Labour’s NEC places annual limit on all-member meeting motions

Labour’s ruling body has placed a limit on all-member meeting (AMM) motions that will only allow local parties to consider scrapping their delegate (GC) structure once a year.

It was decided that the restriction would be enforced at the most recent meeting of the national executive committee (NEC), following concerns that branches and affiliates of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) would otherwise be able to put forward AMM motions as often as every month.

Labour members in Bermondsey & Old Southwark, Hampstead & Kilburn and Holborn & St Pancras, where AMM motions have recently been rejected, will have to wait until November 2019 before considering the switch again.

AMM advocates in BOS, Neil Coyle’s seat, may be particularly disappointed by the ruling, as the motion there was only defeated very narrowly by one vote at the special meeting earlier this month.

Since Labour conference 2018 passed a rule change that made reforming the structure of Constituency Labour Party-wide meetings easier, several local parties have considered the switch.

Activists largely from the Labour left have argued that GCs, where only representatives sent by branches, affiliated societies and unions can vote, are less accessible than AMMs, in which every Labour member in that constituency can attend and vote.

But Corbynsceptics have branded the move a “factional power grab” by Corbynites, while other opponents have said it undermines the role of affiliated trade unions.

The reform now requires only a simple majority of members at a special meeting to vote in favour of it, but no CLP has passed an AMM motion under the new rules so far.