Yesterday evening, Brockley Labour passed the following motion in response to the Labour Party’s review on rules and democracy. This review is being undertaken by Ray Collins, an ex-General Secretary of the Labour Party and an interim report was presented to Labour’s Conference, Collins Review Interim Report Sep 2013. I commented on the debate at conference on this blog in an article called Labour’s Rules considered by those that can change them.

The Brockley Ward motion reads as follows,

This branch believes that any further rule changes should enhance the power of the individual membership.

Labour Party Reform

This Branch notes the speech and proposals made by Ed Miliband in his speech on Labour Party Reform in July 9th, the appointment of Roy Collins to conduct a review.

This branch notes the processes and rule changes undertaken in and between 2010 – 2012, under the Refounding Labour programme.

Individual and Affiliate Membership

This branch believes that any changes to the individual membership rules must encourage the development of the Labour Party, and not encourage individual members who are currently also in affiliated trade unions to reduce their commitment and activism.

This branch believes that affiliated trade unions should be able to express their views collectively at all levels of engagement within the Labour Party;  Constituencies should be able to choose to run themselves through all members meetings.

This branch believes that the CLP Division of the NEC should be expanded to increase the individual membership’s representation.

This branch believes that the role of the National Policy Forum and individual membership’s representation within it should be reviewed to ensure that Labour’s Policy and Programme represent the individual and affiliate membership views.

This branch believes that Conference should have effective governance over the work of the National Policy Forum.

This branch believes that no section of votes in the Leader’s Electoral College should be larger than the individual membership college.

This branch notes that the proposed supporters organisation/list and rules required to elect the next leader has not been promulgated.

This branch believes that a supporter’s organisation/list would be of benefit to the Labour Party.

Selection of Candidates

This branch believes that Labour candidates for public and internal office should be accountable to the policy, programme, rules and membership of the Labour Party and we should not adopt rules that would permit election/selection to be seen as an alternative mandate; all candidates for public and internal office should be subject to periodic affirmation by the party membership and extraordinary recall/dismissal.

This branch believes that Labour Party candidates for public office should be chosen by the Labour Party’s membership and opposes the use of open primaries unless the party organisation is defunct.

This branch believes that the CLP divisions on the London Regional Board should be representative of local government and geographical boundaries.

This branch believes that the European Parliament slate put to members should include the two reserves, and that any incumbent MEPs seeking re-election should be considered on the same ballot paper as new candidates.

Development Plans

No-one in this branch has ever seen an externally funded development plan. This branch believes that the individual membership subscriptions are too high and that too much of the subscription fee is remitted to Head Quarters; this inhibits the self-funded development of CLPs.

Fair Selection/Election

This branch believes that internal elections and selections are an important focus for political discussion and development. This branch believes that capping election/selection activity to a single centrally distributed statement minimises membership participation and maximises the opportunity for rich external forces including the right wing press to influence the choices of the Labour Party.

This branch believes that during election/selections candidates’ access to the membership list must be in accordance with data protection laws. This means that the Labour Party must collect accurate data usage consents.

This branch believes that the use of email and social networking tools is inhibited by the aggressive spamming techniques used by Head Office to ask for money. Begging mails should be subject to data protection law consent.

This branch believes that the Labour Party should offer all members email addresses.

 

Having our say
Tagged on:                     

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: