Peter Kenyon

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.

Will the Labour Party leader order immediate publication of Clause 1 rewrite plan?

Today's Guardian carried a story misleadingly headlined, Ed Miliband seeks to rewrite Labour's founding principles. I think that should have read return to Labour's founding principles. But as ever the devil is in the detail. What is the proposed new Clause 1?

There are lots of hints in the article. In the interests of openness and accountability about Refounding Labour, I invite Ed Miliband to instruct the new General Secretary, Iain McNicol to circulate the proposal to all constituency labour party (CLP) secretaries immediately. Otherwise we are going to have three weeks of speculation before Annual Conference 2011 about the wisdom or otherwise of the proposed change.

Twitter traffic since the story was first announced by  Guardian is indicative of how ideas sometimes develop a life of their own. I think Anthony Painter takes first prize for setting out the difference between a political party and a community organisation here. Luke Akehurst takes the wooden spoon for the most feeble justification for the proposed change.

@PeterKenyon it's radical in that we haven't been doing it in most of the country

There is a job to be done by the NEC ahead of Conference to amend the proposed change to make sure that the Party's founding electoral focus is retained, whilst embracing the need for national/regional/local organisation and campaigning to achieve power and promote Labour values through legislation.

In the meantime, someone needs to wise up Ed Miliband about the shortcomings of community campaigning organisations from a political party perspective. What's their business model? Are they securing monies at the expense of progressive political party membership?

D-day for Refounding Labour - Sunday 25 September: Insane

According to the draft Labour Party Annual Conference timetable, Rule changes and other matters arising from the Refounding Labour 'consultation' will be 'decided' on Sunday 25 September - the first day.

The proposals themselves will be tabled at a deferred Organisation Committee (aka Org Sub) on Thursday 15 September, and decided at the pre-Conference National Executive Committee on Tuesday 20 September.

This is insane. Unless the proposal is for any rule changes to be deferred to a special conference in the late autumn as proposed by Bridgend CLP here.

Serious doubt about the process has prompted Labourlist editor Mark Fergerson to wonder whether it is a sham. Following publication of the Bridgend proposal which is a positive suggestion to a fraught situation in which loyalties to our new Leader are being tested, NEC CLP representative Johanna Baxter called for unity here. Let's hope we can unite around the idea the due process must be observed and members' rights to consider proposals are respected.

All submissions to Refounding Labour need to be published along with all the versions of the Refounding Labour report to Org Sub on 5 July, NEC on 19 July so that the long slow process of rebuilding members confidence in the Labour Party can begin. This is an essential first step to demonstrating to the electorate that the party is true to Labour Values.

An urgent statement is needed from the Leader Ed Miliband, the National Policy Forum Chair, Peter Hain and General Secretary Iain McNicol, who starts work at Victoria Street on Monday, to reassure members that there will be no attempt to railroad divisive and ill-thought through proposals at Conference 2011.

A puff in the Huff: battle for the soul of the Labour Party

Just in case you missed it - the Huffington Post yesterday picked up on my blog a couple of weeks ago about the (s)election of a new Labour Party General Secretary.

 

Iain McNicol's in-tray: Pandora's Box

I welcome Iain McNicol's election as the Labour Party's next General Secretary. I would not describe him as a buddy, or close personal friend. Iain is a comrade. And I would like to share two experiences that highlight why.

I first met him in my capacity as chair of Save the Labour Party in 20045 while seeking members for the LabOUR Commission and starting to raise money to pay for its research programme. The GMB's Mary Turner joined the Commission, and the GMB made a substantial financial contribution to its work. Its Interim Report is here.

Latterly, Iain was instrumental in securing GMB support for the City of London Labour Party branch's Common Council election campaign in 2009. The GMB is a recognised by the Corporation of London as the union representing 'blue collar' workers. Labour in the City was campaigning for the London Living Wage to paid to casual staff employed by the Barbican Centre and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as was the GMB. No one at Victoria Street ordered the branch to fight the campaign. No one at Victoria Street even included the Common Council elections in their work programme. This was guerilla politics organised by local members, working with a local GMB branch. Iain as the GMB's national political officer got it. While Labour was languishing in the polls, Labour in the City was attracting positive media interest far beyond the actual results. We didn't win a seat on Common Council. But hundreds of casual City of London workers now enjoy better pay.

As I write the NEC is wrestling with a travesty of a report on Refounding Labour, about which I blogged yesterday. That is just one manifestion of a deeply corrupt political culture at the heart of the Labour Party with which Iain is going to have to wrestle. The recommendations were written before the deadline and bear little relation to the actual submissions, I'm told.

Lurking in Pandora's Box are the Party's finances, relations with paid staff, and between paying members both individuals and affiliates. Iain was described wrongly in my opinion by Sunny Hundal on Twitter as the 'union candidate' . That is grossly unfair to Iain. He may currently work for a trade union. But he would be better described as a grassroots candidate. Relations between these two sections of the Labour Party that control 50% each of the votes at conference are key to rebuilding the Labour Party.

The TUs are well organised. Members through their Constituency Labour Parties are not. There are too many competing interests: From Progress, Labour First on the right through Labour Values, Save the Labour Party, Winning Labour, the Fabians, Left Loot Forward, to the the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, the Labour Representation Committee, and Socialist Action on the left (and possibly many more). To help the rebuilding, Save the Labour Party has rebranded itself and formulated a set of Aims that ought to appeal to all political sections - they were agreed in June and have been published as the Manchester Declaration 2011. The unsubtle sub-text is an end to command and control politics in the Labour Party under the banner of the Labour Democratic Network. Actual policy is for all the above to debate.

To succeed Iain will need to demonstrate his capacity with the Leader, Ed Miliband to deal with the Pandora's Box issues in time for Conference 2011 in Liverpool in less than 10 weeks' time. Those Refounding Labour submissions have got to rendered into an electronic format capable of being analysed, and published. Ditto Partnership into Power submissions that helped shape 'A better future for Britain'. Party morale, particularly among activists, with odds shortening on a snap General Election needs a big boost. Not just because it's important to have a say. But a small donation culture needs creating, fostering and nurturing while the Party nationally is still struggling to repay debts piled up by former leader Tony Blair and his fund-raiser supremo, Lord Levy in 2005.

Ed Miliband's handling of the issues arising from the extraordinary story about the News of the World hacking of a murdered 13-year old's mobile phone has provided breathing space. Ed's personal standing is rising. But there is still deep public mistrust of politicians. Labour has to reach out. But not by further neglect and abuse of its activist base both in Labour Party branches and constituencies, and in the Trade Unions. Iain will hopefully be able to guide the Leader away from defining himself (like Blair) in opposition to his Party, towards leading the party in the spirit in which he was elected nearly a year ago.

There is a very significant concession by the TU section in their Refounding Labour submission concerning the composition of the NEC, which is heavily weighted towards its section which has 12 seats, compared to only 6 for CLPs. There are lots of suitably warm words in submissions about reaching out, engaging with and being representative of our communities to improve our electoral standing. This is not to decry any of that. But the Labour Party does not need to change its rules to develop better practices. It does, however, need rule changes to rebalance power between members, TUs and its elected public representatives (MPs and Councillors) both on the NEC and its ill-fated National Policy Forum (NPF).

LDN is proposing that that increase in CLP representation on the NEC is a must for a Rule Change at this year's Conference. There will then be a tussle about how? Election by regions like the NPF, or nationally as at present. But that would be debate worth having before a vote at Conference in September to get members talking to each other, sharing ideas and experiences about what works. to encourage that the current restrictions on data sharing among members has got to go. (If you don't want to be involved, you can opt out.) But the default position has got to be members may talk to members.

it would be churlish not to say Good luck, Iain. But you are going to need much more than that. They are called: Comrades.