Proposer: Jon Maxted
Seconded by: RF, Ahmad Bendardaf, Keir Nixon, Rares Cocilnau, Alexandros Schulmann, Terry McCormick
At our last congress in 2023 the Party upheld a motion that committed it to establishing a permanent committee dedicated to the development and promulgation of party education. However, due to the rapid pace of various challenges facing the party since – not least of all the unexpectedly early arrival of the last general election – this commitment has been shelved until now by the outgoing NMC originally responsible for enacting it.
In the interest of not turning its back on unrealised obligations from the 2023 congress and recognising that the work of such a committee is now more important than ever, this congress hereby reaffirms that it will commit to forming a political education committee; defined here as a permanent working committee of five or more party members that will be nominated and selected by the NMC. This committee will be responsible for carrying out all internal party work dedicated to educating and training the party’s cadre and wider membership. This committee will be immediately responsible to the general secretary and the party’s head office between NMC sessions; at NMC sessions themselves it will deliver quarterly reports to the NMC on all its activities, for which the NMC will carry out oversight and ratification.
The exact remit of the proposed political education committee, as defined by the original motion accepted in 2023, ranged from instructing members on practical matters in all fields of party work such as campaigning, party organisation and media production to party political education – the stated purpose of which was to transmit the party’s founding values and mission as a socialist party and prevent it backsliding away from these commitments due to the influence of liberal and opportunist elements that we anticipated may emerge inside our organisation. This congress pledges to reaffirm this intended functionality and remit of the political education committee in full.
The committee will be accessible to rank-and-file members, who can voluntarily submit their own materials and requests on subject matter of interest to the party’s educational work. The final use of these materials will be decided amongst the committee itself and any resulting work will be ratified by the National Members Council.
Finally, in order to avoid any further delay or distraction from the creation of this committee, congress pledges to select the party’s inaugural political education committee at the first session of the new NMC.
This looks good on the surface but could risk confusion between its remit and that of the Political Committee. The remit of any Political Education Committee would need to be tightly defined in order not to compete with the latter especially if a difference of interpretation of policy emerged. However, the communication of core principles to the support base of the Party and so on to the electorate does requiresomething like this.
I agree on the need for a clearly defined remit for all roles and committees carrying out work on behalf of the party. The time where we can make do with informal styles of organisation is rapidly coming to an end – without an unambiguous demarcation between the authority and responsibilities of various roles we run all kinds of unnecessary risks, particularly that of mission creep and conflicting jurisdictions. Simply put, we cannot run an entire national political party in a way that is efficient, accountable or responsive entirely under the direction of a single central committee. It is essential that we structure the party in such a way that its day-to-day executive is able to marshal its human resources in an effective way.
In my view, that is why much of the the day-to-day work of the party’s affairs should be separated into several committees dedicated to a specific sphere of work that are answerable only to the political committee between NMC sessions and whose coordinators are drawn directly from the ranks of the NMC itself. These committee coordinators should also be required to produce reports to deliver to the NMC whenever it is in session. With the expanded NMC we have a large pool of people to draw from for a variety of essential party tasks – my proposal for a political education committee is just one potential example of this and we already do something similar with the way we’ve informally parcelled away our media work to the party’s media team.
What you say about the political committee is the key thing; between NMC sessions the political committee has to be the supreme executive authority of the party, dedicated to charting its course on a national, party-wide scale. It shouldn’t necessarily be bogged down in specific tasks that are better delegated to a committee dedicated specifically to that sphere of work; what matters is that the leads for these committees have clearly defined procedures and remits to ensure their work is accountable to the politburo.
That all strikes me as reasonable so long as the structures are developed so that they do not end up as competing political centres because of the way they are appointed or elected.