Labour NEC bans three more groups “not compatible” with party rules or values

The Labour Party’s ruling body has proscribed three more organisations today as a majority of national executive committee members have voted to ban Labour Left Alliance, Socialist Labour Network and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

LabourList revealed on Monday that Labour NEC members would be asked to proscribe three further groups after agreeing to ban four – Socialist Appeal, Labour in Exile Network, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Resist – in July last year.

At the full NEC meeting today, LabourList understands that 20 members voted in favour of banning LLA and 11 voted against, and the same figures applied to the vote on the AWL, while 19 NEC members voted to ban SLN and 11 against.

Speaking after the NEC vote on the latest proscriptions was held, a Labour spokesperson said: “The NEC has decided that these organisations are not compatible with Labour’s rules, or our aims and values.”

Socialist Labour Network is a new group considered to be a merger of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network, two organisations that were proscribed by the NEC last year on the basis that they were “inimical” with Labour aims and values.

Labour Left Alliance is a membership organisation that also has close links to organisations banned by the NEC in July, LAtW and LIEN, and has ties to individuals previously expelled from the Labour Party.

While the NEC has decided that LLA’s stance on Labour antisemitism clashes with the party’s aims and values, the AWL is being proscribed for different reasons – AWL members are deemed to be Trotskyist entryists.

NEC members agreed today that the AWL is a membership organisation with “its own programme, principles, policy, distinct and separate propaganda” and “its own branches within the Labour Party”. It has stood parliamentary candidates in the past.

Left-wing group Momentum has criticised the latest round of proscriptions today, saying the move will “create hundreds more time-consuming and pointless investigations that often cause members profound stress and anxiety”.

“This has absolutely nothing to do with winning elections,” a Momentum statement read, adding: “Starmer should be setting out an inspiring socialist alternative to soaring bills and energy crisis, not fanning the flames of internal party conflict.”

Clive Lewis, an MP on the left of the party, tweeted: “Proscription lists; mass expulsions; the centralisation of power. It’s naive to think the ‘crisis of democracy’ and the slide to authoritarianism afflicting western polities won’t affect our own political institutions.”

The NEC paper agreed today states that examples of support for the AWL include selling the Solidarity newspaper, contributing to the paper or AWL website, and participating in AWL events, but excluding debates with AWL members.