The next generation
A depressed article by Paul Anderson here, talking about his fear that there is no-one to replace the current generation of Labour activists. (Thanks to DSTFW for the link)
Perhaps most importantly they [the vast majority of cabinet members] were formed politically by the implosion of the Labour Party in the wake of the 1979 defeat by Margaret Thatcher.
The identification of this obsession with the wilderness years as a bad thing is one that I share: I said something similar in an email to the general secretary of the Labour party a few days after the election (didn’t receive any response, mind - guess it’s heartening to know that PPCs don’t get any better treatment than ordinary members):
Our victory this week has finally put the ghosts of 1983, 1987 and 1992 to rest - perhaps now it’s time to put the tired brand and firefighting mentality of “new” Labour to rest? I believe it’s time for a new generation and a new attitude in the party, formed not in opposition to Thatcher, but in awareness of the possibilities of government.
I’d like to introduce the Cabinet to my youngest brother, Marcus. He voted for the first time in May. He was born in 1987; was 10 when Labour won; was 4 when Thatcher fell. His whole conscious life has been one of Labour being in power. He doesn’t know about miners’ strikes and Militant and milk-snatching; despite spending eight hours working for me and Andrew on the day, he didn’t use his vote for Labour.
That obsession with strategies to fight the horrors of the 80s is irrelevant now; it’s about bloody time that the party woke up to the idea that we need a new way of doing things that allows more debate and discussion, and maybe even some meaningful dissent in public - and by meaningful, I mean in a way that doesn’t forever blight your prospects in the party.
(While we’re on this tangent, maybe this anecdote is illuminating: I’m a very small fish in the Labour party; for a year I was one of three hundred odd PPCs with no chance of winning, a necessary functionary for a national party, yet on my selection a friend who works for the party in London was rung up by the regional office to find out if I was going to be “a problem”. 24 years old, member for four years, campaigner for four years, campaigns officer in the voluntary sector, woman, standing in a non-target seat, a former student activist whose “crime” was to have no time for the then-ruling Labour students faction, who were bureaucrats and pro-fees to boot, and we needed to find out if I was going to be “a problem”? FFS!)
[At the next election] a handful of old-stager MPs might retire next time just as they did in 2001 and 2005. But the party in the country is hardly brimming with enthusiastic activists in their twenties and thirties: the replacements for retiring MPs are likely to be uninspiring apparatchiks, just as they have been for the past decade or more.
Yep, probably. I mean, I guess it’s theoretically possible not to have rocked any single boat in the decade-odd of activism you need to be considered for a winnable seat these days and retain the quality that makes you inspiring, but I’ve yet to see it. That relentless towing of the line at university, in the fetid atmosphere of national student politics, through a liberal-ish succesion of two or three jobs working for MPs / think tanks / trade unions / non-offensive NGOs / as a political advisor or SpAd, seems to produce identikit young politicos, with carefully-cultivated quirks and nice shoes, a regional accent, strong links to an area outside their current domicile of London, maybe a coke habit fastidiously concealed, far more interested in process than issues, and hung up on the proximity of power.
As I say, my “radical” (!) background rules me out of that cosy clique, though sometimes I get a day pass, particularly when a little bit of reaching leftwards is needed. I’m also lucky; I live in Oxford, a city with three under 30s on the ruling Labour minority administration, with an active joint CLP, co-chaired by a 23-year-old woman, where a nucleus of young people (and older people who get it) provide the backbone to local campaigning and make meetings bearable in the running fight against the point of order tendency.
UPDATE 7/9: Bloggers4Labour is also discussing these issues.
Couldn’t agree more. Have never been a PPC, obviously, but have never been overly impressed with the overall calibre of those who are. Even many of the brighter ones have never done what I would describe as a “real job” (i.e., not academia, not an NGO, not a think tank, not freelance journalism, not a SPAD) in their lives, and those that have done real jobs are usually lawyers, city-people, research scientists or doctors.
The Labour Party was not set up to represent the professions. Where are the unionists, the car-workers, the call-centre employees, the supermarket cashiers, the post-workers, the lab-technicians? They are outside a Labour Party which at branch level too often gives the impression of being more interested in the welfare and rights of Palestinian trade unionists, which is outwith their power to do anything about, than British ones where they could do rather a lot if they ever lifted a finger.
Frankly I’d be horrified if the General Secretary wasted his time replying to political whinges from ex-PPCs (however much I might agree with you), because since Margaret McDonagh the job has been almost devoid of political content. Complaining to him that the message is wrong is a bit like complaining to the waiter about the fact that the food is revolting: it isn’t in his power to do much about it. Make your point to Gordon… : )
Don’t wish to over comment, but I like to refer to the people you call the “point of order tendency” the “Procedural Tendency”, for it stresses that in their own way they are quite as fatal to the success of the Labour Party as an organization wielding power on behalf of working people as was the Militant Tendency, or for that matter the Millbank Tendency.
They don’t, unlike Militant (’Militant’) or the Millbank lot (’Progress’) have their own newspaper, but that may be simply because the CLPD, Stop The Labour Party, and Reclaim the Party provide extra opportunities for the Procedurally committed to get involved in ostensibly democratic but farcically badly attended meetings at which correct Procedure can be followed and bugger-all achieved. Pete Willsman, Ann Black, and CLPD also send out (with the best intentions) regular e-mails and model resolutions for the Procedural Tendency (the Grassroots Alliance is what passes for the political wing of the Procedural Tendency), and ironically the Labour Party itself keeps them in power in many constituencies and branchs by sending quite unnecessary quantities of paperwork to CLP secretaries, providing plenty of work - and opportunities in meetings - for those keen to convert the party not into a campaign for democratic Socialism but instead into a Procedure for democratic Socialism.
A nameless member of a Labour Group in the south east of England which will remain nameless apparently interrupted a minute’s silence for the late John Smith shortly after his death with the line “Point of order…”. S/he is hereby nominated as Life President of the Procedural Tendency.
I look forward to a future Labour leader facing down a tedious series of motions on internal party ‘democracy’ and the inequitable distribution of jammy dodgers at the Spring Conference with an updated version of the Neil Kinnock anti-Militant speech, in which emphasis is placed on the enormous waste of activist time spent on points of order.
I know a few party members and activists in their early 20’s and younger - down to 16 years old.
The trouble is that they are all children of current activists (our 16 year old is a member of the party) and increased procreation amongst the party membership is hardly a feasible long-term solution!
Good post Antonia, I quite agree. Having seen some other CLPs, I know we’re quite lucky here in Oxford with the flow of students (and more recently, local young people) into political involvement. If it hadn’t been like that I’m sure I’d never have got involved and would now be a boring second-rate provincial lawyer who might even (horror of horrors!) vote Liberal Democrat.
Problem is, in many places many lots of people like us are doing exactly that. It’s fairly obvious that a party that loses fifty percent of its members in a period of eight years in government is doing something seriously wrong. As your experience shows, the first instinct of the leadership is to find young people with interesting ideas a threat. And although I get as fed up with the Procedural Road to Socialism people as Tim does, the bureaucratic/PR/central control tendency is far more effective at deadening any sort of progress.
That’s why I support projects like the Labour Representation Committee - because (apart from being a confirmed leftie) short of getting the young activists in places like Oxford to have more unprotected sex, political debate and activism is the only way we can increase the number of people involved in grassroots politics.
Now, I am not as left as some would have it and maybe more left than others believe but my experience of the Labour Party was/is worrying. As a party member in East London the CLP was pretty dreadful; more interested in continuing battles clearly started several decades previously than doing any work; bothering to engage with critics of the Labour Government and Labour Party policies; leafleting the constituencies; encouraging a young people who turned up and tried to make a difference. It didn’t matter whether you were a student, shop worker or unemployed the CLP just wasn’t interested. Unsurprisingly, over a few months they were left by themselves in a room re-living the ‘glory’ years of the left. [Not that I could ever fathom what they meant!]
[...] UPDATE - 30.12.2006 I’ve since come across this article from Paul Anderson in Tribune last year that takes the same sort of line, and this post from Antonia that develops the point further about Labour’s problems with the 1980s that cause such problems today. Some interesting food for thought there… [...]