Two remarkable results, but at the same time very different outcomes. In Thamesfield, it was the Conservative vote that collapsed (they hung on to less than a third of their 2010 vote), while in Southfields the Conservatives held their own vote (the only impressive thing about the result for them) while the Lib Dems were wiped out in a ward they came second in just six years ago.  The key to Labour’s success in both has been being better at turning our own vote out: 74% in Thamesfield, an even more impressive 82% in Southfields.

How?

First, we won the communications war.  The Conservatives in Wandsworth are lamentably bad communicators once you strip away the “lowest council tax” message (which is possible in by-elections when that’s not at stake). We made sure we got a high quality, full colour four-page newspaper out before election expenses started, and another, smaller scale newsletter with the street name risoed on at party offices to make the campaign relevant to each voters’s street or block.  We delivered direct mails: mailmerged postal vote applications for known Labour supporters; a letter to EU voters letting them know they could participate; issues direct mails for specific parts of the ward.  We delivered pollcards and an early morning leaflet, again personalised to each street, before polls opened.

The key was keeping it local: not talking about the NHS Bill, Ken’s fare deal or anything else that was entirely irrelevant to the things people were voting on.  Voters aren’t stupid: they want reasons to vote on things relevant to the election at hand and in council elections that means council issues and local candidates. Our communications are all on http://www.electionleaflets.org/constituencies/putney

And we made sure we had a twitter feed, facebook page and local website – though as with Thamesfield these were not especially well used by voters.

Second, we canvassed – hard. The Tories targeted just their supporters and uncontacteds: we called on everyone.  No slicing and dicing of the electorate for us: we needed Tory and Lib Dem switchers and (although the result looks like we just won over Lib Dems) we got them.  We started with a decent promise of 1,800; by polling day we’d turned that into more than 2,300 (bear in mind Wandsworth has huge wards of 12,000 voters).

Third, we knew that the problem in a ward like Southfields was turning our our core vote in the north of the ward: in the tower blocks above the Wandsworth Southside Shopping Centre for example.  So we based our campaign centre in the north of the ward for the first time, within 5 minutes’ walk of that estate and other low turnout but solidly Labour communities.  And we went back time and again, with our GOTV team offering to take supporters to the polls there and then.  For the first time in recent history we can at least say that turnout from these areas matched rather than lagged the overall turnout.

Fourth, we used a traditional reading pad system. To be honest, with the number of volunteers we had, a computerised system wouldn’t have coped and a WARP system would have wasted precious time contacting those who’d already voted – and we needed the visualisation of the Labour battleground that reading pads gave us. For the first time in recollection at one point in the evening we had every street and block in the ward being “knocked up”. We also had a telephone GOTV operation run from outside the ward targeting those more far-flung corners of the ward we were less likely to call on as often.

Fifth and finally, we picked the right candidates in both Thamesfield and Southfields. Candidates who knew the scale of the task before them but wanted to win; wanted to serve their areas. Candidates who the voters could see “one of us” reflected back at them. This was critical in respect of Southfields especially because our entire campaign was structured around our choice, Josh Kaile, being a local resident and the Tories parachuting in an outsider.  I suspect the new Tory councillor will spend the remainder of her term of office being recognised as the “Tory from Tooting”.

There’s one final group who were key to our success and that’s Wandsworth Conservatives.  After 34 years in power locally they’ve become arrogant, complacent and lazy campaigners.  They thought they’d gerrymandered Wandsworth enough that they didn’t have to fight elections seriously – not believing that Conservative voters would ever get sick of their laziness, their shocking planning decisions, their neglect of core services like safe pavements and clean council estates. They picked the wrong candidates: if they’d gone with one of the locals who wanted the seat in Southfields they’d have removed in one stroke the centrepiece of our campaign there. Instead, they imposed an outsider and resignations of long-serving Tory members followed. Their publicity was lamentable: they even managed to put Southfields tube station in completely the wrong place on a map in one of their leaflets.

None of this is rocket science. Pick good candidates, put together good, locally relevant communications, canvass everyone – in Tory wards we need to win Tory voters or at least make them unconcerned at the prospect of us winning – beat our opponents on every aspect of the ground war, work hard, get out the vote.

Wandsworth Conservatives have so lost touch that some of them believed they’d actually get a swing to them in this by-election.  They didn’t think they needed to do any work in Thamesfield. They thought they could parachute in any old favoured candidate of the council leader in Southfields.  They’ve been thumped, twice, as a result. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer collection of Conservatives.

by Adam Gray

It has always been difficult to ensure that Labour’s political representatives were representatives in more than just name. One of the major difficulties was always the sheer cost of such an exercise. The trades unions and the cooperative movement initially provided vital financial support to the people’s representatives but many suitable people could not consider the prospect.

Opposition resentment at Trades Union support culminated in the House of Lords in 1909 declaring such financial support illegal but the calamitous effect on this for democracy was soon recognised and in 1911 an Act introduced salaries for MP’s. Now, provided you won your election you need not have money worries. And a greater variety of people, including women, could consider standing for parliament.

But there is another problem tied in with candidates finances that is increasingly threatening the democratic process in much the same way as the lack of a parliamentary salary did. This emerging problem is about being a candidate i.e. the first stage to becoming an MP.

It is getting harder and harder financially for putative candidates to put themselves forward, often more than once, to get selected. And as before, when candidates drop out for financial reasons the democratic process is impoverished. The variety of candidates is reduced and with that the variety of skills, experience and vision available to parliament is also reduced.

The estimate before the 2010 election was that the ‘average’ candidate spent about £4,000 of their own money on promoting their applications for a Labour winnable seat. These costs included printing, publishing and sending out their canvassing material and travel costs, which sometimes including overnight stays. A different cost is taking time off work which is increasingly a no-no especially if the putative candidate does not work in a political environment.

Since then the Party has started making some welcome changes for the early parliamentary selections which include (for short-listed candidates) limiting the canvass material they can use and tightening up the rules on contacting members. You also no longer need the nomination of a branch or affiliate organisations, but to be long-listed, you can seek the supporting statements from branch and affiliate organisations.

These changes will help aspiring candidates who are restricted by both time and money to be competitive in a selection contest for a Labour winnable. It will therefore help ensure there is a greater variety of candidate available for CLP’s to choose from.

But there still needs to be further changes.

Firstly there is still nothing to stop Labour MPs announcing their retirement 3-4 weeks before the date of the general election – just before the short campaign begins. This is not good as it doesn’t allow a candidate enough time to embed themselves into the constituency, particularly if the notional Labour majority is small, but it also means the CLP has no control over the short-listing of candidates where the NEC assumes responsibility. Although in some cases NEC shortlists can actually be a way in which the national party can promote under-represented groups, it’s still important to create a fair and transparent process for all aspiring candidates and to end the perception of ‘parachuting candidates in’. The Party needs to make formal sanction that all Labour MPs, regardless of whether they have been reselected through a trigger ballot, to formally announce 3 years into a parliament where they wish to restand or not.

Secondly some of the changes brought in for the early selections are a step in the right direction, but there is still an issue of aspiring candidates who work full-time whose employment income is their sole support, as well as those with family commitments, are still hampered from being competitive in a winnable Labour parliamentary selection. In the person specification issued by the NEC for prospective Labour MPs, its asks for ‘other life experience’ outside of the Labour Party to include voluntary sector, public service and work, family or caring experience that is relevant to the position of an MP.

In order to ensure that we have Labour Parliamentary candidates and ultimately Labour MPs to have those crucial life experiences, we ask the NEC to investigate the possibility of bringing in a bursary for aspiring candidates who have those crucial experiences in helping to them to be competitive in a Labour winnable parliamentary selection contest.

Unfortunately what we are see are large parts of the PLP who have been a product of a career path that is getting more and more homogenised and therefore less and less representative. The fact that the last leader’s election was composed only of Oxbridge candidates – four of which were former special advisors – was not an endorsement of quality but a snub to Labour’s voting public.

We hope that members of the NEC find our arguments constructive. We want the Labour Party to have parliamentary candidates that members of the general voting public can resonate with, which we feel would help no end in ensuring the election of more Labour MPs – and ultimately bring about the return of a Labour government.

by Jonathan Slater (Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Aldershot in 2010) and Gill Gray (a former Labour South East Party official)

This article was posted first on LabourList, from where it has been reproduced here.

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.

From my own experiences of community politics, and seeing celebrated examples like Birmingham Edgbaston, Tooting and Westminster North, I felt – and feel – that this should be the norm for the party as a whole. With this in mind, I decided to get involved in Labour Values.

That is why I’ll be attending ‘Connecting to Win’ at Labour Party Annual Conference, an event being organised by Labour Values in collaboration with Movement for Change. Building on the excellent work led by Peter Hain during the first phase of Refounding Labour, the event will bring together organisers, campaigners and leaders throughout the party to share, learn and help build a future team that can win again. By winning we mean: winning with our members and communities to change our local areas, develop people and return a Labour government to power for generations to come.

In our submission to the Refounding Labour consultation, Labour Values stated that for the party to have a clear, positive vision for the future, major cultural change is required to build and support the membership, supporters and activists who are our most valuable asset. Other suggestions in our submission included:

- The party should employ local organisers who offer support, training, resources and expertise to local party units in order to promote effective community organising, campaigning and recruitment. These paid officials would also be responsible for helping develop local leaders who can then take on the role of training others.

- The party structures need to adjust to this new set of priorities – a membership unit should be established and the party ought to pursue a network based’ model in preference to command and control.

- Greater power should be devolved to local party units, as and when merited, once new skills and competencies have been developed – the party should offer greater autonomy.

- The party’s approach to fundraising must change: it has to become an integral part of being a member.

- Policy formulation should be restructured in order to draw on the wealth of expertise contained in the party membership. World class ‘Get out the Vote’ strategies are essential if the party is to win.

But we don’t, of course, have a monopoly on the answers: there were over 5,000 submissions, demonstrating the health and energy of the party. We need to involve, harness and energise further.

Our Conference event will have three main aims. Firstly, to invite key campaign organisers from individual CLPs to come together and share good practice. Secondly, to represent some of the proposals that Labour Values and Movement for Change submitted to the Refounding Labour consultation. Finally, to identify some leaders who will take forward and implement the changes needed within their local CLPs.

If you are interested and would like to attend our event in Liverpool, please email jamieaudsley@gmail.com

Jonathan Slater was Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Aldershot in 2010

This article was first posted on LabourList

This was the case in Yeovil where in the 2010 general election I ran as the Labour Parliamentary Candidate. It was an uphill struggle with few activists, poor local organisation and little support from the party. I was left to my own devices to get things moving; as best we could we got members involved and in the year preceding the election we established a small but dedicated campaign group with constant doorstep activity.

It is perhaps hard to convey to people in active urban CLPs how refreshing it was, in a rural constituency, to form a campaign team and to take them out canvassing. In an area where Labour has not knocked on doors since 1997 simply to get campaigning again felt like a huge achievement. I think people on the doorstep were just as surprised to encounter a Labour candidate. I distinctly remember being asked by the owner of a convenience store “why are you bothering?” followed by the all too common assertion “you’re never going to win here”, as if reciting the most nauseating claims of Lib Dem election literature.

But while frustrating, with the prospect of inevitable defeat, I believe we made a real difference. We worked hard and, in doing so, did demonstrate that even a small group of Labour activists can be a force for change in areas without Labour representation. With few means at our disposal we focussed our efforts on Yeovil’s East ward – my plan was to help the local party build campaign infrastructure, develop campaign skills and to lay the basis for success in future elections. The ward we selected had many issues
such as poverty and out of control anti-social behaviour. In talking to people on the doorstep we identified a sense of frustration and could see a community which needed something to change.

At the heart of the ward was a community park which had become a haven for trouble. This wasn’t helped by the park having virtually no lighting which meant people were too afraid to venture through it. It had already been the site of numerous assaults
and with no lighting the darkness seemed to compound the problem with criminal behaviour taking place in anonymity. I believed that if we could do one simple thing – rejuvenate the park, starting with the lighting – we could restore some faith in the power of politics to bring about change. We used the staples of community organising – first striking up a conversation on the doorstep to
identify a problem, then setting out to solve it. I created a petition and with a small group of activists in tow we knocked on doors. I visited community groups, often just popping in, and spoke frankly about what I wanted to achieve. Within days we had collected hundreds of signatures.

In being active in the community I had built some strong relationships with a few journalists at local newspapers – they were probably more amused than anything at the idea of a third place Labour candidate who didn’t know when to quit – but we got them to print our story on the front page of the newspaper which helped to build a sense of momentum. This was the story of a community neglected fighting to improve itself and sort out its own problems.

With so much attention being given to our small issue and with so much pressure on the council I used the opportunity to meet with council officials, presenting our petition, and speaking with them about the viability of getting something done. That we had caught their eye and won over local people, speaking for the community, was more important than the fact that we were not Labour Councillors – they visited the site, agreeing with our assessment of the problem. We kept up the pressure with a letter-writing campaign in the local papers which refused to let the issue go quiet. I knew that when people started approaching me, without provocation, asking about the park and where we were with our campaign that we had something special.

We had no formal power, no councillors, but we had successfully backed the Lib Dem councillors into a corner over the issue, only
made possible through engaging the community and getting people on side. The key part in our campaign, and the ultimate reason for its success, was because we spoke to people, kept in touch and built momentum. As a result we initially secured a £104,000 commitment to upgrade the park lighting; there now stands a brand new park with new play facilities and new lighting. Sure, we did not force councillors to give the money – we couldn’t – but we won people over and made it impossible for them to do nothing. This was a success of community organising and ultimately the power of communities when working together to bring about change.

As futile as things can seem in the South West, I believe this shows that Labour is still relevant. But we need a different kind of
approach if Labour is to re-build its base of support here; community organising can play a central role in establishing outward looking CLPs rooted firmly in their communities through bottom-up campaigning. We must take the initiative and involve the public -too often in the past we have talked at people and not with them. Our regional offices need to recognise that we are more
than an electoral machine but also a movement for change. It isn’t all about elections – they are a means to an end but not the end itself. And I am sure that if Labour were organising in this fashion in places like Yeovil it would be a big step towards reviving our electoral fortunes.

Lee Skevington was the Labour Party’s Parliamentary Candidate for Yeovil in the 2010 General Election

Whether Iain McNicol or Chris Lennie is chosen to succeed Ray Collins, they will take the organisational helm of a party united in its determination to reconnect with its lost voters, and with a leadership equally determined to plug itself back in with Labour members, trade unions and affiliate organisations. The contrast with 1979, and even 1997, is stark.  As Ed said last month:

“Old Labour forgot about the public. New Labour forgot about the party.”

Amid the excitement of watching the emergence of ‘new improved Ed’, and as we await the results of the policy review, it is essential the party takes Refounding Labour seriously. The expertise, ideas, energy and commitment of those organisations, CLPs and individuals who responded is a unique resource. A good start would be to make the consultation responses public.

When a few other London-based activists and I set up Labour Values last year, it was because we had seen how Labour activism and well-run local campaigns could connect with people and buck national trends. We believe in a Labour Party that becomes a mass-participation progressive movement, that empowers members, activists, and supporters with the tools and resources to transform their communities, and that invests authority in the people and groups that deliver this change.

Our submission to Refounding Labour reflects these principles and the lessons from the case studies of good practice we have collected since the general election. To succeed, the party must devolve power and responsibility, giving local party units the tools to do the job:

• The party should employ paid local organisers to offer support, training, resources and expertise to local party units in order to promote effective community organising, campaigning and recruitment.

• Party structures and culture need to be based around a network model, rather than command and control. We need to flatten party hierarchies, move the leader’s office to party HQ when in opposition, establish a new membership unit at HQ, and (save for coordination during elections) disband the regional offices.

• Greater power and autonomy should be devolved to CLPs. We should embrace supporters as well as members by allowing maximum attendance and participation at party meetings, short of voting. And let’s allow the party to organise at the workplace, not just where people live.

• If we really are to become a broad-based movement, the party’s approach to fundraising must change. We should exploit online tools for small donations, as 38 Degrees has done.

• World-class Get Out The Vote is necessary for the Party to win. Contact Creator should have a more intuitive front-end and be deployable on smart phones.

• We should be in permanent campaigning mode, with a healthy blend of listening exercises, activism for local change and issue-based coalitions with other community organisations.  Community organising vs winning elections is a false choice.

None of this is rocket science, and little of it is original: best practice is out there already, we just need to share what works, and let local parties choose what’s right for them. Refounding Labour is an historic opportunity. We need a General Secretary who will help us seize it.

Andy Hull is a Labour Councillor in the London Borough of Islington and a co-founder of Labour Values

This post first appeared on Labour List

I personally felt that on this issue the Labour Government was on the wrong side of the argument. Also, a lot of the Nepalese I met in Aldershot were Labour supporters and couldn’t understand why the Labour Government were not allowing Gurkhas who had  fought for this country prior to retiring in 1997 to settle in the UK or to have equal pensions.

As a result, I made the decision to campaign for this community and to lobby the then Labour Government to reverse its policy.

I started a petition requesting that all Gurkhas received equal pensions to all those who served in the British Army. My strategy in order  to gain as many as signatories as possible was to target a part of the constituency that had not been seen as Labour-friendly: the armed services family living quarters in Wellington ward. With the help of Labour activists like Alex Crawford (who is now a Rushmoor Labour councillor for Heron Wood ward) and former Gurkhas we collected over 2,000 signatures by going around the married quarters and received universal support for the petition. I organised a street stall in Aldershot Town Centre with the local Gurkha community on the Saturday before the Labour Party Conference in 2008. I was amazed by the sight of residents literally queuing to sign when I had a street stall in the Town Centre.  A week later, I presented the 2,000 signatories to the then Minister for Veterans, Derek Twigg.

Then, at the beginning of 2009, I co-ordinated with the then head of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Gurkhas, Martin Salter MP (former Labour Member for Reading West), a signed letter from 29 Labour Parliamentary Candidates that was sent to the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The letter asked for a change in the immigration policy for the Gurkhas following the High Court decision in September 2008 which requested a review of current policy.

I was very fortunate to be supported by a hard-working Labour Group of 6 councillors led by Cllr Keith Dibble. This proved invaluable to me as a PPC where together with the Labour councillors we were able to campaign effectively on local issues concerning the regeneration of Aldershot Town Centre and turning former MoD property into more social housing. It also gave me a campaigning base to build on where I didn’t need to start from scratch.

I think, with the Peter Hain review, the Labour Party has a great opportunity to embed certain changes needed in the way we campaign.

Firstly, the Party needs to support our local councillors who provide the basic campaigning infrastructure that will lead to the Party’s recovery. Without any local government base, it will be impossible to win back the constituencies we lost in May 2010 as well as establishing a base of support to win in constituencies where we have traditionally been in third place.

Secondly, the Party needs to clearly define the role of individual PPCs who are fighting in unwinnable seats to be given clear instructions on what is expected of them in terms of leading campaigns in the constituencies where they are standing as well as supporting neighbouring marginal constituencies. I feel appropriate PPC contracts for all candidates in both winnable and unwinnable seats would be the answer.

Finally, I feel community organising needs to be fully integrated within the Labour Party and be a precondition for the selection of Labour Local Government and Parliamentary Candidates. CLPs need to receive more training from the centre where models of good practice which achieve a high turnout of activists are replicated and effective campaigns are carried out on a shoestring which both myself and the local Labour councillors were able to do in Aldershot.

by Jonathan Slater, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Aldershot in 2010

With the re-launch of “movement for change” there are some important debates that need to be started within the party, but also a few that we really need to move beyond.

We should stop debating whether community organising is an ends or a means, whether it is about winning elections or empowering communities.  It is both. People can prioritise and see the sequencing in different ways, but we can still all let’s get on and do it.  As Anthony Painter pointed out in Uncut on Feb 4, when the original Chicago modellers hit the barriers of political power, they shifted their techniques to “hard” direct party-political campaigning.

But beware straw men in this “organising as means or ends” debate. Community organisers are well aware of the importance of who wins an election to achieving and delivering on community empowerment objectives. Similarly, even those who see community organising in purely instrumentalist terms, as basically a great technique for recruiting door knockers to up our contact rates and get out the vote, don’t believe that winning elections is the sole function of the Labour party, but that empowering communities matters too. Differences in emphasis, articulation and ideas about what causes what don’t mean there should be oppositions of either principle or practice.

Anthony Painter emphasises that we shouldn’t be looking to pick a winning model right now, but need more experimentation and evidence. I would go further and suggest that we shouldn’t be looking to pick a single model at all. There is no single approach to organising that will work everywhere or for everyone. Context matters – in terms of party, people and place. Our organisers need to be given a full range of models, skills and techniques that they can select from, experiment with and adapt to the situation they find themselves in. A central London or Birmingham constituency is likely to respond very differently to its counterparts in the semi-rural home counties or the industrial heartlands of the North.

So the movement for change is an approach that should be central to the future of the Labour party, simultaneously as a way of winning elections, re-engaging with communities and empowering people. But the movement cannot mean everyone marching in line and in time. Rather, it should be seen as an approach to experimenting and skilling up a new cadre of organisers armed with a wealth of techniques and approaches with which to support our activists, supporters, members and comrades.

We need to try different approaches and collect the evidence on how and why they work. What we must not do is pit them against each other or encourage factionalism around particular schools of thought or practice.

The Labour party needs the movement for change not just to transform communities, but for those very community organisers and communities in turn to transform the Labour Party.

by Karin Christiansen (originally for Labour Uncut)

Karin Christiansen is part of Labour Values and a contributing author to The Change We Need.

With this lucky position, though, comes responsibility.  When you know your electorate this well, you don’t get away with bog-standard Labour pledges created in some far-away London meeting room.  The only focus group that mattered to me – my friends and relatives – was one that would have no hesitation in telling me if I got it wrong.  During the election, I knew that my offer to the voters of Wirral had to be right.

I grew up in Merseyside during the 1980s and 90s, when the employment picture was pretty grim.  As a young person, I chose to go away to university in London, believing that this would offer better chances for jobs, and many I knew did similarly.  But Labour in Government re-addressed the regional balance, and the 2008 recession saw only half the level of unemployment in Merseyside than in 1992 for us – a massive success, bearing in mind the size of the crash.

The chair of Wirral South CLP, Frank McCoy (who very sadly died in August) and I talked about this at length.  Though retired, he had been the trade union convenor at Vauxhall Motors, and explained how the union had campaigned through the years for training, skills and investment.  In doing so, they had secured new manufacturing opportunities – and work – for several generations of my constituents.  Meanwhile, I was talking on the doorstep to working families, who read about falling prospects and were worried about the life chances of the next generation.

Through the fog of the 2010 general election, Frank’s foresightedness made me think about what I could add.  How could I build on this vision, where modern manufacturing, and other trades, offered Merseyside’s young people a chance to build a career? How could we involve not just those who needed an opportunity, but their families – from grandparents to brothers and sisters – in standing up for young people?

The answer was to make apprenticeships our top priority.  Labour had made great strides: in 1997 there were just 90 apprentices in Wirral, but in 2008 this was up to 1300.  Still not enough for all those who applied, but a platform on which to build.  The Labour-led council had their own programme, assisting small and medium size businesses with the cost and recruitment of apprentices.  So we had a great Wirral Labour success story too.  I quickly realised that we needed to go much further for our young people, and that this would take a community campaign.

We wrote to thousands of people and asked if they agreed.  If they did, we asked them to send back a freepost postcard, signing up to the campaign and giving their reasons.  We received some heartfelt feedback: a lady describing an apprenticeship as a ‘golden ticket’ for a person’s future, and a gentleman who said that young people having better skills benefited us all – wealthy or not.  With the permission of those who joined the campaign, we used these quotes in our leaflets, showing that the community really could come together to back our young people.

Gordon Brown visited Vauxhall Motors as part of his General Election tour, and made sure to meet their apprentices. His message of government intervention to back our future economy was well received.  We invited regional economy minister, Rosie Winterton, to meet some apprentices at the local training centre.  She followed up by leading a discussion in the local community centre with those who had signed up to the campaign on what Government and businesses could do to bring down barriers to companies taking on apprentices.

We built on the press coverage for these events by highlighting the campaign in my election address, and made sure all campaign volunteers knew how to sign up supporters on the doorstep. Our local Labour team was small, but strong, and having a very clear local pledge helped motivate volunteers and voters. It was, and is, a constant reminder of what politics is actually for.

Labour might not have secured enough seats for a majority in the end, but it was campaigns like ours in Wirral South that denied Cameron a majority.  We listened carefully to people, to their fears for our future, and involved the community in campaigning for the right solution.  This work is still ongoing, and I hope I am able to be a better champion for my home town –  and for apprenticeships – now that I am their Member of Parliament.

by Alison McGovern, MP for Wirral South