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Is the Labour Party addicted to “fixing”?

May 28, 2012 12:58 pm

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Mark Ferguson

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Labour Party

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“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was”

- Once in a lifetime, Talking Heads

Last week I asked what on earth was going on in London, and Len Duvall was good enough to respond. But it was always likely that what happens in one region wasn’t confined there – the change required in the party in deep, once in a generation stuff. The rot has set in across the organisation – this very much isn’t just a London problem.

The Labour Party – it seems – is addicted to fixing.

It’s a suspicion I’ve had for quite some time now, but one I’ve tried to bury away. Of course there had been examples of what seemed like blatant stitch ups, but I hoped they were one offs, or perhaps an innocent mistake.

But there are only so many times you an believe in innocent mistakes before you start to feel like a fool.

On the same day that Len Duvall was telling LabourList readers that “the Party and its staff must seek to maintain a ‘level playing field’ in its internal elections and its internal organisational debates”, the Labour Party in the North West sent out an email to members about the (no doubt impressive) work that local NPF members have been doing. Like the London email last week, this email appeared (somewhat too coincidentally) a matter of hours before ballot papers for the NPF election (and others) began to drop on doormats.

It could be an innocent mistake, but let’s be honest – if it’s a mistake it’s a howler. Let’s not pretend that senior people in the party are unaware when party elections are held. Such emails may well be within the rules (and I’m sure they are),but the party must – like Ceasar’s wife – be not just innocent of wrongdoing, but beyond suspicion too.

Or to be crude, it doesn’t pass the sniff test. Right now – in terms of internal democracy – the Labour Party still doesn’t smell right.

The examples in London and the North West aren’t the only internal selections of which questions have been asked either – although these two areas do seem to attract more criticism than most. Young Labour elections are a constant source of accusation and counter accusation, and their precious email lists are at once strictly controlled by the party and at the same time the source of some rather questionable timing.

In many ways Young Labour (and Labour Students) elections have become an extention of the sort of thing you see in Student Unions – and it is at this early stage where the fixing bug takes hold, and once you have it it’s hard to shake. When it comes to fixing culture – this is the party’s wild west…

And this culture takes many forms. One of my favourities is the use of “convenient” venues for conferences or dates of elections (always under the auspices of saving money though). And don’t expect the Police and Crime Commissioner selections to be any different – selections for new and ill defined roles are often the worst.

The party’s fixing addiction is long standing and deep rooted, but unless it’s dealt with swiftly and forcefully, the rot will set in with a new generation of activists, and it’ll be a little deeper, and it’ll be left for another generation to return us to being what it says on the back of our membership cards – “a democratic socialist party.”

Because at the moment, some of the actions that go on in our supposedly democratic party would shame a low grade banana republic.

AlanGiles

Spot on, Mark.

I admire you for having the guts to write this sort of article – something your predecessors Draper and Smith would never have had the courage to do.

I am afraid modern politics stink – Labour seems to have learned nothing in the past 15 years.

If I were 18 again, frankly I wouldn’t bother – there seems to be no sense of decency or self-respect in political life today – little to choose from between estate agents, dodgy used car salesmen and politicians.

* Lee Morgan (1938-1972)
http://www.playhardsociety.com/ David Wilkinson

Solid post. I might add part of the reason it’s so damn easy to “fix” the votes is overwhelming apathy amongst all but the most active members of groups like Young Labour – where only a fraction of members are actually “involved”, so to speak. Getting more members engaged and involved in voting would at least exacerbate the difficulties of those who’d seek to rig things. When the only time members are hearing from groups is when they’re being asked to vote officers for one position or another it’s a sorry state of affairs in itself.

In cases where “fixing” has already taken place (let’s say a mailing list was abused), giving other candidates equal opportunity to put forward their message via the same medium (allowing them to use the same email list, say) seems like the only fair option available, yet this seems to be beyond comprehension for some. Technicalities, legalities and constitutional formalities be damned. The sniff test says it all.
- http://www.twitter.com/superaffiliate David Wilkinson
  
  UPDATE: Emails have gone out today to Young Labour members (despite most ballots arriving yesterday) which contain links to the manifestos of all North West candidates, in response to the abuse of email lists.
  
  It’s worth noting that this doesn’t change the fact that members *have* been blasting out
  endorsements of themselves via official party lists. They degrade the
  “democratic” nature of the party we claim to be and perpetuate a culture
  of fixing.
  
  Anyone who takes issue is branded as being self-interested or
  exercising a personal grudge. I have neither yet
  can’t help but find the situation appalling. The solution would have been simple enough. Either a) give
  other candidates equal access to the lists to blast in their own format
  of choice (as the perps did) or b) prevent those responsible from standing
  for office this time around for abusing their position (and no doubt data
  protection laws in the process).
Anon

Today, as ballots for the NPF fall on doormats, all YOUNG members in London receive an email from Ronit Wolfson.

Funnily enough, she is also standing for YOUTH rep on the National Policy Forum.She has far fewer CLP nominations than her competitor, so I guess she needed a bit of help from the office…This has GOT to stop.
- Chilbaldi
  
  If I were still a young ‘un, my vote would go to the other candidate on principle.
Charlie Harden

Very good observation of the current control freakery still practised by the national party. You may wish to add the imposition of all women short lists to CLPs. In Carlisle we discussed this issue during a well attended all member meeting with Labour North goons. It was obvious that despite a majority of local views against, would carry no weight whatsoever when the EC met and decided the matter. Democracy? Nah.
- Jen Smiley
  
  In our branch, only this week, women members and most men were against AWS. Only younger (New Labour brainwashed?) men maintained they were still necessary.
  The majority view was that they are demeaning and condescending and that,
  ”If sisters can’t do it for themselves by now, they never will.”
  The secondary debate was whether this resolution would have any effect.
  Majority view, “Nah.”
https://twitter.com/#!/DavidCourcoux David Courcoux

Good to see you continuing to press this issue Mark. Whilst cudos must go to Len Duvall for standing up and engaging with a topic which has previously been quietly sidelined, it is clear that even after the positive response from readers these practices are still widespread.

For example the last two Labour Party emails in my inbox:

- Firstly an email from Ronit Wolfson – vice-chair of London Young Labour – inviting me to a London Young Labour post-election social.

- Next, and I am sure entirely coincidentally, an email from my CLP Chair, which among other things reminds people that the NEC and NPF ballots should arrive soon and what candidates my CLP nominated. Low and behold, National Policy Forum Youth Rep: Ronit Wolfson.

Now in other circumstances maybe this might be seen as a genuine mistake, allowing a campaigning LYL officer to put her name to a standard invite email. However, I might be mistaken but I am pretty sure this is the first LYL email I have had for a good while – loads of facebook invites and messages but not many emails – and of those, none I can remember came from Ronit, who the LYL website tells us is the organisation’s “Women’s Officer & Vice-Chair”.I’m sure Ronit is a very good candidate and works hard for LYL but it cannot be right that in the week ballots start to arrive she is sending out an email , which appears well out of her officer remit, in her own name and to all London young members.It can only be in every member’s interest that there is an internal period of purdah for those members taking part in elections – to stop any appearance of favouritism of malpractice.
https://twitter.com/#!/DavidCourcoux David Courcoux

Good to see you continuing to press this issue Mark. Whilst cudos must go to Len Duvall for standing up and engaging with a topic which has previously been quietly sidelined, it is clear that even after the positive response from readers these practices are still widespread.

For example the last two Labour Party emails in my inbox:

- Firstly an email from Ronit Wolfson – vice-chair of London Young Labour – inviting me to a London Young Labour post-election social.

- Next, and I am sure entirely coincidentally, an email from my CLP Chair, which among other things reminds people that the NEC and NPF ballots should arrive soon and what candidates my CLP nominated. Low and behold, National Policy Forum Youth Rep: Ronit Wolfson.

Now in other circumstances maybe this might be seen as a genuine mistake, allowing a campaigning LYL officer to put her name to a standard invite email. However, I might be mistaken but I am pretty sure this is the first LYL email I have had for a good while – loads of facebook invites and messages but not many emails – and of those, none I can remember came from Ronit, who the LYL website tells us is the organisation’s “Women’s Officer & Vice-Chair”.I’m sure Ronit is a very good candidate and works hard for LYL but it cannot be right that in the week ballots start to arrive she is sending out an email , which appears well out of her officer remit, in her own name and to all London young members.It can only be in every member’s interest that there is an internal period of purdah for those members taking part in elections – to stop any appearance of favouritism of malpractice.
- http://www.twitter.com/superaffiliate David Wilkinson
  
  At least she’s not endorsing herself on behalf of the commitee. This election’s been eye-opening if nothing else.
  - GNLabour
    
    Who’s done that?
- Alan Lockey
  
  First I want to say, briefly, that I am totally supportive of everything that Mark and Labour List is doing to push this agenda. We all know what goes on. And we all know that the desire to ‘stitch up’ is, first and foremost, parasitic on our parties other great and unhealthy addiction: internecine factional warfare. It cascades all the way down the party. At all levels. There is always a nominal ‘right’ and a nominal ‘left’, yet half the time, a la Blair-Brown, it seems more about personality and control than genuine principles. Of course, to ‘win’ an election you need a faction to go out and bat for you. And more often than not factions pick you more than the other way round. More importantly, ‘independents’ and outsiders rarely breakthrough. A total nonsense. Clearly there needs to be a general – and if it already exists it needs beefing up – equality of treatment/access rule. Fine. Also, while I’m here, I am totally opposed to delegate systems of voting. OMOV. Always. We are supposedly an egalitarian party; it feels very weird, as a new member, to find such hierarchical systems on entering the party. Now, on the specifics. David, you are mistaken. Ronit Wolfson has sent out more emails in 2012 than any other member of the exec. We haven’t send as many out as usual, but you may have noticed – there’s been an election. Perhaps, as I’m on the executive myself, I’m on a smaller mailing list. However, in my inbox, I can see shet she sent out full member emails on 28 March, 5 March and 20 February. I can’t be bothered to go deeper into my gmail for more. Furthermore, as vice-chair it is entirely within her remit. Particularly as, without putting too finer a point on it, the chair has other responsibilities at the moment. Now, I’m not saying that the email isn’t unhelpful. I’ve attached a copy of it below just so members can make a fair assessment for themselves about this ‘controversy’. But really, my experience of the party is that anybody who can move from below email to connecting Ronit with an NPF candidacy will have, in my experience, already made up their minds. And probably along some sort of factional basis, mores the pity. That sort of person also makes up approximately 2% of LYL’s membership, most of whom would probably just like to come to a social. Perhaps another member should have sent the email. But lets get things in perspective.
  
  The email: ”To celebrate the recent success in the GLA elections London Young Labour will be hosting a post-election social on Saturday 9 June. The venue is still to be confirmed, but will be in a central location, the details of which will be confirmed and sent out next Monday.If you have any questions in the meantime please contact me on XXXXX or Joe Blenkinsop on XXXXXXXXXXLook forward to seeing you there,RonitRonit WolfsonLondon Young Labour Executive”
  - Alan Lockey
    
    What the hell happened to my paragraphs?!?!
    - David Courcoux
      
      Alan to be honest I think you are probably right. As I said in my original post I am sure Ronit is a very hard working and capable LYL member.
      
      My point however is that to stop situations like this happening it doesnt take much to say that those standing for elected positions should be asked to refrain from using party mailing lists. As I previously suggested a system of internal purdah for official Labour mailing lists and groups such as LYL should exist.
      
      In terms of your other point on group endorsements and slates I agree, slates are there and always will be. However if these groups choose to endorse you that is significantly different to being in a privileged position with access to party resources which others don’t.
      
      I haven’t ye decided who I will vote for, tbh it’s not top of my priorities, but. will judge all of the candidates on their statements and policy positions. My post wasn’t meant to be about an individual candidate and was definitely not motivated by factional politics, just that I felt illustrated an argument I wanted to make that to help the party, members and candidates an official period of purdah for those standing in elections would be the best solution.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

Its very obvious that some candidates in internal elections have access to resources others don’t. High time this was stopped. All candidates should be given the same access and levels of expenditure. And no more slates!
michael

We should take some lessons from the Co-operative Movement. Here democracy is at the heart of its Values and Principles and within the Co-operative Group the Officials of the Society are the guardians of the democratic tradition. Any attempt to “fix” elections by the centre would result in the election being deemed null and void and the offending Official dismissed for gross misconduct.
Stephen Bentley

I have often listened to Mr Livingstone on his shared (with David Mellor) phone in programme on LBC every Saturday morning. Following his narrow defeat in the London Authority elections Mr Livingstone said he would not be standing for public office again, he has also openly praised Mr Milliband as an improvement on previous leaders of the Labour Party and made it clear he would/does support him. As a member of the general public I’ve never known Mr Livingstone do anything connected to politics without a reason. I’m sure Mr Livingstone genuinely does prefer Mr Milliband to previous leaders of the party and I am certain that Mr Milliband is easier to get on with on a personal basis than either of his two predecessors; I am also, following delivery of the 2012 ballot papers, certain that Mr Livingstone is standing for membership of the Labour NEC, along with other members of a “preferred” slate.

Well that’s politics isn’t it? The problem is not that groups of people organise theselves into candidates for party, or public, office on shared paltforms (like the Labour Party), or that candidates use party machinery to contact the wider membership (what is the machinery there for if not to facilitate contact?), it is that we the great unwashed aren’t always quite in the know about who is on whose slate – or who is standing for what in terms of policy. So I agree that if one candidate has been given unrestricted individual email or postal access to the wider membership then so should all the others.

As for modern politics stinking and alleged dodgy dealings in the London Labour Party – well my father knew of London Labour Party politics immediately after WW2 and on into the mid 1960′s and I had always understood from him that you had to be tough as old boots to come out the right side of a Finsbury branch meeting. Finsbury was (I think) Herbert Morrison’s (Home Secretary?) power base – of whom it was said “he’s his own worst enemy” to which Ernie Bevin (Foreign Secretary) is alleged to have replied “not while I’m alive he ain’t!”

Not suggesting we go back to those halcyon days – though a spot of open debate, even dare I say it blood letting, mightn’t have come amiss in recent years. We’d possibly have been spared the endless Blair/Brown carry on for one thing and we might also have some battered old specimens on our front bench who know about earning a living; or living and trying to feed a family on the national average wage of £26,000 pa or more probably less. Something that our current people, bright, shiny and sharply tailored though they be, and ever ready with a snappy quote on football and/or the kids should mateyness be a perceived requirement of the crowd, don’t appear to know that much about.
Cat Smith

Before Ronit Wolfson was Women’s Officer and Vice-Chair of London Young Labour I held the post for two years. In that time I asked but was never allowed to send emails out in my name to London Region members.
Just saying.
http://petergkenyon.typepad.com/ Peter G Kenyon

Dear Mark

Congratulations. I am going to try and compile a spreadsheet of NEC/NPF candidates to highlight when the helping hand of Labour Party staff might have been used to advance a particular individual or slate. As for an eMail I recently received from Alan Johnson MP, promoting the Progress/Labour First slate. How did he get my address? Reports of the state of his CLP would be much appreciated.

Yours in defiance
- http://www.twitter.com/superaffiliate David Wilkinson
  
  That was sent to people on the Progress News mailing list. Attend an event, perchance?
  - http://petergkenyon.typepad.com/ Peter G Kenyon
    
    Never
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http://twitter.com/bencobley Ben Cobley

Yeah I was snorting to myself about that ‘democratic socialist’ thing only today, before reading this. We aren’t really very socialist, but in terms of democracy we are an absolute world away. Fixing culture seems to be ingrained and even encouraged in our hollowed-out organisation, dominated as it is by the various interest groups. Maybe someone needs to go around teaching everyone what the word ‘democratic’ means?
Mr Chippy

I remember under Blair come the NEC elections party members used to get a letter from loyalist (toady?) MPs recommending who to vote for. Funny all the MPs had come ‘independently’ to the same conclusion. I was going to vote for these candidates except for supporting Mark Seddon who I knew but I objected to be given a line so I asked for the list to circulate my recommendations. This was refused. So I filed a complaint to the Information Commissioners which was resisted by the Party but unfortunately ended in the MP being successfully prosecuted!
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Dave Postles

Fixing. Is this another hole in MS products: worm.win32.flame?
G Barratt

There does seem to be a problem with the Labour party. I spent the dead years of Thatcherism 1979-97 involved in various campaigns outside the Labour party, (Palestine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, etc) and the campaigners were (or seemed to be) younger and more energetic and enthusiastic.

In contrast, the Labour party seems to be tired and geriatric, hard to motivate and lacking in ideas. The organisational “fixing” is probably a way to compensate for these deficiencies, along with the heavy-handed discipline.

Another aspect of this problem is the lack of political education. A structuralist view of the Labour party is that it is “not the Tories”, so working-class people vote for it. But this does not a political philosophy make, and many Labour MPs have demonstrated quite acquisitive behaviour with their property dealings.

But then, these people are a “political class”, and quite different in background and education to the voters that they purport to represent. This has been described in some quarters as “the crisis of working class representation”. The victory of George Galloway in Bradford West may well be a wake-up call for the Labour party. Do not take the voters for granted!

George Barratt.
- Daniel Speight
  
  Perhaps the bigger wake-up call should be the recent election results and recent polls in Greece in relation to Labour’s sister party PASOK. The left of centre vote has left PASOK and moved to further left parties because of PASOK being part of an austerity consensus.
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Trudge74 as alexwilliamz

The northwest have sent an email with all the candidates with links to information, so a response on this issue. I wonder if this could be done every time as I would welcome this information.
Phillofts

Fixing of elections and selections is rife at all levels. Even fixing of selections for candidates in local elections occurs to suit leaders’ blue eyed [usually]boys. How can the party be democratic or dynamic when there is no real competition for even selection to elected positions?
- Chris
  
  It isn’t frankly. My MP (god bless her) has said something to the effect that hell will have to freeze over before I can become a Labour candidate in “her” patch again!. Rich as she does not live in the constituency. And I was here and elected before she arrived.
  - AlanGiles
    
    This is the problem. I think some of them are there so long they think they are their private little fiefdoms (Field in Birkenhead thinks he can go round spouting Tory rhetoric about benefit claimants and then when his own members dare to critisize him he has a little sulk. High time he retired – or was made to retire).
    
    Some MPs have an amazing capacity to see and hear only what they want to see and hear – for example Jon Cruddas likes top spend so much time in deep intellectual thought that he doesn’t appear to notice the behaviour of the leader of B & D Council, Liam Smith. My problem with Cruddas is this: if he is able to overlook or dismiss bad behaviour in his own constituency, what is he seriously going to do about bad behaviour amongst his Westminster colleagues?
    - Chris
      
      My MP is a true new carpet bagger (and the best argument against all women shortlists I can provide). She was waltzing around the constituency armed with a membership list seeking support before the selection process was officially in action (or the all women shortlist imposed). So as an ex Lib-Dem parliamentary candidate she got the seat! Me a Labour Councillor who after 28 years as a councillor as well as the odd bit of experiece in that role(and I’m not of retirement age and only stepped down after a health issue) gets invited to a panel interview and passes but no further. But my home town is covered in Labour missionaries from the parts of the District where they can’t get elected.
      So if I’m less than impressed with the current state of the Party when added to the cock-up over my application to run as Lancashire PCC it should not surprise anyone!
      - AlanGiles
        
        Hi Chris. on this one issue I agree with Ann Widdicombe, who though AWS were patronising. I do, too.
        
        I very much deplore what is happening (I don’t suppose Labour is the only offender) in public life now with all the stitch up’s and “arrangements”, and I frankly think it will get worse if Blair is rehabilitated and him and some of the other manipulators of the NL years get back into positions of influence. God forbid.
  - Peter Barnard
    
    You need to move to Cheshire West and Chester, Chris.
    
    For the last selections (all-out elections in 2011), all members in CW & C were sent details on how to apply for selection for the panel of potential candidates.
    
    The same will happen for the all-out elections in 2015 and all members who complete the application details will be invited for interviews to be placed on the panel.
    
    The selection process will be firmly in the hands of the Local Campaign Forum and CLPs, independent of what any MPs or anyone else may think or wish.
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Chris

Given my experience of the “incompetence” of the North West Regional Office over the PCC elections I am not surprised!!
Dave in the Lakes

Keep it in the family has sadly been a constant in local Labour selections in the provinces in my experience….maybe a voice on local Labour party could be a good tool to recruit new membership….Stamp out nepotism..join the Labour Party…

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