Procedural motion
Fallback vote Labour
A new Socialist Alliance
Procedural motion
1. To continue discussion on the Labour Party.
2. To vote at this conference only on:
A. The passage of [AWL NC document] VI which reads as follows:
“Our main focus in elections should be to campaign positively for our own candidates and other socialist and labour movement candidates, but tactically it will still be best for the time being to favour a Labour vote as the default option in contests where there is no positive better option."
B. That part of SC's amendment which relates to the above sentence and which reads as follows:
Replace “But tactically... there is no positive better option.”
By “In certain constituencies, i.e. where there is a left Labour candidate and no positive better option, we would still favour a Labour vote (i.e. a vote for that Labour candidate). In general, however, we do not favour a Labour vote as a default option.”
2. To hold a further AWL conference later in 2009 (around early November). This will be a weekend conference focused on reorienting the AWL in the new conditions opened up by the big capitalist crisis. It will vote on further issues as regards the Labour Party, but will not be limited to the Labour Party question.
3. The AWL NC decision on backing union disaffiliation from the Labour Party stands as AWL policy in the meantime.
[If this is carried, 7.1 and 7.2 and 7.8 are voted on - all else falls]
Fallback vote Labour
Our main focus in elections should be to campaign positively for our own candidates and other socialist and labour movement candidates, but tactically it will still be best for the time being to favour a Labour vote as the default option in contests where there is no positive better option.
A new Socialist Alliance
The June 4th European and council elections will provide an empirical snap-shot of the degree to which Brown and New Labour have plummeted in ‘public opinion’. In all likelihood the British National Party will win one or more MEPs. Whilst this in itself is more of a symptom than the actual problem facing the workers movement – the problem of independent working class political representation and the degree to which the BNP have organised themselves in place of labour movement community structures – we should prepare ourselves for the wave of revulsion and hand-wringing likely to emerge in the labour movement and the left.
Specifically the AWL will, where we can:
- re-assert the call for a Workers’ Representation initiative within trades councils, trade union branches and at national trade union conferences;
- propose that unions with limited political funds modify these funds to allow for the backing of labour movement candidates at elections;
- call upon other socialist groups to co-operate with and co-ordinate the standing of socialist candidates in as many constituencies as possible in the next General Election – up to and including the re-constitution of a Socialist Alliance-type formation.