In defence of Compass

By Willie Sullivan

I was pleased to have confirmed in Luke Akehurst’s recent post that Progress are going from strength to strength. I do hope that he will be equally pleased that as I report here his misunderstandings over the demise of Compass are completely at odds with reality. I accept that it may be challenging for him to imagine a growing, pluralist, democratic and broad-based organisation with space to try out new ideas and challenge orthodoxies. Perhaps when confronted with such it might be so alien to his concept of what a successful organisation might look like that he fails to recognise that success.

As a member of Progress and a frequent attendee and past organiser of some of their excellent events I was slightly concerned at Luke’s description of what he sees as the future direction of Progress. He seems to want us to reject any thinking or discussion and just become a machine for getting like-minded people into position of power. This would close down a vital and valuable space for new ideas and for working with other groups, people and organisations both within and outside the Labour Party. Such an organisation looks more like the old Labour First rather than a new Progress. Labour needs new analysis and understanding and if it is truly to engage the British public it needs to tap into perspectives beyond the relatively small population of labour activists. The whole of the party needs to engage in this project.

Compass members recently voted by the 2/3rd majority required to amend its constitution to open out membership beyond the Labour Party. This followed a two month period of democratic debate and discussion which concluded that attachment to one group of political interests restricted our ability to assist in building the broad-based movement that would be required to ensure a victory for labour ideas and values as well as for its politicians.

Compass wants to try something different. It is not without risks and I always accept the potential to get things wrong. However if we do get it wrong it was on a democratic vote and with the genuine intention of strengthening Labour’s position in order to make people’s lives better. We of course expect and welcome challenge and criticism, sometimes from those who genuinely feel that we can only improve society from within the Labour Party, but also from those who understand politics as factionalism, exclusion and the narrowing required to concentrate power within their hands alone. It is important that these people are made to justify their position.

Perhaps a lesson to be learned from New Labour is that just getting your people into positions of political power is a necessary but insufficient objective. It ignores the other sites of power often beyond and outside politics which are often controlled by the right and in the interests of the elites.

I am pleased to be able to explain another misunderstanding within Luke’s post. Compass as an organisation – after a vote of its membership – wholeheartedly supported Ed Milliband in the leadership contest, and of course still does, as well as appreciating that David would have made a good leader as well. These are judgement calls made by our members in a democratic organisation. They are judgments of shades, not the gross over-simplification of black and white, wrong or right, for us or against us, Compass or Progress thinking that so impoverishes politics and blinds us from seeing the world in its messy multipolar reality. It is only when we try to be honest enough to see that messy reality that we can come up with real and effective policy interventions. I know there are those in Compass and in Progress who agree and disagree with this position. Lets continue the debate.

Willie Sullivan is the Compass Scottish Organiser and a Labour Councillor