SHADOW justice secretary Richard Burgon is announcing plans to push for a Peace Pledge to stop Labour backing illegal wars.

Mr Burgon, who is campaigning to be elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, makes the announcement tonight at a public meeting in Oxford.

The Labour Peace Pledge would see the party constitution changed so that it couldn’t back military action abroad without the explicit vote of party members, except in a case of “a genuine national emergency” or where there is UN backing. 

The pledge is part of plans from Mr Burgon to give party members a much greater say over policy direction. He was the first candidate to publicly back open selection, a measure later adopted by leadership candidate Rebecca Long Bailey. He has also announced plans for members to write a new Clause IV to hardwire public ownership into Labour’s constitution.

If elected, Mr Burgon says he will establish a working group and present the proposed change the Labour Party conference in September.

“Labour remains scarred by the experience of the Iraq war — for many it is sadly the single act for which the last Labour government is most remembered. It was a conflict opposed by most Labour Party members at the time,” Mr Burgon is due to say.

“Jeremy Corbyn rightly apologised for Labour’s role in the disastrous and illegal war at the time of the publication of the Chilcot Report in 2016.

“But even since Iraq, Labour mistakenly backed the intervention in Libya, which has had catastrophic consequences for that country, and contributed to a massive refugee crisis.

“These interventions were supposed to have made us safer from terrorism. Tragically, they have failed in that objective too.

“We must always take a stand on the side of international law and justice. That means a foreign policy robustly independent of the United States.  

“No decision is more important for a political party than whether or not to support military action. It is right that if the Labour Party wants to back military action then it must have the explicit backing of the party’s members, except in the case of a genuine national emergency or with UN backing — which Iraq clearly didn’t have. 

“Never again should Labour members ever again have the shame of having to protest ‘Not in my name’ against their own party.

“With this pledge in place, the British people can be confident that the Labour Party will not repeat the mistakes of the past and wrongly back military conflict.”