What a bizarre question! Branch meetings are past their sell by date. Didn't I know everything in the country is run from No.10 Downing Street? That's how it seemed from the 'vision' set out by Gordon Brown in his interview with the Observer newspaper yesterday. (Word search on the edited transcript : Members = 0, Party = 0, Citizens = 0). Another perspective proffered by Matthew Taylor in this week's New Statesman on 'Why life is good' was:
We want to enjoy ourselves, to be appreciated and to feel we are growing from the experience. Compare that to the last Labour Party, trade union or council meeting you went to.
Coming from a former advisor to Tony Blair, it is not difficult to divine from those remarks why the Labour Party is in such a parlous state. I'm not sure any of us who regularly attend our local branch would ever claim we went to enjoy ourselves. It's more about fellowship, governance, government, civic responsibility and political conviction. But there is lots of scope for being appreciated and growing from the experience. Though one wouldn't have known it from the Gordon interview. He has yet to wake up to the fact that being Labour Leader is about more than delivering a Leader's Prime Minister's report to its National Executive Committee.
Matthew is chief executive for the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) which works to remove the barriers to social progress. Perhaps one of his New Year Resolutions should have been to remind himself about the function of political parties, trades unions and local councils, before repeating one of his prejudices.
Here is my potted functional (very dry...boring) take on the Labour Party branch: Within the Labour Party's federal structure each individual member is assigned to a branch. The branch area is formed by electoral boundary(ies). The idea being that local organisation is linked to securing electoral support for Labour candidates for public office. My branch City of London Labour Party meets at the Counting House on Cornhill this coming Wednesday. Every member has been sent an invitation either by email or post (handwritten envelopes, some hand delivered, some by post). The meeting will be followed by a fundraising Supper in a member's home for more informal, convivial political debate. In our political sights are: a London living wage for Corporation of London employees, maximising Ken's vote for Major and Labour's candidates for the GLA, and Common Council elections in 2009. And no, we are not operating under instructions from No.10.
