We must grow our volunteer offer

Community organising has become something of a buzzword in Labour circles of late, but what does it really mean? There are fears from some campaigners that it is set to replace rather than compliment more traditional forms of campaigning such as Voter ID and leafleting. Luckily a new pamphlet from the Fabian Society dispels some of the myths and shows through some fantastic case studies how community organisation enhances political organisation. Makes it more efficient and more impactful. 

Another buzzword that has been doing the rounds lately has been the concept of “shrinking the offer”. When referred to in policy terms, this is the sense that Labour cannot and should not be aiming too high in our manifesto at the next election. That a focus on expectation management, the betrayal of the Lib Dems and the callousness of the Tories will be what gets us over the line. Forget all that transformational stuff about changing the economy, tackling the housing crisis etc. Labour just need a small retail offer and a couple of great attack posters.

As you may be able to tell, I’m not a fan of shrinking the offer. But – in public at least, as Mark Ferguson has noted – no one is. Yet the caution remains.

So what does this have to do with Community Campaigning? Well it seems to me that the reluctance to adopt some of the innovation outlined in this pamphlet across the board (you might call it a tendency to shrink the offer we make to our volunteers about where, how and when they can get involved – and who we are willing to class as a “volunteer” in the first place) stems from the same insecurities that lead us to second guess our desire to not just be in government but to lead from government.

Ultimately it’s about control. Command and Control.

Community campaigning is all about giving away power. We don’t tell communities what we can and will do for them, we listen to them about what we can and will achieve together. It’s avbout finding out what people in a place want to see from the Party, working with them to deliver it and then getting that info on a leaflet, then getting those now familiar and more trusted faces on the doorsteps.

A friend recently diagnosed a key element missing in the Party. We suck at talent spotting. Bright young things who find themselves a sponsor through traditional methods like bag carrying or student politics do well. But we don’t actively go out and find, nurture and use the talent among our membership. We restrict what they can offer us to leaflet deliverer or canvasser when we have such a huge wealth of talent out there.

In this pamphlet, Economist Ashwin Kumar outlines some clever methods he has been using to investigate the publicly available data to better organise electoral campaigning. He is happy – as he says in the pamphlet – to share these methods with CLPs all over the country. It is data driven campaigning that works. So why aren’t we biting his hand off? Why has this talent in our ranks not been properly identified and utilised?

This is a small example, but an important one. They say that if you are a Tory member you are most likely to have donated to the Party. If you are a Lib Dem you are most likely to have delivered a leaflet and if you are a Labour member, you are most likely to have attended a meeting. But what are we doing with these meetings if not identifying and working out how to best use the talent they contain?

Talent spotting and nurturing requires a generosity of spirit and a willingness to give up some of your own power to develop that of others. This should be a natural Labour instinct: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need and all that. But our fear of the destructive chaos of our past has led to the habit of power becoming all to concentrated in the hands of a few – unwilling, unable or unskilled in passing it on and spreading it out.

Our Party’s advantage has always been our numbers. The Tories have the money but we have the people. Now we need to maximise that strength more than ever. We will do that by becoming an open and generous party. By maximising our offer to volunteers and to the communities we live in and serve.