"This Conference demands that all the policy decisions of this and all future annual conferences of the Labour Party shall be mandatory policy of the Parliamentary Labour Party, whether the Party is in government or opposition.
This resolution from Ince CLP to the Labour Party Conference at the end of September will sum up the feelings of the majority of constituency delegates. More than 30 resolutions demand mandatory selection confer ences for all prospective Labour candidates. At present, this only applies where there is no Labour MP. But the irony of it all is that there will most probably be no discussion at all on the democracy question. The conference arrangements committee have used a rule which prevents discussion on any issue that has been raised within the last three years.
Other resolutions on the democracy issue will almost certainly suffer the same fate when the final agenda is drawn up. It was the same story at last year's conference. The reason why the right-wing bureaucrats react so undemocratically is not simply to protect their positions. It is because the extension of democracy inside the Labour Party strikes at the parliamentary system, and parliamentary so-called democracy. A number of resolutions have been submitted calling for the election of the leader of the Labour Party by Annual Conference, for instance. These suggest that the Parliamentary Labour Party and ultimately the Government should be responsible to the organisations of the working class.