In praise of slates for Labour internal elections

A debate has opened up on Grimmerupnorth, Labour Left Forum, LabourHome as well as here about the issue of slates for the forthcoming Labour National Executive Committee (NEC). Questions are being asked, aspertions cast, and denigrations peppered. It is as though political animals with a common agenda shouldn't been seen congregating together. Oh, you are on a slate - political pervert.

If that were the case then political parties wouldn't exist. Of course, at the rate the mainstream ones  are losing members, perhaps they won't in a few years' time.

As a passionate believer in party politics as active citizenship, I have come to recognise that collective organisation is vital to our democracy whether through the place of work as a trade unionist, or as a community activist through my local Labour Party.

As far as the electorate is concerned when it comes to going to the polls, who are they voting for - the candidate, or the party? We know from experience, most people vote for the party i.e. the slate, not the person. You have only got to look at the fate of those parliamentarians and local councillors who have fallen out with their party and stood as independents. Most (with a few notable exceptions) become victims of their own vanity and lose.

What is coming under scrutiny now is the 10-plus year old Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) slate for the NEC. Initially CLGA was a joint political venture between Labour Reform (now incorporated into five-year old Save the Labour Party (STLP)) and the 35-year old Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). I welcome this interest. In 2006, CLGA won four of the six places in the Constituency section of the NEC. In 2008 we want to send a clear message on behalf of members by aiming to take all six places.

At issue is how do members in a three-million member/affiliate organisation work together on national governance and policy? It's worthwhile remembering that Labour is not a unitary national organisation. Instead, it is a multi-layered federal organisation, with some 175,000 individual members organised inside 639 parliamentary constituencies in thousands of electoral ward related branches. The branch based on electoral wards, not the British Parliamentary constituency, is the interface between each individual member and the party structure. It is a very fragile link for most members requiring dedicated volunteers (usually) to maintain local contact. It needs to be rediscovered by the Party leadership and nurtured. It is the route to reconnecting Labour in local communities to the public realm. Each one of those members has six votes for candidates in the Constituency section of the NEC. Deadline for nominations 1 April 2008. Ballot papers due in the post 5 June. Close of poll expected 4 July 2008.   

In the run up to Labour's election victory in 1997, CLGA was formed by members to give organised voice to concerns that the New Labour project (while initially offering electoral success) would stifle party democracy. Leading lights in the New Labour project under Blair got very close to succeeding.

The only people in the Party who have kept that mass-membership idea alive since the mid-1990s and carry that beacon today are members of the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance, including latterly, Save the Labour Party, and let's not forget - the Labour Representation Committee. But sadly, to my mind and that of many others, not Compass. It is not for the want of trying on the part of CLGA.

Consider it work in progress.

As Curlew succinctly puts it on Labour Left Forum: "Cheers Dunc, think I've got it - voting for the slate means no wasted votes."