When you join the Labour party, you know you’re not going to agree with every other party member about everything. I like a tough debate where people say what they mean – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have survived as a Labour president of NUS in the early noughties or as an adviser to Tessa Jowell when she was trying to help Ken Livingstone become mayor of London.
But when people try and ban those they disagree with, or somehow say that New Labour politics are illegitimate in the Labour party, that’s when we all need to worry. They may not like it but people in other wings of the Labour party do need us: for our policy ideas, for our experience of government and for our ability to speak to the centre-ground of British politics. I refuse to apologise for wanting a progressive Labour government but I don’t see it as a conflict with my being an active trade unionist or a former full-time union official.
That doesn’t mean Progress is perfect. I used to live in London and it was easy for me to just pop in to any Progress events I fancied and join people for drinks after. Now I am a full-time mum with a three-year-old and a three-month-old, living in the north-west and it’s a very different perspective. The formation of this board is a good thing, but it should be the start rather than the end: Progress needs to be alive across the country, especially in marginal seats, not just in Westminster. We also have to say that – just like in almost every aspect of British politics – Progress lacks the critical mass of women needed to make it feel like a natural home for women who want to change the country. If I am elected as a board member I will propose to the first meeting that a Progressive Women’s Network be set up to recruit more women and encourage more women members to get involved.
At the minute, Progress has never been more unfairly vilified but it has also never been more necessary to Labour’s future. We can’t back down but we must reach out: expanding our membership, taking the argument to those who would ban us and helping build a Labour party that can win the next election.
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Mandy Telford is a candidate in the members’ section in the Progress strategy board elections 2012. You can find out more about all the candidates at the dedicated Progress strategy board election microsite