Comments on: The next generation

By: Jon Worth Euroblog » Blog Archive » Britain’s grey baby-boomer cabinet

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 15:30:03 +0000

[...] 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… [...]

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 15:54:53 +0000

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!]

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 13:38:09 +0000

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.

By: Skuds

Skuds — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 23:01:25 +0000

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!

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:50:33 +0000

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.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:15:09 +0000

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… : )

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:14:10 +0000

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.