By Bryn Griffiths

On balance, I think we have every reason to be cautiously optimistic following the Labour Conference 2022 in Liverpool.  We returned from Liverpool to find our Party storming ahead in the opinion polls.  YouGov put us an outstanding 33% points ahead.  On the Saturday that followed conference Enough is Enough put people on the streets in fifty of our towns and cities. Here is the impressive protest in Colchester.

At conference itself there was a string of positive announcements and decisions which would never have been allowed near conference in the Blairite period. Before conference I hadn’t expected to see support for:

✅ All Labour MPs attending picket lines

✅ Public ownership of rail and mail

✅ A £15 per hour minimum wage

✅ Inflation busting pay-rises

I know the Labour Party members in Colchester will also have been delighted to hear Lisa Nandy, Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, commit to “council housing, council housing, council housing”.  The healthy sceptics will of course note it didn’t make the cut for the Leader’s speech who instead spoke of boosting home ownership. Let’s hope Labour means it will deliver both.

I was also pleased that our own positive composite, so ably moved by our youth delegate Cllr Molly Bloomfield ,  on social care was overwhelmingly passed.  The motion had a decidedly un-Blairite approach to the market place, proposing that Labour must deliver a nationalised National Care Service which is:

✅co-produced with service users

✅guided by a taskforce on independent living

✅democratically accountable

✅publicly provided

✅free at the point of use

✅not for profit

Before some on the left come to the view that I’ve completely lost the plot and secured myself a splendid pair of rose-tinted spectacles, I must balance my argument.  I do not think that Starmer has rediscovered his notoriously absent ten pledges. He most definitely hasn’t!

We also need to be hard-headed about how organisationally weak the left currently finds itself.  Even as we packed our bags for Conference, we suffered a setback.  I hadn’t personally nominated Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi for Labour’s National Executive Committee but Colchester Labour Party did, so I was pleased when she was elected.  It was shocking that she was suspended before she even attended her first meeting. I will read the National Constitutional Committee’s deliberations with a lot of interest when they consider her case.

At Conference we were defeated in the elections to both the National Constitutional Committee (Labour’s internal disciplinary court) and the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC).  The election of these obscure committees matters because it was the CAC that banned the excellent Green New Deal motion from the Conference floor before I had even bought my train ticket to Liverpool.

Most importantly we could not, despite our valiant efforts, establish the right of Corbyn’s Islington North and all Constituency Labour Party’s to longlist, shortlist and select their parliamentary candidates. I was proud to speak out for both Colchester’s policy and for democracy in that debate.

So what happened? How did the left make modest policy progress whilst registering so many organisational defeats? Why has Starmer’s relentless march back towards the Blairite centre ground, for the moment at least, stalled?

It is the relative material strength of class forces that forms the context for political ideas in a society. The wave of trade union strikes, the Tory crisis and economic failure have framed the political debate in a way I had not foreseen before Conference. Keir Starmer may have impeccable conservative instincts but as a Labour politician even he must bend a little to the current mood of confidence. 

So what must we do in the aftermath of Conference?  The most important task, without doubt, is to throw the weight of every part of the Labour Party and trade union movement behind this autumn’s wave of trade union strikes.  Win the disputes and we will see Starmer continuing to be propelled towards government while probably making some more surprising policy moves along the way.   Lose the disputes and my fear is we may see the new positive policy announcements melt away as quickly as Starmer’s elusive ten policy pledges.

The oldies amongst us will remember that in 1972 and 1974 the miners’ strikes and victories shifted the whole national political debate leftwards. The material circumstances didn’t make Wilson a left wing socialist but it did make for a Wilson government that at least started with a programme considerably more to the left than his later Blairite successors. It is for this reason that the strike victories will be so important.

Finally, can I say loud and clear: stick it out in the Labour Party. We need you and the wave of strikes creates new opportunities for those of us on the left.  If you’ve been misguided enough to leave here’s the link to re-join . Do it and do it now. Whatever you decide, see you on the picket line this autumn.

Bryn Griffiths was a Colchester Labour Party Delegate to conference.  Bryn is also the Chair of Colchester Labour Party and a supporter of North Essex Momentum The article was written in a personal capacity and all the views in it are his own.