Refounding Labour Submission: An Outward Looking Party
By Emma.
Constituency Labour Parties vary wildly as do their individual issues. It is the case that the most active and vibrant CLPs are to be found where there are also elected Labour members. However, it has been my experience, that those CLPs without elected representation are often those who came to feel most disconnection from the central party and least able to have any say at all in how the Party is run, how it formulates policy and how it governs. With no MP over whose final vote the CLPs might have an influence, and with policy seemingly presented to them often as a fait acompli, these areas lost members and energy because all but a very loyal few could see the point of their membership.
If – as I hope – we are to open up decision making to members far more and make that process more transparent, this may start to attract those members in the Tory heartlands whose active membership is essential to giving Labour voters a sense of some Labour presence, but whose rewards for doing so are often scant at best.
I don’t believe that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to managing CLPs. There isn’t a magic bullet that is suddenly going to make CLPs across the country lively and vibrant places to be. There are however plenty of good ideas out there. So far the Party has presented CLPs with a somewhat binary choice for change: remain with a GC structure or open up to all member meetings. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and work for CLPs of different sizes and characters.
I suggest that the Party produces a booklet sent to every CLP Secretary and updated every 5 years with a series of menu options of differing approaches to local structure, and best practice advice for each. At CLP AGMs, as well as choosing officers, CLPs could also vote on how to conduct their business over the forthcoming year, picking and choosing from different parts of the booklet and deciding how they want to run themselves. While this might make the AGM a lot more procedural, it should avoid procedural wrangling during the rest of the year, as procedure – as well as those who implement it – is chosen by all CLP members.
I suspect it would not lead to massive upheavals year upon year, but would give members who felt their CLPs were not operating at full capacity a chance to debate how to change that without forcing an officer’s position on them, something to which not everyone is inclined or suited, nor always able to invest the time and energy required.
Doing this annually also gives CLPs an opportunity to test what works and what doesn’t and a duty of CLP secretaries should be to report this back centrally for further compilation and discussion. This helps the Party to be an enabling framework, rather than a rigid bureaucracy, but also ensures a realistic amount of two way communication and responsibility.
Labour need to look not just at affiliated unions, important though this is, but also at the Socialist Societies and how they can help to link in with community groups. For example, local and active members of SERA are likely to be an excellent bridge to local environmental campaigns which are tied to the community.
While it is essential that Labour is involved in local communities, we need to remember that people – particularly in the 21st – engage in communities far beyond where they live. The world is changing, and the Labour Party needs to change with it. New ways of linking with people that a decade ago we wouldn’t have known existed make it much easier to make real and valuable human connections on a global scale. In light of this, Labour needs to look again at what we mean by communities and community activism. We need to recognise that the way people identify as communities is evolving.
In the past, it was only those with money and considerable leisure time who could engage in communities of interest that were not geographically based. Now anyone interested in a particular issue can learn from and engage with others and these groups bear all the hallmarks of communities. Labour must engage these communities too as we reach out to look outside of ourselves to broaden our appeal.
Thankfully, Labour uniquely already has an excellent vehicle for engaging with these communities of interest. Labour’s Socialist Societies make up a wide range of communities and interest groups formally affiliated to the party. There is a wealth of knowledge in these organisations, and a depth of commitment to bettering the policies of the Labour Party as a result. I have been proud to run one of the societies in my time, and now serve on the Executive of another and am always proud of the contribution we make to debates both in our own expert contributions and our ability to pull in knowledge from outside the party. I am also currently the Secretary of the Socialist Societies Executive, a group formed to ensure cross society cooperation in the best spirit of the Labour movement. We work together on projects to bring together policy expertise, for example on green homes, or the effect of education on health outcomes.
I am not and haven’t been a councillor, so I feel my opinions on this section should carry far less weight than those who do dedicate their time and energy to the party in this way. However, I do feel that there can be a compromise between meeting held for their own sake and no meetings at all.
Labour Housing Group are currently trying to organise regionally based networks of councillors with housing responsibilities or opposition housing briefs to share best practice, campaigning and policy expertise. This is an uphill struggle, as it is at present almost impossible to get the national party and the staff to assist in the promotion of such an event (I don’t mean dedicating staff time, but sharing email lists with trusted affiliates (or even sending email invitations on their behalf)) that few others are even attempting what could be a valuable way of having councillors network, inspired, better informed and working together to formulate Party policy.
