People often ask what it is like to be a member of the Labour Party. Think of an onion. Left in its skin, it's fine. Start unpeeling it, beware... In my 30 years' membership there have been both tears a plenty, as well as joy. Bearing in mind the number of layers I have sliced into, I thought I'd packed enough hankies for my first real business meeting of the NEC.
As soon as I was elected back in July, informal advice from my new NEC colleagues was: “Keep your head down...take your time...feel you way.” Whereas, the last words from one of my close City of London Branch colleagues before I left London for Esher last Sunday were: “No collusion.”
So I am struggling to be loyal both the Party hierarchy whom I have to work with and you, the members. The best way of describing where we are is to say the Labour Party is at a crossroads, both in terms of its own governance arrangements and with the electorate. It is less than a year since its fifth general secretary in 10 years, Peter Watt resigned in the wake of the undisclosed loans saga. Three months ago, we had been written off by the pundits, too far behind in the opinion polls to recover. Well, as former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “ A week is a long time in politics”.
However, in this report I want to concentrate on governance. The Rule Book Chapter 1, Clause 2.1 says of the NEC:
There shall be a National Executive Committee of the party (the ‘NEC’) which shall, subject to the control and directions of party conference, be the administrative authority of the party.
So what does that mean for each NEC member? You need a little background. Getting elected to the NEC is not like winning a General Election and taking power the next day. An incumbent's term of office if elected ends after the Annual Conference following the election. So in the meantime, what should I have received from Head Office having been elected Well, I wasn't expecting a 40-gun salute. But I had thought, by way of introduction, that I might receive a list of future meetings, an induction programme and a copy of the nomination and election rules for places on NEC's sub-committees. The reality was very different. I had to ask.
There is a strongly held belief among the vast majority of members on the NEC that the Labour Party is unique – in a political sense, I agree. But as an organisation, it's an unincorporated voluntary association. For me, that means it's just like tens of thousands of other unincorporated voluntary association up and down the country. More people, I believe, would be members of the Labour Party if it behaved like one. Since I was elected, I have kept my head down, and quietly set about finding out what I was entitled to. When the Induction Pack arrived, I homed in on the Terms of Reference. It set out what I would have expected for an unincorporated voluntary association – unlimited liabilities for the members. So as you would expect of a newly elected member of the NEC, I asked for a copy of the budget and the latest set of management accounts.
Brace yourself. Are the Kleenex tissues to hand?. That information, I was told, was only supplied to the Business Board and the Audit Committee. Then I began to understand why we are where we are.
Needless to say, my first real NEC meeting was not very comfortable. I seconded Pete Willsman's amendment to the proposed membership of the Business Board to make an extra place available to any member of the NEC, not just past chairs. The voted was lost 4 (CLGA) to many, including all the TU, PLP, ALC and government representatives present. (I declare an interest as I put my name forward for this particular sub-committee.)
I proposed that Section 1.1 be remitted pending further advice. It was said that the NEC's solicitors had been consulted. But we were not given copies of the advice or shown a file note of what advice was sought, and what opinion was given. As I had not rehearsed the proposal with my colleagues, I lost the vote 2 to many. However, the underlying issues will not go away. Yesterday, I was at the London Labour Party biennial regional conference and was inevitably asked by lots of comrades about the NEC. The best way I could think of describing our predicament is that the Labour Party is just at the beginning of a process of what I described as a “normalisation”. By that I mean how do we, in the Labour Party, present ourselves to others in the best possible light – as an organisation that anyone who shares our values would want to join, donate money to, contribute time to, play an active part in, campaign for and vote for at elections?
My hope is that through careful consideration and reflection, the new General Secretary and NEC officers, will appreciate that our Aims and Objectives will be more likely to achieved by consensus building around the Terms of Reference. I am refusing to lie down.
So my next port of call post-Esher is the General Secretary's office to say: “Ray, you and I know that there are legal and constitutional experts who agree with me that the NEC is the management committee of the Labour Party and each NEC member is entitled to the same information to fulfil their fiduciary duties (A fiduciary duty is a legal relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties.) Click here for a fuller definition. If necessary, I will get it in writing.".
Underlying this is the level of detail required to enable NEC members to fulfil those duties. The case made at the NEC was that, for example, the details of negotiations with Labour's unsecured lenders could not possibly have been kept secret among the 33-member body. My response was that had each member of the NEC agreed a budget every year and received monthly/quarterly management accounts in the first place, as I believe we are entitled to, the Party would never have got itself into the predicament it found itself in a year ago. With regard to the particular, as an individual member of the NEC, I would not have wanted to be kept informed about the precise details of every individual or collective negotiation with any particular group of creditors. But I would have expected to be told about the generality of the issues in the context of my fiduciary duties and advised that steps were being taken to deal with creditors with a view to maintaining solvency and unqualified accounts. An important skill in my experience managing any organisation is being able to set out vital information in a simple and transparent way to enable non-executives, or lay members to see almost at a glance when corrective action might be required. By building in those requirements, paid staff start to appreciate what's expected of them as and when problems arise, not when they threaten to overwhelm the organisation.Let's not beat about the bush. Fundamental governance failures going back a decade took the Labour Party to the brink last year.
As I stated in the closing paragraph of Part 1 of this report, I remain to be convinced that revised Terms of Reference for the NEC agreed on Tuesday 18 November are fit for purpose. Now you know why. Hanky, anyone? Not for me, thanks. I remain optimistic we can work through this, strengthen the Party and use revised NEC terms of reference that are fit for purpose as part of our drive for more active members to win back public trust, as well as future elections.
As for my membership of NEC sub-committee(s) and a National Policy Forum policy commission, the other main business of the meeting, I will let you know when I am sure what I will be doing.
If you have any queries about this report, or any other matter of concern to you, your branch or CLP please let me know. With best wishes, Peter Kenyon [email protected]