The strange priorities of the Labour conference

Housing kept off the agenda of the Labour conference

For the second year running Housing was kept off the agenda of the Labour conference. As happened last year, ‘Labour to Win’ told delegates deemed to be supporters of the leadership, which six subjects to vote for in the priorities ballot. It explained, with a little touch of the ‘red scare’, that

“It is essential that we all vote for these to ensure that supporters of the leadership have control of the conference agenda and that unhelpful text from Momentum that might damage us electorally does not make it to the conference floor.”

‘Labour to Win’s’ six did not include housing, of course, because they did not want it discussed. Why? Because 20 resolutions called for abolition of RTB, and sought to commit Labour to definite demands, including 100,000 council homes a year. If this had been discussed in a compositing meeting, these very popular demands might have been presented to the delegates and voted through by the conference, against the wishes of the leadership.

CLPs sent in 46 housing resolutions, more than double any other subject. The highest others were Universal Credit with 22, Climate Change & Ecology 16. Of the 6 subjects that ‘Labour to Win’ called on delegates to vote for, it’s interesting to see how many CLPs were motivated to send in resolutions.

Subject	Resolutions sent	Vote	Position
An NHS fit for purpose	5	210,447	1
Violence against women and girls	9	208,906	2
Energy	10	177,270	3
Ethics & Standards in Politics	2	161,568	4
Ukraine	5	147,295	5
Defence	2	145,518	6
Housing	451	92,065	7

So there were more housing resolutions sent than the six topics which were voted through, combined! Four of the six had 5 or less resolutions. Defence, with just 2 resolutions, trumped Housing with 45.

In an outrageous example of bureaucratic manipulation, the NEC overruled the Conference arrangements committee. Instead of the 16 resolutions on the NHS being collected together under the heading, NHS, as has always happened previously, they were divided into “An NHS fit for the Future” and “Health Funding and Infrastructure”. The former contained resolutions which the leadership was happy with and the latter contained resolutions which they did not want to reach the floor of the conference; for instance, against private sector involvement. If they had been under the same subject heading, then, with 11 resolutions (for the ‘bad’ resolutions) as against five, the compositing meeting would have been likely to have passed a composite with which the leadership disagreed. So the ‘good’ ones and the ‘bad’ ones were separated.

By a remarkable ‘coincidence’, all the subject areas were numbered, and Labour to Win’s recommendations were numbered 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12; a formation easily remembered.

Our campaign had 24 CLPs vote to send in our resolution (our best ever result) or slight variants of it. Of these 24, one sent a slightly amended version but was over the 250 word limit so it was rejected. In two, the officers don’t appear to have sent the resolution in. Of the 21 that made the agenda, 19 of them included abolition of RTB. One was silent on the question and another called for ‘review’ of the policy. A different resolution sent by another CLP also included the call to abolish RT. So 20 of the 45 called for abolition, as compared to one calling for ‘review’ and another CLP calling for “a fair RTB”.

Unlike ‘Labour to Win’, which had early access of the resolutions (they had already drawn up their recommended list), the delegates faced with choosing what to vote for, did not receive the resolutions booklet until the day that the conference started.

1A 46^th from Hendon appeared to be misplaced since it was on gender equality.