25 September 2019|The Canary|Mohamed Elmaazi
On the last day of the Labour Party conference in Brighton delegates from around the country, representing both unions and Constituency Labour Party’s (CLPs), voted unanimously to support the most radical break in immigration policy in the Labour movement’s history.
Featured image via Mohamed Elmaazi
The Labour Party has passed a historic vote on immigration policy at its party conference in Brighton. The second-to-last vote on 25 September included a commitment to “close all detention centres”, “reject any immigration system based on incomes” or a person’s “utility to business”, and “scrap all Hostile Environment measures”.
The Canary was in attendance at the moment conference passed the vote to massive cheers and claps from across the hall.
A break from from Labour’s “very awful record”
Joanna Gowers, a delegate for Finchley and Golders Green CLP, called the vote “the most radical immigration policy we all have ever had as a Labour movement”. Gowers, who has supported homeless people as part of her work, told The Canary that the new rules will help reduce homelessness by ensuring all residents have “recourse to public funds”.
Glad that it received such overwhelming support from Constituency Labour Party delegates and from trade union delegates. The Labour Party has a very awful record when it comes to immigration. We’re much better than the Conservatives, but under Tony Blair’s New Labour in particular we were responsible for the originator of the Hostile Environment. With our anti-terror laws… we pushed Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, ant-migrant policies and [Labour politicians] were initially the people talking about reducing immigration.
Read the full article here: https://www.thecanary.co/feature/2019/09/25/labour-pledges-to-abolish-immigration-detention-centres-in-historic-conference-vote/