactly this kind of method: he takes on a different persona and secretly films and records people, leading them on and guiding them into making exactly the kind of unguarded comments he was looking for – all in order to prove how anti-Semitism is rife in Germany, Palestine, the USA, etc. He is like a Michael Moore of the Zionist right – but on a much lower level.

Tenenbom told LBC radio: “He [Pete Willsman] is a nice guy, he has a great sense of humour, he’s knowledgeable. But like Jeremy Corbyn – I met Jeremy and he’s also a nice guy, very fatherly – but they suffer from a disease of really hating the Jews.” Tenenbom has also given lectures, in which he explains why “the suffering of Palestinian people is bullshit” (since you ask, he knows that because he got hold of a nicely produced business card by a Palestinian businessman and visited Palestinian shopping malls that sell some luxury goods).

Clearly, this is a man on a mission. Pete Willsman would have done well to at least quickly Google the guy before he sat down with him for a cup of coffee, talking about one of the most sensitive issues in today’s political discourse. Especially as he was once before the victim: in July 2018, an unnamed fellow member of the NEC secretly recorded Willsman when he angrily criticised all those who were responsible for so many false allegations of anti-Semitism in the party – and then outrageously passed the audio to the press. Clearly, that member should have been investigated for bringing the party into disrepute, not Willsman for stating the plain truth.

Momentum

That episode last year also exposed how far Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum, has moved to the right. Rather than defend his comrade of over 30 years, he dropped him from the slate of recommended candidates for election to the NEC. The fact that comrade Willsman was re-elected nevertheless shows both his popularity and the increasing disillusionment with Momentum among party members. It has been worse than useless in fighting the witch-hunt in the Labour Party – in fact it has been complicit.

Just this week, Lansman was yet again busy conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, when he celebrated the dismissal of George Galloway by Talkradio: “Talkradio is right to sack George Galloway for what he said. Anti-Semitism must be rooted out and rejected by all socialists, alongside all other forms of racism and hate speech.”

We are no fans of Galloway, especially since his idiotic support for the xenophobe and chauvinist, Nigel Farage, and his rightwing Brexit Party. But was his tweet really anti-Semitic? While celebrating Liverpool’s win over Tottenham Hotspurs in the Champions League final, he wrote that there would be “no Israel flags on the cup”. Galloway was referencing the fact that some Spurs fans – who famously identify themselves as the “Yid army” – do indeed carry flags with the blue and white Israeli national emblem on them. Galloway’s tweet exaggerated the scale of the pro-Israel sentiment among Spurs fans – but, in any case, he was referring to Israel, not Jews. With such tweets, Lansman is helping to feed the anti-Corbyn witch-hunt.

As an aside, “Momentum’s most engaged and active members” have just received Lansman’s proposals to “democratise the organisation” (funnily enough, this includes at least one person who has been suspended from Momentum for the last six months, as well as people who assure us that they have not paid their membership fees for the last two years). So exciting times: will we finally see a democratic conference, where members can vote to get rid of Lansman as the owner, leader and all-round puppet-master of the group? Or perhaps we might be given a fair chance to democratically decide a constitution and get rid of the one that Lansman imposed after his coup of January 10 2017? Or, you know, maybe members might be given some say on the kind of campaigns and political priorities we want Momentum to advance? Which surely would be way to the left of what Lansman is doing.

Of course not. Lansman is suggesting three things: (1) to increase the number of regions from three to five; (2) increase the number of directly ‘elected’ people on the leading body from 12 to 20; and (3), our favourite proposal, get rid of the annual ‘elections’ and instead only bother with them every two years. Because, you see, “a relatively high level of resources are diverted into running elections rather than other activities.” That is a classic: increase democracy by decreasing elections. Brilliant.

This last proposal actually seems to be the main reason for the ‘consultation’ (which lasts a staggering seven days, giving the few remaining Momentum groups no time to discuss them). Proposal 1 and 2 are obviously bullshit and will do nothing to democratise anything, but it seems that the annual charade of online elections (where isolated members are asked to choose between candidates of which they know very little) seems to be too burdensome for our Jon. So this is not a proposal to democratise Momentum, but, on the contrary, to make it even less accountable.

EHRC

A Zionist himself, Lansman has been partly to blame for the scale of the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign in the Labour Party. It is an outrage that Labour members are being suspended, investigated and expelled for stating the truth: that the so-called anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour Party has been cynically manufactured and carefully directed. Meanwhile, anti-Corbyn MPs, such as Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman and Tom Watson, insult, disrupt, make bogus accusations and work hand in glove with the capitalist media – with no repercussions. “Those making false charges ought to face disciplinary action and should be held accountable for their actions” – as Labour Against the Witchhunt’s recent statement and model motion on Willsman correctly declares (see page 11).”

However, the opposite is happening. The expulsion of the Blairite plotter, Alistair Campbell, is now being “reviewed” – we fear that his reinstatement is imminent. And that despite the fact that he has openly boasted about voting for the Liberal Democrats, no doubt in order to provoke an action by the party and, of course, the subsequent counter-reaction by Tom Watson et al, who claim to be outraged by this application of Labour’s rules. No such leniency is applied when it comes to the auto-expulsion of (leftwing) members who have merely wished candidates in other parties “good luck”. The double standards applied here are staggering and underline which way the scales in the civil war are still tilting.

Similarly, the Labour Party should call out the investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for what it is: part of the latest move against Corbyn. The complaints were lodged by the Jewish Labour Movement and the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Clearly these two organisations have no interest in fighting racism at all: their only purpose is to get rid of a certain Jeremy Corbyn and they have actively plotted against him from day one. The JLM was refounded in 2015 specifically to campaign against Corbyn and Tony Greenstein has described how the CAA has campaigned almost exclusively against Corbyn rather than anti-Semitism or racism.

The EHRC will now investigate “whether the party has unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish”. But, if there has been any unlawful discrimination by Labour against Jewish people, surely it has been against Jewish anti-Zionists. Many of them, as well as black members, are involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights, which explains the disproportionate number of expulsions and suspensions of black and Jewish comrades.

In this context, we are somewhat puzzled by the strategy proposed by a number of black activists, who think that Labour Party members should now swamp the EHRC with examples of anti-black racism. Clearly, that would only give the witch-hunters even more ammunition and lead to the predictable result that the party – and specifically Corbyn – will not just be found guilty of anti-Semitism, but of other forms of racism too. That is not exactly a winning strategy, comrades.

Trigger ballots

At the heart of the latest move is the news that the overdue trigger ballots – by which sitting Labour MPs are subjected to a possible reselection ballot of members – might finally be implemented after all. We have to say, we remain a little sceptical. Of course, as a reform agreed at last year’s Labour Party conference, it should be implemented. After all, it was only ever a compromise cobbled together with the unions to hold off the far more democratic proposal to re-establish the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates (aka open selection), which would otherwise have gone through.

Still, even this slight reform represents a serious danger to many careerist MPs, who quite rightly fear that the local membership might give them the axe, given half a chance. In particular it is the separation of the trigger ballot into two separate votes that could see sitting MPs being democratically challenged for the first time since 1990. Then, Neil Kinnock abolished mandatory reselection and instead introduced the trigger ballot system, where a total of 33% of all Labour Party branches and affiliated organisations (each branch and affiliate having one vote) had to oppose the sitting MP in order to spark a full selection process between different candidates. Democrat that he is, Tony Blair increased the threshold to 50%.

It is now back at 33%, but, crucially, a full selection process starts when either 33% of a Constituency Labour Party’s branches or 33% of its affiliates say ‘no’ to the sitting MP. This is hugely important, as trade unions and other affiliated organisations have in the past often played a negative role, using their votes to side with the right in holding off more leftwing challengers supported by the CLP’s branches.

But, unless the NEC publishes a timetable and guidelines on how to launch such trigger ballots, nothing can happen. In January, Jennie Formby was commissioned by the NEC to urgently produce such documents – but then Chukka Umunna and his friends split from the party and the leadership got cold feet. “In an attempt to stop further defections, Labour could delay the start of re-election battles,” reported The Guardian in February. It added: “Labour is set to put back the start of the formal MP selection process … which could have led to vast numbers of MPs facing deselection.”

Perhaps it was the hilarious news that Change UK was about to split itself into oblivion that led to the latest reports about the overdue implementation of the trigger ballots being imminent. As we said, while we would obviously welcome such a move, we remain sceptical. After all, it would require Jeremy Corbyn and his allies to finally come out fighting and stop their campaign of appeasing those rightwingers who would probably get the chop by the local membership. And we have yet to see any evidence of that.

CLPD silence

Unfortunately, the same goes for Peter Willsman’s own organisation, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. The CLPD is characterised by its uncritical support for (or, more precisely, total submission to the thinking of) Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, the first sentence of the lead motion to its recent AGM (written, we believe, by Willsman) read, rather creepily: “Full support to the party leader at all times”. That also just about sums up its current attitude to the witch-hunt against its secretary, Pete Willsman: Because Jeremy Corbyn remains tight-lipped and does not come out in support of Willsman, neither does the CLPD.

In fact, the organisation and its leader have been very quiet over the whole witch-hunt. Had it not been for the two secret recordings of Willsman, we would not actually have known where exactly he stands on the issue of the smear campaign. Shortly after Chris Williamson’s suspension, the CLPD published a short, mealy-mouthed defence of the MP – but also distributed the so-called instruction that allegedly bans branches and CLPs from discussing any motions on ongoing disciplinary cases. As Labour Against the Witchhunt has usefully pointed out, there is in fact “no ban” on such motions. “True, they are categorised as “not competent business” (which means they will not be discussed by the NEC), but it is always up to the members of any meeting to decide what they want to discuss.

And every single statement, every public resolution will add to the pressure to get our comrades reinstated – whether the NEC discusses them or not.

However, the CLPD pretends nothing has happened. We are assured that “of course” CLPD members stand in solidarity with Pete. But no public statement has gone out, explaining how their comrade was the victim of a sting, no information has been sent to members – nothing. Unsurprisingly though, behind the scenes all hell has broken loose. We hear that Willsman was urged by other officers to resign as CLPD secretary, though that does not actually seem necessary, as the ridiculous rules of the organisation only allow full Labour members to be members. With his suspension from the party, he was automatically suspended by the CLPD. The chickens have come home to roost …

He was swiftly replaced by Barry Gray and Jake Rubin, with the latter being particularly keen to distance the organisation from Willsman. We have been forwarded an email of Rubin’s, where he argues: “Pete should apologise for his comments and I won’t be advising that CLPD defend them. ‎It is not true that the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is solely the product of Israel.”

Pete Willsman did not actually say that. Remember, on the tape we can only hear a version of his comments that was heavily and purposefully edited. For example, at one point Willsman quite clearly states he is talking about “all of this anti-Semitism against Jeremy”, for which he quite correctly blames “the Israeli embassy” (ie, the Israeli government).

So we are down to this: “One of these things about anti-Semitism is they’re using that to whip people up – they use anything, any lies. It’s all total lies and they whip it up.” You could try and take that apart, bit by bit, to try and work out what exactly he means by “it’s all total lies”. But remember, this is not somebody giving a well-prepared speech for an audience, but somebody speaking out over a cup of coffee with a person pretending to be sympathetic.

But his own comrades are not giving him the benefit of the doubt. With even his leading figures in the CLPD twisting his words and throwing him to the wolves, what chance does Willsman have of a fair trial in front of the party’s skewed disciplinary body?

This is particularly shameful, as comrade Willsman has been a leading figure in the CLPD for close to 50 years and his position on the NEC has kept the group going for much of this time. The CLPD is, shall we say, a little on the inert side – and has, funnily enough, become increasingly so since the election of a certain Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Before that it occasionally posed left, but, as soon as Corbyn was elected, it dropped its key demand for mandatory reselection and has been shadowing his campaign of appeasement.

Apart from proposing a few left-leaning motions to annual conference and publishing the useful (though rather tame) daily voting guide, ‘Yellow pages’, at conference itself, the organisation does very, very little. Its role in the Grassroots Centre Left Alliance (GCLA), which for the last 30 or so years has been recommending soft-left candidates for various internal elections, is diminishing by the day. This latest failure of the CLPD to stand in public solidarity with its leading member will only increase the speed with which the organisation heads towards implosion. That would be a loss.

 

Labour Against the Witchhunt model motion

Reinstate Pete Willsman!

This branch/CLP notes:

  • On May 31, Labour Party NEC member Peter Willsman was put under “administrative suspension” after he was secretly recorded by the Israeli-American author, Tuvia Tenenbom.
  • The audio was recorded in January 2019, but leaked to the press over five months later, no doubt to coincide with a new hotting up in the campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn.

We further note:

  •  Tenenbom claims that he ‘happened’ to come across Pete Willsman in a hotel bar and that his sound engineer ‘happened’ to have left a hidden microphone switched on.
  • However, Tenenbom has published a number of books in which he uses exactly this kind of method. He secretly films and records people, often guiding them into making the kind of unguarded comments he was looking for, in order to prove how anti-Semitism is rife in Germany, Palestine, the USA, etc.
  • Tenenbom has given lectures, in which he explains why “the suffering of Palestinian people is bullshit” (https://bit.ly/2MAH1xo) and has told LBC radio: “He [Pete Willsman] is a nice guy, he has a great sense of humour, he’s knowledgeable. But like Jeremy Corbyn – I met Jeremy and he’s also a nice guy, very fatherly – but they suffer from a disease of really hating the Jews” (www.lbc.co.uk/news/labour-israeli-embassy-behind-antisemitism-smears).

We believe:

  • That anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, must be vigorously combatted – ideally, through education and debate, not disciplinary measures and ‘zero tolerance’.
  • That the Labour Party is not institutionally anti-Semitic, as the figures published by Jennie Formby prove. On the contrary, many claims of anti-Semitism have been taken out of context, exaggerated and weaponised in order to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, an outspoken supporter of the rights of Palestinians. Anti-Zionism has been wilfully and wrongly equated with anti-Semitism.
  • That nothing Pete Willsman said was anti-Semitic. Pete did, however, point to some uncomfortable truths exposed by the Al Jazeera documentary The lobby, which has been ignored by the mainstream media. The documentary revealed a systematic effort by the Israeli embassy to involve itself in the internal battles in the Labour Party. Also revealed were the efforts by the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs to label opponents of Israel as anti-Semites.
  • That this proven interference should be the subject of an overdue investigation, as demanded by Jeremy Corbyn in a letter of January 2017.

We further believe:

  • A stalwart of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Pete Willsman has been serving on Labour’s NEC for many decades and is one of the few real allies of Jeremy Corbyn on that body. This is why he has been on the radar of those who will do anything to get rid of Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
  • That anti-Corbyn MPs such as Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman and Tom Watson insult, disrupt, make bogus accusations and work hand in glove with the media – with no repercussions coming their way. Those making false charges ought to face disciplinary action and should be held accountable for their actions.

We therefore express our full solidarity with Pete Willsman, Chris Williamson MP and all the other Labour Party members who have been suspended, expelled or disciplined on bogus charges of anti-Semitism or because of their support for leftwing groups. We want to see them immediately reinstated.

Important information

There is no ban in the Labour Party on moving motions in support of comrades in ongoing disciplinary cases. As in the case of Chris Williamson MP, the ‘advice’ sent out by Labour Party HQ merely declares such motions to be “not competent business” for the NEC to discuss. That merely means the NEC will not look at them – but the rest of the workers’ movement will certainly do so. Any motion, any statement, any act of public solidarity will add pressure to get our comrades reinstated, gives courage to other Labour Party members and branches and shows the victims of the witch-hunt that they do not stand alone.

More information on this issue and detailed guidelines on how to move a motion are here: www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org/campaigns/there-is-no-ban-on-moving-motions-in-support-of-chris-williamson-mp.

 

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

CLPD AGM: Follow my leader

Whatever happened to the democratic exchange of ideas? William Sarsfield reports on the CLPD’s March 9 AGM

There were good things to take from this year’s annual general meeting of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in Birmingham’s Council House. The 200 or so attendance was excellent. The fighting mood was encouraging. There is confidence about the next round of elections in the party.

The problem is the impoverished political perspective of the CLPD’s leading lights – sadly something shared with most left organisations, inside Labour and out. A problem encapsulated by the twin track policy they seek to impose.

First, that support for Jeremy Corbyn (and, by implication, other core left leaders around him, including John McDonnell) must be uncritical, if it is to have any operative content. This position was put with useful bluntness in the opening lines of the executive’s motion 1 (which we never got the chance to discuss – see below). It called on comrades to give “Full support to the party leader at all times”.

Farcically, I did hear some comrades trying to pass this off as a call for the membership to constitute itself as a sort of political comfort blanket for Corbyn – a collective cuddle from the rank and file. Certainly, there is no argument that he has taken some very unpleasant personal kickings from the capitalist media and the treacherous majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party. This ‘explanation’ is desperate, however. Clearly, we were being counselled to provide uncritical and unconditional support to Corbyn and the political concessions he makes – the measures he judges necessary to pursue the chimera of a pacified PLP right.

A couple of amendments to this terrible formulation were submitted, one emphasising that support for Corbyn should be predicated on his working within the remit of conference decisions and the other, politically much better amendment, which made support for Corbyn conditional on him fighting for “the thorough democratisation of the Labour Party and society” and emphasising the basic right for members to “criticise him when and where necessary – for example, over his silence when it comes to the witch-hunt against his supporters in the Labour Party”. A debate on this would have been very useful and, no doubt, would have revealed some serious differences. Precisely for this reason, the organisers ensured that there was no time to have this key issue aired at all.

Second, the mantra came from the top table, as well as the floor, that the only priority that mattered was the achievement of a “Labour Party government led by Jeremy Corbyn” – no caveats about the political content of that government’s programme, the compromises it might offer to pacify the right wing, its room to provide meaningful gains for the working class, etc. In the absence of a debate on these themes, the conference’s discussions around this mantra of the ‘next Labour government’ became both apolitical and ahistorical. It was almost as if we have enforced on ourselves a sort of voluntary amnesia, where we forget the actual history of past Labour governments – their attacks on our class, authoritarian restrictions on democratic rights, support for brutal imperialist wars, etc.

The bulk of the day’s proceedings were taken up with reports from the CLPD’s various working groups. These were of widely varying degrees of political nous and quality, it must be said. For instance, the women’s group presented an interesting feedback on its impressive record of work, even though I felt that its orientation was very ‘bureaucracy-centric’. There was too much emphasis on structural/legalistic initiatives as avenues towards women’s liberation rather than the question of struggle and the role of the working class. The comrades spoke of increasing “diversity” and the problems of “low-income” women. I was put in mind of the Women Against Pit Closures movement in 1984-85: their energy, anger and brilliantly innovative methods of struggle and solidarity. Surely that should be a model for us as socialists, rather than the route to women’s freedom being through ‘breaking glass ceilings’ and shimmying up the corporate ladder?

Councillor Yasmine Dar was billed to speak “on national executive committee goings-on”. Instead, the comrade delivered a very high-tempo, slightly garbled contribution, the bulk of which consisted of telling us that she and other left comrades on the governing body were there not to “put forward our views – we put forward your views”. In fact “Our responses are your responses,” she told us at one point. Quite how she or any other leftwinger on the NEC could aggregate the views of the couple of hundred in Birmingham – let alone the hundreds of thousands in the party at large – remains a mystery to me.

Best speech

By far the best speech of the day was the last, made by Stephen Marks, a Jewish Voice for Labour comrade from Oxford, who was co-reporting from the national constitutional committee (which deals with all disciplinary matters that the NEC feels it cannot resolve).1)Stephen Marks was (ostensibly) the bone of contention that caused the 2018 bust up between Momentum and the CLPD when – under their mutual flag of convenience, the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance – they fell out pretty spectacularly about the composition of the their slate for the NCC. Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, opined that “’the Jewish community’ with not tolerate a JVL representative” – ie, Stephen Marks.While the comrade explained that he was constrained by some legal considerations, he certainly was not constrained by politeness. He spoke with real passion and anger about the witch-hunt in the party. He ripped into the existing procedures as not fit for purpose; called for a “no leaks” stricture to be rigorously imposed on the right wing of the PLP – weasels who go scuttling to the press with privileged information (my words, not his); he was nearly drowned out by cheers when he stated that Tom Watson should be told to “shut up”; and – most important of all, in my view – called for comrades to formulate an “independent position to Corbyn and McDonnell” on key issues like this.

Undoubtedly, it was a stirring way to end proceedings, but the point was that we had not even touched on the key business we needed to debate and decide on – the secretary’s report and the policy motions. Throughout, the various chairs bumped other things up the agenda, in front of these two key items. This toxic culture of regarding debates and public differences between comrades – even if the divisions are sharp and heated at times – is anti-democratic to its core. It is a crippling weakness that comrades suffer from.

At the start of the afternoon session we were advised by the chair that the executive committee (largely the same as the 2018 version, I believe) had met and produced a feeble motion of mealy-mouthed ‘support’ for Chris Williamson MP. This reads:

1. CLPD exposes all forms of anti-Semitism and racism.

2. CLPD notes the personal statement from Chris Williamson MP.

3. CLPD does not believe Chris Williamson MP should be expelled from the Labour Party.

4. CLPD will circulate the statement at

bit.ly/dontexpelchriswilliamson.3

Err, that’s it …

I have no doubt that, if conference had been allowed the time and space to amend this pathetic ‘solidarity’ message, we would have ended up with a far angrier, harder position being adopted. By the same token, I am sure that if the comrades in Birmingham had also been able discuss the motion calling for critical distance from Corbyn – let alone the icon-smashing call for a new, Marxist influenced clause four – there would have been outrage, sharp exchanges and hard lines drawn between different positions.

In other words, the CLPD’s executive committee seemed determined to starve us of the meat and drink of politics l

It cannot be right to support someone regardless of whether they are right or wrong

Stephen Marks of JVL hammered the witchhunt and called for politics independent of both Corbyn and McDonnell

References

References
↑1 Stephen Marks was (ostensibly) the bone of contention that caused the 2018 bust up between Momentum and the CLPD when – under their mutual flag of convenience, the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance – they fell out pretty spectacularly about the composition of the their slate for the NCC. Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, opined that “’the Jewish community’ with not tolerate a JVL representative” – ie, Stephen Marks.
Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

NCC ‘left’ slate farce ends in another Jon Lansman surrender

The manoeuvres over joint candidates for Labour’s disciplinary committee exposes the political vacuity of the existing left groupings, says Carla Roberts.

If any more proof was needed that the organised Labour left is in deep trouble, the last week has surely provided it.

Since its foundation in 1995, the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance has operated as an underground club, to which only a few lucky reps of approved groups are invited. This thoroughly undemocratic and unaccountable lash-up has always taken it upon itself to ‘recommend’ various candidates for Labour Party internal elections – consistently guided by its original assumption of the necessity of reaching out to ‘honest’ moderates.

For many years, the CLGA stuck to its mantra that the only way to defeat the Blairite right was through an alliance with centrist candidates, and rejected any moves to present an openly leftwing platform. This hopeless perspective explains how Ann Black could remain on the CLGA ticket for so long, despite being very much on the centre-right of the party.

Despite its name, the CLGA’s two main current constituent parts – Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) – are, of course, both on the left of the party. But they have now fallen out quite spectacularly over which six candidates to support for the newly-expanded national constitutional committee (NCC). This is a crucial body in the Labour Party. It deals with all disciplinary matters that the national executive committee feels it cannot resolve and – given that it is dominated by the right – the referral of a left-winger to the NCC usually results in expulsion from the party. Incredibly, even after its expansion from 11 to 25, only a minority are to be chosen by rank and file Labour members. The rest are appointed by affiliates, which explains why in the last few crucial years, the NCC could be so (badly) chaired by Maggie Cousins, a delegate from the rightwing GMB union.

After three meetings, the CLGA talks deadlocked on October 10, apparently because Momentum (aka Jon Lansman) refused to support Stephen Marks, a member of Jewish Voice for Labour, which has been included in the CLGA negotiations for the first time. Lansman tried to veto Marks, allegedly arguing that “‘the Jewish community’ will not tolerate a JVL representative”.

So, on the morning of October 11, the CLPD simply put out its own slate of candidates, which included Stephen Marks. The slate was also supported by JVL and the “Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”. (The whole CLGA project has the definite whiff of ‘Potemkin Village’ about it. Jon Lansman, for example, is representing two organisations – Momentum and his own blog, Left Futures, which is so crucial to the labour movement that its latest entry is dated February 5). After a lengthy discussion, the Labour Representation Committee also decided to support the slate, despite the fact that the only candidate they put forward, LRC treasurer Alison McCarty, was rejected by both the CLPD and Momentum.

Momentum published its slate later the same day. And indeed, it did not feature Marks (though there were three candidates who were also on the CLPD/JVL slate: Khalid Moyer, Cecile Wright and Annabelle Harley). Now Lansman let it be known that Momentum “had been prepared to back Stephen Marks”, but did not include him because of ”concerns about the geographical balance of the CLPD slate”. Or, in Lansman’s own unconvincing words: “Half of CLPD’s slate live in London or the south-east. So do three out of four of the existing CLP reps”, he tweeted . This transparent obfuscation over “concerns with the geographical balance” reminds us of his crass attempt to bullshit his way out of his ill-judged attempt to become Labour’s next general secretary. Remember, he claimed then that his only motivation in standing was to increase the gender balance – oddly enough, by standing against a woman, Jennie Formby!

What do they stand for?

Lansman opposes Marks for political reasons, of course – not geographical ones. Stephen Marks has written about how the problem of anti-Semitism in the party has been “exaggerated and weaponised by JC’s enemies”. Clearly that makes him, in Lansman’s view, the ‘wrong kind of Jew’. Which also reveals as utter bullshit Lansman’s claim that Marks could not represent “the Jewish community” (our emphasis). There is no uniform, politically homogeneous Jewish community – the simple fact of the existence of Jewish Voice for Labour proves that. There are pro-Zionist Jews and there are anti-Zionist Jews – and that is just for starters. Politically, in today’s toxic climate, you cannot get two more implacably opposed viewpoints in the party. We know which of the two viewpoints Lansman supports.

He has been on the wrong side of the Labour witch-hunt from the start: a soft Zionist who has argued for the party to adopt the full ‘working definition on anti-Semitism’ put out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – including the full list of highly disputed “examples” that effectively bans criticism of the state of Israel. ’Zio’, the diminutive form of ‘Zionist’, should be banned as ‘insulting’, according to him. And don’t forget, Lansman – alongside Margaret Hodge (that charmer who branded Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking racist and anti-Semite”) – recently attended a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement. Readers will not need reminding that this outfit supports and aligns itself with the Israeli Labor Party: that is, the foul organisation that orchestrated the nakba (the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948) and which presided over the colonialist conquest of the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967. Momentum’s constitution – enforced by Lansman after his coup – bans from Momentum membership anybody expelled from the Labour Party. It internalises the witch-hunt, in other words.

The farce continued when a candidate on the CLPD slate withdrew: “We understand that Kaneez Akhtar has been put under pressure to withdraw,” the CLPD’s statement read. “We are seeking further info and if true will ask another BAME woman candidate to put her name forward.”

Put under pressure by whom, exactly? We are not told. But apparently, it had something to do with the fact that Jabram Hussain, a candidate on the Momentum slate, is the brother of Bradford East Labour MP Imran Hussain and that Kaneez Akhtar is a Labour councillor for Bradford City. We can only guess at the power games being played out here. She was replaced by Sonia Klein, who, like Annabelle Harle, is a member of Welsh Grassroots Alliance (we can only guess how Jon Lansman must have suffered under this geographical and gender imbalance).

Of course, the whole Labour left went berserk over there being two rival leftwing slates. But, after a week, ‘harmony’ was again restored on the morning of October 17. Momentum released a press statement: “Following our call to reopen negotiations, we’re happy to announce a joint list of candidates backed by Momentum and CLPD.” Clearly, they did not even bother inviting any of the other organisations who are officially part of the CLGA. The agreed candidates are Cecile Wright, Khaled Moyeed, Annabelle Harle, Susan Press, Gary Heather – and, wait for it, Stephen Marks.

So, the new “negotiations” basically led to Momentum collapsing and accepting Stephen Marks after all. In turn, the CLPD now supports Susan Press (a councillor and Lansman loyalist, who had been put forward by Momentum for all sorts of other positions in the past). Sonia Klein and Michael Menear, another loyal Lansman supporter and member of Momentum’s national coordinating group (NCG), have been dumped. Not that they matter, to be quite frank. The real disagreement was always over Stephen Marks.

Apart from Marks, who has written on the question, we have to guess what these candidates think about the witch-hunt in the party, the necessary reforms of Labour’s disciplinary process or the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. The CLPD and Momentum give us some short information about the colour of their skin and where they live – but no politics at all.

It does not bode well that both Momentum and the CLPD have been very quiet on the witch-hunt against Corbyn and his supporters. When Willsman was accused of anti-Semitism (see below), he incredibly chose to publish an apology and referred himself for equalities training … when clearly the witch-hunters deserved a two-fingered reply. Both Willsman and Lansman support Cecile Wright for the NCC – it was she who smoothly and swiftly replaced Jackie Walker as Momentum’s vice-chair when she was first suspended from the Labour Party on false charges of anti-Semitism. Can we really rely on her to speak up for other members who are similarly falsely accused?

Kaneez Akhtar, the CLPD candidate from Bradford who eventually withdrew, said in an interview: “I fully support the IHRA definition on anti-Semitism and was indeed proud that Bradford council adopted this definition.” The acceptance of the IHRA by the NEC has already led to an increase in suspensions and investigations, as it dramatically widens the definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism (calling Israel a “racist endeavour”, for example). How on earth did she end up on a ‘left’ slate?

Labour Against the Witchhunt seems to be the only organisation that has asked the candidates some pertinent political questions. That is a much better approach, in our view. But, for the time being, we have to guess about the politics of the other candidates. We fear that – apart from Stephen Marks – no other candidate can be relied upon to challenge the false narrative that the Labour Party is awash with anti-Semites. That is a truly worrying state of affairs.

Lansman humiliated

The joint CLPD/Momentum slate represents without a doubt a new political humiliation for Jon Lansman. Pretty much all leftwing organisations had backed the CLPD slate, while Lansman’s was supported by Momentum – and nobody else. Funnily enough, even Lansman’s former NEC ally, Christine Shawcroft, came out for the CLPD: “The only result of supporting the Momentum ‘slate’ for the NCC will be getting rightwingers onto the NCC,” she wrote on Facebook. Did we mention she is a director of Momentum Campaign (Services) Ltd?

Most local Momentum groups who said anything on the matter also fell in behind the CLPD slate. We hear of a number of frustrated Momentum members setting up ‘secret’ WhatsApp and Facebook groups to start organising around Momentum nationally. An online petition of “active members of Momentum” who are “increasingly concerned about the lack of democracy in Momentum” is spreading like wildfire.

No doubt, Momentum is in deep trouble. Yes, Lansman still owns the data of tens of thousands of Corbyn supporters. But politically, he has managed to make one huge mistake after another, shedding support and members in the process. It all started with his coup of January 10 2017, when he simply abolished all democratic structures in Momentum, imposing his own constitution on the organisation.

But dumping Pete Willsman from the slate for the NEC elections earlier this year was the real turning point for many. Willsman, long-term secretary of the CLPD, was a victim of the witch-hunt directed against Corbyn and his supporters. His comments, recorded at a closed NEC meeting and leaked to the press (by whom, we wonder?), forcefully called into question the ‘anti-Semitism problem’ in the party. While someMomentum members followed Lansman’s toxic advice not to vote for Willsman, he was nevertheless re-elected to the NEC (albeit with a smaller share of the vote than the rest of the CLGA slate).

This was followed by Lansman’s collapse over the question of mandatory reselection at this year’s Labour conference. Despite the fact that over 90% of delegates wanted to discuss the issue (and presumably vote in favour of it), Lansman urged Momentum supporters to vote against. Few people followed his advice and, in the next vote, 75% of delegates continued to support open selection.

Clearly, Momentum enjoys less and less political authority amongst the Labour left. Some people seem to think that it can be reformed: the petition quoted above, for example, demands that “minutes from all past meetings” are published, “calls on the NCG to oppose individual opinions that are not in line with Momentum members” and “calls on the NCG to be accountable and contactable, and carry out a review of the structure and democracy of Momentum with widespread input from members”.

Obviously, none of these rather naive demands would change how Momentum is run. There are probably some more radical ideas being discussed right now. But this monstrosity of an organisation cannot be reformed. The constitution imposed by Lansman makes sure of that. Both organisationally and politically, it is deeply flawed. Yes, it has played a relatively useful role in getting Corbyn re-elected and has organised some useful training for local party members. But it plays no real role in educating, politicising or even just organising its 30,000 or so members. They are treated as mere voting fodder.

Flawed method

Lansman and Willsman are old comrades – and it shows. They are both presiding in pretty unaccountable fashion over their respective organisations. In March this year, they first came to blows over which candidates to support in the elections to the NEC. Lansman refused to continue backing Ann Black. Quite right, in our view – and long overdue. But Pete Willsman insisted on giving her support – he had worked well together with her on the NEC, despite some political differences. He even, undemocratically, overruled his own executive committee’s decision to drop her from the CLGA slate. So Lansman simply leaked his nine candidates to the press – minus Ann Black, of course (at this point the list still included Pete Willsman).

For decades, Willsman and Lansman worked together in the CLPD: both feature in a very entertaining BBC drama, which shows how the CLPD successfully fought for mandatory reselection in the Labour Party back in 1980. Funnily enough, as soon as Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, both gave up the fight for this important leftwing principle: CLPD dropped it; Momentum never adopted it. In this, they were following Corbyn’s lead. Unfortunately, he still attempts to appease the right, in the vain hope that this will keep the centre on board and thus eventually neutralise the right.

This is tactically inept, of course. The majority of Labour MPs have been plotting against Corbyn from day one, if not before. Should he become prime minister – which is far from certain, even if Labour wins the next general election – he would be held hostage by the Parliamentary Labour Party. In all likelihood the right would try one manoeuvre after another to get rid of him. By refusing to back mandatory reselection (aka open selection) at conference, which would have allowed the membership to rid the PLP of the anti-Corbyn right, Momentum and the CLPD (as well as Corbyn himself) seriously undermined the leader’s position.

This is very much in line with the old political method of the Labour left: getting the Labour Party into 10 Downing Street trumps everything. Open criticism of the party’s flawed programme or the Labour leader are taboo, as they could harm electoral prospects. Political differences are treated as a huge problem, to be kept under wraps. Socialist politics are hidden, because they could be perceived as unpopular.

This latest farce ought to spell the end of the CLGA. Its politics and methods belong to the scrapheap of history. We fear, though, that even if it was killed off, it would probably be replicated under another name – reborn as an organisation with the same flawed political method. After all, programmaticallythere is very little that distinguishes Momentum and those Labour left organisations that supported the CLPD slate. Neither organisation involved in these abortive subterranean negotiations have seen the need for transparency on any of the political differences involved, let alone the views of the candidates they support.

Clearly, there is a huge space for a principled organisation of the Labour left that criticallysupports Jeremy Corbyn, fights against the witch-hunt and campaigns openly for socialism and the thorough democratisation of the party and the left itself. Reporting openly and honestly about what is going on must be an integral part of the culture of such a new organisation.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The left

Two alternative left slates for NCC elections

The Centre-left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) seems to have finally imploded over which candidates to select for the newly expanded National Constitutional Committee. The winking out of existence of this shady organisation is long overdue. 

[this article has been updated on the evening of October 11]

Since its foundation in 1995, the CLGA has operated as an underground club, to which only a few lucky reps of carefully screened groups are invited. This thoroughly undemocratic and unaccountable lash-up takes it upon itself to ‘recommend’ various candidates for Labour Party internal elections – consistently guided by its assumption of the unelectability of the party’s left. (An especially perverse template to work to in the aftermath of Corbyn’s victory and the membership surges he inspired.)

For many years, the CLGA stuck to its mantra of giving support to centrist candidates and rejected any moves to either present a leftwing platform or support openly left individual candidates. It is this hopeless perspective that explains how Ann Black could remain on a ‘left ticket’ for so long, despite clearly being very much in the centre/right of the party. (More background here).

The two main current constituent parts of the CLGA – Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) – have now fallen out quite spectacularly over which six candidates to support for the NCC. This is a crucial body in the Labour Party. It deals with all disciplinary matters that the National Executive Committee (NEC) feels it cannot resolve and – given that it is dominated by the right – a referral to the NCC usually results in an expulsion from the party.

The talks “deadlocked” on Wednesday October 10, apparently because Momentum (aka, Jon Lansman) refused to support Stephen Marks, a member of Jewish Voice for Labour (which has been newly included in the CLGA negotiations). Lansman argued that “‘the Jewish community’ will not tolerate a JVL representative”, as the Skwakbox reports.

So, on the morning of Thursday October 11, the CLPD put out its own slate of candidates, which includes Cecile Wright, who is also championed by Momentum. And, of course, Stephen Marks. The slate is also supported by JVL and the “Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”. Who? Have readers seen much evidence of the work on the LCND beavering away in the ranks? No, us neither.  The whole CLGA project has the definite whiff of ‘Potemkin Village’ about it (Jon Lansman for example is representing two organisations, Momentum and his own blog, Left Futures, which is so crucial to the labour movement that its latest entry is dated from February 5.) After a lengthy discussion, the Labour Representation Committee also decided to support the slate, despite the fact that the only candidate they put forward, LRC treasurer Alison McGarry, was rejected by both the CLPD and Momentum.

Momentum published its slate later on the same day. And indeed, it does not feature Marks [tough there are three candidates who also feature on the CLPD/JVL slate: Khaled Moyeed, Cecile Wright and Annabelle Harle]. Lansman let it be known that the organisation “had been prepared to back Stephen Marks”, but did not include him because of “concerns about the geographical balance of the CLPD slate“: “Half of CLPD’s slate live in London or the South East. So do 3 out of 4 of the existing CLP reps. I regret that CLPD launched their campaign today without agreement. Momentum will launch its more representative slate later today whilst continuing to seek to negotiate with CLPD”, Lansman tweeted during the day.

Utter bollocks, of course. He opposes Marks for political reasons – not geographical ones. Lansman has been on the wrong side of the Labour witchhunt from the start. He is a soft Zionist who has argued for the Labour Party to adopt the full ‘working definition on anti-Semitism’ put out by the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – including the full list of highly disputed “examples” that effectively bans whole swathes of criticism of the state of Israel.  The diminutive “Zio” should be banned as ‘insulting’, according to him. And don’t forget, Lansman – alongside Margaret Hodge (that charmer who branded Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking racist and anti-Semite”) attended a conference organised by the Jewish Labour Movement. Readers will not need reminding that this outfit supports and aligns itself with the Israeli Labor Party: that is, the foul organisation that orchestrated the nakba (the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948) and which presided over the colonialist conquest of the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1967.

The simple fact of the existence of Jewish Voice for Labour proves that Lansman is wrong to claim that there is a uniform “Jewish community”. There are pro-Zionist Jews and there are anti-Zionist Jews, for a start. Politically, in today’s toxic climate, you can’t get two more implacably diverse viewpoints. We know which of the two viewpoints Lansman supports. His transparent obfuscation over “concerns with the geographical balance” reminds us of his crass attempts to bullshit his way out of his ill-judged attempt to become Labour’s next general secretary. Remember that he claimed then that his only motivation in standing was to increase the gender balance – oddly enough, by standing against a woman, Jennie Formby!

Chequered history

In truth, we are surprised that Momentum and CLPD still attempted to be in the same room together. After all, they also came to blows over which candidates to support in the elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC) in March this year.

Lansman, owner of the Momentum database, refused to continue backing Ann Black. Quite right, in our view – and long overdue. She supported the move to stop tens of thousands of pro-Corbyn members from voting in the second leadership election and, as chair of the NEC disciplinary panel, gave her backing to much of the witchhunt against the left – for instance, by voting for the suspension of Brighton and Hove CLP. Many have questioned, quite rightly, why the CLGA continued to back her.

But CLPD’s secretary, Pete Willsman, insisted giving her support – he had worked well together with her on the NEC, despite some political differences. He even overruled his own executive committee’s decision to drop her from the CLGA slate.

So Lansman simply leaked his nine candidates to the press (sans Ann Black, of course). Deal done. At this point, of course, the list still included Pete Willsman, who Lansman later dropped after ‘somebody’ had recorded the comrade at an NEC meeting and leaked the audio to the press. He was charged with ‘anti-Semitism’– for questioning the severity of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party! ‘Bizarre’ does not quite do it justice.

Lansman and Willsman are old comrades, of course – they worked for decades together in the CLPD: both feature in this very entertaining BBC drama, which shows how the CLPD successfully fought for mandatory reselection in the Labour Party back in 1980. Funnily enough, as soon as Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, both gave up the fight for this important leftwing principle. In this, they were following Corbyn’s lead, unfortunately, who still attempts to appease the right, in the vain hope that this will keep the centre on board and thus neutralise the right.

This is tactically inept. The majority of Labour MPs have been plotting against Corbyn from day one, if not before. Should he become prime minister – which is far from certain, even if Labour wins the next general election – he would be held hostage by the Parliamentary Labour Party. In all likelihood the right would try one manoeuvre after another to get rid of him. By refusing to back mandatory reselection (aka open selection) at conference, which would have allowed the membership to rid the PLP of the anti-Corbyn right, Corbyn has seriously undermined his own position.

What now?

This latest episode must serve as serious wake-up call for the whole Labour left. As this year’s conference showed very vividly – especially the debacle over open selection – there is now a massive democratic deficit on the Labour left. A huge gap exists between the aspirations and the hopes of many members about what the Labour Party is and what it could achieve – and the attempts by the Labour leadership to steer the organisation into another direction altogether.

There is a huge space for a principled, leftwing organisation of the Labour left that critically supports Jeremy Corbyn, fights openly against the witchhunt and campaigns for the thorough democratisation of the party and the left itself. Reporting openly and honestly about what is going on must an integral part of the culture of such a new organisation and that is why we say that the politics and the methods of the CLGA belong on the scrap heap of history. Neither organisation involved in these aborted subterranean negotiations have seen the need for transparency on any of the political differences involved, let alone to criticise the methods employed. In emails to their members both JVL and CLPD do not even mention the fact that there has been a disagreement with Lansman.

This, comrades, is just not good enough.

Conference 2018, Democracy and the Labour Party

LP conference 2018: Democracy, reselection and Omov 

Carla Roberts looks at some of the rule changes before this year’s Labour conference

First, a note of caution: this will not be the final list of constitutional amendments before delegates at this year’s conference in Liverpool (September 23-26). Some of them will be composited with similar amendments and there are indeed a few where that makes entire sense – as opposed to contemporary political motions, which are usually composited into bland, motherhood and apple pie statements.

We also know that some amendments coming from Constituency Labour Parties will be superseded by the recommendations and proposed rule changes coming out of the Party Democracy Review (PDR) run by Jeremy Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Katy Clark. Unfortunately, it looks like the first delegates will get to see of them will be at conference itself – the national executive committee will take another look on September 18. Those recommendations will be discussed on the Sunday, the first day of conference, with the rest of the rule changes to be debated and voted upon on the Tuesday.

In accordance with one of the plethora of undemocratic clauses in the Labour rule book, proposed constitutional amendments from CLPs are parked for almost 14 months before they can finally be discussed by delegates. Among them is motion 10, which proposes to do away with this crassly anti-democratic delaying rule.

CLPs are only allowed to submit either one contemporary motion or one constitutional amendment per year, which means that any reform attempts from below take an incredibly long time to filter through. And, once conference has voted on an issue, it cannot be revisited for another three years – even if it only deals with the same question tangentially. The result is a ridiculously long, overcomplicated travesty of a constitution. Yes, the PDR will push through a number of changes (including, apparently, the abolition of the three-year rule). But clearly, the whole thing should be ripped up and replaced by a new, streamlined constitution that is fit for purpose.

We will look at the recommendations from the PDR as and when they are finally published, but, judging from the leaks, it is fair to say that it will probably not contain many of the radical proposals that would be needed to transform the Labour Party into a real party of the working class. This would require Jeremy Corbyn and his allies making a conscious decision to put two fingers up to the right inside and outside the party.

No, the most radical proposals come from below, from CLPs. For example, in order for Labour to become the umbrella organisation for all trade unions, socialist groups and pro-working class partisans, all undemocratic bans and proscriptions must be abolished. Constitutional amendment number 6 from Mid Worcestershire, Rugby, Truro & Falmouth, Bexhill & Battle makes a useful start in that direction. It wants to remove the first part of the infamous rule 2.1.4.B (‘membership conditions’), which bars from membership anybody who “joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the party”.

 Although we fear it is unlikely to win a majority, it is an important debate to have. Jon Lansman has already made it clear that Momentum would oppose such a change, as “this could benefit groups who are opposed to the party”. What, like Progress and Labour First? Of course not.

Lansman knows very well that this rule has been applied in an entirely one-sided way against leftwingers only – among them supporters of Socialist Appeal, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and Labour Party Marxists. Groups such as Progress and Labour First remain untouched and can continue to operate freely and in a highly organised fashion. And what about members of Stop the War Coalition or Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament? Surely they are also examples of a “political organisation”? This rule should go. Labour would be positively transformed by allowing members of left groups – who are often very dedicated – to operate freely in the party.

Instead, Lansman seems to have inspired rule change number 7 from Broxtowe, which adds a few words to the first sentence: “joins and/or supports a political organisation that is in conflict with the aims and principles of the Labour Party”. This formulation has been used, for example, to expel supporters of Socialist Appeal because, rather than recognise “the importance of the enterprise of the market”, the organisation wants to “consign the market economy to the dustbin of history”. The amendment carries that distinct danger and should therefore be opposed.

Mandatory reselection

The Parliamentary Labour Party urgently has to be brought under democratic control. The majority of Labour MPs have been shamelessly plotting against Jeremy Corbyn and sabotaging him at every turn. They are far to the right of the Labour membership and, once elected, usually enjoy a ‘job for life’.

It is unfortunate that Jeremy Corbyn – after all, he is the central target of the right – has refused to take up the challenge and include mandatory reselection in the Party Democracy Review. Nevertheless, there are eight rule changes, submitted by 13 CLPs, dealing with the subject of how and when the party selects its parliamentary candidates. If we ignore the rule changes that tinker with some of the less important issues around this question and combine similar rule changes, we can see that there are two clear alternatives.

  • Option 1: Rule changes 24 (Portsmouth North, Rochester and Strood) and 26 (Labour International) want to do away with today’s trigger ballot – which makes it more or less impossible to replace a sitting MP – and instead introduce mandatory reselection, where all those interested in becoming a candidate (including the sitting MP) participate in a democratic selection process.
  • Option 2: Rule changes 27 and 28, on the other hand, also do away with the words ‘trigger ballot’, but not the undemocratic concept. If a sitting MP receives more than 66% of “nominations” from party branches and affiliated organisations, the MP would automatically be reselected.

Such a system would still be hugely in favour of the sitting MP and could easily be rigged by affiliated unions and societies. Much better to have an open and democratic contest between all candidates, to be decided by Labour members – as envisaged by rule changes 24 and 26.

Option 2 smells heavily of Momentum’s original plan. Instead of doing away with the undemocratic trigger ballot altogether, Jon Lansman merely drew up a lame proposal to raise the threshold from Tony Blair’s 50% back to Neil Kinnock’s 66% – ie, two thirds of local branches and affiliates would have to vote in favour of the sitting MP, otherwise a full selection process would begin. Lansman even had this proposal sanctioned by the membership in one of Momentum’s tortuous and clearly biased online “consultations”.

But he seems to have undergone a mysterious change of heart and we can only speculate about the reasons behind it. He has certainly not explained them to Momentum members – or bothered to mention that there even has been a change. Lansman has still not told members which of the rule changes he wants them to vote for, but option 2 is clearly not it.

This week, he sent another email to the membership, informing them that Momentum now favours a system that gives

a fair chance to all candidates and does away with this negative, divisive stage of campaigning – so it’s an open contest from the start, and there are no ‘jobs for life’. That way, local members and the sitting MP can compete for the Labour Party’s backing at the general election, and run positive campaigns about issues local voters really care about.

Momentum has even set up a petition on the issue. Would it be petty if we thought this was a neat way of harvesting more data, while simultaneously jumping on an increasingly successful bandwagon?

Evidently, the increasingly vitriolic nature of the civil war in the Labour Party has given the campaign for mandatory reselection a new lease of life. With the support of Unite, the Fire Brigades Union, presumably the vast majority of CLP delegates and even the timid backing of Jeremy Corbyn himself, it has a good chance of winning at conference (even though John McDonnell managed to disappoint once more by declaring his support for the existing system).

Omov not the answer

It is understandable that a good deal of proposed rule changes want to extend the use of ‘one member, one vote’ to elect NEC representatives (rule changes 1, 2, 3 and 4) and even the party general secretary (18 and 19). After all, this is the method that allowed Corbyn to become leader.

This trend is also reflected in the recommendations that are expected to be in the PDR. The Huffington Post published a leaked summary, which apparently includes recommendations for “more digital democracy”, including “secure online voting systems for CLPs developed for policy and other matters”.

However, in our view there are some serious problems with Omov. As a general principle we should be against plebiscites in the party – for electoral contests or otherwise. There is a good reason why the move to Omov for the election of the party leader began with the likes of Neil Kinnock and John Smith, and culminated in Ed Miliband’s Collins review – it was a rightwing ploy to dilute the working class nature of our party. It atomises comrades and makes serious political engagement very difficult. For example, how do you question a candidate when all you have is a short statement and s/he does not reply to emails? In terms of making policy, how can you effectively move an amendment when you do not have the possibility of talking to people and explaining some of the nuances?

Take the contemporary motion on Brexit pushed by  People’s Vote. On paper, many lefties and Corbyn supporters find this entirely acceptable – allowing the people a say on the final Brexit deal sounds democratic, doesn’t it? Until you explain to them that this is clearly part of the coup against Corbyn, to embarrass him even further by undermining his pretty successful strategy of letting the Tories tear each other to pieces, while keeping all options open. Having to come out for a People’s Vote is likely to cost him in terms of votes.

Comrades should also bear in mind the farce that was Lansman’s Momentum coup, cynically wrapped as it was in a veneer of ‘democracy from below’. In fact, this pseudo-inclusive manoeuvre crushed the embryonic democratic structures of the organisation and substituted online voting by the entire, atomised and easily steered membership. Omov in Lansman’s hands was the vehicle for a profoundly undemocratic plot against the interests of the membership – one that stymied Momentum’s potential to be an effective, dynamic left trend in the party.

Online voting also marginalises the role of the unions in the party. Yes, the representatives of rightwing unions have played an entirely negative role on the NEC and when it comes to trigger ballots. But in general, the affiliation of unions is an enormous strength of the Labour Party. While they should not be allowed to stop the democratic selection of parliamentary candidates, unions have clearly played an important role in preserving the character of the Labour Party as a workers’ party, even under Tony Blair. In fact, we should fight for a serious commitment to a vigorous national campaign to affiliate all unions.

 

Momentum

NEC elections: Grit your teeth and vote for Jon Lansman!

Ballot forms for the three additional places on Labour’s National Executive Committee began to be distributed yesterday. The left on this leadership body was recently strengthened with the election of the pro-Corbyn Richard Leonard as leader of the party in Scotland (the expectation is that he will probably personally fill the Scottish NEC seat created in the aftermath of the party’s 2016 conference – or, if not, at least appoint a delegate supportive of the left leadership.) The election for these extra three seats, to be decided by an all-member vote, is an important opportunity to consolidate this progressive shift on the leadership and give it a slightly more comfortable majority.

For this reason, Labour Party Marxists recommends an unconditional, but highly critical vote for the slate supported by the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance, Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy including a vote for Jon Lansman, the controversial ‘owner’ of the Momentum brand. It is not surprising that for some on the left, support for Lansman is hard. The pattern of nominations from the CLPs clearly shows some left comrades taking a vicarious revenge for the crass internal coup that Lansman and his close allies launched in January 2017. That, coupled with the ugly amalgam nature of the CLGA itself – essentially a lash up with right-leaning candidates – further muddies the water. (There are supporters of Manchester councillor Yasmine Dar and national policy forum representative Rachel Garnham who might well have their own reasons for not putting a tick next to Lansman’s name) there were obviously some squeaky-bum moments in in the pro-Lansman camp that have put the man’s election in some doubt.

Interestingly, the joint CLGA/Momentum/CLPD campaigning website for the NEC elections unusually enquires if supporters had voted for “the full team (Yasmine, Rachel and Jon)” or just “part of the team”. They are clearly aware of the fact that quite a few members cannot bring themselves to vote for Lansman (but the CLGA/Momentum/CLPD still wants to record them as supporters and be able to harvest their data).

We hear of lefties even agitating for a vote for Sarah Taylor instead of Jon Lansman; she is a disability campaigner and Momentum member, but without much of a profile in the party. She picked up just six nominations from Constituency Labour Parties against Lansman’s 148. It’s unlikely she would win; but she could split the vote sufficiently to allow a rightist like Eddy Izzard slip in through the middle.

No doubt, the political hostility to Lansman specifically is well-founded, given the shameful manoeuvres in Momentum. However, that must be put aside for this election. Lansman is a leading figure on the left of the party. He shares many of the flawed politics and bureaucratic practice of the wing of our party. LPM will not let-up in our political criticisms of the man anymore than we will stop criticising Corbyn and McDonnell themselves. However, in this election he and the platform he is part of should be critically supported in order that our leadership is more safely in the hands of people who reflect the views and political aspiration of our mass, left wing membership.

If you can’t beat them…

The Labour Party right remain strong in terms of the grip its tentacles continue to have on the apparatus/’civil service’ of the party. However, there is no question that it has taken some devastating hits over the past period. Take, for example, the aforementioned election of Richard Leonard and its implications for the balance of power on the NEC.

Of course, it was the right wing which managed to sneak through the anti-democratic organisational innovation at last year’s party conference that led to the creation of two new NEC seats. These would be in the gift of the leaders of the party in Wales and Scotland; both then in the hands of right wingers, of course. Times do have a way of a-changing, however. Now, Scotland has gone ‘Corbynite’. There are rumblings from Wales as the membership’s outrage grows against the leadership’s contempt for basic democracy in elections for the leader and the new post of deputy leader. (And let’s not forget that the ‘registered supporters’ category that swung so powerfully behind Corbyn in the election contest/s was another wizard wheeze of the right.)

What’s a poor right winger to do?

Well, some seem to have reached the conclusion that ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!’

Reports reach us of hard-line rightist councillors pitching up at Momentum meetings; of local Momentum secretaries who, after much nagging, have finally been given lists of Momentum members in their area only to find – yes, you’ve guessed it – rightwing councillors and dyed-in-the-wool anti-left zealots listed as members.

At the same time, worrying news comes from Sheffield where the Momentum branch has voted – by 29 to 25 votes – to exclude from Momentum membership comrades that the witch hunters in the party have excluded on political grounds.

Are we seeing a creeping ‘domestication’ on Momentum? A process of incorporation and political dissolution? If any readers have noted an out-of-place face turning up out of the blue at your local Momentum meeting or right wing councillors beginning to tout themselves as Momentum supporters, let us know! And do call them out in meetings, because others should know who has snuck in.