The author first wrote a much shorter summary for Labour Left Internationalists, which he then expanded for this report: see here.
Shortly before Labour Party conference (24-28 September 2022, Liverpool), we asked "Will the unions rebuke Starmer?" Despite the class struggles raging with increasing intensity, they didn't, leaving the Labour leadership's trajectory largely unchallenged.
Keir Starmer’s leadership largely got its way in Liverpool, with less and less effective left resistance than a year ago. A mix of left-wing demoralisation and bureaucratic stitch-ups produced a new "moderate" majority among Constituency Labour Party (CLP) delegates; but what decisively cleared the way for Starmer was a continued lack of union political revolt, despite growing working-class struggles.
Though now a minority, the CLP left is still a substantial presence in and around the conference; but its impact in the conference was weak. The left did poorly at getting delegates elected and at getting policy motions submitted through CLPs, and the party machine followed up with expulsion of delegates, bureaucratic manoeuvres to exclude inconvenient motions and so on. Yet the conference did pass a raft of left-wing motions, mainly because of the unions. It is not possible for the Labour bureaucracy to carve up and carve out unions in the same way it does with CLP activists. Meanwhile the leadership doubled down on its established strategy of ignoring what conference has voted for, posing again the question of a much more vocal and active union revolt.
That didn’t happen. In an article hailing Starmer, the right-wing liberal Guardian commentator Martin Kettle summed up: “Liverpool was also a success in party management terms…The unions cooperated with the leadership most of the time.”
For “unions” read “union leaders”. When I write unions in this report it will predominantly be shorthand for their leaders, who decided what their organisations did at Labour conference, and generally with little reference to the union rank and file, democratic structures or democratically decided union policies.
The impact of the growing strike struggles was visible in the motions unions put forward – the left-wing policies conference passed included at-least-inflation pay rises, “unequivocal” support for strikers, a call for members and MPs to join picket lines, and a £15 minimum wage – and to a much lesser extent in announcements the leadership made (see below). But this did not feed through into a wider, active union revolt. Instead of attempting such a thing, the union leaders by and large passed their policies (while allowing other left-wing policies to be excluded), sat back and let Starmer get on with it.
What do we mean the unions went along with Starmer?
Take one example of a high profile left-wing policy the conference didn’t pass, because it was in effect bureaucratically excluded from the floor. Numerous motions advocating public ownership of energy were ruled out of order on very thin pretexts; but a small number were allowed through. The machine’s solution was to simply not tell the relevant CLPs about the compositing meetings where motions were chopped up and stitched together, with the result that they did not attend and their text advocating public ownership disappeared into the bin. Ditto text on public ownership of water. As far as I know this is the first time this has ever been done.
The next day Barrow and Furness CLP – whose motion had advocated public ownership of both energy and water – challenged the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) and there was a vote on allowing conference to hear it. The CAC won and conference moved on – which means that the majority or at least a very large minority of unions voted with the CAC. We should also ask what the unions that were in the compositing meeting did to make a fuss.
In advance of the conference the unions did nothing to protest against expulsion of delegates, ruling out of motions and so on. It seems very likely their representatives on the CAC collaborated with the leadership against the left.
In the priority ballot of delegates to choose which issue areas the conference would discuss, unions mostly voted for “safe” areas containing little disputed text so that, for instance, motions on housing (where there were a very large number of left-wing motions), energy, migrants’ rights and the anti-union laws were not discussed.
Nor did unions challenge the National Policy Forum over its repeated ignoring of conference policy, or back up the many CLPs that tried to.
Similarly, left-wing rule changes, for instance to ensure Jeremy Corbyn can stand as a Labour candidate in the next general election, were defeated, while right-wing ones narrowing party democracy in various ways were passed. A large minority or maybe a majority of the unions must have voted with the leadership; and for sure they said little if anything about it.
More widely too, the unions did not make a fuss at the conference. Left-wing activists including left MPs went down to support striking Liverpool dockers; but their union Unite did not organise a delegation from the conference or even just of its own members. Moreover, when the dockers came to protest at the conference centre, demanding support from the Labour leadership, the Unite delegation not only did not mobilise people to join them but didn't even join the protest themselves! Nor did they organise to take the strikers into the conference.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has made noise about dissatisfaction with Starmer – essentially to justify disengagement from the Labour Party. Unite’s quiescence at Labour conference reinforces what this approach means in practice: allowing Starmer to have his way. Unite, as Labour’s biggest affiliate, could have a major positive impact – but it is refusing to do so.
There are hundreds of things unions could have done to use the conference to push forward a working-class agenda, boost and organise the left, pressure the leadership to shift and start to exercise some control over it. For the most part – there was this or that useful thing done – they did very little. That is not just a matter of this particular conference, but reflects a much wider lack of union political campaigning and struggle, in the Labour Party and more generally.
With this conference, in the midst of the strike wave, an opportunity to start to change all this was missed; but the fight to do so will continue and is essential. Socialists must organise in the unions to challenge the political passivity widespread among union leaderships and many activists, including by pushing for a militant fight in the Labour Party.
What did the conference vote for?
Some of the demands included in the left-wing motions passed by the conference were frustratingly vague: “proper sick pay”… “proper long-term funding for local government”... “reform welfare to protect dignity and ensure adequate income”… But many of the demands were clear and relatively sharp (relatively: there was nothing that clearly called the leadership to account, even on its weaseling about strikes). It’s worth noting that the motions from Unison were significantly clearer and sharper than those from the supposedly left-wing Unite.
Conference voted for:
• Pay rises at least in-line with inflation.
• “Unequivocal support to all UK workers taking strike action” and for joining picket lines, including “all Labour MPs” doing so
• A £15 minimum wage
• Opposing privatisation, academisation and outsourcing; bringing services back in house; public ownership of the railways and Royal Mail specifically and of “essential services and utilities” generally
• A free, publicly funded and publicly provided social care system
• “Proper needs-based funding for local government”, ie an implication of reversing the cuts
• “To return all privatised portions of the NHS to public control”
You can read all the motions submitted and the composite motions passed here.
This builds on left-wing policies passed in 2021, including public ownership of energy and repeal of all anti-union laws. The issue is the lack of campaigning for these policies and to demand Labour commits to them.
With motions for public ownership of energy and the broader Labour for a Green New Deal kept off the agenda, the composite passed on climate change was extremely bland. Ditto the composite on childcare.
The conference voted overwhelmingly for strong solidarity with Ukraine, but the composite motion a) dropped the pro-active proposals for actually mobilising Labour members included in the National Union of Mineworkers motion promoted by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and b) included right-wing CLPs’ support for NATO and GMB’s use of this issue to promote higher military spending. (In a sign of Starmer’s increasingly authoritarian regime, a delegate who gave an appalling Putin-apologist speech opposing the composite was suspended shortly after the conference.)
Since last year, when CLP delegates voted overwhelmingly to support proportional representation but a majority of the unions voted it down, the conferences of Unison and Unite have both voted to support PR. This year, the pro-PR motion passed by a big majority (along with a call for abolition of the House of Lords).
Support for a more democratic electoral system and abolishing the unelected Lords is long overdue. Starmer's announcement even before conference opened, that electoral reform would not be in Labour's manifesto regardless, shows that we must dial up the pressure so the party leadership cannot ignore this mandate. We must also link this to a wider programme for defending and expanding democracy. At the same time, the tendency to see electoral reform as a sort of panacea should be resisted, and Labour should not sacrifice its independence for a single-issue coalition with liberal parties with no connection to the labour movement.
There was nothing submitted on Brexit, nothing on policing and criminal justice, and nothing on international issues except Ukraine.
The weakness of the left
What happened at the conference reflected the weakness – organisational and above all political – of the left in the unions, but the weaknesses of the Labour left too. Momentum on paper promoted motions for the conference but, given the small numbers submitted (except the PR motion), evidently did not do much about it. As previously, it made no serious attempt to organise or mobilise delegates and visitors beyond sending out messages with voting instructions.
Some comrades on conference floor report a general lack of confidence and stroppyness among left-wing delegates – understandably given the way the party has gone in the last year (three years in fact). The lack of any large-scale push by the organised left will have reinforced this problem, and facilitated union passivity, helping Starmer minimise any challenges or even just disruption.
Although some union delegates – including apparently Unite – did not go into the hall when Starmer had the conference sing “God Save the King”, there was no attempt to protest against this by anyone except Labour Left Internationalists (of which Workers’ Liberty is part). LLI raised it in their conference bulletin and inside with a poster. In fact Momentum put out a message to delegates urging them not to protest. It’s not a matter of how one judges tactical questions about protesting in the hall, but about evidently wanting nothing to be said or done about the issue.
There were some very good sessions at the fringe festival The World Transformed (as well as some pretty insubstantial and a few bad ones), but more than ever the event is very much divorced from the conference, with little in the way of attempts to mobilise those present to impact the conference or advocacy of struggle in or demands on Labour more generally. This is not say every discussion at TWT should be about the Labour Party, but the growth of this gap is indicative of a political problem. (In the TWT session on the monarchy, Momentum was on the platform, but nobody taken to speak pointed out that it had discouraged protest on this issue.)
What the leadership announced
Despite the lack of union revolt and aggressive left-wing pressure, the leadership did show some minor signs of shifting leftwards, in part possibly as a result of rising working-class struggle. Starmer announced a publicly-owned energy company – far short of the necessary policy of public ownership of the energy sector, but a shift. Shadow local government secretary Lisa Nandy promised a Labour government’s mantra would be “council housing, council housing, council housing” and talked about stronger rights for private tenants. Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh announced the leadership does after all support nationalising the railways. Angela Rayner talked about insourcing and stronger workers’ rights, and there were various announcements about increased public spending.
Such policies, if carried out in anything like solid form and mirrored in other areas, would put the next Labour government substantially to the left of the 1997-2010 regime. The problem is that after almost 15 years of capitalist crisis, unchecked ruling-class warfare and Tory social vandalism – and 40 years of unbroken neoliberalism – it will take far more than this to substantially repair social damage and begin to turn the tide. As thing stand, any sort of radical social change is off the agenda (to say nothing of socialism, which was off the agenda under Corbyn too).
The Labour leadership, predictably, said nothing about supporting strikes or about fighting the anti-union laws, beyond Angela Rayner saying they would repeal Liz Truss’ new attacks (not mentioning existing laws, not even the 2016 Trade Union Act, or advocating any real struggle to stop new ones). Even the plans to strengthen collective bargaining previously advocated by the leadership were mentioned only in passing and obliquely.
At the same time, Starmer continued to pander to the nationalist right, not only promising to “make Brexit work” but announcing a “points-based immigration system” – the slogan of the Tory right and clear dogwhistle to racists. If implemented in any serious way it will also mean strengthening bosses’ power over migrant and by extension all workers.
The wider problem is the Labour leadership and politicians’ utter lack of accountability to the party membership and labour movement. Media reports say there was an increased presence of corporate lobbyists at the conference; and that Starmer and Reeves have held 250 meetings with CEOs. They don’t have that kind of relationship with union leaders, let alone the union and party rank and file!
Socialist and labour movement activists want to push the policies the party advocates to the left; as things stand, there will stronger pressure to push them to the right, including from within the party. A radical assertion of Labour Party and labour movement democracy and accountability is necessary to tip the balance the other way. Sovereignty for Labour conference, making it the real democratic decision-making centre of the party, is the crucial demand. The whole framework in which policy is something announced from above by the leadership, not decided by members, affiliates and their democratic representatives, needs to be challenged and defeated.
What we did, what needs to be done
Workers’ Liberty, working with others in Labour Left Internationalists, and with campaigns including the Labour Campaign for Free Movement (LCFM) and Free Our Unions (FOU), tried to do some of what was necessary. We sold hundreds of pounds worth of literature and engaged hundreds of people in discussion about class-struggle socialist ideas; focused seriously on the conference, including organising for motions and policy debates; went to support the dockers both on their picket lines and at the conference; supported the Labour for Trans Rights and Forde report/anti-racism protests outside the conference; and helped distribute campaign materials and organise events including the packed LCFM session at TWT and FOU and Ukraine Solidarity Campaign fringe meetings.
In the months ahead, what happens in UK society will be determined above all on the picket lines; but working-class struggle also requires politics and political organising and intervention. The failure of the unions to fight politically for pro-working class demands – often ignoring policies agreed by their own democratic structures – is a great weakness.
The Labour Party, which may well relatively soon be in power, remains the only large-scale UK political organisation rooted in the labour movement; the unions retain major organisational and political weight in its structures and broader life, and the extent to which and goals for which they use the that weight are major tests of their willingness to fight for working-class interests. Despite all the difficulties, it remains necessary for socialists to fight in its structures and seek to mobilise the wider labour movement to do so.
With Labour now riding high in the polls, the Labour right will be triumphant. The socialist left should not be intimidated, but seek to push forward to win clear pro-working class policies, against both the right and the passive politics which dominates in the Labour left and the unions.
• Labour Left Internationalist bulletins for the conference here
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