Peter Kenyon

A reply to Tim Horton's challenge - starting from Labour's grassroots

Tim Horton, research director of the Fabian Society, writing in today's Guardian, has posed a challenge for the Labour Party:

Labour badly needs an agenda motivated by what is good about localism and mutualism, not what might be bad about the alternatives.

This goes to the heart of an official Labour Party consultation, misleadingly entitled: Refounding Labour. Is Ed Miliband, Labour's new leader proposing that the Party should be reconstituted? That's not mentioned anywhere in the 20+ page document to which he contributed the Foreword. Nor is it refered to by National Policy Forum chair Peter Hain. So we'll have to assume their intention is that the Labour Party will remain an unincorporated voluntary association. Now I know that one of my avid readers is very uncomfortable with any public discussion about this matter. Why might that be? Well in plain language being unincorporated means that each member is jointly and severally responsible for the Labour Party's finances with unlimited liability.

What would be good is that if this were more widely understood. This is not just a Labour Party thing. It is a wonderful opportunity to expand the skill pool for localism and mutuality. The minute you want to launch a campaign, set up a club, or an activity that involves money, the need to adopt a written constitution looms large. Anyone who has tried opening a bank account for a voluntary body will testify to that.

So what was the Labour Party machine under New Labour doing? Shutting down branches based on electoral ward boundaries, and plundering their bank accounts and fixed assets. With it, Labour's capacity to knock on doors and retain local council seats atrophied. The rest is history.

That will be Labour's fate if it doesn't focus on what makes localism and mutualism tick, it's the governance, stupid.

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.

Is there a hidden agenda for Refounding Labour? Finances?

The use of the expression 'Refounding Labour' for the consultation now underway among Labour Party members has been puzzling me ever since I first read it. There are lots of loaded questions about ways the party should operate. But how is it all going to be paid for? Not a word on that issue. I find that condescending in the extreme. Is it that to talk about money demeans our politics? Or has our politics been demeaned by the way in which the Labour Party has been financed for the last 15 to 20 years?

There has been a sustained effort by party officials supported in their blind ignorance by the vast majority of the National Executive Committee for widely differing reasons to seek to commandeer / consolidate the assets held by the party's grassroots organisations - the bedrock of any refounding?

Another thing which I learned a decade ago following the introduction of higher allowances for local councillors was that where Labour was able to win council seats, a levy on local councillors became the source of significant monies to run some local constituency parties. Lurking there is still a major governance issue - should those funds be controlled by local members? Or should they remain the 'property' of sitting councillors to help them retain incumbency, ie their seats, allowances and means of continuing the levy to help fund their next election campaign? There is a similar problem with some MPs.

Nationally, the Party fought the 2005 election with unsecured loans which remain like an incubus on the Party's balance sheet. It managed the 2010 election on a low budget funded by large and small donations. Now out of government how successful is the outgoing General Secretary (now m'Lord) Ray Collins strategy of meeting capital and interest repayments out of commercial income alone? Are our small donations and membership subs being tapped to keep the unsecured creditors at bay? How much are the Labour Party hierarchy hanging on for the Committee on Standards in Public Life to throw them a financial lifeline with a promise of more public funding for political parties? 

What is clear from the 126 questions posed in the document with a Foreward by Ed Miliband and an Introduction by Peter Hain, is that the Labour Party is silent about what it is in law - an unincorporated federated voluntary organisation, in which every member has unlimited liabilities. Scary, no. Of concern, yes. If for no other reason than there is no other body capable of acting as the the leader of the progressive majority in the UK.

So when the polls close on Friday, among the questions that need to be addressed  is: Can the Labour Party afford to be honest about its finances? Can it afford an ethical donations policy? Can it afford to let its members have a say? Should it be rebuilding its finances from branches upwards? If so, where is that going to leave the people who have been actively working for opposite ends and left the Party with less than half its membership in 1997, despite the flush of interest post the 2010 General Election?

Time to grasp some nettles. Oh, and just in case you were thinking a new general secretary will be the answer. Forget it, these nettles have very deep roots.