WeeklyWorker

28.11.2013

Left Unity: How to vote at conference

CPGB Provisional Central Committee recommendations

Reading the agenda for the November 30 Left Unity founding conference, it quickly becomes clear that there will be almost no time for any real discussion on the day, as we rush from one agenda item to the next. This results mainly from trying to squeeze into one day what is in reality several days’ worth of business.

In the light of this situation we offer some recommendations for voting here, in the order in which issues appear on the agenda1.

Standing Orders Committee report: The very cramped quality of the agenda would be (slightly) improved if all the motions and amendments in parts 7 and 8, ‘Priority campaigns’ and ‘Electoral strategy’, were deferred to the policy conference planned for spring. The only two of these resolutions which are really ‘immediate’ - Glasgow’s on solidarity with Edward Snowden and West London’s on reviewing the constitution next year - have been ruled out of order by the SOC; the rest can surely wait. To begin the day with a row about the SOC report will probably be unpopular in some quarters, but it is surely necessary.

Safe spaces policy: The vote will be to endorse or to refer back. We would urge a vote for reference back. The document is founded on a misconception - that ‘safe spaces’ are in some sense attainable - and in its present form will produce witch-hunting and splits, as happened in US Maoist organisations in the 1970s and in feminist groups at the same period and into the 1980s, and as is happening currently in the German left party, Die Linke.

Transitional procedures for national council; election of the transitional national coordinating group: The constitutional conception of the national council is misconceived (see the brief discussion below). Ideally, this conference should elect a collective leadership. But no amendment to the structural conception of the party’s leadership is on the table. Given this, the Coventry and Leamington amendment to provide for the election of the transitional NCG at least is worth voting for.

Aims: This discussion will presumably start with a procedural vote about Huddersfield’s ‘delete all’ amendments to the Class Struggle, Communist and Republic platforms. The SOC has declared this to be a procedural motion rather than, as it should have done, simply ruling it out of order as anti-democratic. Huddersfield’s amendment is plainly a dishonest manoeuvre: either an attempt to prevent minority views being heard at all (if it is taken to prevent these aims proposals being introduced and put to the vote) or an attempt to get an additional speech against these three sets of proposals under the guise of ‘amending’ them out of existence. There are rumours, however, that this ‘amendment’ will be withdrawn.

The SOC report is unclear as to how the vote to select the platform of aims will be conducted, but it looks as though the method will be in the bureaucratic, game-playing mould of Walter Citrine’s ABC of chairmanship: “As each platform is voted for, it becomes the substantive motion. Called in order of signed support.” This is just about a tolerable method if the platform with least support is called first, and so on up to that with most support. If, however, Left Party Platform’s proposals are taken first, declared passed, and then the other proposals are taken to have fallen (which is the Citrine method), the result would be to deny minorities - especially Socialist Platform, which is likely to have the most minority support - any means of registering the relative size of its support.

When we get to the vote, assuming we get an opportunity to vote at all on minority platforms, we would recommend a vote for the Communist Platform as first preference, and, if this is defeated, the Socialist Platform as second preference. We have argued this case in several articles in recent weeks.

We do not urge a vote for any of the other platforms, or for Camden’s (Ken Loach’s) amendments to Left Party Platform. Let us take these in order of appearance.

The Camden amendments would significantly improve the LPP proposal - especially in the amendments to paragraph 3 (end to capitalism); the new paragraph 9 (rejecting governmental coalitions with capitalist parties); and the amendments to paragraph 10 (removing the specific identification with the Euro-left and the Stalinist language of “peoples” and specifying opposition to imperialist wars). But they do not alter the basic Marxism Today structure of the LPP.

Party name: There are three options: ‘Left Party’ (proposed by Crouch End); ‘Left Unity Party’ (Manchester Central South and Rugby); and ‘Democratic Voice’ (Huddersfield). None of these would be our choice; but ‘Democratic Voice’ is hopeless: an obviously frontist misdescription of what the organisation is. ‘Left Party’ seems slightly preferable to ‘Left Unity Party’ as a ‘brand’ for the general public.

Constitution

The draft constitution is a cod-legalistic nightmare. It both attempts to specify as rules what should be left as political principles and features an over-elaborate structure. This structure has elements of federalism, in the form of national council delegates elected from Euro-constituencies (section 12j); of bureaucratic Bonapartism: directly elected officers (section 12) (what happens when one of them resigns for family reasons, etc?); and provision for electronic referenda (section 10), which, like all referenda, concentrate the decision-making power in those who set the questions.

The constitution attempts to protect against bureaucratic control by complex accountability rules. But it also retains the fundamental instruments of bureaucratic control - speech controls (through the ‘safe spaces’ policy); the creation of procedural minefields; the right of the national council (in section 3e) to deem membership of (unspecified) organisations “incompatible with membership” of Left Unity (a clause borrowed from the Labour Party, or perhaps from Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party); and the rejection in principle of “permanent factions” (7b ii) (a clause borrowed from the SWP).

It will almost certainly prove itself unworkable within months and begin to be ignored in practice. That said, it is the only constitution on the table, and reference back is not, we are told, an option.

Most of the amendments are tinkering within the framework of the mistaken scheme. But a few of them are worthwhile. The most important is at the end, to section 21 - where West London and Haringey both correctly propose to delete the two-thirds supermajority requirement for changes to the constitution. Given that the present text (even as amended) will rapidly prove unworkable, a vote for this amendment is essential.

One welcome feature of the draft is it is made clear that LU will organise in Scotland and Wales (section 8). There will clearly be some controversy over 8e, which commits LU to discuss organising in Northern Ireland if 50 individuals there apply to join. West London, and Waltham Forest, have proposed deleting this clause. This is not, from CPGB’s point of view, an issue of principle: in our view ‘one state, one party’ is the right starting point. That said, it has been a tradition of the left in Britain not to attempt to organise in the Six Counties, for reasons of solidarity with the Irish national struggle, and the very different politics of the statelet mean that such attempts as have occurred have mostly been very unsuccessful.

Among other amendments to the constitution which have not been accepted and which are worth having a view on: In section 3, on membership, Islington proposes removing the minimum age of 13 for membership. Having a minimum age at all seems pointless, though we cannot expect to get many people under 13 applying to join. Wigan proposes that national meetings should move round the country: the effect, given that the public transport network is London-centred, would be to reduce attendance from other ‘regions’, and this proposal should be rejected. Sheffield correctly proposes to delete 7b iv, which would prohibit “caucuses” (platforms or tendencies) from “public campaigns against the overall aims or policy of the party”.

Campaigns and elections

Priority campaigns: We have already noted that most of this item would be better deferred to the spring policy conference. To decide on priorities means exercising an ongoing choice between competing demands for our attention, but this agenda item is not designed to allow us to do so; while, in any case, if we did, new events would likely immediately overturn the relevance of the decisions made.

That said, all the motions on the NHS could be classified as ‘Those in favour of good and against evil, please raise your hands’. Sheffield’s motion on trade union strategy is inappropriately over-ambitious (LU clearly will not be in a position to launch a “rank-and-file paper”). The Birmingham amendment is a do-nothing one; the West London amendment is more realistic; the Lambeth amendment (from Workers Power?) would commit LU to some good policies, but also to head-banging rejection of compromise in adverse circumstances. Waltham Forest’s housing motion is a sound proposal (public sector house-building, reintroduction of rent control, etc), as is Glasgow’s motion on internationalism; the amendments from Cardiff and West London would degut it and should be rejected. Southwark’s climate change motion and Wigan’s amendment to it are again of the ‘good versus evil’ type.

Electoral strategy: Crouch End’s motion is in substance a do-nothing proposal, by making the best (election campaigns with mass local support) the enemy of the good (election campaigns as a means of building local support and getting ideas across). The amendment proposed by Huddersfield and West London is a substantial improvement on the original motion.

Rugby’s motion expresses Pete McLaren’s long-standing conception of left unity on the basis of federalism plus lowest common denominator politics. Sheffield’s amendment regrettably proposes to delete the one useful point in it, that if LU is to stand in elections it should seek some degree of agreement to avoid electoral clashes with other left-of-Labour groups which stand in elections. Given the options for voting, we advise abstention on the amendment and a vote against the motion .

Notes

1. ‘Left Unity founding conference documents’, in five parts: http://leftunity.org/category/founding­conference. The first part contains the SOC report and agenda.