Internationalists in Labour are beginning a drive to get internationalist, socialist policy put to Labour’s national conference this autumn (25-29 September).
Momentum Internationalists (MI) will be supporting motions on solidarity with the Hong Kong democracy movement and the Uyghur Muslims targeted by Beijing’s ethnic cleansing drive. We will be backing a motion from the Free Our Unions campaign that raises the alarm about the government’s plans to impose anti-strike “minimum service requirements” in the UK transport sector, makes the case for trade union freedom in the UK, and stresses the need to remove legal bans on industrial action to win on broader issues like climate change and racism.
Labour Campaign for Free Movement will be putting policy on fighting to win back and extend migrants’ rights following the government’s Brexit rollback of freedom of movement, which MI will also be backing. Young Labour Internationalists will be moving motions calling for a rule change which would permit Labour’s youth wing to have its own autonomous annual conference.
Momentum Internationalists will also be putting a motion about inequality and unemployment in the wake of the pandemic.
The deadline for local Labour Parties to submit motions is usually a few weeks before the start of Conference, but many local Labour Parties decide what motion they will be submitting much earlier, often around June.
Momentum’s leadership has announced that it will permit Momentum members to vote on what Momentum recommendations for motions to be taken to Labour Party Conference. Given that the new leading group does not permit local groups to send motions to Momentum’s national executive, this is a turn-up for the books, and good.
Hopefully, Momentum’s procedure for choosing conference motions will be the open, democratic debate which is so sorely needed.
• MI held a discussion on the EHRC report, antisemitism, and Labour on 28 January, with about 100 attending. Speakers were David Renton and Jill Mountford; there were many and varying contributions “from the floor”, in one of few open and reasoned debates to have happened within the Labour left on this issue. MI will be holding forums and debates on the last Thursday of every month: check out momentuminternationalists.org
