Scores of letters of support sent to Leeds North East CLP since its suspension detailed injustices in other parties, prompting our members to call a meeting to discuss these abuses to democracy. Party members have experienced: take-overs of Local Government Committees (LGCs) and Labour Groups by regional officials, councillors threatened with expulsion unless they obey officials' instructions in council votes, MPs who vote to have their own CLPs suspended in order to ensure their own reselection, and blatant racism by Party officials.
In one instance members were advised that membership verification would involve producing passports. Would you want to be a member of a club that did this? Neither did they. Many just left the Party and the sitting (white) MP felt easier about reselection. One LGC has been suspended for ten years on the whim of officials, without process, justification or appeal. Above all, there is secrecy: people are not told why they are suspended, what inquiries discover, what is reported to the NEC or what it, in turn, decides.
Democracy, accountability, and justice have long been rare within the Party machinery. By this spring it seemed they had become endangered species. By the end of Conference 1997 they may well be extinct within the Party if the Labour Into Power proposals are passed: instead of officials acting outside the rules, the rules themselves will be changed to remove any defence against arbitrary action. Behind the weasel language of "stakeholding" and "partnership" lurk measures to transfer all power for policy making, organisational matters and finance to the leadership. Activists will be replaced by Mandleson's Millbank mafia's marketing, and dependence on trade unions will disappear under state funding of political parties.
The leadership has backed off from its original plan to break both the power of Constituency Parties and the link with trade unions in one go, in favour of divide and rule: this year they come for the CLPs, next year for the trade unions. Trade unions who refuse to defend CLPs this year do so at their own peril.
The meeting in Leeds established DCLP, a campaign to fight abuse and defend constitutionality in the Labour Party. We want:
Please send us accounts of interference, coercion and authoritarianism against individuals or sections of the Party . A meeting in early September will organise for Annual Conference. Contact: Celia Foote, 24 St Martins Drive, Leeds, LS7 3LR. 0113-262 4667.