‘Connecting to Win’ was an event jointly organised by Labour Values and Movement for Change at Labour Party Annual Conference 2011 in Liverpool. The aims of the event, in which 55 party members from all up and down the country participated, were to (1) share successes in developing our membership and working with our broader communities; (2) consider the challenges we face with this work; and (3) identify practical next steps we can all take.
Developing our membership
How have you supported or developed other people?
One-to-one (a public individual conversation with another person) relationship building and to involve and understand people’s interests. Listening activities with our membership to gain their ideas and involvement. Making it possible for everyone to participate (e.g. disabilities) and supporting them to achieve success with the skills they have to offer. Helping young people learn, come through and take on roles that interest and excite them. Online activity (e.g. for carers), facebook, twitter. Saying thank you – simple but important. Created a culture of campaigning that achieves something. Developed the social dimension of the local party.
Challenges and obstacles experienced
Party rules. Lack of transparency and openness in the formal processes and decision making of the party. Lack of information about how things work and decisions are made. Too much talk in meetings without anything to actually do or work on. Exclusive language, jargon and culture that turns people off. The council being obsessed with council business and nothing else. Disconnect between Labour members and councillors. The local party being oblivious to the community outside. Branch meetings becoming too parochial. Existing members making too many assumptions on meeting new members. A lack of standardised membership materials and information to properly welcome people to the party. Older members forcing leaflet rounds on new people so they run away. Too much top-down managerial control and solutions imposed. Socials always held in pubs. Local activists who aren’t necessarily members – e.g. young members in Muslim communities and how we involve them. How to create sustained activity for people to do outside of the electoral cycle and campaigning that is relevant and enjoyable. Bringing people into party structures that are often complicated to explain. Risk that party embership is seen as a fee only, rather than something to commit to or participate in. Self-selecting group of white, middle class activists. Very few people doing everything. A lack of money to support the training and development of people. No-hope elections that mean people don’t want to be involved.
Actions we are going to take to develop our membership
Engage and listen to new and young members and invest time in them. Explain the structures to people in simple language. Trust members with information about each other, enabling them to build relationships amongst each other. Develop a membership pledge, rather than a membership requirement. Finite terms of office to ensure new blood is involved. Themed meetings on relevant topics, no pointless General Committee meetings (GCs). MPs supporting other CLPs where there isn’t an MP by e.g. attending GCs. Provide childcare expenses where necessary. Provide food and refreshments at meetings. Take on risky and exciting campaigns that really meet the interests of our members and community to get them involved.
Communities and change
How have you taken action to improve your community (with other organisations)?
Working on the issues that people care about – e.g. parking consultation. Running a listening campaign in Lambeth on domestic violence and street safety. Transformed voter ID in Oxford by asking people what needs to change in their area. Attending other local organisations’ meetings e.g. vicars’ meeting in African churches. Working with the community to clear the park. GC business gets in the way so we have moved bureaucratic business to the Executive Committee (EC) and are freeing up the GC for action-focused work. We have made sure campaigns have focused on developing the talents and skills of the people involved, not just solving the issue, this ensures we develop people and we ask who will we develop as we plan a campaign and take action.
Challenges and obstacles experienced
The sense that we talk big ideals and yet can’t change small things on the ground. Not managing expectations about what we can achieve. Holding meetings at times when people
can’t attend. Members who are not prepared to change the way we do things. The complacency of incumbents who only care about their position. The imbalance of power within and between local community organisations. Councillor and MP casework creates a culture of doing things for people, not with people. Demands from the central party as to how constituency parties should campaign. Recognition of people who don’t want to, or can’t attend meetings. Ward meetings are an irrelevant waste of time and a duty not a pleasure. Councillors who see themselves as sign-posters to council officers. Weaving together MPs; councillors; members; non members; supporters; organisers and public to achieve success and involve all. Accountability of each other to ensure things get done. The question of how community campaigning work can be scaled and sharing principles for this. We are unsure what a successful target to set ourselves is in terms of community campaigning, i.e. what is realistically successful.
Actions we are going to take
Ensure General Committee meetings have a section on community and how we are working to actually improve things, not just talk about improving things. Employ local organisers paying them £25k a year and fundraise to do this (can we match fund with the central party?). Candidate contracts and commitments (both language used) that are agreed and support to ensure they are accountable. People kicked out if they don’t deliver. Change the culture in our local areas by finding community leaders and working to
organise and involve people in taking action. Involve supporters in elections. Better online communication to raise awareness of community related work. Collaborate across wards, CLP’s and borough boundaries to work on natural geography rather than just election maps. Develop active local councillors to take up issues and involve people in tackling them. Win local and practical things to build positive energy, rather than pessimism for over promising and failure to deliver. Bring people together to recognise what communities they are in and feel positive about this. Develop tools for activists e.g. websites, a proper community campaign toolkit, support to set up websites. Develop young people as Labour leaders with a clear pathway of training, especially for low income young people. Mentoring of new members, formalised and one-to-one to ensure their development is successful. Person specifications for candidates which emphasises the experience of community campaigning and taking real action. Acknowledge community related work as action in itself, not just something people put up with on the way to winning an election. Conduct action-focused campaigning to ensure different conversations snd different data collected. Develop a bottom-up local labour party campaign plan. Support local CLP chairs and other roles meet to discuss and share good practice. Develop focused community campaigns on taking action to involve and develop new activists. Facilitate more national issue campaigns locally with better national campaign material that can be more easily tailored for the local level.
I tried out the Oxford Labour method of asking people what they want to change about their local area, and I was really surprised by how well it worked.