Committees play crucial roles and nominations will help support campaigns of best candidates
The nominations deadline for nominations for crucial Labour Party positions is approaching and Labour members whose CLP (constituency Labour party) has not yet nominated are urged to arrange nomination meetings.
Elections among party members for two positions on Labour’s Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) and National Constitutional Committee (NCC) take place this summer and autumn.
Why it matters
The CAC plays a crucial role in influencing the running of Labour’s annual conference, deciding what is discussed and how – a key element of Labour’s policy-making. Rigging by the right at conferences early in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership did considerable damage to the party and even put additional, unelected anti-Corbyn members onto Labour’s NEC, so the importance of having candidates who will represent the wishes of members is clear.
The NCC is Labour’s ultimate disciplinary committee, which was expanded last year, having been dominated for decades, detrimentally, by the Labour right. Both committees are crucial for the effective democratisation of the party.
The left slate candidates for the CAC are current incumbents Seema Chandwani and Billy Hayes. The NCC candidates are Stephen Marks, Gary Heather and Jabran Hussain. Marks and Heather are incumbents, elected only last autumn but on a one-year term instead of the usual three years in order to prevent a majority of NCC members coming up for election at the same time.
Labour members will receive their CAC ballot papers over the summer. Delegates will vote for their preferred NCC candidates at this September’s conference in Brighton.
Press for nomination meetings if your CLP has not already nominated and remember to cast your ballot for the CAC slate and to make sure your conference delegates know how to vote in Brighton.
The campaign statements of the left candidates can be found here and here.
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WW2. My working class father put his life on the line because he believed that a better world was possible. He did not fight for the glory of war or capitalisim. The second world war robbed him and many of his friends of a long life. My father gave his life for democracy while Trump fights to destroy democracy. My dads generation defeated fascisim and conservatism and gave us all a National Health Service , we can not let them be fogotten. Stand and fight the new imposters such Trump, Farage and Johnson.
A process cloaked in mystery as Constituencies appear to be closed for the summer.
It might be useful to mention, in the article, the closing date for the nominations.
Yes, very important.
Control of the CAC was crucial in ensuring that there has been no debate on Trident since, I think, 1989!
Motions were barred from debate on the totally spurious grounds that they were ‘not contemporary’.
As a result, Labour’s actual policy is identical to that of the Conservative Party and significantly worse than that of the Liberal Democrats whose conference was allowed to debate the issue.