Peter Kenyon

Why I joined Labour: the other side of the coin

I have just renewed my Labour Party membership online. It has taken the Labour Party's systems three months to catch up with my decision to cancel my direct debit. As my avid reader(s) know, I have a thing about accountability. Budgets and management accounts are essential in any organisation for all elected management committee/board members however it is incorporated. I could have resigned in the light of my experiences during my two-year term on the Labour Party's national executive committee (NEC). Instead I have chosen to stay and fight the cause of democratic socialism from inside.

My latest opportunity for gesture politics was to cancel my DD. Eventually a flag appeared on my Membersnet personal details inviting me to renew. An invitation I readily accepted, as having passed my 65th birthday I am entitled to pay at the reduced unwaged rate. It is a pity that the tables for membership rates have not been updated in line with current Conference agreed rates. But where there is a will there's a way. I just ticked 'Other' and manually inserted the current unwaged rate.

Then I was offered an opportunity to tell why I have joined the Labour Party. No warm words from me. So don't expect to see the following entry on the Labour home page. Rather crossly, I stated:

Been a member since 1978. Cancelled DD as do not trust Party with my money. One term on the NEC was sufficient. Having reached retirement age have reduced my membership status to unwaged.

There was no Print Page option so I cannot prove I have 'renewed'.  I will just have to keep a careful watch on my Credit Card account payments. 

As for the 'saving' on my membership, that will be going to my local branch to fund our next local election campaign. Here I have the satisfaction of knowing that the Treasurer has already produced the accounts for 2011, and they were presented to the branch last month, subject to audit. Audited accounts are expected to be available at the next branch meeting tomorrow.

Members: keeping track, staying in the loop and social media illusions

Labour Party General secretary designate Iain McNicol calling all members. LabourList picked up a new videoclip just released linked to the London elections next year and asked: More like this please

It is a refreshing change making use of social media to encourage members to get involved in a key campaign for Labour in 2012 (though not the only one). Like LabourList editor Mark Ferguson I hope there is more use of such facilities to get messages across to those members and supporters that are devotees of new media facilites and social networking.

There are lessons for our new GS across the piece. To date most Labour Party forays into new media and social networking has been blighted by top down command and control requirements imposed by Head Office. Refounding Labour is just the latest fiasco in that regard. But there are some features of current IT functionality that are worth preserving and enhancing.

Yesterday, I persuaded a new member at my third attempt to register on the Party's intranet facility called Membersnet and add an eMail address to Personal Details. Any member can access that facility with their membership number. Old cynics will no doubt worry that this could trigger a torrent of spam eMail generate by Head Office. Well, you can always Unsubscribe from that traffic. But Head Office are now not the exclusive users of that data. Through a facility called MemberCentre every constituency labour party (CLP) secretary, and every branch labour party (BLP) can access their members data.

That is an excellent basis for improving party communication locally. In my own constituency the Womens and Youth officers also have access as do branch chairs who have requested it. But there is a residual problem arising from mistrust of Head Office (ab)use of personal data. Consequently, many long-standing members refuse to update their Personal Details. According to memberCentre data only 75% of my branch members are on eMail. Yet my own database has eMails for 94%. That's because of personal contact. I know there is one member left who has an eMail address, but its work and too complicated. The rest just don't have email including a 98-year old - who insists on paying the full rate and appreciates getting copies of notice, minutes, supporting papers and newsletters. Four out of the five members are within easy walking distance of my flat, so it's one stamp a month.

This is part of the process of reaching out into our communities. That is why I launched an appeal on Twitter to all Labour Party members to update their personal details on Membersnet - get your membership card ready to register. I invite the Leader and the GS-designate to retweet.

Reaching out involves organisational capacity as well as campigning, if we forget that in the pre-Conference rush to find a consensus around Refounding Labour, Labour risks problems getting re-elected nationally. Better to start rebuilding the organisational and campaigning infrastucture now than spending time rewriting rules in ignorance of the load already carried by volunteers despite Head Office and its Regional Directors. They may put on a good show for Conference. But they have made an extraordinary mess of the Party on the Ground in too many parts of the country.

Refounding Labour – five basic options (on one-side of A4)

This consultation represents an opportunity for Labour Party members to shape an organisation to lead progressive politics in the UK and help consolidate a progressive majority not just at home, but in the wider world, extending out to the European Union, where democratic accountability needs to be strengthened.

 The document issued by the Labour Party entitled Refounding Labour does not set out the issues in those terms. But having read it and abstracted all 126 questions posed, that should not inhibit us members from thinking bigger and more clearly.

 The five basic options are:

1. Organisational structure

   A federated membership organisation (individual members, TUs and socialist societies) with rights, responsibilities and clear lines of accountability based on local/parliamentary electoral boundaries, or a loosely defined supporters club for political careerists funded by rich individuals, large TU donations and increased state-aid ?

2. Political education

   Re-establish political education / promotion of democracy forums to reach out to young people, local communities, TU branches and single-issue pressure groups to counter the right-wing media and encourage Labour Party membership, or surrender politics to media tycoons in perpetuity?

3. Policy making

   Establish ways for members through branches, constituencies and their elected delegates to contribute to and decide policy in partnership with elected representatives, or continue with take it or leave it top-down policy making by diktat?

4. Accountability of representatives

   Require elected representatives to submit to compulsory reselection and ensure local accountability is free of vested interests, or condone a 'jobs for life' political culture?

5. Values

   Identify policies that reflect Labour Values and the aspirations of a progressive majority even if that means admitting errors in government between 1997 and 2010 or continue to deny how opportunities were missed and values betrayed?

 There are a some rule changes required at Annual Conference 2011 to establish the future direction of the Labour Party arising from which ever options are chosen.

City of London branch in 2009 proposed, for example, the adoption of a standard Annual General Meeting on the eve of or during the first session of Annual Conference, which was supported by our CLP but ruled out of order by the Conference Arrangements Committee. The point was to make clear to the electorate that in law the Labour Party is very similar to tens of thousands of other voluntary organisations, and its leadership was happy to demonstrate a readiness to be accountable to its members.

The Labour Party will need a small number of headline catching proposals for debate and decision at Annual Conference 2011 to make itself an organisation progressives want to join and stay with as the vehicle for their politics in the UK, EU and internationally.

Let me know if this approach will help focus debate in your branch/CLP, and whether you have ideas for further improvement.

Will the search for a new Labour Party GS be triggered this week?

Labour's 'ruling' National Executive Committee meets on Tuesday. Key question is will the long-awaited search for a new General Secretary to replace Ray (now m'Lord) Collins be triggered? Talk on the March for the Alternative suggested it might.

Not before time either, the Party needs fresh ideas to modernise itself and develop a new financial settlement in which dependence on rich individuals becomes a feature of the past, and membership subscriptions, affiliation fees and small donations make up the vast majority of the Party's income.

Rebuilding from branches based on electoral wards is IMHO will be an essential of the Labour Party of the future.

Remodeling Labour Party politics from a member perspective

Volunteering to take part in the Labour Party takes may forms. Simplest is to pay a membership subscription, and sit tight. Do absolutely nothing. Of course, one is meant to be on the electoral register. But who's checking? Then, of course, there are those pesky events requiring a cross in a box.

It's just so easy to get judgmental.

What? Join a political party, but not register to vote!!! WTF?

In Tower Hamlets on Thursday those people who are registered to vote will have an opportunity to chose a Mayor. As a keen new media social networker I have been bombarded with messages exhorting me to assist in the campaign for a Labour elected mayor. As indeed I have as secretary of a neighbouring constituency labour party (CLP).

II was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee at the time that the Labour mayoral candidate was imposed by a majority of my former colleagues. Asked to comment by Guardian blogger Dave Hill, I described the decision as "another example of the institutional folly of Labour in ignoring natural justice.", ie the person against whom complaints were made was not given any opportunity to address them before the NEC took a decision to replace him with the complainant was taken.

As my words "institutionalised folly" imply the Labour Party has form. In one Tower Hamlets Labour Party branch, it is said that local members have not been allowed to choose their own candidates for the local council for 16 years. What must local members in that borough be thinking? We know some have felt sufficiently strongly about the issues to have sacrificed their party membership by supporting a candidate of their choice, who is now not the official labour party candidate. Others felt sufficiently strongly about their objections to that person to have done everything in their power to persuade the NEC to overturn the results of an all-members' ballot to chose the Labour mayoral candidate three weeks earlier. The majority - are they currently campaigning for any candidate? What concerns me is that there are underlying issues in the conduct of members, elected public and party representatives, as well as paid Labour Party staff that do not seem to me to be consistent with (re)building a mass membership organisation.

By definition such an organisation will comprise a majority of people or their relations whose careers and/or ambitions to hold elected office either public or party will not depend on their membership of the Labour Party. Membership will be for most an expression of political values, and a willingness to make a financial commitment to promote them. That as I wrote at the outset that could be the limit of some individuals membership commitment. All such members deserve the same respect as those members for whom their Labour Party membership is a job, or a full-time volunteering commitment.

For me as a branch secretary that respect takes the form of ensuring that each member in my branch receives each month (except August) an invite to the next meeting with an account (minutes) of the last. Boring, boring. Well you can be judgmental if you like. But what I now know is that Maria, for example, is 98 year old but insists on paying the full rate subscription and appreciates regular local party news, Fred is going into hospital for a major operation on Wednesday, Jessica has just had a hip replacement, and is being cared for by husband Jack. (All names changed to protect identities) In the meantime, the able bodied and active are waiting for the next edition of City Rose from the printer so that we can leaflet every residential property in the City of London with details of our NHS campaign and other news.

What tends to mark the 'active' out from other members is that some experience in life has enabled them to cross a threshold. It may have been nothing more than a welcome note on joining. Actually, that could be doing the 'inactive' a great disservice. How does any of us know what each other says to anyone else in the interests of the cause in the course of a day? Beryl in the chip shop on the corner could be the best communicator on behalf of the party in the district. Never goes to meetings of course, clashes with her opening hours.

So more respect, less judgmental behaviour would seem basic pre-requesites in the remodelled party. I'm grateful to Paul Cotterill for triggering this blog with the first part in his blog post 'Reclaiming membership'

Remember two bald men fighting over a comb?

Today is the deadline for Labour Party National Executive Committee candidates to confirm their willingness to stand for election in 2010 and submit a pic and 250-word statement. Mine was submitted yesterday - Special Delivery - so Billy (Hayes) I'm depending on your members to make sure my papers arrive before the deadline at 1700 Friday 6 August.

Two years ago I was a member of a slate mobilised by the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA). Then the CLGA was effectively run by two organisations, Save the Labour Party (StLP) and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). StLP has never seen itself as a mass-membership organisation. That was and remains one of its ambitions for the Labour Party. Hail the day, when the Labour Party itself is an ethical, solvent, democratically-run, mass membership body. StLP actively campaigned to create the widest possible base on the centre-left of the Labour Party from which to draw candidates for the NEC. Compass was wooed. As was the Labour Representation Committee. It has proved a step too far in 2010. There is no Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate. Achieving a consensus proved impossible at a meeting in central London on Wednesday night.

I hope, foolishly no doubt, that there not be any point scoring from the right wing slate - Labour First. It would be reminiscent of General Alexander Haig's likening of the Falklands War in 1982 between the United Kingdom and Argentina to "two bald men fighting over a comb".

There is some very serious political thinking, campaigning and lobbying to be undertaken between now and Labour's Annual Conference at the end of September. In the first instance, there is Conference itself - another rally or a rekindling of political debate?

Then there are the questions of debate about what? Yesterday the New Statesman's Staggers blog trumpeted 'Labour will have just 13 days to decide its deficit policy' highlighting the time between the election/appointment of the new Leader's Shadow Cabinet and the Comprehensive Spending Review planned for 20 October. That is what every Labour Party member is up against: Westminster village commentators trying to set the agenda, when it is ours for the grasping. Conference should decide Labour's policies, including that for tackling the budget deficit. Labour ministers demonstrated their inadequacies deciding policies over the last 13 years. We don't want to run the risk of repeat mistakes in opposition.

What better opportunity for the Leadership candidates to draw a line under the past than by encouraging and enabling the Labour Party through its members and branches to get to grips with shaping the future at its annual 'parliament'? If they can't be bothered, be assured I will spend August doing my bit by hewing the words of contemporary issues/resolutions. They will be offered via this blog for contempt and derision, cutting and pasting, honing and polishing ready for that torturous journey of consideration, debate and amendment through branches, constituency parties to the Conference Arrangements Committee. At Conference itself delegates will take part in a Priorities Ballot to settle the subjects for debate, those chosen then involve compositing of the resolutions ruled in order. Then on to the Conference floor for debate and votes. 

So you could say that Labour has 50 days between now and the start of Conference to learn how to address the key issues facing the country. Conference can decide future direction That would leave the new Leader those 13 days after the Shadow Cabinet elections to shape a team to implement Labour Party policies.

It would be in very sharp contrast to the Conferences of our political opponents this year as their Leaders struggle to sell their Faustian pact to their increasingly restless members.

For Labour, the offer of a showcase of a new Leader listening and learning to inclusive, but outward looking debates both for opposition in Westminster and readiness for future government in Edinburgh and Cardiff, and hopefully Westminster sooner rather than later, really would be 'new politics', game on.

Glazing over - bewilderment at joining the Labour Party - what's the antidote?

I'm struggling with what to say, beyond the usual welcome and signposting, to all those people who have just joined the Labour Party,. They have now been assigned to a local Labour Party branch based on their postcode. I wonder how many of them knew that when they filled in the application form and paid their membership fee? I have a dual responsibility as local branch secretary, as well as secretary of the constituency labour party (CLP) - all the detested aspects of 'Old Labour' rolled up in an official function - booking rooms, drawing up agendas, assembling papers, finding speakers, writing minutes.

I'm already drowning. How do I explain a branch? Ditto a constituency? My branch is City of London. It covers 25 electoral wards. Elsewhere some are contiguous with a local government electoral ward from which councillors are elected to the local councils and so I could go on.

My experience of Labour Party life is that the majority of members pay their subscriptions as an expression of civic engagement and that's it. They have lots of entitlements such as choosing candidates for balloting, whether for public office or internal positions, like currently that of Leader, and helping shape policy. On the other hand the vast majority of staff who work for the Labour Party believe members are for delivering leaflets, and knocking on doors - fullstop. According to one apocryphal tale - the Labour Party should be 'massive, but passive'. Their latest wheeze is not even to send out nomination papers for Deputy Leader, when Rule 4.2.D.i says:

When the PLP is in opposition in the House of Commons, the election of the leader and deputy leader shall take place at each annual session of party conference.

I know it came as a bit of shock to some people that we might not win the 2010 General Election. But we are where we are - in Opposition. So given my tasks this morning, assembling all the information cascading in about elections - Leader, Deputy Leader, National Executive Committee - Division III CLPs, Party Treasurer, Auditors, Conference Arrangements Committee, National Constitutional Committee, National Policy Forum Division 1 CLP section, London Mayor, not forgetting the CLP Chair's report, 2010 General Election Report, Westminster City Council 2010 Election Report, Treasurer' Report - you may discern my dilemma. Mark my words, if I omit any prospective candidate's statement for any one of the offices cited above, I run the risk of being accused of a 'stitchup' by someone in the Labour Party who does not share my views either about governance or policy.

In the meantime, those eager new or returning members are awaiting encouragement (or, perhaps, not). So it's time to hit the eMail/telephone and find out. I think that should be my first priority. But.... the paperwork. Procrastination, yeah. But it's all in a good cause. I just hope my initial contact is warmly welcomed. Our branch has what I like to think of as a healthy blend of campaigning, debate, fundraising and socialising. There's a risk. The idea of meeting with an agenda could provoke glazing over, and bewilderment. It just that the campaigning, debate, fundraising and socialising don't just happen - they require organisation. We could revert to the leitmotif of new Labour - sofa government - no written agendas, no minutes. That worked didn't it? Oh, stop it, Kenyon, get on the blower.

Labour Party enforcer overrules local branch vote in Stoke

I know a General Election imminent. I know local elections are imminent. But we live in a democracy. I belong to a political party that put a Freedom of Information Act on the Statute Book. These simple but profound facts are routinely ignored by most of my colleagues on the Labour Party national executive committee.

It is no secret that the Labour Party's local branch structure has been seriously weakened by Blairite design over the past 13 years. No systematic development plan to rebuild is in place. That is despite all the evidence concerning the outcome of the 2010 General Election campaign pointing to the need for members and supporters willing to talk to voters on the doorstep. Will Straw writing on his Left Foot Forward blog noted:

Professors Alan Gerber and Don Green of Yale University have shown that face-to-face contact has a far greater impact on voter turnout than either phone calls or mail. Leaflets increase turnout by 1.2 per cent; volunteer phone calls increase turnout by 3.8 per cent; and door-to-door canvassing increases turnout by between 7 and 11 per cent. 

Labour Party election strategy coordinator, Douglas Alexander says:

"At the end of the day, it's people not posters that win elections."

Meanwhile, in Stoke on Trent, there seems to be no limit to the Labour Party NEC's determination to destroy its organisational capacity on the ground. A meeting of Hartshill and Penkhull branch labour party was convened on Friday 19 March 2010 by the Labour Party's senior constitutional officer to select a candidate for the one seat in the ward up for election on 6 May 2010.  After the formalities, the procedural motion to move to the vote was moved and DEFEATED. So quite rightly no selection took place. It was the latest twist in a running battle between local members and the Labour Party 'powers that be' firmly rooted in the detested electoral mayoral fiasco.

Imagine the surprise and consternation in the land of Pits'n'Pots, when last week ballot papers were despatched by post to Hartshill and Penkhull members. They were offered two candidates, neither of whom had been selected by branch members. Asked for an explanation, party officials said they had been instructed by the NEC's Organisation Committee chair Cath Speight to ignore the branch vote.

Is there any wonder that it is still proving difficult to motivate members?

Selection in the spotlight: Leyton and Wanstead

The deadline for applications for the last remaining constituency in London without a prospective parliamentary candidate (as of today) Leyton and Wanstead passed at midnight Monday 8 February. No official announcement has been made about who the three members of the National Executive Committee's special selections panel (SSP) will be. They will interview and shortlist on Thursday 11 February.

What I can tell you is that Ann Black, chair of the NEC and a CLP representative will not be one of the three. What I can't tell you is why not.

Of particular interest still are:

1. the total number of applicants

2. the method of reducing many applications to a managable longlist and by whom

3. the membership of the shortlisting panel.

4. the method(s) proposed to reduce the longlist to a shortlist for an all-member postal ballot other than interview

Needless to say, my suggestions for offering local members maximum involvement in those processes set out here have been studiously ignored, an initial offer from the London Regional Director, Ken Clark to CLP chair, Greg Eglin to ensure the CLP could observe the interviewing and shortlisting had to withdrawn due to an extraordinarily short-sighted decision by the SSP to EXCLUDE CLP observers. Among those voting against was CLP representative Ellie Reeves.

UPDATE 2325: London Region Director Ken Clark rang me earlier this evening to ask for a correction concerning the offer to ensure the CLP could observe the interviewing and shortlisting to which I have agreed. Ken said tonight no such offer was made.

All I can say is that during the NEC meeting on 26 January I received the following message from a L&W contact who wrote:

Greg has confirmed Regions commitment to this and advised that he intends to write

The NEC decision was apparently in the light of the bruising experience of allowing the then CLP chair from Norwich North to witness the star-chamber proceedings against former Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson. After which it was alleged that an unauthorised account was given by the former chair. The underlying problem in that case, tragically, is that to this day no one knows what the charge was against the hapless Ian Gibson. Such miscarriages of justice are not easily forgotten by members who have seen what few rights they have in the Labour Party stripped away.

If Labour Party NEC members and staff cannot agree a coherent message about what was decided in a meeting, one has to ask what are the chances of formulating coherent and convincing messages to the electorate to vote Labour in the forthcoming General Election?

Some Leyton and Wanstead members and branches have already submitted suggestions as to whom they would like to see on the shortlist. Others have decided to wait and see before commenting.

What is certain is that this remains a selection in the spotlight.

Active Labour parties yield local council results

Further evidence of the bedrock of the Labour Party can be seen in yesterday's local council by-election results.

RESULTS:

Blackburn with Darwen Borough - Queens Park: Lab 638, Lib Dem 366, C 174. (May 2008 - Lab 756, Lib Dem 722). Lab gain from Ind. Swing 10.3% Lib Dem to Lab.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough - Newchapel: C 208, Ukip 148, Lab 138, Lib Dem 127. (May 2008 - C 416, Lab 220, Lib Dem 180, Ukip 127). C hold. Swing 10.4% C to Ukip.

North East Derbyshire District - Holmewood and Heath: Lab 373, C 209. (May 2007 - Lab unopposed; April 1O 2008 by-election - Lib Dem 382, Lab 356, C 165). Lab gain from Lib Dem.

Tandridge District - Whyteleafe: Lib Dem 444, C 236, Ukip 99. (May 2008 - C 526, Lib Dem 407, Lab 45). Lib Dem hold. Swing 19.4% C to Lib Dem.