For many contemporary observers, the age of party politics is over. Falling membership levels, especially pervasive in the socialist parties of western Europe, are indicative of a deeper crisis. Inexorably, it is argued, parties are being hollowed out by social change, consumerism and media power. Political parties in advanced democracies have outlived their usefulness, according to this gloomy prognosis.
But for Labour there was no ‘golden age’ that has now past. As the 20th century progressed, the party failed to heed R H Tawney’s exhortation to ‘treat electors not as voting fodder, to be shepherded to a polling station, and then allowed to resume their slumbers, but as partners in a common enterprise’. Despite winning power in the 1920s – with intermittent bursts of popular participation in the 1940s and 1990s – Labour was unable to develop a mass membership base as the Conservatives achieved in the 20th century – fuelling persistent electoral underperformance.
Too few local parties regarded recruitment and retention as key to their activities. Where local MPs and organisers established membership as a priority – in south-east London and East Anglia in the 1950s, or Sedgefield in the 1980s, for example – mass membership became a reality. But weak membership is far from peculiar to the present.
So, are the days of mass political parties really over? Parties are surely as necessary now as they ever were. They provide organisational and legal infrastructure – including local branches – to manage and mobilise activists on a national scale, to contest elections effectively on the ground, and to develop policy locally and nationally.
But they do something even more vital. Politics requires organisations that can mediate between governing elites and voters. The era of representative democracy isn’t over. Elections aren’t merely an opportunity for voters to express individual dissatisfaction through the ‘consumer complaint box’. Parties act as the bridge between local communities, individuals, and the institutions of the state, providing a unique channel of access to power for the most excluded in society. Indeed, Labour at the grassroots has recruited generations of working-class leaders and activists into politics.
The decline in the size, power and vitality of parties can be halted. Mass parties will not only survive, but flourish if they are prepared to advance structural and cultural changes that break down bureaucracy and the rigid geography of organisation that inhibits involvement – instead treating members as a special commodity central to the party’s success. The Conservatives built a mass organisation in the 1950s, despite numerous sociological indicators that pointed to terminal decline.
‘One Member One Vote’ (OMOV) and the revision of Clause IV have modernised Labour’s electoral appeal, but not its internal organisation. The party’s culture and institutions originating from the 1918 constitution remain largely intact. After a historic third victory, it would be tempting to eschew the debate about potentially divisive internal reforms. But to reject it now would have catastrophic implications for the party’s long-term survival, mirroring Labour’s abandonment of ‘In Place of Strife’ in 1969.
We have to start imagining what the Labour party should be like, rather than complaining endlessly about its faults. Detailed organisational changes are badly needed if Labour is to develop a more healthy internal life. That has to mean redefining what is actually meant by ‘membership’. Contemporary trends require a redefinition of organisational involvement, as ‘single issue’ campaigns such as Amnesty International and the RSPB have recognised.
The geographical structure of traditional branches and CLPs inhibits participation in an age of high mobility, especially among the young. The GC as presently constituted should be replaced – constituency parties from Durham to Salford are experimenting with new structures. The local Labour party should act as the platform for social entrepreneurs, those who through new schemes, initiatives, and businesses help to generate change.
Too many also find the price tag prohibitively expensive. Labour should consider less committed and cheaper forms of membership such as a ‘registered supporters’ network’, as Matt Carter proposes elsewhere. It is also necessary to extend the rights and duties of party membership to Labour supporters. Mirroring primary selection contests in the US, it should experiment with primaries for parliamentary, local government and mayoral selection contests. Likewise, trade union political levy fund payers who help to finance Labour should be granted full membership rights.
Electronic networks can mobilise supporters, as both the Howard Dean and John Kerry web-based fundraising networks demonstrated during the last presidential election in America. Indeed, this also helps to make parties less dependent on major financial donors: in an age of cynicism, Labour has to become a genuine ‘people’s party’, free of vested and commercial interests.
If Labour is to remain the engine of innovative ideas, the National Policy Forum must have its capacity boosted, providing a credible mechanism for policy development parallel to government and enhancing the quality of political debate in local parties. The NPF should be allowed to establish independent working groups, comprising NPF members, MPs, relevant ministers, CLPs, and policy experts from think-tanks and universities together with trade unions. There must be an opportunity to vote on rival options at party conference, ensuring members have their voice heard.
While each of these reforms is necessary to rejuvenate party activity, Labour has to undertake the subtler task of evolving a more appealing culture and ethos. Instead of abandoning its past, it needs to draw on the ‘self-help’ traditions of the labour movement. For example, it could establish a ‘University of Labour’ autonomous from the core campaigning functions of the party. It would host discussions; provide training; publish original works of history and political theory; organise summer schools and discussion circles in partnership with local parties; and promote broader cultural activities. In Sweden, for example, the Social Democrats even established concert halls, theatres and orchestras for working people throughout the 20th century.
A ‘University’ should serve as the political education wing of Labour, modelled on the Workers’ Educational Association pioneered by Tawney in the 1920s. The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci argued that socialists should engage with the institutions of civil society – especially the local community – for it is here that the battle of ideas is fought.
To change society, it is necessary to transform prevailing common sense, generating alternative realities, and leading the way in anticipating future structures and institutions of community life. It is not sufficient merely to win control of the state, or the local authority. Social change is not brought about by replacing one set of political leaders with another. That is why the party matters, with political education at its heart. As Tawney put it, the party has to enable people ‘to build from within… to develop their own genius, their own education, their own culture, that is the secret’.
The mass party isn’t over, despite the apocalyptic predictions of the doomsayers. Labour has to engage in a process of change that will culminate in a new style of political party, transcending its industrial roots, reaching out to all classes and parts of the country. That has to mean rededicating itself to enriching its own members and supporters – and to a commitment to the renewal of political and civic life – sustaining Labour as the agent of progressive change in Britain.