Peter Kenyon

Devolution: Labour action - branch resolution, waste of time?

Labour Party leader Tony Blair sought to kill off the art of resolution writing by imposing a new method of policy-making, misleadingly called Partnership in Power. The system was adopted by the 1997 Annual Conference after a historic UK General Election victory. Hapless members or at least their Conference delegates, carried along by the euphoria, suspended critical judgment and signed away collective freedom of expression.

In future policy was to be made through commissions, and deliberations of the National Policy Forum (NPF). The NPF was and remains dominated by leadership placepersons or self-appointed loyalists. That is despite the introduction of one-member-one-vote elections for constituency Labour Party delegates, in the full face of leadership opposition in 2009.

The last remaining vestiges of resolution-writing persist in the form of Contemporary Issues (no more than 10 words) with a 250-word backgrounder aka a resolution, or an Emergency Motion.

So how are members of a local Labour Party branch expected to get their heads round a seemingly complex issue like devolution and the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum? From a leadership point of view, we are not expected to. Fullstop. Shut up and accept the leadership line. To a greater degree that works with the Parliamentary Labour Party.

So there in a few sentences is a process-driven insight into calls for devolution. Treat people like idiots and there is a risk of revolt.

The resolution I published yesterday here followed concerns raised pre-Conference by branch members about the lack of debate inside the Labour Party about of either demands for devolution or action required post-referendum, and my own reflections since. One of my comrades who was most keen to see the issues discussed emailed me after the result of the referendum highlighting the results for independence in local authority areas that form part of the so-called Labour heartlands in Scotland.

Risks to the Labour vote in Scotland in the run-up to the 2015 General Election can not be understated. To rise to the challenge, Labour leader Ed Miliband needs to hear from disparate voices inside his party and those that support Labour's values.

Resolutions are one way of providing such expression. Amendments are a transparent means of highlighting differing points of view to that proposed.

 

 

 

Is Ed cosying up to Tony to pop the question? Payback time

Today, Labour's National Executive Committee is doing what has become an all too familiar routine two month's before the Labour Party's Annual Conference - nodding through the arrangements to fleece members and deny them a voice. Or may be not. We'll find out soon enough. 

Meanwhile, I have been trying to make sense of last week's headlines following a fundraiser at the Emirates organised by former No 10 director of communications, Alistair Campbell and featuring a reported return to active Labour Party service of his former boss, Tony Blair.

Inevitably this set the wires humming and the tent flapping. Is the Labour Party really going to benefit by a public display of gritted teeth? The official line is that the former prime minister is to advise on the post-Olympics legacy. I can't help wondering if the continued fragility of the Party's finances isn't the real driver. Labour's 2011 accounts are due to published shortly via the Electoral Commission website. There was still a substantial seven figure sum of unsecured debt to be repaid according to the 2010 accounts. All of it was incurred on Blair's watch to finance the 2005 General Election campaign. Even I who regularly remind my avid readers that Blair nearly bankrupted his party, financially and politically, would be more forgiving, if Ed's cosying led to payback time.

£10 million, Mr Blair, that would do nicely.

Language in Labour Party politics: an apology?

ConDem housing benefit policy changes have occasioned the use of vivid metaphor to illustrate what is actually involved for many tens of thousands of people. Leading Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee apologised this morning on BBC Radio 4 for using the expression 'final solution' in her column on the subject on 25 October. Here's the context:

Rent was always the glitch in the benefit system, and Beveridge never found a logical answer. Well, here at last is a final solution he never considered: put all poor people in distant dumping grounds where nobody wants to live because there is no work, then call them workless scroungers, lacking in aspiration for the children they have taken out of class to throw together in schools where nobody's parents work. 

Chris Bryant MP for Labour and Boris Johnson, London's Conservative elected mayor have both used the expression 'social cleansing'. Johnson ramped up the debate referring to Kosovo, where events triggered by Serbia's then dictatorship were a stark reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. Four days on from Toynbee's use of the expression 'final solution', there is much greater public awareness of the issues surrounding the ConDem's intentions regarding housing benefit. There is a severe shortage in inner-city areas of social housing for large families, and private landlords have become increasingly greedy. All of us us in the Labour Party have to put our hands up and admit that in government under former leader Tony Blair we completely failed in our responsibilities to tackle these issues. A recovery plan was initiated under Gordon Brown, but it was woefully late and the electorate punished us. We are going to have to apologise for that if we hope to win back the electorate's trust.

Whatever Labour's shortcomings nothing justifies the ConDem proposals. By the use of vivid language a political outrage with profound human consequences is now better understood. It seems likely that the political consensus will settle around the expression - ConDem social cleansing:  a policy driving relatively poor people mainly in work and their families out of their homes to be replaced by better off people.

Earlier this week. I was pilloried on Luke Akehurst's blog for the use of the German expression "Obergruppenführer" to describe the current and former London Labour Party regional directors, or regional secretaries as they used to known when I first joined the Labour Party. An apology was demanded.

It is childish, tasteless, insulting and gratuitous to use a title associated with the organisation that perpetrated the holocaust to describe Labour Party officials who have been trying to deal with very complex and volatile political situations in a professional way.

What's more, as Party employees they can't answer back.

Peter should apologise to them. This is completely uncomradely and unacceptable language.

I might oblige Luke one day, not to mention Terry and Ken, whom I know well, like and have worked with closely from time to time. My current self-appointed task as a member of the Labour Party is to illustrate a fundamental and now long-standing internal organisational problem. Ed Miliband has 'inherited' a party structure and operational culture which is, for the most part, inconsistent with the needs of a democratically-run, solvent, ethical 21st century mass political party in which members have a proper say.

There is a highly disciplined command and control structure operated by Head Office staff through eleven regional parties - with their own 'boards', but staff answerable and accountable to a 'super' regional director at Head Office. There is a veneer of accountability to the Party's National Executive Committee. De facto control is in the hands of the senior management team, answerable previously to No.10, at least under Tony Blair. There is incontrovertible evidence that they had started to develop their own agenda when Gordon Brown was in Downing Street. Now Ed Miliband's leadership is at risk, unless these issues are dealt with. We know that Luke and Labour First members believe the staff can do no wrong. But that is not the experience of too many other members. So I am open to suggestions as to how the key post holders should be described given the current command and control culture, and the urgent need for change.

Unity pleas must not mask a deep rift over how the Labour Party is run

A HH:MM:SS countdown to the Labour Party Leadership announcement adorns its website. A gradual swell of pleas for unity can be anticipated ahead and after the declaration. The political fight has to be taken to the Tories. Who could disagree? Livelihoods of millions of people whether in or out of work for whatever reason are under threat from the ConDem's mismanagement of the budget deficit.

All the more reason to expose and seek to heal a long-standing rift over how the Labour Party itself is run. Rift? What rift? It's between the democratic centralisers and the democratic socialists. There was a time, it is said, when Party staff served all sections of the Party. No longer. Throughout Tony Blair's period in office as Leader, Party staff were deployed to serve the Leader; and with increasing ruthlessness. Remember the fiascos over the leadership of the Welsh Assembly, and who should run in 2000 as Labour's candidate for London Mayor?

The lingering stench of democratic centralism continues to pollute the Party as was all too evident at this week's pre-Conference National Executive Committee. A prolonged campaign of interference in the rights of Labour Party members in Tower Hamlets to select their own candidates for public office reached fever pitch with a mini-hysteria led by Acting Leader, Harriet Harman, her husband, Jack Dromey, aided and abetted by NEC chair Ann Black (seeking re-election on the self-styled Grassroots Labour slate) and the General Secretary Ray Collins. Swift action by the new leader to replace Collins and other HO staff has been called for on Left Futures. That's easier said than done. There is a deeply engrained democratic centralist culture espoused not just by Labour Party grandees and HO staff, but supporters at every level of the Party. John Harris in the Guardian on Wednesday caught a facet of this culture in his Comment piece Labour's right will roar back. He asked:

What has happened to the party's right? Most of its remaining number are clustered around MiliD, and aside from the odd pop at "Red" MiliE, keeping shtoom. But do not be fooled: they are as fired up as ever, and preparing for a return once the membership gets back to leaflets and balloons.

Note Harris's appreciation of members as sentient beings. The centre-left has no coherent vision or message for members disenfranchised in constituency parties frozen in time by the National Executive Committee awaiting the outcome of a ConDem government boundary review, which will take years. The machine's dogged resistence to parliamentary prospective candidate reselection needs to be recognised for what it is - a sitting MP's insurance scheme. I'm a Chartist. I support annual parliamentary elections as the most effective means of holding our elected representatives to account. But given recent experience the least Labour could do is reintroduce compulsory reselection. Where  there is no Labour MP, CLPs should be encouraged to come up with not just consituency, but branch development plans. These should link fundraising, local/national campaigning and political education to fight every parish, town, district, local and regional government seat. Alliances can be forged with community groups. It is a mammoth task. The new Leader should seek a rapid start on this work.

In doing so s/he will have to be mindful of what the NEC is actually proposing at Conference in Manchester. To encourage local initiative (not), it is proposing a rule change to oblige all party units to transfer any property it holds in trust or owns into the name of the Labour Party. It is sequestration in defiance of the wishes of countless benefactors dead or alive. Why? To bolster the national Labour Party's balance sheet increasing its assets at no financial cost. I doubt my ability to organise a sufficiently vocal protest to get  the proposed Rule change withdrawn. But if the new Leader wants to send a clear message to members s/he could useful insist at the NEC meeting on Sunday that sequestration is deferred pending an open and transparent consultation.

As I said at the NEC on Tuesday soundings undertaken by the outgoing Treasurer Jack Dromey were utterly cynical. They took place over the summer holiday period between the second half of July and 17 September. Worse, sound reasons for having a coherent property policy are being used to cover up the scandalous breakdown in financial governance arrangements of the Labour Party without the lessons being fully aired, understood and addressed. In the absence of proper budgets and management accounts, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I should not  trust HO with my membership subscription, let alone a bequest . 

In the quest for change in the Party, relations between Leader and individual member and political levy payer/affiliate awakened by the 4-1/2 month long campaign have to be built on further. Reform of policy-making and encouragement of debate taking on the Tories should not be confined to Westminster but extended to everywhere people live and work. Here there is an opportunity to rebalance the Party's federal structure. New Labour squeezed the affiliated trades unions' representation on the National Policy Forum - to around 1/6th. But it left the TUs holding a disproportionate number of NEC seats - 13/33 who continue to fulfil a praetorian guard function for the Leadership. That compares with just 6/33 for constituency reps. TU representatives also hold the whiphand on the NEC organisation committee. Those whom I have encountered in my two year term on the NEC are temperamentally unsuited to managing discipline in a voluntary organisation. Put simply they have forgotten the need for carrots. Sadly, they have abandoned any regard for natural justice as evidenced in former MP Ian Gibson's deselection last year, and latterly over Tower Hamlets. There should be equal representation of affiliates and CLP representatives on the Organisation Committee, and in the coming year it should be chaired by a CLP representative.

A really bold Leader would tackle the representation of women in the Party's structures head on. An opportunity to set a 50% minimum for elected places in the Shadow Cabinet was lost on Tuesday thanks to the sisterhood. Acting Leader Harriet Harman failed to secure the votes in the PLP ballot. The NEC failed to hold the PLP to account. When I questioned the status of the PLP inside the Party, i was told by self-professed equalities champion and General Secretary Ray Collins that standing orders were outside the scope of the Rule. Not true, every CLP and local government groups SOs have to be approved by the NEC. When I protested NEC vice-chair Norma Stephenson moved next business, which was promptly adopted by NEC chair Ann Black. There are sound reasons for the PLP to be brought explicitly within the scope of the Labour Party's Rule Book when it comes to Party policy and financial governance arrangements. A thoughtful Leader on Sunday morning would ask for a rethink and suggest that the PLP SO changes should be put to Conference with an NEC recommendation for immediate adoption of a minimum of 50% elected places for women. Then a political education programme is needed to both encourage women to stand as Labour candidates, and branches and constituency parties to choose them.

Finally, there is the question of accountability of the Leadership. The Party hierarchy has already fixed an indefinite term of office, contrary to Rule, for Deputy Leader Harriet Harman. Nomination papers for Leader and Deputy Leader should be issued each year. The democratic centralists have ignored this since 1997. If the new Leader wants to reconnect with members s/he should insist that nomination papers are sent out. it gives every member the chance to say: "You are doing a great job, I will renominate you" or "Hang on, you are not, I will nominate another member of the PLP". The democratic centrist fear chaos, and bizarrely are proposing a Rule change in Manchester. That has been  described by Left Futures as a "wreckers' charter". If that is intended to stir up effective opposition, it is to be applauded. But not at the expense of securing a commitment from our new Leader to be accountable regularly to the membership as well as the electorate.

After seven years of campaigning for membership and our critical importance getting Labour's messages across on the doorstep, I hope our new Leader will not just put the Blair/Brown years behind, but the democratic centralist practices that prolonged them beyond the electorate's patience.

Modernising the Labour Party: Blair was right, but achieved so little

Dragging my way through 'A Journey', former Labour Party leader Tony Blair's account of himself, I came across two sentences on p.42 with which I agreed. He states:

As I surveyed the wreckage of the Labour Party in the aftermath of the 1983 election, I knew change had to come about. The trade union base could not support a modern political party if it was to be a governing party.

The first sentence was screamingly obvious to everyone and anyone who was politically involved at the time. But I cite it as it implies that Blair came to a conclusion about the role of the TUs inside the Labour Party at that time too.

As I prepare for a meeting of the party's National Executive Committee tomorrow Tuesday 21 September, it got me thinking about just how little progress Blair made in practice in the intervening 27 years to create a sustainable base for a modern political party capable of governing.

That remains the challenge for our new leader to be declared on Saturday in Manchester. I believe in Labour's federal structure, linking affiliated trade unions, socialist societies and individual members. It highlights collective action in the workplace and our special interests - binding them to the values we seek to promote through the power of elected office. But there are too few voters who are both politically active through TUism or special interest groups as Labour Party members and supporters to enable Labour to pay its way. My dictums are therefore:

As I survey the wreckage of the Labour Party following the 2010 election, I know change has to come about. A new financial and political model has to be established to support a modern political party if it is to be a governing party.

I see my colleagues in the affiliated TUs, and their candidate for the Party Treasurer post, Diana Holland as potential allies in the process of developing that model. I know whoever succeeds Gordon Brown as leader will want to too. Without being overly cynical they will have to. Thanks to Blair's contempt for individual members, making undeliverable promises to rich people and near bankrupting the Party to fight the 2005 General Election, the Labour Party has become once again overly dependent financially on the TUs. It is not sustainable. Union political funds are under great pressure from increasingly impatient levy-payers and designs of the ConDem coalition. Public perceptions of old Labour have been revived.

On tomorrow's NEC agenda there is to be a set of proposals concerning assets (mainly property) held by constituency and branch labour parties. I shall be seeking deferment pending a thorough review of the options facing the Party. It is not impossible that the NEC will be advised of the absolute necessity of immediate action. I hope there are sufficient members of the current NEC who remember how they and subsequently Conference were bounced into a 50% increase in fees for full rate members back in 2006. By then individual membership was already 50% lower than it had been in 1997. Those remaining were what the economist would describe as price elastic or willing to put up with it in sufficient numbers to boost income. So it proved.

With property, the issues are different. My speculation was and remains that these assets are being used to fulfil purposes related to the fact that the Party's debt centrally exceeds its centrally owed assets. Their possible use as collateral to support Labour HQ increasing its borrowing was flatly denied at the last NEC meeting in July, though I can find no reference to such assurances in the minutes of that meeting.

The genesis of CLP/BLP assets goes back to individual and collective decisions bound in trust. As matters stand I do not trust the Labour Party with my membershi8p subscription, let alone a share of my estate. So my plea to my colleagues tomorrow is to think before we act.

As anyone with any interest in their community knows - places to meet and converse are vital hubs. While there has been some consideration during the leadership debate about community organisation, there has been little comment about where Labour people can get together. Some reflection out of the box is needed. If we as NEC members forget the critical importance of trust in that process of building new income streams - then the job of creating that alternative financial and political model will be much harder, and inevitably take much longer.

Are you listening, comrades?

Labour Party still caught in the Saviour syndrome

Labour Party members should be wary, very wary. Sixteen years ago the Party was suckered (in a manner of speaking) into believing that just one person, and only one could lead it to victory in a General Election, defeating the Tories. His name was Tony Blair.  

These sagas of New Labour were being retold just this morning by fabled spinmeister, Peter Mandelson. He recounted how under New Labour the Labour Party had been rebuilt, won three elections, and everything in the the world was just so, until that nasty Mr Brown agitated and plotted against the Saviour eventually replaced him.

Us Labour Party members, well we all had to go along with this. Ten years had passed. Then an elected one by the name of Gordon Brown was hailed by over 300 Labour Members of Parliament as the only one.

For it was writ on the tablets of Labourism that only the elected ones could name a Saviour, and so it proved. A cry went up: "The Saviour is dead, long live the Saviour". A coronation was staged. And all was well. The Saviour managed fire and flood. Until the pestilence of the Account came to pass. The curse of the unelected Saviour descended. The New Labour cherubs murmered, "Saviour, it is time to allow the people a say." "Your powers will be greatly increased." "Your opponents will be overcome". But the Saviour was content. Another year passed and a plague of bankers descended in the land. All was not well. The Treasury was stripped bare. The Saviour was forced to visit the land of the lenders to feed the people. Then it was time for the Account. The curse of the Act descended and there was no escape. The people had to be reconciled. And they were - to ConDemNation.

So the house of the Labourites was without a Saviour. The elected ones in the shadows decreed an early coronation. But the brothers and sisters in the wilderness demanded time to reflect - 40 days became more than 80. And so it came to pass. The servants of the New Labour house continued to weave and spin. Suddenly, a cry went up for another Saviour - a Party chair. How can this be, one asked. Is it writ on the the tablets of Labourism? So the scribes busied themselves and it was writ. And all was well. 

Housing - another failed market example

News from the National Housing Federation of a prediction that 2009/10 will see the smallest number of houses built since 1923 comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with market weaknesses. The lesson for Labour election strategists is that we have to go to the electorate with credible promises. We can demonstrate how Labour in government can no longer rely on market forces. Labour can show it is intervening to lift new starts now. And we need to offer bold commitments to build large numbers of affordable units wherever they are needed to reduce waiting lists, create jobs )mopping up slack in the construction industry), and training anew to keep pace with labour market shortages of skilled trades people. Tory Councils holding up house building, and /or refusing to insist on at least 50% affordbale social housing igrantin planning permission should be exposed for denying people affordable homes.

Of course,  Conservative 'shadow' housing minister Grant Shapps claims the data is "another failed Labour statistic". No, more a load of Shappstrap - it's a failed Blairite/New Labour statistic. That's why I remain puzzled by the idea that Tony Blair who vetoed council house building as Prime Minister can be of any help to Labour in the forthcoming election.

I just hope these NHF figures are a further reminder to Prime Minister Gordon Brown to reposition Labour as the party of government that intervenes in markets to ensure people's needs are met.

Labour Party NEC: Mandelson mystery lecture

As you might expect yesterday's Labour Party National Executive Committee was focussed on the forthcoming General Election, whenever that might be before 3 June. In the absence of the Prime Minister and Labour Leader Gordon Brown in Northern Ireland the Agenda was rearranged. Deputy Leader Harriet Harman and Election Manifesto coordinator Ed Miliband were both scheduled to report, listen to debate and answer NEC members' questions. But nothing by way of either advance notice or explanation helped clarify a mystery 30-minute lecture by m'Lord Mandelson on Labour's electoral prospects - all of which IMHO had been rather better covered by Harriet and Ed. The most telling question came from a colleague who must remain nameless about whether there were ideological lessons to be learned by Labour from the banking crisis, credit crunch and subsequent recession. In the light of the obfuscation that followed from m'Lord, the famous rebuke offered by former Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee to former party chair, Harold Laski came to mind. Attlee is reported to have written:

"I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome."

I can't help thinking that m'Lord's latest idea reported earlier today that former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair will join the election campaign, had it been put to a vote in the NEC might have revealed a less than enthusiastic response. And after Friday, and Blair's scheduled appearance infront of the Chilcott Inquiry, phew!

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?

Blair - 'elected Prime Minister': Alastair Campbell live at Chilcot Inquiry

Here we go again. Giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry at about 15.11 this afternoon Alistair Campbell, former Director of Communications repeated the lie. Therein rests a constitutional problem (unwritten of course), which may help explain how we ended up going to war.