Peter Kenyon

Labour Party: rebuild from scratch - Progress?

The following article appeared on the Progress website yesterday, to which I replied today:

Rebuild? Yes. Completely? No.

There are examples around the country of highly successful campaigning branches and CLPs, that have connections with mainstream single issue organisations, resident groups, development trusts and the like. As a possible step to getting a better understanding of this 'good' campaigning capacity, as opposed to the 'rotten boroughs' branch and CLP model (that I suspect we are both familiar with), I made a suggestion to Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the last Labour Party NEC. I proposed that he got a briefing from the General Secretary about the number of active branches operating at a local government electoral ward level throughout the country.

Going back a bit, the LabOUR Commission wrote to the then chair of the NEC, Mike Griffiths, in May 2007 suggesting detailed research on the state of the party on the ground. All to no avail, yet. As a member of Save the Labour Party since 2003, I could go on. But if you look at our latest newsletter for CLP and branch officers we are offering a survey service for our affiliated CLP and branch members to find out about member loyalties ahead of the election. It is a communications device.

The responses via the Labour Party Membersnet accounted for just 1% of total respondents (n=421) last week, compared with over 60% via a Facebook group, 'At the 2010 General Election, I am voting Labour'. Whatever Head Office's shortcomings, our view is that we, the members, should just get on and communicate with each other. 

I suppose that I should have added that that way we will be in a better position to know whether to dissolve the current organisation and start again, or not.

I'm still optimistic that by shining bright lights in dark corners we can save the day, get re-elected and rebuild the party.

Labour activist exposes Tory debt scaremongering

This posting on the Compass website is a must read for any Labour activist, economics editor and political correspondent and commentator, and the Labour Party Clause V committee charged with signing off the 2010 Manifesto.

Ann Pettifor writes:

In 1946 Britain's debt was roughly 5 times what it is today - a staggering 250% of GDP. At that point an extraordinary thing happened. The heavily indebted Labour government began to spend - as soon as legislation was agreed by Parliament.Labour invested in a bold and visionary project: - a publicly funded health service free at the point of use - the NHS. There was a slum clearance and housing programme. They revived the ancient universities, provided pensions and welfare to the poor.......

My emphasis. The rest speaks volumes too.

Labour Party: members on Manifesto pledges - poll

Politics Home has just published the results of a poll about Manifesto pledges. Not edifying reading for our Ed. Ed Miliband is the Labour Party's Manifesto co-ordinator. 

Save the Labour Party is experimenting with the use of polling to gauge opinion, and possibly rebuild morale among some members.

It would be good if some of the investment in web services by the Labour Party was known about by members in the first place, and trusted to be used more frequently.

Blair to have Labour Party election role - aaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

There have been some strange goings on of late. I presume I imagined this story in the Daily Telegraph?

If the Maltese Labour Party can do it, why not the British?

The ultimate riposte to Peter Watt and his ilk?

State funding of political parties 'inevitable' - ex-GS Peter Watt

Watching ex-Labour Party General Secretary Peter Watt on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 was repulsive, but compulsive viewing for me. I only met him one. It was in my capacity as Chair of Save the Labour Party. He was standing in for Matt Carter. He concluding our meeting by dismissing me as "part of the problem".

He was right. Invididual members like me regard our right to speak out as sacrocanct. My wife and I had already put our views opposing state-funding on the public record in evidence to the Electoral Commission's (EC) inquiry into the funding of political parties. Save the Labour Party adopted the same position rejecting the idea that taxpayers should fund political parties. And of course the EC rejected the pleadings of the mainstream political parties for state-alms. That goes a little way to explain the dislike, and even hostility towards the EC from the Labour Party on Peter Watt's ill-fated watch as General Secretary.

The Labour Party is an unincorporated voluntary association. Watt displayed his ignorance in stating on screen that technically members of the National Executive Committee are responsible for the Party's debts. Wrong. As anyone involved in the governance of unincorporated voluntary associations knows - technically EVERY member is liable for the debts, not just its management committee.

State-funding is the ultimate refuge of the political scoundrel, the snake-oil salesperson unable to persuade enough people of the merits of their political programme. Labour would be well advised to reject the idea as part of its Manifesto commitment to clean up British politics. It would be a good way to stress our confidence in our Labour values and our ability to raise enough money to remain solvent and win elections without relying on the state taxpayer.

UPDATE 1415 Monday - Too True!

Tally-ho: New Labour for a new decade

Who's writing Labour Prime minister Gordon Brown's lines? According to the Daily Mail (shame on me for even reading it, albeit online) Tim Shipman writes:

The Prime Minister will say he plans to campaign on a 'New Labour programme for the new decade'.

Further we are told:

Mr Brown will outline plans to put 'social mobility' at the heart of the election campaign, a bold ambition given that his critics say he has presided over a decline in such aspirations.

I would not quibble with the fact that New Labour nobbled social mobility for a decade. I'm just puzzled how fresh thinking about jump-starting social mobility under Brown can be promoted credibly as New Labour. But who am I, a mere foot-soldier, to complain? Just one of those who will be out on the doorstep for time-to-time over the next 100 days.

UPDATE 1100 This is ongoing at the Fabians. Fewer than 50% of those in the Hall gave Brown a standing ovation, according to one tweeter. No surprise there as many Fabians and political conference junkies are not even Labour Party members. The 'New Labour' error appears in Brown's article in the Guardian under his own name. There's still time to learn from one's mistakes though, just - 100 days.

Labour Party staff - exceeding authority

Ever since I became a Labour Party explorer the bush telegraph has resounded with allegations. Today, I was telephoned by Ken Clark, London Labour Party Regional Director to confirm that one of his regional officers had issued incorrect instructions to a group of CLPs instructing them to postpose their AGMs. I thanked him for putting the record straight. What better way of making the case for AGMs at the regular time? I reflected on this here.

The temptation for anyone in a position of power is to hang on. Of course, that will not be the case with Gordon Brown. He will be going to the country on 6 May, rather than hang on until 5 June. But for party unit officials in obscure places like, to name a couple of examples, say, Barking or Stoke, who ought to face re-election in February, it would be so convenient to have their AGMs postponed.

Key message to CLP secretaries - how are we going to motivate members to come out and campaign, if we don't ensure that they have a say?

More insinuations, and innuendo sprinkled with the occasional fact can be read here.

Labour Party branch challenge - AGM time

My wife and I got to bed in the wee hours this morning following the City of London Labour Party 2010 AGM and monthly Fundraising supper.

We had an AGM with a written Annual Report (partial) and Accounts (unaudited). We elected a chair, vice-chair, secretary (me), treasurer, campaigns officer, youth officer and membership secretary (me), plus four GC delegates with a vacancy that will be filled before the CLP AGM

There was a full and free debate about Labour's electoral propects and how we are going to campaign. Our newest member has only been in the Party a week! S/he was not press-ganged into taking on any elected position at his/her first branch meeting.

BTW the supper raised £90, and will go a significant way to offsetting our loss of £129.59 in our local election year 2009, when we spent around £2,500 taking on the City establishment.

My pals in Charlton Labour Party across the Thames in Greenwich tell me they had 23 members attend out of 95 at their AGM the previous night. The position of chair was hotly contested and went to a second ballot after a tied vote. Save the Labour Party Secretary, Mark James, was elected chair 11:9 on the second ballot.

Labour Party NEC Officers meanwhile decided that party units could defer AGMs until after the General Election. I shall be be registering my objections to this major lapse of good governance at the next NEC meeting on 26 January. But coincidentally, NEC Officers advice has been misinterpreted by Party staff in at least one region. Party units there have been instructed NOT to hold AGMs. I have demanded an immediate retraction.

How else can party members hold their colleagues exercising delegated authority to account? How else can they be satisfied that income and expenditure has been handled honestly? Of course, such trifling matters are not of much concern at Labour Party HQ.

Labour's radical manifesto: who decides?

Today's media is littered with reports of yesterday's Cabinet at which it was proclaimed the next Manifesto will be the most radical in recent times.

At about the same time a message went out from Head Office to Labour's beleaguered constituency National Policy Forum and National Executive Committee representatives setting out a process for further consultation with Constituency Labour Party members via their representatives.

Being a practical person, I have been wracking my brains about how members at this late stage can have any sense of ownership over the policies that might persuade the electorate to give Labour another term in office governing the United Kingdom. Remarks like these reported in the Times this morning are not helpful:

Mr Brown said there must be no repeat of last week’s botched coup. The campaign must be not “about us and the Labour Party” but about the public’s priorities. Sources said that the words amounted to an instruction.

No, Mr Brown if you have been correctly reported, in the first instance you need to remind yourself about what resources you have available to fight this General Election. If Labour is to win, it has to win over its Party pdq. Your Joint Policy Committee opted to abandon a further meeting of the National Policy Forum. There is no Spring Conference. Volunteer members of the Labour Party are not readily inclined to being told what to think (though that doesn't stop some of the NEC, too many Party staff, not to mention some Labour elected representatives from behaving as though they are the 'thought police'.) At least Labour local government understands the importance of rallying morale and is holding an event on the last weekend of February.

Instead of barking orders, some of us think reality checks are vital. Save the Labour Party is experimenting with a short survey on Labour loyalties. It is currently running in an open version on Labourhome and Facebook, and closed versions in Bury North, Weston and the City of London Branch, plus the Labour Party's own Membersnet. A report of responses on Labourhome to date is available here.

Reading between the lines, if this survey were representative, and I would be the last to claim it is on the basis of responses to date, then you would be thinking:

If your most with-it members don't think the party can win, policies are important, want a say, but they haven't one....then a further decline in membership not to mention a crushing defeat at the GE is inevitable.

That's the challenge, and it will not be altered by hand-me-downs from Downing Street. We, the members, have to want to change the zeitgeist and get on with it as part of Team Labour.