The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) is a group of Labour Party activists campaigning for changes to the constitution and rules of the Labour Party to ensure that Labour MPs and Labour governments enact policies agreeable to the party membership.

History

CLPD was founded by Labour Party activists in 1973, with support from about ten Labour MPs, and its first President was Frank Allaun. A leading co-founder was Vladimir Derer, and his house in

Golders Green Golders Green is a suburb in the London Borough of Barnet in north London, northwest of Charing Cross. It began as a medieval small suburban linear settlement near a farm and public grazing area green, and dates to the early 19th century. It ...

became CLPD's headquarters for about twenty-five years. A key reason for its formation was that the 1960s Labour governments ignored

Labour Party Conference The Labour Party Conference is the annual conference of the British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. It is formally the supreme decision-making body of the party and is traditionally held in the final week of September, during the party conferen ...

decisions on key domestic and international issues. Amongst the changes desired were mandatory reselection of MPs, for the party leader to be elected on a franchise wider than MPs and for the party manifesto to be drafted by the National Executive Committee rather than the parliamentary leadership.

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabine ...

was the foremost advocate of CLPD demands. In the late 1970s, CLPD had about 450 members and nearly 300 affiliated organisations. In the 1980s, the CLPD became the first Labour organisation to call for more representation of women within the party, which eventually led to

all-women shortlists All-women shortlists (AWS) is an affirmative action practice intended to increase the proportion of female Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom, allowing only women to stand in particular constituencies for a particular political p ...

to select candidates being adopted in the Labour Party. In 1983, the activities of the CLPD were the subject of a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

hour-long

docudrama Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television show, television and feature film, film, which features Drama (film and television), dramatized Historical reenactment, re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of docu ...

, 'The Campaign'. At the 2014 Labour Party Conference a CLPD motion achieved

one member, one vote "One man, one vote" or "one vote, one value" is a slogan used to advocate for the principle of equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of democracy and political equality, especially with regard to electoral reforms like ...

elections for the

Constituency Labour Party A constituency Labour Party (CLP) is an organisation of members of the British Labour Party who live in a particular parliamentary constituency. In England and Wales, CLP boundaries coincide with those for UK parliamentary constituencies. In Sc ...

section of the Conference Arrangements Committee, after having earlier achieving this for the

National Policy Forum The National Policy Forum (NPF) of the British Labour Party is part of the policy-making system of the Party, set up by Leader Tony Blair as part of the Partnership in Power process. A Provisional National Policy Forum had been established by Bla ...

Recent developments

In 2015, CLPD member

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who has been Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North (UK Parliament constituency), Islington North since 1983. Now an Independent ...

was elected as Leader of the Labour Party, and took forward the CLPD agenda of increasing democracy in the Labour Party by putting forward reforms to increase the ability of the

Party Conference The terms party conference ( UK English), political convention ( US and Canadian English), and party congress usually refer to a general meeting of a political party. The conference is attended by certain delegates who represent the party memb ...

to determine Labour Party policy. Corbyn did not advocate mandatory reselection for Labour MPs during his term as Labour leader – a demand that he, along with Tony Benn and other members of the CLPD, had made in the 1980s – but because of the Conservative government's constituency boundary redrawing, all MPs intending to stand again were due to face reselection by October 2018 anyway.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links