Despite the severest cost of living crisis in most of our memories, the Chancellor’s Spring Statement increased the Ministry of Defence budget by £5 billion in the next two years, with a total increase of £11bn over the next 5 years.
Forecast organisations are predicting the UK will be the worst performing economy of all G20 countries in 2023, and will have shrunk by 0.3% by the end of this year. Funding nuclear weapons and war are being pursued at the expense of workers wages.
Labour CND’s model motion for this year’s Labour Party conference argues that high military spending restricts the action governments can take in defence of the public sector and workers pay. We’re calling for an in-coming Labour government to:
increase investment and promote growth
improve public services
provide an emergency support package to off-set the cost-of-living crisis, and
take effective action to tackle climate change.
It you agree with us, please encourage your local party to send this motion for debate at Labour’s 2023 conference. Download our motion which includes an explainer with some facts, figures, and arguments to help you make the case in your CLP.
Labour CND joins the many organisations and individuals across the Labour movement and beyond calling for the Labour whip to be restored to Diane Abbott MP., the first black woman in parliament. Labour Black Socialists outlines Diane’s record in an eloquent and compelling call to restore the whip.
Diane has been as staunch an opponent of nuclear weapons and war as she has been a campaigner against racism. She has joined many Labour CND platforms for over 30 years.
LBS has launched a petition pointing out Diane record at the forefront of anti-racism campaigns and supporting communities and families who have been victims of racist policing, school exclusions, deaths in custody, racist attacks, murders and the hostile environment policies
Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury Festival.. Hundreds of thousands of new young members joined the party when Corbyn became leader, making Labour the largest social democratic party in Europe.
Keir Starmer’s resolution to block Jeremy Corbyn from standing as the Labour candidate for Islington North constituency at the next general election is an attack on Party democracy and on the rights of local Labour Parties.
The right of Party members to choose their own candidates is fundamental to the democracy of the Labour Party. In 2020 Starmer said ‘local Party members should select their candidates for every election’. His about-face at the National Executive Committee in March 2023 represents an attack on the rights of all Party members and affiliates.
It is a shameful disregard of natural justice and of the wishes of the electorate of Islington North who have shown their support for their MP at successive elections over the past 40 years. The implications, however, go beyond one person and one CLP.
It should go without saying that the Party’s processes and procedures must be fair and transparent. The means by which Starmer banned Corbyn from standing as a candidate was neither.
The wording of his NEC resolution was based on the view that Corbyn is an electoral liability. If Labour leaders were to be banned from re-standing as Labour parliamentary candidates on the basis of a bad election result, then Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and many other past leaders would have suffered a similar fate.
In reality, elections are won or lost for a number of reasons. In 2019, Brexit played a significant role in Labour’s defeat. Starmer, Shadow Brexit Secretary at the time, will undoubtedly be aware of this.
This procedure adopted for preventing Corbyn from standing takes power away from the party membership collectively to decide what they believe to be in the best interests of the Labour Party. It transfers that power to a small group of individuals to impose their subjective, and often contested, view of what Labour’s best interests are.
On the basis of such a procedure, the NEC is able to remove whomever the Party leadership may decide should go and for whatever reason. This process encourages factionalism and fosters a climate of suspicion and fear in the Party.
Opposition to removing Islington North CLP’s right to reselect Jeremy Corbyn extends beyond supporters of Corbyn. Labour CND stands with the many local Parties, individual members, and affiliates who believe this decision is wrong and profoundly dangerous.
In a further attack on the rights of members, local Labour Parties are being banned from affiliating to Labour CND and a number of other progressive peace and justice campaigns. Labour CND campaigns within the party for the global abolition of nuclear weapons, including Britain’s Trident system, and for peaceful foreign policies. These ideas merit discussion, these principles deserve support, and we believe the overwhelming majority of party members agree.
Labour CND committee unanimously agreed the following statement in response to the ban. The basis on which the Labour Party has introduced this ban is outlined below.
2023 is the centenary of the birth of Walter Wolfgang. Walter was a childhood refugee from Nazi Germany and later became a member of the party’s National Executive Committee. Walter devoted his life to nuclear disarmament, particularly campaigning in the Labour Party against nuclear weapons as a founding member of Labour CND which works within the party for the global abolition of nuclear weapons, including Britain’s Trident system, and a peaceful foreign policy.
Walter campaigned for a progressive foreign policy and spoke out against the Iraq war. New Labour quickly expressed its regret at the ejection of Walter Wolfgang from the Labour Party Conference in 2005, and the event cemented Walter’s place as a figure in the party.In 2018 the Labour Party awarded Walter a merit award which was presented by then leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Walter died in 2019, but Labour CND’s work continues. For many years Labour CND has campaigned, held fringe meetings, drafted motions, and gained affiliations from Constituency Labour Parties, Branch Labour Parties, and affiliated trade unions.
Labour CND regrets the decision of National Executive Committee to end CLPs’ right to affiliate to Labour Party orientated campaigning groups like Labour CND. We thank all the local parties and affiliates which have supported us over the years. Our work for peace and justice will continue.
A few hours before one London CLP was due to hold its 2023 AGM, a message was received from Labour’s Head of Internal Governance that the CLP could not renew its affiliations without approval from the NEC. To do so would breach party rules.’ The following organisations were listed:
Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Stop the War Coalition
Republic
London Irish
Abortion Rights Campaign
Jewish Voice for Labour
Somalis for Labour
Sikhs for Labour
All African Women’s Group
Health Campaigns Together
Campaign Against Climate Change Trades Union Group
Peace & Justice Project
The email also warned that organisations which are nationally affiliated to the party are eligible to affiliate to any CLP provided they pay the appropriate fee and the CLP cannot debate or decide on their affiliations.
This is yet another attack on the rights of local parties. The basis was laid at 2021 Labour Party conference which passed a series of rule changes promoted by the General Secretary. They included a catch-all rule change which bans local parties from affiliating or donating to organisations without the approval of the National Executive Committee.
Chapter 7, Clause XI .5 of Labour’s 2023 Rule Book now reads: ‘This CLP and units of this CLP shall not enter into affiliation with or give support, financially or otherwise, to any political party or organisation (or ancillary or subsidiary body thereto) without the prior permission of the NEC. Nor shall they give any such support to individuals ineligible for membership of the Party.’
Under CND’s constitution, only members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who are also members of the Labour Party are eligible to participate in Labour CND. We have operated under the same rules and constitution for four decades without experiencing any objections, which provide for affiliations from CLPs, Labour Branches, and Labour affiliates.
Starmer: ‘We will look carefully at details of the military spending announcement, and we will support it.’
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has produced a budget for the few not the many. He has promised a £11 billion worth of military funding, while failing to address the cost of living or climate crisess.
What’s on offer for the MoD? The Ministry of Defence gets a whopping £11 billion more over the next 5 years. It will reach 2.25% of GDP by 2025, with the intention to raise it to 2.5% when fiscal and economic circumstances allow. There’s £5bn extra in the next two years – £2bn this year and £3bn next. Of the £5bn, £3bn goes to nuclear ‘defence’ and the Aukus pact, with the remaining £1.9bn rebuilding Britain’s stockpile of munitions to replace those sent to Ukraine.
Labour’s response Responding to Hunt, Keir Starmer had only one thing to say about the military budget hike: ‘We bill look carefully at the details of the military spending announcement, and we will suppport it.’ This response is simply not good enough from a Labour leader. None of the problems facing Britain can be resolved by nuclear weapons or war.
CND’s response We stand with the workers and trade unions striking for better wages and a better future. Instead of spending unnecessary money on more nuclear warheads, CND calls on the government to guarantee fair wages and real pay rises for all.
Jess Barnard, now a Labour NEC member, was on the first demo at Lakenheath in May2022
In January, the Federation of American Scientists revealed that B61-12s nuclear bombs have been cleared for transport to bases in Europe, including Britain. They are the United States newest guided nuclear bombs, the same type used on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, though considerably more powerful of course.
Their locations in Europe will include RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk which last year became the sixth nuclear base in Europe funded by the US. Guided nuclear bombs were stored at Lakenheath until 2008. The silo facilities at are still intact there.
Peace campaigners only became aware of plans by the US to station nuclear weapons in Britain again when sharp eyes spotted that the US Department of Defense had added the UK to a list of NATO nuclear weapons storage facilities in Europe, which are to be ‘upgraded’ at a cost of millions of dollars. The British Government tried to keep this news secret – Parliamentary CND was originally told by the Ministry of Defence that they could ‘neither confirm nor deny’ the reports that nuclear weapons would be returning to Lakenheath, on the grounds that this was purely the business of the United States!
Irresponsible British media outlets have given this news almost no coverage, yet the weapons pose a danger to everyone in the country, particularly people in the Southeast of the country. Lakenheath, is only 70 miles north of the capital city. Millions of people live within range of the blast and radiation in the event of a terrorist attack on the base or even from some kind of accident involving the weapons.
The US aircraft which would be needed to transport the bombs to their targets are already at Lakenheath. This would be an extremely dangerous development at any time, but the war in Ukraine and increasing global tensions, with calls for NATO members to increase their military spending and step up military aid to Ukraine, put Britain on the front line in a future NATO/Russia war.
Nuclear weapons have now been declared illegal by a UN Treaty, yet the US and NATO still insist that they are vital for our defence and national security. We have to make it clear that the weapons make us a target and actually threaten our security, as well as destabilising international relations.
When nuclear weapons were stored at RAF Lakenhurst previously, there were 110 bombs kept there – enough to render the planet uninhabitable by humans and many other forms of life. After a sustained public protest led by CND, the weapons were removed from the base in 2008. Clearly, constant vigilance is needed to make sure they don’t return.
London CND will be at the US Embassy onTuesday 21 Marchto say thanks but no thanks – we don’t want these weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction stationed on UK soil.
The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) has agreed unified slates for the National Women’s Committee, the National Constitutional Committee and the Conference Arrangements Committee. Although members’ eyes are inclined to glaze over at the mention of elections to these bodies, all of them are vitally important for defending democracy and members’ rights in the Labour Party.
The CLGA supported members of the National Women’s Committee have done excellent work supporting women and calling for the reinstatement of a standalone Women’s Conference. Unfortunately, despite their campaigning, this year’s Women’s Conference is just one day tacked onto the beginning of the Annual Conference in Liverpool. The members of the Women’s Committee will be elected by delegates to the Women’s Conference, so it is important to select delegates who support the work that has been done and needs to continue.
There are also positions up for election on the National Constitutional Committee (NCC) which deals with disciplinary issues, and the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) which organises conference business. They are also to be voted on by delegates to Annual Conference, part of anti-democratic moves away from one member, one vote ballots. OMOV was only brought in for national committees in the first place because the then General Secretary couldn’t ensure that there was no interference from Party staff during elections amongst Conference delegates!
The NCC is very important to try and ensure due process and justice for members faced with disciplinary action from the Party. The CLGA members on the CAC are vital to try and prevent constituency resolutions being ruled out of order for spurious reasons, and to try and allocate more time at Conference for delegates and less for the platform.
Members have until 12 noon on Friday, 23 June to get their CLP to nominate the CLGA-recommended candidates, but don’t leave it till the last minute! CLPD have made candidate statements for all three elections available on their website. That is also the last date to nominate Conference delegates and putting forward Constitutional Amendments (Rule Changes).
There are no National Executive Committee elections this year.
The world is facing a period of unprecedented danger. At the end of January, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward. They are now set to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest to global catastrophe the world has ever been. The main, but not the only reason is the war in Ukraine.
Early in the course of the war Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asserted ‘we must prepare for the fact that it could take years’. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned last August, the world had entered ‘a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War’.
Despite many warnings that the war could provoke nuclear confrontation, President Biden and Prime Minister Sunak are still calling for escalation. Encouraged by this, in December President Zelensky called on Nato allies for 500 more tanks; in January he appealed for some of the latest fighter jets.
Ukraine is a war fought on two fronts – the invasion of Russia and resistance of Ukraine; and a proxy war between the US-Nato and Russia. Sadly, Ukrainians are the all-round losers. One year on, the statistics tell the story.
According to UNHCR sources:
over 8,000 civilians are recorded dead and almost 13,500 more injured – the actual figures are considered to be much higher
approximately 8 million Ukrainians are internally displaced
another 8m have crossed Ukraine’s borders, including 2.8m to Russia and 1.6m to Poland, and
nearly 18 million Ukrainians are ‘in dire need’ of humanitarian assistance.
Alice Mahon, 28 September 1937 to 25 December 2022
We reproduce below Labour CND Chair Carol Turner’s tribute to Alice Mahon, former MP for Halifax and Vice President of CND
The death on xmas morning of Alice Mahon, Labour MP for Halifax 1987 to 2005, is a sad loss for the labour movement and for all those of us who knew her. There are few like Alice in the House of Commons nowadays – an MP who remained outspokenly committed to peace, socialism, and internationalism. She will be very missed by those of us who share those values.
Alice was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, and an avid Morning Star reader. She was a feminist, hounded by the anti-abortion lobby during general elections, a former nurse and NUPE shop steward who held the NHS to be Britain’s most popular institution and was scandalised and ashamed when New Labour supported its partial privatisation.
Alice was proud of her West Yorkshire constituency and its working class history, and angry that successive government failed to provide the economic support the area needed and deserved. She was an anti-racist who loved that some of her grandchildren shared an African-Caribbean as well as a Yorkshire heritage.
A staunch supporter of the Good Friday peace process, Alice was an internationalist who campaigned for Palestine and for many people and liberation movements who found themselves on the wrong side of western imperialism.
Peace was central to Alice’s values, her opposition to militarism was unbending. A lifelong opponent of nuclear weapons, she was a Vice President of CND and a patron of Stop the War at the time of her death.
I met her in person for the first time shortly after her election to parliament when she spoke at a Labour CND annual conference in Manchester Town Hall, We were friends from then on, campaigning for peace and against wars together for over 40 years. At the end of the 1990s, Alice became co-chair of Labour CND with Jeremy Corbyn.
In 1990 she was one of the first MPs to join the Committee to Stop War in the Gulf, set up by CND in anticipation of the invasion which came in February 1991. She was horrified when Tony Blair supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As well as taking part in Stop the War activities, set up Iraq Liaison to campaign against the war amongst all the political parties in parliament.
Alice tabled an Early Day Motion which brought together the biggest show of parliamentary opposition to the war. EDM 927 was signed by 162 MPs – LibDems, Plaid Cymru and Scottish Nationalist as well as many of her Labour colleagues and including four ex-ministers.
In one of her regular news releases at the time, Alice said of Blair: ‘The Prime Minister has failed miserably to make a case for military action… Briefings by ministers are pathetic – lightweight statements of belief with no facts whatsoever about the actual situation.’
Alice was also a well-respected UK member of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly, even chairing one of its sub-committees for a time. A fierce opponent of its military missions, her involvement in its parliamentary structures didn’t stop her from attacking Nato. Sadly, this would likely see her removed from today’s Parliamentary Labour Party.
As with Iraq, so with former Yugoslavia. Alice and I set up the Committee for Peace in the Balkans at outbreak of civil war in the 1990s. She was one of a very few western parliamentarians who opposed western intervention – believing it had little to do with protecting Yugoslav citizens and anticipating the likely outcome.
Despite media vilification, she remained adamantly opposed to Nato bombing campaigns and visited Yugoslavia several times during the 1999 bombing, one of the very few western politicians to do so.
She spent time on the round-the-clock picket of Downing Street set up by Yugoslav expats during the 1999 bombardment, visited the Chinese Embassy in London to express condolences when Nato bombed its Belgrade Embassy, and travelled to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal on Yugslavia) in the Hague to lobby chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Shortly after she left parliament, Alice resigned from the Labour Party, disgusted by New Labour war-mongering. She rejoined when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader. On her death he Alice was ‘an utterly brilliant working-class campaigner, one of one of my best comrades in parliament’.
Outspoken on politics, on a personal level Alice was respectful of colleagues and opponents alike, treating all equally regardless of rank or status. Her warm manner veiled some sharp insights which poked out from time to time in a surprisingly acerbic humour – like when she’s quipped to Blair on the floor of the Commons during an Iraq debate: ‘Who’s next, North Korea?’
Alice was a kind and generous human being. It won her respect and many friends, and together with her hard work on behalf of her constituency, made for a growing majority at each election. A walk around the town centre with her would usually take considerably longer than it should, as she stopped every 100 yards or so to exchange a few words with the dozens of Haligonians who greeted her.
Alice loved Halifax. She fought hard for her constituents first as a Calderdale councillor then as an MP. She lived in a modest bungalow in Northowram village, a couple of miles from Halifax town centre and not much further from where she was born and grew up.
Back from London most weekends to be with her family, she and Tony, her husband and best friend who died less than a year before her, spent evenings in their local chatting to mates and telling stories about the weird and woolly doings of parliament.
Alice was an MP whose political commitment and loyalty to friends, comrades, and community deserves to be an example to every one of today’s parliamentarians and would-be parliamentarians of tomorrow. She was, however, much more than that – someone who worked hard at living a life in line with her socialist principles.
* This obituary first appeared in the Morning Star 15-01-23
CND‘s tribute to Alice Mahon Jeremy Corbyn‘s tribute to Alice Mahon
Many of our supporters will be aware that Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, an articulate anti-racist, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, and a founder member of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) was suspended and subsequently expelled from the Labour Party in December 2022. Her expulsion was based on an alleged rule breach which had taken place more than a year earlier.
Naomi was elected as a CLP rep on Labour’s National Executive Committee in August last year, one of the Grassroots 5 candidates which Labour CND, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, and many other Labour Party organisations and campaigns supported. Her expulsion disenfranchises the thousands of members who voted for her and the many CLPs who nominated her.
Naomi’s campaign for election to the NEC began after the alleged breach had taken place, well before her autumn suspension. She was allowed to run for election, and she was issued with Labour Party credentials for annual conference. But when rolled up to Liverpool in September, her pass was revoked and Naomi was barred from the conference centre.
This case is one of many in today’s Labour Party. Labour CND believes it isn’t fair and it isn’t right. We have signed a statement condemning her expulsion and calling for her reinstatement. You can read it here and add your name if you wish.
