Young Labour is the youth section of the UK Labour Party. Membership is automatic for Labour Party members aged 14 to 26. It exists to involve young people in the Labour Party and ensure that the aspirations of young people are reflected in Labour’s policies in power. Young Labour members are able to get involved in the Labour Party through local policy events, campaigning or by attending events and social gatherings. Young Labour hosts an annual conference, alternating between national committee elections and policy conferences every other year. Young Labour also holds a range of additional national events, including fringe sessions at the Labour Party's annual conference. Young Labour is affiliated to both the International Union of Socialist Youth and Young European Socialists.
History
Young Labour was founded in 1993 by a Labour Party annual conference motion in Brighton, proposed by Tom Watson, seconded by Brian Whitington, then Chair of the Labour Party Young Socialists, and supported by then National Executive Committee Youth Representative Claire Ward. Before 1993 young people in Labour had been represented by the Labour Party Young Socialists. In October 2017, Young Labour passed a motion at their annual conference which called for banks to be publicly owned, and for Britain to withdraw from NATO. The main reasoning for passing the motion was because it was viewed that NATO "no longer meets our collective security needs" and that it "has been the lynchpin and institutional expression of American imperialism". In March 2018, Young Labour voted to condemn then-Labour MP John Woodcock's comments to the pro-Erdogan website The Daily Sabah, in which he appeared to praise the Turkish government, criticising the MP's comments as "apologising for a regime which jails our comrades in Turkey and commits war crimes against refugees and civilians". In May 2018, the organisation started a digital campaign against then-Labour MP Chuka Umunna after it was revealed that he employed university students to be unpaid interns. The campaign, "#PayUpChuka', led to the Labour leadership briefing the Parliamentary Labour Party that employing unpaid interns runs contrary to Labour's 2017 general election manifesto. In October 2018, Young Labour voted to make Brazilian labour leader Lula da Silva its honorary president, with a statement calling the embattled former President of Brazil a "towering figure in the working class movement". In September 2019, Young Labour's national leadership voted on sending a motion to the Party's annual conference calling for Right to Buy to be abolished on the first day of a Labour government, rent controls to be enforced, and for local councils to be given greater powers to nationalise land owned by property developers.
Membership
Members of the Labour Party aged 14 to 26 are automatically members of Young Labour.
Structure
Young Labour National Committee
The Young Labour National Committee acts as the executive of the organisation. It includes a chair, the National Executive Committee youth rep, an international officer, five liberation officers, two ordinary reps, five trade union reps, three Labour Students reps, and 11 regional reps. In addition, the Labour Party appoints a permanent secretary to act as facilitator, National Policy Forum youth reps appoint a vice chair, and the youth wings of affiliated organisations, such as the Co-operative Party and the Fabian Society, are able to appoint a representative.
Chair of Young Labour
Between 1991 and 2009 the Chair of Young Labour was appointed by the Labour Party. Reforms passed by the Labour Party's annual conference saw the creation of a democratically elected chair, voted for by delegates at Young Labour's national conference, to serve a two-year term. The first election took place in 2009. In late 2017 the Labour Party's NEC changed the system so that the Chair of Young Labour is elected by a one-member-one-vote ballot of young members. It was reported that over 7,000 young members voted in the 2018 election.
Delegates at Young Labour's national conference also elected the Youth Rep to sit on the Labour Party's NEC. The election operated under an electoral college, with a third of the vote for young member delegates, a third for Labour Students delegates, and a third for delegates from affiliated trade unions and socialist societies. For the 2018 election, the system was changed, with half of the vote allocated to young members through a one-member-one-vote ballot and half allocated to block votes by affiliated trade unions and socialist societies.
