From the CLPD newsletter:
In summer 2007, shortly after he became Leader, Gordon Brown submitted a document (‘Extending and Renewing Party Democracy’) to the NEC recommending a number of changes to Annual Conference procedures. Both the NEC and later Annual Conference accepted these changes.
The main thrust of these proposals was to replace ‘Contemporary Motions’ by ‘Contemporary Issues’.
Before the advent of New Labour, every CLP and Union could send motions and amendments to Conference and the whole agenda of Conference largely revolved around these motions. Tony Blair changed all that. Conference was downgraded to little more than a glorified rally, with only four motion subjects allowed onto the agenda for debate and vote. A further restriction was introduced in that these motions could only be ‘contemporary motions’, in other words they had to cover an issue arising after the end of July in each year.
Gordon Brown went even further. In 2007 ‘Motions’ disappeared altogether.
Their replacement, ‘Contemporary Issues’, cannot be voted on. They are debated and then remitted to the Policy Commissions of the NPF for further debate. The Policy Commissions then report on the progress of their deliberations to the following Annual Conference.
These reports can either be voted on or remitted again to the NPF for yet more discussion and then another report to the next Conference. Perceptive readers will have concluded that these new arrangements are far from perfect. For this reason, in 2007, the Unions insisted that in 2009 there would be a review. The 2009 Annual Conference postponed the issue until the 2010 Conference.
At [the 2010 Labour Party conference in] Manchester a review of the whole Partnership into Power process will be launched. Several CLPs and Unions have already made suggestions for reform. These include:
That Conference must have the opportunity to express its clear view on matters of major political concern. This can only be done by voting on motions.
Motions should therefore be reinstated.
The artificial criteria of ‘contemporary’ (restrictively interpreted as August onwards) should be dropped. CLPs and Unions should have the right to submit a motion on any matter of major concern.
The spirit of the ‘4 plus 4’ rule for the Priorities Ballot at Conference should be properly honoured at every Conference – 4 subjects from the Unions and an additional 4 separate subjects from the CLPs.
At Conference there should be provision for voting in parts in relation to the lengthy NPF documents, instead of the current undemocratic practice of Conference having to vote on a whole document on an all-or-nothing basis.
Undemocratic exclusion of rule changes
Delegates at this year’s Conference at Manchester [should] have an opportunity to vote on several rule change proposals that will be moved by Constituency reps.
These were submitted last year, but under an obscure convention (known as the ‘1968 Ruling’) they are first referred to the NEC for its considered opinion and are not timetabled for debate and vote until the following year’s Conference. This may seem a sensible procedure, but in practice it has not lived up to the intentions of its originators in 1968. The NEC was supposed to give thorough consideration to all proposed rule changes, but in fact the NEC hardly looks at them and every year invariably rejects all rule change suggestions from CLPs.
Unfortunately the situation is much worse this year because a whole range of important rule changes from some 23 CLPs and two unions have been ruled out of order by the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) in a very high handed manner.
The CAC has ruled all these rule changes out by using a blanket application of the ‘three-year-rule’. The CAC has employed an unfair and catch-all interpretation of the ‘three-year-rule’. The rule states that, when a Conference decision has been made on a rule change proposal, no further amendment to that ‘part’ of the rules will be permitted for three years.
The key word here, of course, is ‘part’. [There is no definition in the rules of what is a ‘part’ of the rules: there are clauses, sections, sentences, but no indication as to which of these means ‘part’]. In other words, if a CLP amends a completely different ‘part’ of a long clause in the Rule Book, compared to other parts that may have been recently amended, then that is in order. [In the past, it has always been considered in order: rule changes have been ruled out only if they relate to the same specific issue as previously decided within three years].
The CAC has ignored the significance of the word ‘part’ and applied a catch-all interpretation. This is unacceptable and any challenge from ruled out CLPs, insisting that the Rule Book is correctly interpreted, should be given full support. It is difficult enough for CLPs to have their voice heard in this Party, without the CAC gagging them.
Aggrieved delegates may go to the rostrum and seek redress by challenging the Chair of the CAC. Every delegate in the hall should do their best to support these challenges and oppose the gagging.
Comments
Unions say they will back reference-back
The ruling-out of the rule changes was decided at the end of a CAC meeting, where Labour Party full-time officials told the members there was no time to discuss remaining business in detail and hurried them into rubber-stamping a series of officials' recommendations which included the blanket, and unprecedented, ruling-out.
The implications, if this ruling is upheld and its spirit continued, is that it will become practically impossible for unions or local Labour Parties ever to get any rule changes about conference decision-making debated. So long as the National Executive puts some little amendment to that general area of the rules once every three years or so, proposed rule changes will always fall foul of the "three year rule" in this new interpretation.
In a welcome and very unusual move, however, we understand that the big unions are indicating that they will support moves from the conference to "refer back" the relevant sections of the CAC report, at least as regards two of the proposed rule changes, on CLPs being able to propose both a contemporary motion and a rule change, and on voting in parts on platform documents.
It seems pretty definite now that this 2010 conference will once again debate and vote on contemporary "motions" from unions and local Labour Parties, reversing the 2007 decision whereby unions and Labour Parties could submit only "issues" to be discussed but not voted on.
Text submitted as "issues" to this conference will be converted into "motions".
Logically, the National Executive has to propose a rule change to reverse the 2007 conference decision to ban motions. And in fact the Executive has promised to do so.
There are rumours, however, that the Executive may try to proceed by just admitting motions in practice without changing the rule. Such a procedure, while nonsensical, would obviously make it easier for David Miliband, if elected leader, to ban motions again.
There may also be undemocratic manoeuvres on the issues or motions submitted to the conference this year.
The current rule is that issues or motions must be "contemporary", meaning that they must relate to very recent events and cannot cover anything debated by the National Policy Forum. The left has long campaigned to lift this restriction, and the big unions are in broad terms favourable to lifting it.
However, as it stands, the rules give the CAC huge latitude in ruling out motions. In 2008 and 2009, motions having been converted to "issues" without risk of a vote, the CAC was liberal. In previous year, it has frequently ruled out large numbers of motions.
This year, advice has been sent out to local Labour Parties about not submitting issues/ motions on matters recently debated by the National Policy Forum. Given that the National Policy Forum has not met for a very long time, that should not be a big restriction. But the advice refers, without explanation, to a list of subjects on which local Labour Parties have made submissions to the NPF's policy commissions.
A procedure of ruling out motions on anything on which local Labour Parties have made submissions - even if those submissions have never been discussed, and do not look like being discussed any time soon - would give Labour Party head office power to rule out virtually any motion it didn't like.