Left Unity internal elections: call for nominations, deadline 26 Feb

Left Unity’s internal elections need to take place by the end of March.

We need to elect our national officers and other members of the national council by then as well as the Disputes and Appeals Committee and Standing Orders Committee

This letter is to ask whether you would be interested in standing for any of these positions or in proposing someone else to do so.

As set out in our constitution there are different groups of people who make up the national council.

a) Caucus representatives are people from the Women’s, LGBT, Disabled members and Youth and Student caucuses. All those caucuses have decided to rotate their representatives. We do not yet have a Black caucus.

b) National/Regional representatives. Each nation or region is entitled to at least two representatives and more if there are more members with a total of forty places. With our current membership this means 2 representatives for Scotland, Wales, Eastern, East Midlands and the North East, 3 representatives for West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside, 4 for the South West, 5 for the North West the South East and 10 for London

Those representatives have the responsibility to make sure branches in their area are kept informed about what the meetings decide and also to help the creation and maintenance of regional committees.

c) 15 representatives elected nationally.

d) The following national officers

There is more detail in the constitution (section 12) about what these positions involve. All these officer posts apart from Principal Speaker are open to job share.

People are able to stand again if they filled a post last year – you cannot stand for the same post for more than three years in a row.

The National Council may also elect or co-opt other officers. Last year it elected an Access Officer.

At least 50% of those elected to the national council and the other committees need to be women.

As we said earlier we are also re-electing members for the Standing Orders Committee, Disputes Committee and Appeals Committee. (see constitution section 11)

People standing for any of those committees cannot also stand for the National Council.

If you want to stand for any (or several) of these positions you should send an email to internalelections@leftunity.org by midnight on February 26 2015 stating:

It is normally preferable if you wish to stand in more than one position that you submit more than one statement explaining your suitability for each specific post. If you wish to propose someone else you should let us know by the same deadline.

If you prefer to receive a ballot paper by post please let us know by the same deadline.

Ballot papers will go out on March 3
The election will run until March 23.
The results will be announced by March 27.