In the spring of last year, I realised problems were mounting inside the party. Speaking at a constituency meeting on the Essex coast, I found that the only topic members wanted to talk about was Iraq. Of course, in every constituency there’s some subject or other that gets people excited. But this was the third constituency in a month where the Middle East had dominated the discussion, and at every one, members had displayed similar anxieties. They were fearful that major decisions were about to be taken by our party leaders, while the party itself was left out in the cold. This criticism may have been levelled at Labour governments before, but the difference was that this time, thousands of lives were at stake.
I raised these concerns with several ministers over the next few weeks, but came away feeling as though I’d been slapped on the legs for exaggerating the problem. ‘It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming all Labour party members think the same when you’ve been round a few constituencies,’ one minister told me. ‘I was down in Cornwall last week and the subject wasn’t mentioned once.’
By July’s NEC meeting I knew my anxiety was shared by other constituency representatives and by some of our trade union colleagues. We tried to impress on the leadership how worried we were. ‘Members want to know what the outcome of
a war with Iraq would be,’ we said. ‘Saddam would have been separated from his weapons of mass destruction,’ came the answer. But this was more of a mantra than a political strategy.
We wanted to know who would run the country once he was gone? How would we stop Iraq breaking up like Yugoslavia did? Would the Kurds get autonomy? How would we prevent neighbouring countries from being destabilised? In reply, we were simply told that all that was important right now was that we were as robust as possible in order to ensure that Saddam backed down. The crucial question ‘But what if he doesn’t?’ wasn’t addressed.
Over the next few months, a consensus grew within the NEC.
We’d support the tough stance our government was taking, in the hope that this would enable the weapons inspectors to go back into Iraq, creating an environment whereby Saddam would hand over his hidden stockpiles of weaponry. The debates we had with the leadership were of necessity brief, but at least they took place. We became absolutely convinced of the seriousness of purpose that lay behind the utterances of Geoff Hoon, Jack Straw and Tony Blair, even if many of us had reservations about some of the points that they made.
Unfortunately, the rest of the party didn’t have the privilege of our proximity to the leadership. Virtually all they heard on the subject was via the media. But Labour party members tend to be smart people. They need analysis, not tabloid headlines. Yet
they were given mixed messages. We were threatening Saddam to combat international terrorism. Then we were aiming to rid him of his secret nuclear stockpile or sending a message of deterrence to other highly armed, dysfunctional regimes. Later, the line became that we needed to dislodge him to free the Iraqi people. Proof was offered to support each new story of Iraq’s murderous capabilities but, when it arrived with a fanfare of trumpets, it tended to be at best debatable and at worst paper-thin.
I am not recounting this little piece of history to make some vehemently anti-war point. Like many Labour party members, I believe our country has a moral duty to join in the fight against tyranny if the conditions are right. My concern is that so little quality information was available that it was hard for any of us to come to a conclusion as to whether or not such criteria had been fulfilled.
By spring conference somebody, somewhere in government had belatedly woken up to the seriousness of the breakdown in communications. We suddenly saw a totally different side to the government. Every minister wanted to talk about Iraq and its implications. Jack Straw in particular was inspiring, witty, shrewd, candid and deeply analytical. Members told me
they came away from conference feeling much better. Not all agreed with everything that was said, but at least they felt we were all members of the same political family.
Unfortunately, in my part of the world, this rapprochement came too late. Activity in my branch had fallen to an all-time low, as concern about a possible war spread among its members. This is a branch that was once the political engine of the west side of Bristol. Future council leaders and MPs all cut their political teeth at our meetings. Yet now attendance was down to just three people. We were, though, in a better situation than the two adjacent branches, which had completely ceased to operate.
As David Triesman has pointed out, there doesn’t seem to have been a mass defection from the party. Nevertheless, those who were leaving were the people who, in the past, had done so much of the work. ‘It wouldn’t have made much difference if it was the people who just paid their subs,’ our secretary confided to me recently. ‘But these were branch stalwarts and friends!’ When we lost Bristol in the May elections on a low turnout, it was a bitter pill to swallow, but hardly surprising, given the depletion in our army of helpers.
It would have been more excusable if this had been the first time such a rupture between government and members had occurred. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Remember the problems that arose a couple of years ago over pensions? Loyal members tried in vain to get the Treasury to listen to their warnings that government policy was highly unpopular on the doorsteps. Although the government did change course, it did so too late. What should have been seen as a massive triumph of increased support for the elderly had all the appearance of some kind of defeat.
Likewise, many members in both unions and constituencies felt excluded from the debate about PFI. Whenever they tried to raise issues about the political unacceptability of a two-tier workforce, they felt brushed aside. Far too late in the day, the government sat down with the unions and gave them the assurances that were needed. But there is a feeling that in both these cases ministers only started listening when they felt their backs were against the wall. Both times the result was good news for the party, but there was a great deal of unnecessary blood on the carpet.
So why does this continue to happen? A common phenomenon in large organisations is that senior executives preach the virtues of modernisation, but don’t recognise
that it needs to start with their own practises. Our ministers have made life better for millions of our citizens, but I see symptoms of this lack of self-awareness. Socialist and social democratic parties were created as mobilisation machines to ensure that a new political class was elected to parliament. Today’s members, however, want to feel engaged. But why should we go out and work to deliver victory for politicians if we don’t believe they’re really listening to what we say?
The National Policy Forum was established as an attempt to empower the membership, to create a space where we could all genuinely contribute to Labour party policy. And after a shaky start, it’s beginning to do just that. More Labour members are involved in the policy-making process than in any other mass party in Europe, and the overwhelming majority of participants seem to find it a challenging and worthwhile experience. But the NPF will only continue to grow and develop if our senior politicians enthusiastically embrace the process, and if party members are convinced this is happening.
There are grounds for optimism. If there’s a single politician with the pedigree to champion the voice of ordinary party members it’s our new chair, Ian McCartney. Likewise, in David Triesman we have a general secretary committed to making party education and communication top priorities. But these two visionaries can’t transform the party on their own. This Herculean task requires political will at the very top. They’re also hampered in their desire for true party-wide dialogue by the fact that so few unions, business people and ordinary members are prepared to make the required investment in the party’s future. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my time on the NEC, it’s that a withdrawal of funds doesn’t cause the government to change policy, it merely leads to reduced services and staff lay-offs.
Hopefully, the fighting in Iraq is all but over. The harder task of building some kind of peace and stability will inevitably take place away from the headlines. We must ensure that next time – and, as the debate about foundation hospital shows, there’s bound to be a next time – the government contemplates making a high-profile and deeply controversial decision, mechanisms are put in place to allow Labour party members a sense of ownership of that decision. This means further democratisation of the National Policy Forum process, a clarification of the relationship between the NPF and the election manifesto, more imaginative use of our website to allow for proper electronic debate, and more MPs being given the specific task of travelling the country to engage with party members. But top of my wish list is to see every minister spending far more time and energy explaining the work of their department to our members, and genuinely listening to the response. Who knows, they might even learn something.