Political

Community Politics motion – amendment is in

Thanks to the sterling work of Mary Reid, the amendment to the community politics motion at LibDem conference that I and others have been working on with Mary has been pulled together and submitted.

The debate is on the Tuesday afternoon of party conference. Fingers crossed the amendment gets taken for debate, but in the meantime here is what it says:

From: Kingston, Glasgow North and Richmond & Twickenham local parties plus 18 voting conference reps
Proposer: Mary Reid
Summator: Mark Pack

Amendment to F41: Community Politics

Line 33, replace ‘organise’ with ‘empower, enable and encourage’

After line 37 insert, then renumber:

3. The principle of subsidiarity to be adopted by elected representatives at all levels of government, ensuring that decision-making is devolved to the lowest feasible, democratically accountable  level.

In lines 38-39 delete ‘ensure dialogue with the communities they serve’ and insert

listen and respond to the communities they serve by engaging with community groups and by seeking out those without advocates, and to ensure dialogue and personal contact

Add at end of motion:

and to help ensure these calls are turned into effective action, Conference calls on:

a) the Party President and the Federal Party to work with those responsible for candidate approval processes at all levels in the party to encourage changes in the approval processes to place a high value on would-be candidates having an understanding of, and commitment to, community politics;

b) the Federal Policy Committee to ensure that community politics runs strongly as a theme through the party’s policies and policy development process, and in particular to ensure that future policy papers contain an analysis of how the proposed policies will help community politics;

c) the Federal Executive and Federal Party staff to work with others such as ALDC and State Parties to ensure that the skills necessary for community politics have a prominent place in the party’s training programmes and to provide grassroots campaigners with templates and materials to support community politics activity;

d) the Federal Party to use Federal Party communications to supply party members and supporters with campaigns they can directly participate in which support the party’s national policy priorities;

e) the Federal Executive and Federal Finance and Administration Committee to make support for and promotion of community politics one of the criteria when allocating grants to party bodies;

f) Liberal Democrat ministers to use the language of community politics rather than adopting the vocabulary of other political parties; and

g) the Party President, the Federal Executive and the Federal Policy Committee to report back on their own contribution to progress in these areas as part of their reports to the 2012 federal party conferences.

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