These are the three motions from the three banned organizations, the Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group, The Grass Roots Left and Socialist Fight.  The Labour Party Marxist was also banned by being refused affiliation. The lost motions had no replacements apart from an emergency motion to support Keith Henderson. The Conference itself was a dreadfully boring affair with all motions passed with almost no opposition and little debate.

The one highlight was the speech of Matt Wrack General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) which dealt with the appalling problems  now caused by the machinations and bureaucratic manoeuverings of John Lansman as the head of Momentum, the mass membership body that assisted so much to get Jeremy Corby elected twice. He suggested that the LRC might have to take the space vacated by Momentum if Lansman succeeds in wrecking its February conference as is now his obvious intention. Clearly any type of democratic conference would immediately begin by ousting John Lansman following his victimisation of Jackie Walker and the almost universal outrage this has caused.

Michael Calderbank explained that the Grass Roots Left, and presumable all the others banned, were not allowed to affiliate because the NEC were, “not satisfied that your organisation represented a body with a national membership base”.

Organisations satisfying this criterion on the LRC website are:

Westminster & City Co-op Branch, Cambridge Morning Star Readers’ Group, Hands Off Venezuela, Labour Action for Peace, Labour CND, Left Front Art, Leicester Morning Star Readers and Supporters Group, Milton Keynes Trade Union and Labour Party Partnership, PCS Labour Left, Socialist Appeal, South Yorkshire Morning Star Supporters Group.

Appendix 1: The Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group statement on the banned motion followed by the Motion:

End the LRC bans and Proscriptions on the IRPSG and everyone else.

For the past several AGMs the IRPSG have proposed motions defending the democratic rights of Irish Republican prisoners, all of whom the LRC endorsed. There was no AGM in 2015 but this year we are denied the right to affiliate and propose the motion which we submitted, below. We are confident the AGM would have endorsed it again this year, if given the opportunity. We might legitimately speculate that the decision to ban the IRPSG was motivated, at least in part, by the attack on us in 3 October in the Belfast Telegraph which sought to put pressure on John McDonnell because we wrote:

“It is now clear the prison administration is bent on using a system of intimidation and bully-boy tactics like raiding cells in the middle of the night causing sleep deprivation – and in the words of the prisoners themselves – ‘creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion’.”

And

“Only last week prisoners Colin Duffy and Alec McCrory were released without charge having spent two years and three months of imprisonment, and there is still the scandal of Brendan McConville and John-Paul Wootton being held in the prison isolation wing for the past four years. How can this be justified? Is it not reminiscent of Guantanamo Bay?”

We are confident delegates here sympathise with these views and not with the Orange Order-supporting Belfast Telegraph.

The late Michael Holden, founding member of the IRPSG who died on 21 September in Carrick-on-Suir in Co. Tipperary while on holiday there.

This is the banned IRPSG motion:

There was no similar motion

The LRC demands justice for the Craigavon 2 and Tony Taylor and pledges to support the efforts the 5 Irish TDs who have campaigned for their human rights. We demand a proper jury trial by their peers for the 2 and disclosure of the evidence used to intern Tony Taylor.

These three men have been targeted because of their legal Irish Republican activity and have been fitted up in retaliation for the political ‘crime’ of opposing the British occupation of the north of Ireland.

The Craigavon 2, John Paul Wootton and Brendan McConville, were convicted by a Diplock Court judge without a jury of the murder of PC Stephen Carroll in 2009.  The so-called evidence against them is unconvincing and their conviction relies on a completely unreliable witness and the discredited doctrine of Joint Enterprise.

Tony Taylor wasn’t arrested for any crime, let alone convicted. He was released on licence in August 2014. Tony then engaged in political activity on behalf of the legal organisation the Republican Network for Unity. In March 2016 Tony’s family car was surrounded by armed police, he was arrested and taken straight to Maghaberry prison. Tony’s solicitor has been told that he was returned to gaol on the basis of intelligence reports that they cannot see.

We also support the demand for political status for all Republican prisoners, who currently endure punitive prison conditions. We call for the implementation of the August 2010 Agreement between prisoners’ representatives and the authorities in Maghaberry to end strip-searching.

Appendix 2: This is the banned Socialist Fight Motion.

Disgracefully there was no comparable motion presented. John Lansman was given a speaker’s slot, to add insult to injury

The LRC condemns Jackie Walker’s suspension from the LP and removal as Vice-Chair of Momentum; we call her reinstatements. There has been a sustained campaign by right-wing forces, in part organised by Israeli Government agents assisted by mass media and supporters within the LP to take away our right to oppose illegal settlements on Palestinian land and the brutal apartheid system in Israel. We are utterly opposed to labelling those who raise this as anti-Semites.

Walker, of mixed Afro-Caribbean and Jewish origins, has been politically active all her adult life as an anti-racist and anti-fascist. Her witch-hunt is at the behest of the racist Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, an arm of the Israeli state and its Havoda (Labour) Party.

Her questioning of special protective measures for Jewish schools when Muslims and disabled children are far more likely to be the victims of hate crime is reasonable and not racist.

She was correct to oppose Zionist insistence that the Holocaust was historically unique and to point to other genocides like the slave trade; 14 million deaths by several European powers. 10 million were slaughtered by Belgium’s King Leopold. Taken together, these events reveal that such slaughters are a product of capitalism and imperialism, rather than, as Zionist ideology has it, some kind of inherent, essentialist hatred of Jews by non-Jews.

The definition of racism against Jews, aka anti-Semitism, should be straightforward: Hatred of and discrimination against people of Jewish origin, for that origin, absolutely not criticising the racist actions of Israel.

Appendix 3: The banned Grass Roots Left Motion

The NEC did present an alternative motion in support of Keith Henderson to replace this at the last minute:

Grass Roots Left Motion to the 2016 Labour Representation Committee AGM on 29 October

This conference notes that LRC member Keith Henderson and his family face homelessness as the result of a legal battle he has been involved in against the right wing bureaucracy in the GMB trade union arising from the fact that he put left wing social democratic principles into practice.

Keith was victimised for carrying out the democratic decision of GMB members of the House of Commons branch who had voted to put a picket on the Houses of Parliament on the day of action of the public sector pensions dispute on 30-11-2011. This action incurred the wrath of GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny who shouted at Keith for being too left wing after receiving a call from the Labour leader’s office.

Formerly Keith was dismissed for alleging that leaders of the GMB union were colluding with right wing elements in the Labour party to prevent him, as a working class left wing activist, from progressing in the movement.

However, despite deeming that the dismissal was fair they also concluded that Keith had been discriminated against because of his left wing socialist democratic beliefs. This has now been enshrined in law as a protected characteristic of philosophical belief under the 2010 Equalities legislation introduced by a Labour government.

Conference therefore resolves to make every effort to assist in raising the money to pay the court costs in this case, which the GMB are pursuing him for and may amount to £15,000, making him, his aged parents and his dependent brother homeless.