Gordon’s right – we didn’t finish reforming the Labour Party

By Andy Taylor

Any movement for change needs two things. Movement and change. Witnessing the Obama campaign in Ohio confirmed a doubt in my mind that the Labour Party is properly structured for either.

In terms of the Obama campaign itself, I can think of no better analysis than that given by Democratic strategists Stan Greenburg and James Carville, in their piece entitled ‘The Extraordinary Campaign‘, in which they say “Obama’s election was produced by an extraordinary shift in the way the citizenry gets information and relates to candidates and the Obama campaign’s ability to exploit that at every level.” I encourage you to read it.

I defer to them in analysing Obama’s campaign, but in concentrating on what we can transfer to Labour campaigns, I am reminded of a party meeting shortly after the 2008 local elections. Everyone agreed that the national situation, and especially the 10p tax row, had severely depressed the Labour vote, and given us the worst share of the vote in many years. However, the ray of hope was an analysis of voter contact. Where there had been a sustained and wide-reaching campaigning effort to knock on doors, deliver leaflets and make phone calls, our support had held up, with Slough, Liverpool and Oxford doing especially well.

The moral of the story for me, from the global significance of Obama’s victory in the USA, to Labour winning control of a council, is the importance of voter contact. Of course, parties need to have a winning message, based on sound policies positioned to target the groups of voters you need to turn out. Mass media is vital in reaching the vast majority of the electorate, but however well crafted the message, well directed the broadcast or well targeted the issues, it is still a blunt instrument, targeting broad voter groups.

Likewise, the huge untapped potential of internet campaigning could reap huge rewards, regardless of what Eric Pickles thinks, particularly for activists and active floating voters looking for something to identify with, but for the many, not the few, the front door remains key.

A great success of the Obama campaign was in building a self-sustaining network of supporters, who would recruit new supporters, who in turn would be asked to contact and recruit yet further new supporters. This not only gave the campaign reliable information on who were confirmed supporters and who required further encouragement, it was also done hand-in-hand with the funding operation. As we saw at the end of the campaign, Obama’s financial dominance was based on countless donations of twenty or so dollars, which allowed him to push McCain much harder in swing states and broadcast the unprecedented half hour campaign ad on prime time television.

It was this sense of a network, a growing movement for change, where conversations were encouraged between neighbours, not on a glib script from party headquarters, but from the simple idea of someone knocking on a neighbour’s door and telling them why they were supporting Barack Obama. There is a supreme confidence in that simple act, as there is always a risk that you don’t know what people are saying in your name, but that is exactly why it works. Parties like to control by hierarchy, but popular movements work better as networks, eschewing scripts for shared values and personalised messages.

Ultimately, I believe a five minute conversation on a doorstep is the most powerful means of turning a floating voters. They are gratified by the direct contact, by being asked about their concerns, to be given the chance to question and, yes, sometimes to complain. Phone calls are pretty good, personalised letters and emails are OK, but the effort and exposure of canvassing door to door is noted. For Obama, the advantage was to, in effect, introduce him personally at the door. For Labour, it will be about taking on criticism, but reminding people of what has been done, and what we need to do.

US campaigns have the advantage that they are essentially reconstituted for every election, and the candidate’s campaign sits in parallel to the party machine, and so they get the campaign they want. I am increasingly aware of the disparity between that freedom and flexibility, and the standing structures we have in the Labour Party, the CLPs, BLPs, ECs, GCs, LGCs etc. Tony Blair’s reforms of the party structure in the 1990s, the creation of the National Policy Forum and the huge changes to the organisational structure which built the Millbank war-room, were strictly at a national level – they worked, but they didn’t necessarily empower.

The local Labour Party still exists in a world of committees, evening meetings and socials that a fraction of the membership gets involved in. I do not doubt the dedication and hard work of those who work within that structure, but it does not serve our position as a campaigning movement for change. There are many honourable exceptions, I am sure, but the countless anecdotes of new members being excluded, of meetings dominated by agendas and minutes and of time spent debating extravagant resolutions.

The strength of the Obama campaign is that it stretched well beyond Democratic membership, where many others not only felt part of a wider movement, but would actively campaign for new supporters. We should look towards a reform of the Labour Party’s structure which supports these wider networks, and sustains the kind of coalition of support we had for the 1997 campaign and beyond.

There seem to be two separate issues to address. Firstly, that party members have an important role beyond campaigning, in acting as consultees for the development of party policy, though it often takes a significant suspension of disbelief to imagine that is anything beyond symbolic. Secondly, we need a structure that goes beyond party members, and beyond the existing Labour Supporters Network to encourage the kind of self-sustaining movement witnessed in America. We can then ask people who identify with our values, people who are active in other movements and campaigns which cross-over with our own, not only to vote Labour, but to ask other people to do the same.

There is a generational issue here. The age of tribal politics and mass membership of political parties is over, as are the stricter class divides of previous generations. Many people are still politically active, but not necessarily along party lines, with issues like the environment, globalisation and human rights taking prominence. In purely practical terms, the modern work-life balance leaves less time for other activities, and a far more mobile work and family life means that people are less tied to specific areas. People are getting information and connecting with one another in different ways, from watching YouTube videos, to communicating and joining groups through Facebook and Twitter.

There is, of course, a stark necessity to maximise the number of Labour votes, but that must arise from a genuine movement for change, what Gordon Brown called the progressive consensus, and following what Bill Clinton told the 2003 Labour Party Conference, that “we are the changemakers”. We used the powerful ‘time for a change’ argument to win in 1997, but we are now at risk of becoming the victims of the same charge. We have to prove that the change people supported in the past is happening, and ask them to support the future progress we want to make. That relies both on us having a clear vision to promote, and a motivated army of supporters on the ground, spreading the message and mobilising new and former supporters.

In clear resource terms, we no longer have the funds to direct everything from party HQ, even if some still want to. We must rely on the capacity of the party and the wider Labour movement to build a yet greater movement for change. But this should not just be done out of necessity, it should be done to ensure that the Labour Party attracts new members, attracts new generations and shares the same perspective, aspirations and means of communication as they do. It should be done to counter the prevailing mood of anti-politics, and the sense that the parties occupy the same ground.

Somehow the left, from centre to extreme has always liked committee meetings and acronyms, but it invariably becomes exclusive, rule-driven and byzantine. Let’s now look to a review of the party, which is at once democratic, and yet also focused on active campaigning. It should allow greater input for party members into policy making, but encourage support and activity much further beyond the party membership. It should build communities of interest, as well as geographic communities; just look at www.barackobama.com/people for all the different groups of supporters, who were each building their own networks according to how they identified themselves by ethnicity, interests, profession, sexuality and so on.

Let’s build a campaigning network that drives a self-sustaining movement for change, that encourages a broader political conversation in workplaces, places of worship, social groups and in other movements, such as environmental groups, charities or student unions. Some worry that this could lead to the narrow factionalism of our party’s not too distant past, diverted by narrow causes and finely worded motions that didn’t ignite public interest, but we are a movement, not a single campaign, and we are all free to bang our own little drums as long as we don’t forget that we are a movement for equality and progress above all else.

We have a duty to the millions of people for whom a Labour government committed to tackling poverty and poor life chances is their only hope of getting on in life. We must remain a powerful political force, our values demanding excellent public services, responsible markets and sustainable progress. We must ensure that from the bottom to the top, we are able as a party and movement to make the best of our overwhelming talent, passion and drive, and continue to defeat the essential pessimism of conservatism.

This article forms part of a wider pamphlet being produced on lessons from the Obama campaign by those on the Labour Staff Network/Young Fabians trip. More details soon.