Labour's NEC agenda - in my dreams
Labour's National Executive Committee meets tomorrow with attention fixated on its finances. The Electoral Commission lists borrowing and due dates in spreadsheet format for all parties. The latest data for 30 September 2007 can be downloaded. Taking out borrowing by CLPs, the national party has total loans outstanding of £19.48 million, of which £12,95 mln is listed as due on dates before 1 January 2008. But only £5.50 million is secured. My interest is in enabling the Party to reorganise its finances so that it is able to face the future with confidence. The LabOUR Commission made recommendations about this last year. The Party under Mike Griffiths as NEC chair did diddly squat. Save the Labour Party's new committee (its reconstituted annually) met in Blackpool at the weekend. A letter has been despatched to the new NEC chair, Dianne Hayter politely suggesting that the NEC might want to factor in members as a source of new income into its thinking.
We remain convinced that the Party's current difficulties can only be addressed by rekindling Labour as a mass membership, democratic socialist party. It is now over three years since the Electoral Commission in its report on political party funding recommended that all political partiesincrease membership and small donations. Hayden Phillips recommendations, if a consensus were possible about state funding, are never going to solve Labour's underlying financial problems.
Why should our bankers or affiliates continue to bankroll the national Party if it does not welcome more, active, paying members.
Would you donate or lend the national Party money in current circumstances? If not, what would be your conditions? Don't be shy, even the friendly banks impose them. I'm just hoping that they get tough over membership growth as a condition. That way being a member of the Labour Party might start to mean something again.
We'll all be pleasantly surprised if anything comes out of tomorrow's deliberations to put a fresh spring in the step of all those lost Labour members and voters. In my dreams.
