Is it good for those who share political perspectives to work together? Yes. Should this mean treating anyone expressing different views as the enemy within? Absolutely not. So my personal journey should be read in this light.
I was elected to the NEC as part of the centre-left grassroots alliance (CLGA) from 2000 until 2018, when I lost to Momentum for not being leftwing enough. I returned in 2020 with support from Labour First on the traditional right. Through those years I kept my core principles and judged issues on their merits, while the party shifted around us. This is a history of factionalism as I lived it. I’ve used the terms “left” and “right” as shorthand: apologies to those on both sides who self-define as “moderates”.
The Beginning
When Tony Blair’s Partnership in Power barred MPs from the NEC seats elected by members, both left and right realised that multiple candidates from competing grouplets would all lose in one-member-one-vote (OMOV) ballots, and success depended on promoting six people for six places. The left was quicker off the mark and in 1998, helped by endorsement by the Guardian as ballots dropped, four CLGA candidates, led by Tribune editor Mark Seddon, were elected.
The Tolerant Years
Until 2016 left and right groupings each held between two and four seats. However NEC meetings allowed all voices to be heard and votes could not always be predicted, notably on the Ken Livingstone debates with Tony Blair urging the NEC to keep him out in 2002 (carried 17-13) and to readmit him in 2004 (carried 22-2). The main areas of contention were between leadership and unions over employment rights and privatisation, and constituency members, holding six out of 33 seats, could cause little serious trouble, even over Iraq.
This balance was maintained because most candidates were unknown to most members, so OMOV tended to randomise the results. Diversity was further improved when Tony Robinson and I changed the rules to exclude peers and to replace anyone becoming ineligible by the previous runner-up immediately, rather than serving their full term.
Turbulence
All that changed in 2016, when Jeremy Corbyn’s two leadership campaigns signed up hundreds of thousands of members who could be contacted directly and urged to support left candidates in other internal elections. The right had no equivalent access to the mass membership, and Momentum-backed candidates swept the board in 2016 and 2018.
Meetings became longer and more polarised. Sometimes we might as well have taken votes at the start, rather than spending seven hours restating entrenched positions. This was pre-Covid so we had to be there, and key votes were knife-edge. In July 2016 the NEC voted by 17-15 to hold secret ballots, 16-15 to let Jeremy Corbyn vote on the leadership process, 18-14 to include him on the ballot, and so on. In September the NEC added Scottish and Welsh representatives by 16 votes to 14, and Glenis Willmott was elected chair by 18 votes to 17 after the left vetoed longer-serving members.
After the 2017 general election, when Jeremy Corbyn exceeded expectations, Momentum gained total control of the NEC, adding a thirteenth trade union place and three more constituency seats. They won these in by-elections and took all nine in 2018 (I was 13th, running as a Left Independent). And this NEC voted, by 18-14, to scrap the runner-up rule for filling vacancies in favour of expensive and time-consuming by-elections, to shut out any opposition.
The Pendulum Swings Back
However when Claudia Webbe and Navendu Mishra were elected as MPs in 2019 this worked against the left. Over 100,000 members had departed since peak Corbyn, and two Labour First candidates narrowly won, enabling the new leadership to bring in STV (single transferable vote) for future NEC elections. That has built diversity into the system and the NEC benefits from voices beyond traditional left and right blocs.
The national policy forum (NPF) is in a less good place. It took me ten years to get OMOV elections for constituency places, only for the NEC to return to election by conference delegates. For regional seats the electorate is in low double figures, with some youth representatives chosen by one or two delegates and most CLPs disenfranchised. Opportunities for factional influence are obvious. This year the right are celebrating victory in a way that is as unseemly as Momentum’s dominance in 2018 and fairly irrelevant because the NPF deliberates rather than votes, so all views matter.
Full range of party opinion
Ultimately every Labour representative is also an individual, bringing their own experiences. Being seen as “left” or “right” is only part of our identity. The test now, for all sides, is whether they are mature enough to build an NEC and a NPF which reflect the full range of party opinion and moves beyond the point-scoring of the past.