My Love/Hate relationship with Labour

By Susan Nash, Chair of Young Labour

Things I love and hate about being in the Labour Party?

It’s the people that make it. A cliché but so true – when I was thinking about what I loved about Labour I kept coming back to the people who’ve inspired me, taught me so much, the people I’ve met in this organisation who helped me navigate our structures, or recognised the avenues for discussions when it seemed like some in parliament weren’t willing to listen.

It was those inspiring, energetic and resilient young members who inspired me to run to be Chair of Young Labour. However there is another side to this coin; when I look back I see how much of this was down to luck, a combination of chance meetings and conversations with highly engaged activists, or the opportunities available through Labour Students. Too often someone’s entire experience of the party hinges on how active or well connected their CLP chair or MP is, or whether they discovered an active socialist society.

Members alone cannot return Labour to power – our policy review must reach out beyond those in our movement and listen to the voices of those that more importantly do not currently support our cause. But members are an asset we must invest in and better utilise.

Just yesterday I was told how a young supporter had tried to join the party, but after 5 months was still waiting on her application, when she enquired what had happened she was passed from pillar to post, and unable to get a resolution. Not exactly the red carpet you’d hope for.

Members have come to Labour in their thousands since May but new members currently get little information on the variety of ways they can contribute or participate. I remember from when I joined several letters about donating but very few letters about helping spread the Labour message through recruiting, organising events, blogging, or developing a local campaign. I was time rich but monetarily poor but the information I received didn’t consider that.

Not everyone wants to sit in meetings in a drafty hall on a Thursday night, whilst some are passionate about their local community we shouldn’t assume that the only contribution you can make is through a structure based around your geographical area and not your interests, your skills, your expertise, your identity, or the time you have to participate.

For young members these changes are urgently needed in Young Labour. We need a website, a young member’s pack, the freedom to more easily set up Young Labour groups. We also need the ability to contact our members, and to aid young members to be able to talk to each other – to self organise and to mobilise. We need the ability to discuss and create policy and campaigns about issues affecting young people today.

But for this to happen in Young Labour and beyond we need staff not spending so much of their time facilitating, managing or at worst controlling the local party bureaucracy and more staff capacity freed up to map out our members and opportunities for people with different interests and skills to volunteer to central or common tasks and aims. We do it so well for some things – like the leadership election, the referendum, or for the general election short campaign.

Staff should be freed up to act more like other membership organisations in the modern age and identify members who are tapped into organisations and networks we need locally or nationally, identify members with talents in areas we need more volunteer support, staff who can offer different avenues for action to the people currently languishing in a branch meeting wondering how they came to be there.

Young Labour will be hosting events across the country in coming weeks to encourage young members to utilise this opportunity to transform the party. We will be encouraging members not just to look at Young Labour but think how they want to change the wider party.

And come conference I hope that our Young members can start to see the small progress we’ve made to welcome new members, and give young members a greater voice within the party.

You can find out more about Refounding Labour, and explain what you Love about the party (and what you’d channge) here.