Congratulations to Progress for recognising that Third Place First needed to be revived. The conference in Reading drew members from not only the south but other party workers in other parts of the country where Labour is struggling. The challenge was to take a trip down memory lane and see how in seemingly hopeless seats Labour can move from a poor third (or worse), to winning the seat.
Perhaps a useful phrase that sums up the mountain we have to climb to even be where we were in the mid-1990s is 16-14. These are the number of seats we held in Spelthorne and in Runnymede either side of the Thames in Surrey prior to winning power nationally in 1997. We now do not hold a single seat in either borough. In the mid-1990s it was being widely expected that for the first time Labour would take control of both. Perhaps examining what happened here may provide a clue to why Labour has lost so many seats in the south. It must be emphasised that although Labour advanced here in May significantly it failed to win a single seat on both councils.
The reasons for this disaster are both internal and external factors around Labour. Gratifyingly, Iain McNicol seems to be the first general secretary for ages prepared to seriously examine the complex sociological and psychological factors involved in Labour party membership. Clearly Labour will struggle to survive if it fails to tackle the fact that its membership is an ageing one particularly in large areas of the south. This is clearly true in Spelthorne and Runnymede. It is almost as if the effort to move out of the seeming irrelevance of campaigning in the 1980s exhausted members in both constituencies. The consequence of their dropping out has meant that even the seats held during even the worst years of the 1980s have been lost.
An element not discussed or properly analysed were tensions and disputes within Runneymede and Spelthorne parties. In Spelthorne this took the form of virtual open warfare. They were not unique in this. George Catchpole, a former regional director for the south-east, tore his hair out about the nights spent seeking to settle disputes in not only Spelthorne but places like Castle Point where Labour not only won the council but the parliamentary seat as well during the 1990s. For a while the negative energy going into these almost constant arguments could be ignored but eventually it resulted in an implosion of activists and party workers. As well as this, the force of nature through ageing has been the emptying out of a cohort of activists crucial for survival of these parties as a campaigning force in these areas.
Commentators have tended to see this as a left-right split. This is a simplification of something which is complex and which will require a great deal of thought to rectify. One of the seminars at the Progress conference sought to examine the way in which people joining the party in areas of the south might go off to their first meeting and come back with the post of secretary. For many their first contact is likely to be a very large set of streets in which to deliver leaflets. One of the breakout sessions hosted by Movement For Charge suggested more experienced members making contact with new members on a one-to-one basis over a cup of coffee. The little-thought-of role of social secretary could play a crucial role here by developing positive informal links between party members. What is clear is that it was not the perceived formality of general management meetings that should carry all the blame for scaring members away put forward for declining membership suggested. Indeed, the move to weaken the structure of local parties may have had the reverse effect because views of members seemed to have nowhere to go.
Nor can policy decisions that directly impinged on the south be cleared from some degree of responsibility. Both constituencies mentioned above campaigned against the environmental consequences of widening the M25 and a third runway at Heathrow. Representations against both fell on deaf ears and increasingly these were seen as an irrelevance to ministers. Rank-and-file members buoyed with expectations of progress on a whole range of southern issues were to be disappointed. The two big southern issues of housing and transport were not seen as priorities alongside Tony Blair’s mantra of ‘Education, education, education.’ One of the forums that had existed where councillors from the south could speak on equal terms with those from the larger conurbations, the Local Government Conference, disappeared on the grounds it cost the party too much to run. Here was a gathering of Labour members expert at running businesses spending billions of pounds that might have provided a counterbalance to a civil service which Blair complained about who were being denied a chance to meet and exchange good practice. There was a fatuous belief within some elements of the party that we could survive as an effective campaigning entity while at the same time haemorrhaging members. Whatever the virtues of many some of Labour’s policies in office they often hung like rootless shrubs because they were not embedded within the membership who were expected to go out and campaign for them.
Even after the modest success of the May election in much of Surrey, Labour was only incrementally closer to gaining the number of seats it had even in the worst years of the 1980s. The most worrying thing is identifying younger activists to go and create the campaigns to begin winning again here. It’s good that Third Place First lives again and has begun asking the right questions.
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Murray Rowlands is chair of Surrey Labour party
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