The 2015 general election… and then what?

The general election is only 12 months away. Your door knocking sessions are now in full swing.  New volunteers are coming out the woodwork, and the voter ID sheets are stacking up. Election organisers are publishing their techniques. Campaign capacity in local parties is growing.

Contrary to the received wisdom of electoral organising, I think right now is a good time to consider your plan for the first week after May 2015.

But we cannot plan till we know the outcome, I hear you say. Regardless of the result, there are some certainties:

– Your party will be (relatively) full of active members volunteering their time.

– Those volunteers will suddenly be looking for something else to do.

– There will be another election at some point in the future.

From these points there is an obvious question: what to do with the volunteers so their commitment to active involvement in the local party is embedded over the long term, ensuring capacity remains high for future elections?

Standard procedure is to slot a few volunteers into local party administrative posts. Tie them down basically. But this makes little sense. People who have been getting their kicks from walking the streets, building a campaign, and having conversations on the doorstep may not want to start sitting in meetings, checking agenda points and seconding motions.

Perhaps some will be put forward for council selection. But there aren’t enough seats for this to be a sensible strategy for building long-term party capacity, and many may not want to be Councillors.

Instead, that first week after the election is the opportune moment to start some community organising.

Start with a listening action – a door knocking session without the VID sheets. Instead of asking who they are going to vote for, ask what one thing would they change locally. Have longer conversations with residents, and keep detailed notes about each conversation.

Then as a group, consider what you’ve learnt. What is angering people, and what might be ripe for a local campaign. A broken door on an estate? Removing graffiti? Anti-social behaviour? Make a plan – assign roles, decide an objective, choose tactics, pick a target and a set of asks.

And when you get the win, start the process again, but with more people and bigger targets. A living wage campaign targeting a local employer? A campaign to get more Council support for credit unions? Or action on a local derelict building? This continuous, cylindrical approach distinguishes organising from campaigning. 

Ensure responsibility for the campaign is shared out among volunteers, beyond a single organiser. This will create trust among activists, building strong, lasting relationships, and will mean, importantly, that organisational capacity is retained for future elections.

There are plenty of case studies backing up this argument.

Take the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign.  While a non-partisan campaign, it got many people politically active for the first time and provided a space where relationships could be built between party activists and community members.  Those relationships can result in more volunteers for future door knocking. Any local Labour Party can take the lead in creating similar campaigns in their area.

Or consider the work of Movement for Change.  Working across the country, M4C have created campaign groups that are tackling all kinds of local issues, from doorstep lending in Swansea to the condition of rented housing in Brighton.  These groups successfully mix party activists and community members, to the benefit of both.

Over in the US Organizing For Action has used community organising techniques to embed the capacity developed during the Obama 2012 campaign.  Axelrod helped set up OFA, and it would be surprising if conversations were not now ongoing about similar post-election campaign strategies in the UK.

By considering a plan for the period immediately following the next general election, and by putting in place a community organising strategy, local parties can capture and build capacity throughout the long electoral cycle.

James Scott is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London researching the use of community organising practices within the British Labour Movement.