At 9 pm last night Jon Lansman emailed Momentum members outlining details of a new constitution which would purge Trotskyists from the organisation. Momentum will apply to affiliate with the Labour Party and require its members to join Labour and cease their membership of any other political party. “Any member who does not join the Labour Party by 1 July 2017” will be kicked out of Momentum.
The existing democratic structures of Momentum will be disbanded and control will be handed to its National Coordinating Group, which will now have the arbitrary power to ban individual groups. This means Lansman and his allies can purge the groups which had been plotting to wrest control from him, for example the Alliance of Workers Liberty, Workers Power, Left Unity and the Communist Party of Great Britain. It also means people who cannot join Labour because they have been expelled from the party will also have to quit Momentum. The likes of the infamous Trot troublemaker Jill Mountford will be out.
This is naturally being condemned by the anti-Lansman faction in Momentum as anti-democratic, authoritarian and “Stalinist“. Lansman says the changes are justified by the results of a survey carried out with Corbyn’s backing, giving him the authority to implement the reforms. This is a brutal move by Lansman to squash his opponents, Labour moderates are looking on admiringly at his ability to fight the far left…
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