London Region

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SOCIALIST Organiser fights to act as a real campaigning paper which can organise achieved in recent years at the Greater London Regional Council of the Party should not lead to complacency. Nor should it lead comrades to think that the question of simple democratic reforms at the GLRC can safely be left on one side while we concentrate on democratising the Party at national level.

Aside from the fact that this is a somewhat unprincipled position it is also very short sighted, since it is by no means guaranteed that the London Left will always be so favourably situated.

Some comrades may be unaware that the procedures associated with the GLRC in general and the Regional' Conference in particular, are among the most undemocratic of any Region in the Labour Party. The Annual Report of the Regional Executive Committee contains no mention of the previous year's Conference oI of any of the decisions made at that Conference - it is as if previous Conferences did not exist.

The resolutions that are ruled out of order are no published and disappea without trace. The delegate are denied a right of repl and so on; the list o undemocratic practices is : long one.

A comparison with thi procedures at the Southeri Region Conference, which i certainly not Left domina ted, dispels any illusion ,about the GLRC and reveal just how undemocratic it is The following are some of the democratic practices at the Southern Region:

a) Soon after the Regional • Conference all organisations are advised, in a summary of the proceedings of the Conference, of the resolutions carried OI remitted to the Regional EC.

b) The EC examines each resolution and where applicable, during the year informs appropriate organisations of progress in dealing with their resolution.

c) The Annual Report of the Regional EC gives details of the decisions taken by the Regional EC in relation to resolutions carried OI remitted at the previous Regional Conference. In a similar way the NEC reports to Annual Conference on the decisions they have taken in relation to resolutions carried or remitted at the previous Annual Conference.

d) The Annual Report contains a list of all the CLP Secretaries in the Region together with addresses and phone numbers.

e) The Annual Report organisations have to write to the EC if they wish to have a question put on the Annual Report.

h) At the Regional Conference the proposers of motions have the right of reply at the end of the debate, in common with the practice at trade union conferences, not to mention GMCs and every other Party meeting (except the GLRC and Annual Conference).

There are several other simple democratic reforms that could be carried out at the GLRC. For instance delegates could be told at the start of the Regional Conference (on a duplicated sheet or verbally if there is not time) exactly what the EC's recommendation will be on every resolution which will come before Conference.

This is important information for delegates when preparing their speeches, since with no right of reply they have no opportunity to answer the EC speaker.

This reform was achieved