Momentum’s warring factions have reached a truce over the future of the leftwing activist movement after the steering committee promised a rethink of plans to hold a “virtual reality” conference.
In a victory for internal critics of Momentum’s chair, Jon Lansman, the leftwing Labour veteran close to Jeremy Corbyn, the group issued a statement on Wednesday night acknowledging there had been a “breakdown in trust”.
The committee has also agreed to elect delegates to attend a physical conference, though members will have the final say on proposals via an online vote.
A public row broke out this week when four regional Momentum networks condemned Lansman and the group’s steering committee for a last-minute decision to cancel a meeting of the group’s highest body, the national committee, and push on with an online-only national conference, where the group’s 20,000 members would vote on e-forums on Momentum’s ethics and structures.
Lansman backed the one-member, one-vote model for Momentum’s first ever conference, though the idea was the brainchild of the movement’s younger, more digitally savvy activists, modelled on the system used by the leftwing Spanish political party Podemos.
Trade unionists and more politically experienced members of the committee, including Jill Mountford, a member of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), and the Fire Brigades Union general secretary, Matt Wrack, favoured a more traditional elected delegate model for the conference instead.
One Momentum insider told the Guardian it had been feared those delegates were likely to be self-selecting “old hands” pushing for control of Momentum’s direction.
Lansman called an emergency steering committee meeting last Thursday, with less than 24 hours’ notice to push through his favoured online voting option and cancel a meeting of the national committee, in a move denounced as a coup by his opponents.
Wrack and Mountford issued public statements of dissent, and Michael Chessum, another opposing member of the steering committee, called the meeting “an outrageous, farcical way for that decision to be made”.
The trio, joined by Jackie Walker, another member of the steering committee who was removed from her post as vice-chair after an antisemitism row over comments she made at Labour conference, organised a splinter meeting in Birmingham for Momentum members this Saturday to discuss the leadership’s “democratic deficit”, a move that threatened to split the movement.
Under pressure, the steering committee met and issued a joint statement on Wednesday night saying it “recognises and regrets the discontent and frustration felt by Momentum members in recent days”, adding that the group’s democratic structures needed to develop.
“Unfortunately, this summer’s leadership election delayed that development, with all our energy being diverted into ensuring Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election,” the committee said.
Greater transparency from its leadership was necessary, the statement said. “Our path to democratisation, through our first national conference in the new year, has not been sufficiently effectively communicated, leading, at times, to a breakdown in trust between different sections of our movement.
“There was not enough consultation and discussion with the diverse political and organisational traditions that exist in our movement. Pluralism is our strength, and all views must be properly engaged with.”
The national committee will meet in early December, with new elections for committee representatives from the group’s “liberation strands” of affiliation leftwing movements.
Instead of a virtual reality conference, physical delegates will be elected to debate proposals submitted from the membership, but activists will have the final say on what procedures are adopted, via a post-conference vote.
Organisers of the parallel Birmingham meeting said it would still go ahead “notwithstanding the very welcome statement of this evening’s steering committee”.
“We still need to discuss the very serious democratic deficit in Momentum and work out how to approach the forthcoming national committee on 10 December and the national conference in February,” Wrack said in a Facebook post.
