The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), formed in 1973 by a group of rank-and-file activists, held its Annual General Meeting last Saturday at Conway Hall in central London.

A report of the CLPD AGM can be read here

Jim Kennedy's speech on the trade union link can be found here

By Peter Willsman, Secretary CLPD

Regular visitors to Left Futures will be aware that the Party is piloting a revised and truncated procedure for the selection of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs). This is currently being operated in 26 seats identified by the NEC as ‘early bird’ marginals. The NEC’s Organisation Committee has given an undertaking to properly review the Pilot. A thorough review is vital because the Pilot has major deficiencies, which I will come to in a moment.

There has already been disquiet amongst Party members in several of the ‘early bird’ CLPs. The Pilot was not flagged up in the Refounding Labour documents, but it seems that it is being swept up under that general heading. Indeed, senior party officials took advantage of the cover provided by the rule change on Refounding Labour to illegitimately delete the whole of the procedure for selection PPCs from the Rule Book. Clearly certain officials have already made up their minds about what will happen.