Peter Kenyon

For the avoidance of doubt: a NPF before Easter?

Working on the assumption that Labour needs to mobilise as many members as possible to win back London, what's going to get them motivated? Well, we can take it for granted that crass remarks by Labour Leader Ed Miliband committing Labour to sticking with Coalition public spending cuts, and shadow Chancellor Ed Balls pledging to freezing public sector pay will not get party activists out on the knocker. Let's not forget that the new Leadership, in what can only be described as a very unfortunate oversight, has gagged members directly elected representatives on the National Policy Forum. Nor can the Refounding Labour debacle be readily dismissed as an administrative hiccup. A deadening sense of business of usual, when Ed Miliband promised change, is having a corrosive effect on party confidence and could result in historical precedent being overtaken by events. Labour may have never replaced a leader by staging a coup, though former Leader Tony Blair, might want to disagree with that analysis.

Personally, I have no confidence in any of the alternatives cited as potential leaders by more celebrated commentators than myself. I want Ed Miliband back on track. Not as red Ed, but as democratic Ed - the Leader willing and wanting to listen. He should talk to attendees at the first National Policy Forum meetings in the early 1990s. They remember the former, and sadly late, John Smith sitting at the front and listening to debates.

Just because there are elections in less than 100 days time does not mean elected representatives should not be discussing and debating policy. On the contrary, I would argue the opposite. Given the need to persuade the electorate that Labour values matter, what better way to get key messages to members - you matter, and voters - we understand your needs and have better ways of addressing them, than having open discussion? 

According to Luke Akehurst's account of last Tuesday's National Executive Committee:

[He] asked why there wasn’t going to be an NPF meeting before the reps face re-election in the summer. Peter [Hain] said that if an affordable venue could be found then an NPF meeting would be held in late June or early July.

Rather than remonstrate with Peter, and rail against Ed, now is the time for practical responses. So, the Labour Democratic Network is asking all NPF representatives elected by members, and representatives of the other stakeholders, about their availability on Saturdays between now and Easter. Further it is offering to find and pay for a suitable venue in London to enable them to meet.

The proposed format is deliberative - no set speeches, no campaigning sessions eating into time for discussion, debate and voting. LDN hopes that this will be seen by the Leadership as a genuine offer to help set the seal on the change needed to our politics.

(Apologies in advance to any NPF CLP representative if we haven't got a correct eMail address for you, if you don't receive a Doodle invitation in the next 48 hours, please get in touch.)

 

 

"Mess left by Labour" - no, not the economy - the party

Even some right-wing commentators think Labour's leader, Ed Miliband, has had a good week, thanks mainly to Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite the Union. I disagree. But it would be easy to get distracted by events. After the supposed repositioning of the Labour Party's economic policy, I blogged last week about the "Mess left by Labour" - Voters need to know ConDem mess is worse, and worsening , with a promise ..to be continued.

While most commentators are focused on the Westminster village, media positioning, individual performances as measured by opinion polls, I'm more interested in the structures and processes that shape modern politics.

Having listened to, and read endless speeches and interviews, I'm fed up of my party being blamed for a mess that never was. But after nearly nine years of looking closely at the Labour Party itself, I'm convinced the real mess plaguing Labour's electability is the party itself. Ed Miliband had an opportunity when elected to start to clear up that mess. Instead, he has been making it worse. 

There is only one piece of serious empirical research about party membership in the last 10 years that I know about. It was conducted by the LabOUR Commission and still available from the Labour Democratic Network website here . The main conclusion was that both current and lapsed members expected a say in Labour Party policy-making. That was back in 2006, and I doubt the expectation is much different today. For the avoidance of doubt, that's a say, not the right to dictate to or tie the hands of the Leadership. Instead, Labour Party members remain effectively gagged as I set out earlier this month here. Their directly elected representatives on the National Policy Forum  for 2010/2012 have not had the courtesy of a single NPF meeting to deliberate policy. Worse, there are sitting members of the National Executive Committee and hopeful candidates bombarding members with election materials, without so much as an apology for having failed to secure a date for an NPF meeting before the ballot papers are issued for the 2012/14 NPF term of office which starts later this year. 

This reflects misplaced loyalty to party colleagues. We are members of a democratic socialist party, not a glee club. Think on it. (to be continued.)

 

Decoding Iain McNicol, the Labour Party's new general secretary - correction

In two week's  Sometime this month, may be today, maybe in four weeks' time, Labour's new general secretary Iain McNicol, is expected to set out to the full national executive committee (NEC) strategic proposals to consolidate the party's position in the mainstream of British politics poised to win the next general election. (Correcting timescale - some NEC sources hint at today, some later in the month. Whenever, change can not come soon enough.)

His annual conference speech was I was told by his supporters a must read. Yesterday At the weekend in a speech to the Scottish Labour special conference, drawing on his own experience as a Labour Party and TU organiser he insisted:

You have to get organised.

You need to raise funds.

You need to knock on doors.

You need to listen.

You need great candidates rooted in their communities.

You need policies which speak to working people’s aspirations and dreams.

Let's hope every member of the PLP and every aspiring candidate for public office as a representative of the Labour Party get's a grip on that. Careerists beware.

He then went on to set out three insights inspired by Labour's Victorian founders:

The first is that the Labour Party was created as a specific reaction to the failure of the Liberal Party to deliver progressive change for working people...The second insight is the amount of effort the Labour pioneers spent on calibrating the right organisation for their new party....The third insight from our founders was their great sense of optimism.

Not surprisingly for my avid readers, I'm interested in how he developed his insight into organisation. Iain offered a glimpse:

The key insight is that Hardie and the rest created a form of organisation suited to their times. The system of branches and delegates mirrored the other organisations they were involved in: the churches, the unions, the Temperance Movement.

This begs a question are forms of civil organisation any different today? for those Labour Party members who are so engaged, the answer has to be not a lot. I attend church. It has a parish council. It has agendas and minutes. Ditto the house group in the block of flats in which I live. Ditto the arts association. Ditto the social enterprises that I am or have been involved in. Ditto my trade union branch.

Paradoxically, or may be not, Iain did not continue in that vein. Instead he said:

For most socialists back then, attending a Labour Party meeting would feel familiar and normal, because so much else was organised on similar lines.

I don’t believe we can honestly say that about today’s Labour Party structures. They don’t feel familiar to our new members, they can feel bewildering and alien.

Few would disagree with him in that regard. But why are they unfamiliar? Professionalisation and the emergence of a political class dominating mainstream political parties, trade unions and civil society in general may account for that lack of familiarity with the structures. Lines of accountability have become blurred. Scope for members to have a say have been stifled. Annual conference has become a political trade fair run for profit, not the deliberative assembly our founding forebears would have recognised. 

With a flourish in the direction of social media, Iain concluded his remarks about organisation proclaiming:

So our structures need to reflect the way people live their lives.

I regularly interact with members via Twitter. I talk with our party staff via email. We are embracing the digital revolution in politics, and it changes us.

So of course we need to reflect these changes in the way we conduct our campaigning.

Campaigning, it has to be remembered, is a facet of organisation. On that note Iain gave little away. But then he was in Scotland and the state of Labour Party organisation on the ground is what might be loosely described as thin.

Returning to his opening call, how should Labour members respond? As secretary of the Labour Democratic Network (LDN), I found myself thinking, Iain, if you really mean what you say, then the Labour Party has to organise from the electoral ward up. In that regard, I recommend reading LDN's Manchester Declaration signing up and get organising. 

 

 

 

Redesigning the Labour Party website - a means of bridging the gulf or widening it?

This is a short version of a post I put up on the Labour Democratic Network site here earlier today. This has already prompted a question about whether this debaqte should be in the public domain or not. I believe there is more to be gained by Labour in its effort to rebuild a mass-membership party, than lost by washing some dirty IT linen in public.

My starting point for a rethink set out nine months ago was:

Summary: a member is entitled to:

• an overview of the Party
• be enabled to see how s/he might fit in at a glance, and
• hold those in elected office to account

the proposed web-based service aims to address those requirements

What do you think?

The Labour Party website should be shut down: a riposte

Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy and a Labour Party member blogged earlier today that the Labour Party site was rubbish and should be shut down.

I have a different perspective:

The Labour Parrty website should inspire people to join, and remain full voting members. To this end I commend the Labour Democratic Network, and the Labour Transparency Project.

But be warned, this is not the time to throw the proverbial socialist baby out with the nerdy bathwater. I spoke to a staffer who shall remain nameless at Conference who introduced me to a facility to enable CLP secretaries to eMail their members using a facility somewhere on the Labour Party website.

I’m just about to check it out and will report back later. Lurking in the Labour Party online offering are datasets of immense value to an entirely different web presence. One that Labour e-literates will get in a flash.

I'm sympathetic, but when I asked Sunny during Conference which CLP he was a member of he couldn't tell me. As a constituency labour party (CLP) and  branch (BLP) secretary, I have a  different take. 

This is the time to gather round and identify the datasets and the online tools that are of real value to members. To this end the Labour Democratic Network is happy to act as a broker. Just sign up and we'll keep you in the loop.

UPDATE 6 Oct 2011 0930: Sunny has asked me to assure you that he now knows which CLP he is assigned to

 

Labour Party Conference 2011 remains shrouded - only a week to go

'Twas famously said by former Labour Party leader Harold Wilson that "a week is a long time in politics". If only.The prospects for Annual Conference 2011 in Liverpool are not auspicious. No one outside a hazy inner circle has a clue what is to be debated and how. Some members are cross. Others have an endearing trust in the leadership, and their elected representatives in Parliament, or on the Party's National Executive Committee and the Conference Arrangements Committee.

In the last 24 hours, NEC constituency party representative Johanna Baxter who twitters @JohannaBaxter told her followers in response to questions, including one from me:

@PeterKenyon @mr_onionspressed @Ed_Miliband wed re com of props.Org agreed yest 2 com agreements made @ that mtg.Mail 2go2 CLPs tom re this

That means CLP secretaries should get a briefing today (Saturday).

This followed her representations to Party leader Ed Miliband on Wednesday evening which she reported on her Twitter site the following day after the NEC's Organisation Committee (aka as Org Sub):

Plsd that #nec OrgSub agreed w/ my sugg 2 @Ed_Miliband last nite that we communicate 2 CLPs asap those @RefoundLab props we cld agree 2day

So far so good. However, Ed himself promised publication of submissions to the Refounding Labour consultation back in mid-July. He has been ignored. Of course, that is not how it is being reported by Head Office. It cites staff shortages, technical difficulties. But the truth is there are staff employed by the Party who think they are the Party, and who to date have proved performance-management proof.

Similarly, policy making is as much a mystery. The deadline for submission of Contemporary Resolutions passed yesterday. Why haven't they been published? The official line is that haven't been considered by the Conference Arrangements Committee to establish whether they are 'in order'. Nod, nod, wink, wink - the criteria are so convoluted they make Spaghetti Junction look like a Roman Road. Their purpose - to minimise the risk of embarrassment to the Leadership.

As I asked in my previous blog, "Why would anyone want to join such an organisation?" That's the challenge for Labour's party managers over the next week - to transform the Conference into an event that reverses declining party membership.

In that regard, the Labour Democratic Network (LDN)'s Manchester Declaration sets out a vision of how the Labour Party can become a mass membership party, despite the naysayers agonising over declining political party membership across the so-called established democratic world. That is hardly surprising given the almost universal contempt of politicians for any effective form of accountability, and the corrosive influence of state-funding of political parties.

The basic unit of party organisation for LDN members is the electoral ward. About which there is much to say, but not just now.

Where's that HO briefing about the decisions taken at Org Sub?

UPDATE Email received at 1338 just read - I suspect it's code for more command and control, without sight of the rule changes it poses more questions that it answers. 

To all members

Dear Peter

As you know, final recommendations arising from the Refounding Labour consultation will be going to the NEC next Tuesday, ahead of consideration by the Annual Conference in Liverpool.

Peter Hain promised to keep you up to date with developments and wanted me to provide you with a summary of the some of the recommendations agreed by the recent Organisation Committee, and which will be discussed by the NEC next Tuesday.

The Committee is acutely aware that delegates will be receiving the final recommendations for consideration quite close to Conference, and was therefore keen for these initial conclusions to be communicated now.

The Committee agreed in principle that rules changes will be proposed in the following areas:

Purpose and objects

• Clause I concerning the party's objects will be updated, giving greater emphasis to Labour's role in local communities.

Rights and responsibilities 

• Rights and responsibilities of the party leader will be defined for the first time, including control over appointments to the Shadow Cabinet.
• Rights and responsibilities of Labour candidates and elected representatives will be defined, and provisions made for the use of model contracts.
• Rights and responsibilities of elected members of the Parliamentary Labour Party will be defined, including the right to be consulted on any positions taken by the leadership in the context of a hung Parliament.
• The ALC subscription will be abolished and councillors will instead, in line with other Labour representatives, pay a 2 per cent levy on total income arising from their elected role.

Enabling structures

• Local Government Committees will be replaced by Local Campaign Forums (LCF), which will allow for local adaptation and different models of structure and membership. LCFs may apply to the NEC to pilot new and innovative procedures for selections. CLPs will be free to adopt different models of organisation to suit local circumstances, with certain common features, to allow joint working across constituency and geographical boundaries. There will be a new model of CLP finances to help redistribute resources more equally, and lift struggling CLPs out of debt.

Encouraging recruitment

• The minimum age for becoming an individual member of the party will be lowered from 15 to 14 years old. There will be a lower local join rate for new members, to encourage recruitment.

Policy making

• We will open up the process to ensure a greater voice for members in a system that is more transparent and accountable, and which reaches out to the public. We will create a process that ensures the voices of young members, women, BAME, disabled, LGBT and other under-represented members are heard in policy development. One representative from Labour International will be added to the membership of the NPF; and a textual omission regarding the Northern Ireland CLP, which already has one representative, will be corrected.

A bigger voice for councillors

• The Leader of the LGA shall have the right to attend meetings of the political Shadow Cabinet when in opposition and the political Cabinet when in government. There will be better services provided for our councillors with a new website and enhanced online facilities, more training, design support for templates, and increased support for all Labour groups, large and small.

 

Full details of the actual textual rule book changes arising from these points will be sent to you as soon as the NEC has agreed the final recommendations to be put to Conference. The above recommendations do not represent the full extent of the changes likely to be proposed from Refounding Labour, and further issues are currently under consideration.

In addition, a number of reforms that do not require rule changes, such as new and improved technology for communication across the party, will also be proposed as part of the overall Refounding Labour package, and we will endeavour to ensure that you receive details of the final recommendations as soon as possible.

I hope this information is helpful and I will be in touch with further updates in due course.

Yours sincerely

 

 

Ray Collins

General Secretary

 

 

Comrade McNicol delivers a message to Labour Party members

For the glossy version go to the Labour Party Conference guide. But a couple of days ago when I was checking out MemberCentre, I had a thought. MemberCentre is part of the internal Labour Party IT offer.  For those good democractic socialist volunteers who give their time to keep other members informed about local issues, meetings, campaigning and fundraising activity it offers genuine value - realtime access to members' details.

I blogged and tweeted about its shortcomings and how they might be improved a couple of days ago and issued an invitation to our new general secretary designate and also our Leader. In the first instance local communication capacity depends on each member taking on a responsibility. I wrote:

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.

I had written about my impressions of Iain shortly after his appointment here. I started my piece with:

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.

So I was not exactly surprised when last night, in true comradely fashion, @Iainmcnicol retweeted my appeal.

Iain McNicol @IainMcNicol retweeted to 2,082 followers: PeterKenyon Peter Kenyon @IainMcNicol Will you RT my appeal to #Labour party members to update details on Membersnet. Helps volunteer officers keep members in loop Sep 08, 6:25 PM via web

View @IainMcNicol’s Tweets

I am now attempting to pass this message on to every CLP in the country. It hasn't required a change in the Labour Party rules for me to attempt this task. But if you can help, please let me know. In their turn I hope every CLP will pass it on to every branch, and every branch to every member - even those who currently don't declare an eMail address. As I discovered in City of London branch some 20% of members actually had one, but had never disclosed it previously to the Labour Party.

It is partly about trust. So here's a practical way in which we can start to Refound the Labour Party, in line with the Manchester Declaration and the aims of the Labour Democratic Network. of which I am secretary.

Refounding Labour: Defer 12 mths or call special conference?

The odds on a Refounding Labour quick fix to change the Labour Party's rules at its 2011 Conference are lengthening rapidly. A ham-fisted attempt by the Lib-Dem media mouthpiece, the Guardian on Tuesday to lock Labour Leader Ed Miliband on a collision course with the affiliated trade unions, aided and abetted by unnamed sources is doomed to failure. The fingerprints of antediluvian-Blairite apparatchiks were all over the front page splash by political editor Patrick Wintour, and a pompous editorial, headed 'Brotherly love'. 

Time to move on. Refounding Labour as a consultation with members has been bungled from start to date by Labour Party staff, not helped by the absence of weak direction from Ed Miliband's personal appointee, whoops, nominee for the post of National Policy Forum chair and i/c Refounding Labour. It is alleged that Peter Hain has had a' Wizard of Oz' moment, found courage, and is now seeking publication of the submissions. 

Even if he succeeds tomorrow, we are now less than eight weeks away from the start of Conference in Liverpool. Given the brouhaha, serious consideration will undoubtedly being given to simply deferring any decisions arising from Refounding Labour consultation a year until Conference 2012. Most local Labour Parties will not be meeting again until early/mid September. Scope for formulating compromise positions has all but gone.

There is an alternative approach. No doubt Ed Miliband himself and his advisors will be keen to show firm leadership. But of what sort? Authority that is going to help reposition Labour as a national electoral force is needed. At the same time Ed needs the Party behind him in support, not wielding daggers. One strand of opinion evident in informal discussion concerns London-domination of the Labour Party. This reflects the absence of representation on the Party's National Executive Committee from the devolved nations, or any English regions, north of London and the South-East. But it also reflects frustration with London-centric policy making, and rigged candidate selections. 

Immediate publication of all submissions both to the Refounding Labour consultations, and those to the multitude of policy reviews undertaken under another Ed appointee, Liam Byrne, would abruptly end the farce of current Labour Party policy making and belatedly herald an era of openness and transparency. That has to be done within days for maximum effect. Prospects of members actually being heard will take time to filter through into new membership interest, and greater activism. But that would set the scene for more open debate in Liverpool about the issues that matter to voters.

In parallel, consideration is needed of how the Party is structured and governed. My immediate reaction to the 'appointment' of former ITV chief Charles Allen to review management structures and commercial activity was somewhat jaundiced: what does he know about branches and constituencies? However, a professional business-like review as set out is to be welcomed. Outstanding is how do members fit in? If reform of the party's national executive committee to create parity between affiliate and CLP representatives is seen as part of the answer, then the Party's rules will need to be changed before the end of 2011. NEC elections are on a bi-annual cycle and the next ones are due in 2012, the call for nominations will start in December. Delay consideration of Refounding Labour a year and that means the new rules would not apply until 2014. 

That is why a special conference in late 2011 focussed on Refounding Labour might be the way forward. Two weeks ago I deluded myself into thinking that there would be time for due consideration if draft proposals were circulated to members at the same time as to the National Executive Committee's Organisation Sub-Committee due to meet on 6 September. I drafted an emergency resolution to that effect. Today I learned the risk of a fix had been picked up by Bridgend CLP general committee (GC). After due deliberation, it decided on a different course of action; namely, a special conference in November. The full details are available on the Labour Democratic Network website. In Bridgend CLP GC's view, and in this regard I am speculating, there is simply not enough time between now and Conference 2011 to enable ordinary mortals time for proper consideration of the outcomes of Refounding Labour.

Hopefully, this idea will not escape the attention of the Member of Parliament for the neighbouring constituency of Neath, Peter Hain MP.

 

 

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.