In the Labour party we are obsessed with the Obama campaign. Understandably. The good money was never on Barack Obama to beat Hillary Clinton or to become the first black president of the United States. But he did it and he did it convincingly. Since we’re now the underdog, we’re looking hard at the lessons we can learn.
Much of the focus has been on how well the Obama campaign adapted to the new media age. Obama had an online presence in every social networking community, ranging from the familiar Facebook to the less familiar Hulu.com.
He famously had a 13 million-strong email list with which he could communicate at the touch of a button, which in turn helped to generate literally millions of dollars worth of small sub-$200 donations.
The Labour party nationally has been working with US campaigners to implement some of these tools here in the UK. But let’s face it: for those of us at the coalface battling it out street by street with our (mainly) Tory counterparts in marginal seats, we neither have the time nor the money to make sure we saturate the social networks. And regrettably, with a few notable exceptions, we don’t have the email lists either.
Fortunately, the Obama campaign was not just about online tools and emails. What the pundits who concentrate on these features miss is the vital element at the heart of the Obama vision: the development of a vibrant community-based grassroots movement. To understand it you need to know that Obama learnt his political trade as a community organiser in Altgeld Gardens – one of the most deprived parts of Chicago. What he learnt was that people, regardless of their background, could be recruited into activism given the right structure, the right leader and the right values.
As a candidate for the democratic nomination he had control of the last two. All he had to do was set about building a structure that would encourage participation on phenomenal levels. And under the glare of a largely unobservant media, that’s what he did.
For those interested in the nitty gritty of how he did it there’s no better exposition than Zack Exley’s ‘The new organisers, what’s really behind Obama’s ground game’ (the Huffington Post,
8 October 2008). In summary, what the article reveals is a movement obsessed with people. At its core, was a tranche of paid organisers whose primary function was to find, train, motivate and retain activists and furthermore to develop a new tier of unpaid organisers who in turn would go through the same motions again.
Field organiser Patrick Frank explained to Exley: ‘On the Obama campaign, when I see people like me and my friends used to be, we turn them around and say: “Well hey, here’s how to be a community organiser. Let me help you be a community organiser.” And then they go out and they get people to be their coordinators. And then we tell those new coordinators: “Build yourself a team and be organisers too.” There’s no end to it.’
This movement allowed the Obama campaign to get into places that they would never have reached otherwise. This contrasts with the Kerry campaign in 2004 where, according to Exley, whole swathes of rural Ohio were written off in the weeks before polling day. As a model for building up activism, it could not be clearer or simpler.
The question that Zack Exley’s article prompts is, can this work here in the UK? And further – can it work for the Labour party? There’s no doubt we are in a different place in the electoral cycle to Obama. We are in a third term of a Labour government; Obama was a new fresh face on the up.
The pessimists will also want to point out that political activism is on the wane; at least if you believe the academic studies on the subject. The Labour party is, apparently, in a state of ‘creaking disrepair’.
And in some places I’ve no doubt that’s true. Does it have to be? Absolutely not. Jeremy Bird, the Ohio state organiser, crucially explains how they did it: ‘We decided in terms of timeline, that [our organisers] would not be measured by the amount of voter contacts they made … but instead by the number of volunteers that they were recruiting, training and testing.’
Inspired by these words we decided to experiment in Birmingham Edgbaston. We downed voter ID tools and used our canvassers to call potential helpers (members and non-members) instead. We stopped doing and started building.
And something slightly unexpected happened. Despite being 15 points behind in the polls, there were still people who wanted to join in! The people we spoke to said yes – we’ll help and we’ll get involved.
Twelve months down the line we have more than 100 new activists – some knocking on doors, some delivering leaflets and some stuffing envelopes. A smaller group have taken on organisational roles – some responsible for ringing leaflet deliverers, some for arranging voter id sessions and others for finding new helpers. The key is taking the time to find out what skills our volunteers have and then making the most of them. We might wish that everyone was up for voter ID – but the reality is they’re not. The question is what can they do to take some other task off your hands?
We are nowhere near as sophisticated as the model described by Exley and every time I read his article I am reminded of how much further there is to go. I am also reminded that when you develop a grassroots network you are building a movement, not a machine.
As field director Jackie Bray put it: ‘Movements are built not by individuals but by relationships’. It is not good enough to ask simply what a potential helper can do for you. You must ask (and repeatedly continue to ask) what you can do for them. New volunteers are your eyes and ears in the communities which we serve – but we need to remember they are people too. Forget that at your peril.
That’s why we followed up our volunteer recruitment project with a series of social events and coffee mornings where volunteers are actively encouraged to tell us what needs addressing in their communities. Crucially, when they tell you, you must then act and your leader (your MP, PPC or council candidate) must be at the forefront of that campaign.
Because building a field operation to win an election must at its heart be an operation to deliver change on the ground. Political party affiliation may be on the wane but interest in politics is not. People want to see a party and a candidate that is on their side. If they feel that their MP and local Labour party will fulfil that role, then they will come out and help.
Politics has changed and if we don’t respond to that change, local constituency Labour parties will be unrepresentative, moribund and unable to fulfil their campaigning or community function. The beauty of this is that once you have built your organisation you can of course use it for anything: leaflet delivery, voter id and most importantly, political change in the communities we serve.