Labour Representation Committee

A movement formed by trade unionists and socialists to secure a voice for socialists within the Labour Party, the unions, and Parliament.

An axis for unifying the left

Extracts from an AWL leaflet distributed at a regional meeting of the National Shop Stewards Network, held in Glasgow on 1 December. “In backing the Labour Party rule changes (to ban unions and CLPs from submitting motions to annual Labour Party conference), union leaders have effectively disenfranchised millions of trade unionists who remain organisationally affiliated to the Labour Party. The issue here is not just one of union democracy – i.e. the fact that none of the union leaders had a mandate from their membership to back the rule changes. The much more fundamental issue is that the...

Labour Representation Committee conference: a missed opportunity

"The LRC meets at a time when socialists within the Labour Party, trade unions, left groups and many progressive campaigns are being forced to face up to a number of hard truths in reassessing their future", read the National Committee statement to the Labour Representation conference on 17 November. Around 250 attended the conference, slightly down on last year. The theme of the conference was Next Steps for the Left. The National Committee rightly pointed out that in the current situation the: ‘potential for the left is therefore immense and the LRC could play a pivotal role because of its...

LRC balks at new start, but debate will go on

“The LRC meets at a time when socialists within the Labour Party, trade unions, left groups and many progressive campaigns are being forced to face up to a number of hard truths in reassessing their future”, read the National Committee statement to the Labour Representation conference on 17 November Around 250 attended the conference, slightly down on last year. The theme of the conference was Next Steps for the Left. The National Committee rightly pointed out that in the current situation the: “potential for the left is therefore immense and the LRC could play a pivotal role because of its...

LRC and the Recomposition of the Left

Leaflet for Labour Representation Committee conference, 17 November 2007. "The LRC needs to make itself the axis for a recomposition of the left... a new Workers' Representation Committee... an urgent appeal for socialist unity". Read the rest by downloading the attachment, below.

Labour and union left debate after Bournemouth

A "relaunch to achieve workers’ representation” — that is what supporters of Solidarity will be arguing at the conference of the Labour Representation Committee on 17 November. The Bournemouth Labour Party conference decision to ban motions from unions and local Labour Parties at future conferences completed a full shut-down of the Labour Party’s living political link of accountability to the labour movement. It has forced every socialist who has taken the life of the Labour Party seriously — and every socialist should have done, because for over a hundred years the life of the Labour Party...

Motions to LRC conference 17 November 2007

Below are motions drafted by AWL members and supporters of the paper Solidarity for the Labour Representation Committee conference coming up on 17 November. Several of the motions deliberately overlap with each other in content, so that if some fail to get the support of bodies affiliated to the LRC, or fail to get that in good time, then not all the content is lost. A. Re-launch to achieve Workers' Representation The National Conference of the Labour Representation Committee recognises that the decisions taken at the 2007 Labour Party conference at Bournemouth have disenfranchised the...

Turn to build Trades Councils

In response to Bournemouth, we should initiate a long-term consistent campaign to build or revive Trades Councils as political organs of the labour movement. The motivation: working-class politics cannot re-emerge without the emergence of more or less broadly recognised pan-worker (cross-union) organisation on a geographical basis. Trades Councils are no arbitrary or special gimmick, but the basic, obvious form of such organisation. They were the local organisations of the Labour Party in most places before 1918. Political initiative is likely to come through Trades Councils — relatively close...

LRC Conference: We need a Workers' Representation Committee

The national conference of the Labour Representation Committee on 17 November will provide an opportunity for socialist and trade unionists who want turn the tide of retrogression in the labour movement. The significant effort by the left to re-assert itself through the campaign for John McDonnell MP for leader of the Labour Party was unable to surmount the bureaucratic obstacles bolstered by the Parliamentary Labour Party and the union hierarchy. At Labour’s conference in Bournemouth, the union leaders allowed the abolition of conference’s ability to make policy and at a stroke...

Labour left unfocused

Party should be “committed to socialist policies” now lacks any means by which it might be carried through. The only practical suggestion was that, given the dramatic loss in Labour Party membership, it was now much easier for the left to take over moribund constituency parties (and presumably the smaller they get, the better, as it then becomes even easier). John McDonnell argued very strongly that Brown’s victory without a fight by the unions was a turning point. Rather than proposing anything practical to reverse it, however, he seemed to say the game was up and “the old strategy was over...

Unions vote for political hara-kari: LRC responds

On 23 September the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth voted to ban unions and local Labour Parties from putting motions on current political issues to any future Labour Party conference. Labour Party policy-making will now be supervised by the Parliamentary-leadership-controlled “Joint Policy Committee”, and ratified by occasional take-it-or-leave-it referendums of the membership. Union leaders had said as late as 12 September before that there was “no chance” of them supporting such rule changes. A few days before the conference, though, they all buckled. Eighty per cent of the union...

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