Jeremy Corbyn was one of the many MPs to joins staff at the CND stand
CND’s Wages Not Weapons theme proved a winner at Labour’s 2022 annual conference, and the CND stand did a roaring trade throughout the four days in Liverpool. Awareness of US nukes coming to Lakenheath had also grown, and it too was a recurring theme of discussion with passers-by.
The number of Young Labour and Labour Student visitors to our fringe meeting was up on previous years, reflecting how the danger of nuclear conflict over Ukraine was driving the issue into people’s consciousness. We were delighted too with the amount of follow up at the CND stand after the fringe meeting.
In a personal view of Labour’s 2022 conference, Labour CND Vice Chair Christine Shawcroftsuggests it’s slipping back into being a leadership rally
I didn’t have very high hopes for this year’s Annual Conference, but even so I was bitterly disappointed. You’d think that the Forde Report had never even mentioned factional behaviour by Party staff, and certainly not pronounced it completely unacceptable. Several delegates found themselves suspended or even expelled in the run up to Conference, two north London CLPs with very large card votes found that all their delegates were barred from attending Conference, and even a newly elected NEC member found herself suspended. Again.
We campaigned for many years to transform Annual Conference from a leadership rally to a democratic, decision- making Conference. We managed to get rid of the pointless time-wasting videos, the sofa chats, the unamendable Policy Commission documents (not to mention the policy statements which had never been anywhere near the National Policy Forum) and make more time for debate from rank and file delegates. Yet it’s all creeping back – and when there was time allocated for debate, it became clear that PPCs were being called to speak much more frequently than ordinary delegates.
The ‘theme’ of Conference could have been ‘Rolling Back Democracy’. There was an NEC Rule Change for the constituency reps on the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) to be elected by Conference delegates in future, instead of by a ballot of all members (usually called OMOV for One Member One Vote). The proof that this is a really backward step was shown on Tuesday, when the National Constitutional Committee (NCC) reps were elected by Conference delegates. The mis-named ‘Labour to Win’ faction had placed flyers calling for a vote for their candidates on the delegates’ seats. Now, leafletting inside the Conference centre is strictly prohibited by the Rules. Many times, I would try and sneakily give out CLPD leaflets, only to be stopped by Party staff. Putting leaflets out in the actual Conference chamber could not have been done in secret. After protests, there was an announcement from the platform the following day that there was to be no leafletting in Conference – coincidentally, there were no more elections left anyway.
However, the days weren’t all doom and gloom. The fringe meetings were often very useful, informative and inspiring. The CND fringe meeting was particularly good, with brilliant speeches from scientist and campaigner Stuart Parkinson, our dedicated supporter of peace and disarmament Jeremy Corbyn MP, and MPs Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Beth Winter. Our own Kate Hudson had also been due to speak, but had been unable to get a train due to the intransigence and refusal to negotiate of Avanti North West. There was standing room only at the meeting, and many young people, lots of whom made good contributions when the meeting was opened to the floor. The chilling descriptions of what a nuclear war would actually be like exposed all the macho posturing and demands for leaders to say that yes, they would ‘push the button’ if it came to it. What they’re promising to do would destroy civilisation and possibly the human race as well.
