Ever wanted to gnaw your arm off at a CLP meeting?

Diary of a benefit scrounger

By Sue Marsh

Have you ever sat through a Constituency Labour Party (CLP) meeting? Have you ever wanted to gnaw your own arm off while someone stumbles through an Agenda so long it feels like you’ve been there your whole life? Have you nodded off while proposing and seconding motions, scripting resolutions or discussing policy forum proposals?

Me too. But still I go, and I play dutifully by the rules and almost nothing ever happens at all.

By the time of the 2010 election, I felt so exasperated by my party, so impotent and so ignored, that I began to believe nothing could or would ever change. Then, David Miliband launched Movement for Change and for the first time in years, I felt a little glimmer of hope try to break through the cynicism.

Movement for Change aimed to re-unite Labour with its original aims – those of Keir Hardy. It was a grassroots movement of direct action and community. It wasn’t prescriptive – no-one told you how your particular movement in your community ought to work – it simply gave you the training and confidence to go out and ask what needed to change, then the tools to make sure you got results, not more empty promises.

Ethnic groups and minority groups forgotten by their local representatives rushed to the M4C banner. There was an energy and a thrill at the big London Rally that I hadn’t seen before. It was empowering and finally seemed to offer a way of reaching out to the millions and millions of people who don’t even vote, who think politics has no relevance at all to their lives.

At conference, Ed Miliband promised to take the movement forward and yesterday, Mark noted an article from the Guardian announcing that together, Ed and David would do just that.

It doesn’t take long for the critics and cynics to crawl out of their comfort zones though does it?

This piece in the New Statesman seems bent on undermining M4C in just about any way it can. In fact it’s so distorted I began to wonder what their agenda might be? The article isn’t even always factual:

“Movement for Change had a big meeting at party conference which started full and ended up with less than half that number.”

That must have been a different meeting to the one I went to then. Ed Miliband addressed a M4C meeting at conference so full that there weren’t enough chairs for everyone – even a few MPs and SPADs had to stand at the back craning their necks to see. How about this snippy little comment?

“What is need(sic) is a professional root and branch re-organisation. What we appear to be getting is the establishment of a people’s militia.”

God forbid people should actually organise their own affairs eh? Doesn’t that comment highlight just how Labour as a grassroots movement has lost its way?

Whilst the M4C idea originally came from a group called Citizens UK, the article tries to imply they are one and the same thing. The author of the article feels M4C will be “a total, unmitigated catastrophe.” Don’t hold back then, say what you really think.

Well, I was there. I went to the rally in London in August, I went to the meeting at conference and I went on the training. People up and down the country started to organise action in their own communities – fighting cuts, making communities safer and more to the point getting results. I set up my own blog as a direct result of Movement for Change. Without boasting, the fact that I’m writing this today for LabourList points to at least a modicum of success.

Anything that challenges the status quo, that suggests we can do things differently, will face opposition and criticism – particularly from the very structures it aims to supplement. That doesn’t mean it can’t succeed though. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother even trying. 34.9% of the UK didn’t even vote at the last election. That’s almost as many votes as the Conservatives received to claim “victory”.

In my opinion something that has the power to make them think about getting involved again should be embraced.