Islington 1 - North West Region 0

I am not a delegate to the Labour link forum taking place today and tommrow in Newcastle despite my best efforts, however I was pleased to here from my source on the seen that the North West Region withdrew its proposals to get rid of directly elected seats for the Labour Link National Committee. I am sure it is no coincidence that this was proposed after last years Labour Link elections saw number of seats contested in different regions by left candidates. One even won with another elected unopposed.

The withdrawing of the motion was essentially forced by the passing of amendment 63.02 to motion 63 at National delegate’s conference which included the following points

“Conference welcomes the turnout in the last APF (Labour Link) National committee elections which was relatively high in comparison with recent National Executive and Service Group Elections, conference recognises the importance the use of all APF payer ballots on a regional basis for electing the APF committee.”

And

“also include in the review the set up of the two national political committees and consider expanding the directly elected seats and reducing the indirectly elected seats to the National APF (Labour Link) committee;”

Clearly the passing of such a motion would have unambiguously Contradicted National Policy and had to be withdrawn. I don’t normally gloat but I might just a little bit on this occasion.