The era of persuasion

By Julian Ware-Lane

Keith Dribble has written an interesting piece for Progress on third-placed Labour candidates. It could include second-placed candidates where second really is a long way from the winning line.

I finished third this year in a seat we won in 1997. Christine Butler’s amazing win in Castle Point was on a similar scale to Stephen Twigg’s; she did not get anything like the publicity that Stephen got because Michael Portillo was a much bigger national figure than Bob Spink.

Both Bob and Michael made it back to the green benches, although Portillo chose the softer option of a super-safe Kensington and Chelsea seat.

Keith’s article goes on to talk about a Third Place First campaign, and this illustrates the importance of Labour campaigns in areas where we do not normally win. Castle Point is a borough that Labour controlled in the 1990s. Now we have no representation on the council; in part due to the selfish petulance of Dave Blackwell, in part due to Labour’s unpopularity.

Fighting every seat is something that is a bug-bear for me. Too often we do not put up candidates. In my neighbouring local authority of Rochford the English Democrats fielded more candidates than Labour this year. This distorts our vote share, deprives many of a democratic outlet (imagine being the voter given a choice between Conservative and the BNP), and throws away a chance to not only win, but also recruit and fundraise. Some of our strongest membership areas are in Tory strongholds.

I wonder whether we organise ourselves correctly within the party. Each local party is organised on constituency boundaries, boundaries that change frequently and will change again in this parliament. Local authority areas are often split across local parties, although some constituencies join together to keep their town ‘intact’ politically. Local Government Committees in my experience are always subservient to CLPs. Perhaps we should organise on local authority boundaries, with a parliamentary committee to serve the needs of Westminster elections and MPs.

I was lucky in Castle Point in that the constituency boundary was co-terminus with the borough boundary. This definitely made life easier over a long campaign. I was a candidate for almost three years, three years in which there was one parliamentary election, but three local elections (and two by-elections). Since there are more local elections, and since most people more readily identify with their town, borough or district than to whatever the Electoral Commission dreams up for their MP (and equalisation with further destroy any hope of constituency identification), organising on these lines makes sense (to me, anyway).

What is true today is that the era of merely identifying our vote is passed. We have no majority, we now have to persuade. I think a change to AV will help us campaign better, I also think that putting candidates up for every election and campaigning everywhere will put us on the road to political recovery.

The little mentioned reality for all parties nowadays, and especially for Labour, is that grassroots parties are very often on their knees when it comes to activism. Despite the recent membership rise driven by Clegg’s duplicity there is still a need for more members. We have flogged to death the areas identified as ‘key’, now we need to attack virgin territory, territory where received wisdom says we cannot win.

No election should be a foregone conclusion. If we believe we have the right message then let’s take that everywhere we can.