Renewal campaign vows to move Momentum HQ to the North of England

Momentum Renewal, a campaign set up ahead of internal Momentum elections, intends to move the organisation’s headquarters from London to the North of England, LabourList can reveal.

If its candidates are successful in the upcoming national coordinating group (NCG) contests, the group has vowed to fulfil the pledge to quash the perception that Momentum is “London-centric”.

The slate, which is backed by Labour MPs including Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett, says it has based the idea on “the success of groups in the North” and the “perceived lack of support the groups have received from a centralised London office”.

The group says it has “drawn upon the experiences of activists and campaigners based outside of the capital” in the development of its plans for Momentum HQ, currently based in north London.

Momentum Renewal activists are calling on Forward Momentum – a group putting forward candidates such as Nadia Whittome MP and metro-mayor Jamie Driscoll – to back its call for an HQ relocation.

In a statement, the MR initiative said: “In a show of goodwill Renewal has said that it will work with Forward Momentum candidates to push these proposals to realisation.”

Update: Forward Momentum has its own plans for Momentum offices, which involves setting up a number of bases across the UK, “scaling down the London office and allocating resources to the regions and nations”.

The campaign said: “Forward Momentum is committed to developing plans to open offices across the country, starting in the North of England but also in the many regions and nations of the UK that have also suffered from Momentum’s over-centralisation.

“But ensuring ‘a fair distribution of material’ can’t be achieved just by relocating an office; it can only be done by also giving local groups and members a real say in how Momentum runs and control over resources.

“Forward Momentum is the only campaign to put forward serious proposals to achieve this, including giving local groups and members control over campaign funding and key decisions, such as parliamentary selections and what campaigns Momentum runs.”

There was controversy among activists earlier in the week when Manchester Momentum said it had been asked by the London office to take down its endorsement of Momentum Renewal.

The posts have now been taken down because according to the Manchester group others that had openly supported rival campaign Forward Momentum have now also removed their endorsements.

Forward Momentum sources, however, say that local groups needed to hold digital all-member meetings before making endorsements and that FM-supporting groups such as Liverpool Momentum had already taken down their posts in anticipation of the new guidance.