Labour under fire for ditching two-day standalone Annual Women’s Conference

Three Labour campaign groups have launched a petition urging the party to restore Annual Women’s Conference as a standalone two-day event, ensuring women are not “sidelined”.

This year Labour’s national women’s conference will be held on Saturday October 7 in Liverpool, the day before the party’s main annual conference gets underway in the city.

In 2018, the party’s democracy review stated  that “wherever possible Annual Women’s Conference should be a stand-alone event with a
venue which enables as many women as possible to attend”.

The conference was held over two days in Telford the following year, and for the past two years it has been held in the first half of the year virtually amid the pandemic.

Since 2017, the conference has also been given a formal role in the party’s policy process, with the ability to send two motions to the main conference. This year women’s branches and CLPs can submit rule changes too.

Before Jeremy Corbyn became leader, women’s conference had historically been held over one day however, the day before conference.

LabourList can reveal Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Labour Women Leading have now launched a petition today urging the party to revive the two-day, standalone event. They claim it is a “clear breach” of the party’s own stance following the democracy review not to hold it separately from party conference, and criticised a lack of separate fringe meetings and stalls.

“The Women’s Conference should provide a space where the voices of all Labour women are heard,” it says. A template letter for supporters to send to Keir Starmer says this year’s format has faced opposition from women within the party, and it is “disapppointing that Labour has decided to ignore women members…as was agreed”.

“Women’s Conference provides the perfect opportunity for our activists and members to network at the grassroots and participate in democratic debate. The two-day Women’s Conference in Telford in 2019 proved to be a vibrant success withover 1300 delegates taking part and two motions sent to Labour Party Annual Conference,” it adds.

“We hope you will agree that women’s voices are vital in debating and deciding policy in the run up to the General Election and thats we must expand women’s influence in the party by advocating for more women’s branches in CLPs, and by strengthening the voices of the National Women’s Committee and the Women’s Conference Arrangements Committee.”

But a Labour spokesperson said: “Labour is the party of women’s equality, and that’s why we will put equality for women at the heart of our mission-led agenda for government.

“We are looking forward to a motivating and inspiring Women’s Conference.”

One party source said the party was committed to ensuring women’s conference was as well-attended as possible, and that its motions were taken forward to annual conference. It had therefore been “important” to hold women’s conference after the National Policy Forum, which only saw its final event in late July and final documents circulated last week.

Holding the women’s event in October means its motions “are not overridden by the NPF and that the conference can be well-attended by politicians and members alike”, they added.

“This does mean that there are logistical constraints about holding a full fringe programme, but we are confident we have got the balance right.”

Another source close to the party’s National Executive Committee said that organising a separate event was “costly” and resource-intensive, as well as sometimes risking clashes with local and by-elections.