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The Labour Party isn’t “them” – it’s you…

May 31, 2012 9:05 am

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I want you to do something for me today. I want you to ask a friend, collegue or maybe even a family member to tell you what the Labour Party is. The results, I’m willing to bet, will be illuminating.

Some will tell you the Labour Party is Ed (Miliband or Balls), some will say Blair, or Brown – and someone is bound to muddle up their Milibands and tell you it’s all about David. They will probably think of the Labour Party as men in grey suits (always men) on their televisions, shouting at each other in wood panelled chambers or talking in jargon in well lit TV studios. Politics feels distant from their lives, and the way we do politics only serves to push people further away.

Fortunately though, there’s a remedy to that – because the Labour Party isn’t them, it’s you. It’s friends and neighbours, workmates and the man who runs your local shop. It’s your doctor, your electrician and your old school teacher. It lives and breathes in the world around you. But people don’t know it. Our members are the party’s greatest strength – their relative invisibility is our greatest weakness.

In recent weeks, I’ve been helping to run a by-election in my local area. And it’s been a fantastic experience. Not because I love elections – although, here’s the thing, I do – but because of the people I’ve met while I’ve been campaigning. Because whilst messrs Miliband and Balls get the attention and the limelight, the Labour Party couldn’t survive without the unsung efforts of Labour activists, the happy(ish) few prop up the party through sheer force of will.

You all know the types – the person who never seeks elected office but is always the first one out to canvass. The longs serving Treasurer who expects nothing back from the party but gives so much of themselves. The chair who IS the local party. Unsung heroes. Unrecognised. Not thanked often enough. Not spoken of loudly enough. Not thought of as the Labour Party.

But they a though. As much, if not more, than anyone else. Thank you.

Now go and ask the person next to you who or what the Labour Party is. And then tell them, the Labour Party is you, too.

P.S. – As I’m campaigning in the by-election today that means posting will be a little light. It also means I’ll miss Jeremy Hunt at Leveson which I’m hugely disappointed about. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

P.P.S – If you happen to be in London and want to campaign in the by election for Labour, you can find us all day at 104 East Barnet Road (next to New Barnet Train Station).

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  • http://twitter.com/_DaveTalbot David Talbot

    How apt, Mark. 

    I always find it really quite humbling when I go round my home constituency of Stratford on Avon and speak to members – many of whom I have now known for years and count as friends. We’re in an unwinnable constituency, with no Councillors since the turn of the last decade, but I know that come election time I can count on them to knock on doors, deliver leaflets, man stalls, do the accounts and attend meetings. All for the greater good of the Labour party, not themselves.

    Good luck today

  • AlanGiles

    Good luck Mark – I wouldn’t worry too much about missing Hunt – just try improving your aim!. Seriously, I dare say he has been “coached” in what to say, as David Cameron has been (apparently he was taking instruction a few weeks ago – he was being “advised how to act”, though I suspect it’s too late for that – he should just flail his arms around like he usually does).

    As for what the Labour party is – let’s hope whatever it is, it won’t be a return to 1997.

    * Tubby Hayes (1935-1973)

  • aracataca

    This is a really good point and always worth remembering. It’s us who are the Labour party. The idea that the Labour party can be both (and paradoxically) lumped together and individualised (ie through the use of terms like Blairite) at the same time is self evidently nonsensical. This kind of view is propogated all the time on here by contributors like  Alan Giles and Treborc and imho should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

    • treborc1

      Silly child.

      • aracataca

        Thanks for your kind, generous and intelligent comment. I can see that, as always, your comment is expansive, it has been carefully thought through and delicately nuanced. Very well done.

    • AlanGiles

      Perhaps if Blair and Mandy and their pals hadn’t made such efforts to take the party over and pursue it in their own image – if they hadn’t used the poisonous Alistair Campbell to brief against any cabinet member or MP who had the guts to disagree with their own myopic little view of the party, perhaps then I would deserve to be treated with contempt, but given that they did, and that there are still Blairites crawling in the sewers of the party (both in Westminster and on LL) trying to turn the party ever more rightwards, I would respectfully suggest that I am entitled to treat your critique with the contempt it deserves.

      ____

      Getting so p!ssed off, can’t be bothered to find you any names or dates, all so far today have had the flute in common

      • Redshift

        Out of interest Alan, where are you from? I mean if you re/joined with say 5 other locals do you not think you would have a fairly significant impact? I mean 5 people all year round is a solid base of a campaign team or the core of a CLP’s officers if it wanted to be. 

        To me you scream of labour values and the exact kind of person we need in the party. Hell, if you spent half the time you spend on here debating (and I’m not for a second saying there is anything wrong with that) organising in the party/for the party I’d wager you’d make a fair impact. 

        • AlanGiles

          I doubt it, but it is kind of you to say. I was born in East London and didn’t travel very far – I live in Havering, but as our local organiser is Mr John Reid who frequently posts on LL, and given his views – often expressed – about “left wing nuts” etc I don’t think it would be a very happy experience for either of us!. It reminds me of the Herbert Morrison/Ernest Bevin situation. You probably know it – somebody said that Morrison was “his own worst enemy”, Bevin replied “not while I’m alive he isn’t!”. 

          Sadly, when I see the ToryLites coming into the Party, I sometimes think, frankly I’d be better off to go to the Greens. I often feel we are fighting a losing battle, especially now Blair is ingratiating himself with Blair. Still, let’s not get morose…..

          • AlanGiles

            Sorry should have said “Blair ingratiating himself with ED, but come to think of it, he probably does it to himself as well

          • aracataca

            When are you off?

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=36910622 Edward Carlsson Browne

             5 people joining the party is also a significant voice in internal debates. Given the sanity of your local organiser and the standard we’ve achieved in recent results in Havering, it’s probably enough to get a better organiser, for a start.

        • aracataca

          Nice one Redshift. Funniest thing on here for a long time.

      • aracataca

        Thank you for your kind and measured comments.

      • aracataca

        Following on from what Redshift  said, I think your ideal role within the party would be as a regional organiser preferably  in one of our tougher regions such as the South West or the East. Your marvellous insights, boundless energy, generous spirit, oodles of free time and enormous capacity for rational, well-honed and balanced argument could be used in motivating local branches and CLPs and boosting morale. You could be just what Labour are crying out for. Go for it Alan.

        • AlanGiles

          Considering that a little further down the page you wrote:

          “Nice one Redshift. Funniest thing on here for a long time.”

          and

          “When are you off?”

          I can only conclude your aptitude for sarcasm suggests that you are a pre-teen girl.

          One of the reasons I actually left the party was because people like Blair were turning the party into a slightly paler blue version of the Conservative party, and – frankly – lickspittle “supporters” like you, were prepared to go along with any jerk to the right Blair and co prescribed, because of your arse-licking loyalty,  was hypocrisy personified.

          Examples abound: when Purnell instituted Freud, people like you thought that was OK – after all, Purnell was “Labour”  wasn’t he? – he wore a red rosette after all – when the coalition carried on with the same policies by the same man, they were seen for the evil that they were by the same “Labour” supporters.

          The signs were there for the peering at right back in 1997: on the night Blair was entertaining himself with some pop singers at No 10 leaving his minister to force through benefit cuts for single mums, who was forever popping up on radio defending the measure?: Barbara Follett. Of course, as the wife of a millionaire author, who was indulging herself as a Blair babe for pin money, she knew about the poverty of single mums, just as multi-millionaire investment banker, knew all about the poverty of the long term sick and disabled.

          Even now when arch hypocrites like Byrne and Chris Williamson post articles on this site, people like you are so anxious not to rock the boat, you fail to point out their hypocrisy to them, but under your silly little screen name, you are more than happy to critisize those of us who do have a mind of their own and independent views, ladled out with your stupid puerile sarcasm.

          If people like you are the future of  Labour, along with the “Purple Booker”, and Messrs  Reid, and  ”Dore” , if that is his real name,  and young blokes in a hurry  to become MPs like Jon, then, frankly, the party might just as well throw it’s lot in with the coalition, because where policy is concerned there is little practical difference  (“cutting slower” is a real cop-out, a cliche’, which means nothing) , where  decency and integrity is concerned, as the expenses scandal revealed, you are all as bad as each other.  Indeed, you deserve each other, because supporters like you are so supine you are prepared to put up with anything, just so long as the right wing of the Labour party decree it. Those of us who disagree, are treated with contempt by the likes of you.

          Please stop your idiotic responses to me, because I am not answering any more of them, frankly you are a waste of space and not worth bothering with, but when you lose the next election, don’t come complaining.

          • treborc1

             They will have no idea what so ever what your talking about, I’m afraid Tony is an idol  to these people, and sadly they see no evil…..

  • Johndclare

    Thank you.

  • Dagon

    The upper echelon of the Labour Parliamentary Party determines party policy absolutely. The Labour Party may not officially only be “them” – but it’s policy agenda IS completely decided upon by “them” based on the media, polls, focus groups, surveys and psephology.

    The question used to be: What should we do to make life better for all?

    The question is now: What should we do to make life better for us?

    The tail now wags the dog. 

    • AlanGiles

      Totally agree.

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