Former special advisor, Dorothea Hodge, talks to the Labour Women’s Network political day:
I’ve just been incredibly inspired this week by having a double dose of Bill Clinton, a single dose of Tony and, the best medicine of all, getting together with lots of old Labour party staff.
Each person reminded me of our vision, the reason why we choose to be members of the Labour Party and consequently I’m going to blatantly plagiarise some of my inspiration this week in a way that I hope inspires you to go out and work with faith communities to achieve our overall vision; to live in a world in which there is fairness justice and equality for all.
Let me tell you briefly where I came from. I’m from a family of Christians whose faith was demonstrated by our campaigning for social justice, from boycotting all things South African (and being able to explain why my friends shouldn’t eat South African oranges at 5 years old!), to collecting for leprosy missions in India and Christian Aid in Africa, to our open door policy to family and friends of all races and creeds; our faith guided how we related to the world; from our respect for the earth (our family was a little bit like the 70s sitcom “The Good Life” as we grew our own!) to our respect for our neighbour whether they be next door or overseas. We followed our faith’s highest moral guideline ‘To love God and to love your neighbour as yourself’.
My faith led me to the Labour Party, and when I reflect on the amazing people I was with this week the parallels are clear.
I’m going to name check one of my favourite ever members of staff at the Labour party Christine Brazil, a long-term campaigner, and receptionist at the party for years. Putting up with tantrums, egos, challenges etc. Christine demonstrates the kind of commitment to a cause you find in faith communities.
I often remind politicians who are confirmed secularists about the impact of faith communities. Where else in society can you find up to 5000 people week after week listening patiently to a speech which is essentially on a similar moral code to the labour party?
I can tell you. We have them, and its at my church, but its not just the church, it’s the gudwara, the mosque, the temple, the synagogue, the chapel; week after week, year after year, century after century.
Our faith communities were into the ‘big society’ years before the Tories. That is what they do… look after one another; provide volunteer services in the community, and around the world. Christian aid, Muslim aid, all with the same values we share. . many many of our social services were once provided by faith communities, and indeed our own party’s first MP, Keir Hardie, came to politics from a faith background, he was a Christian socialist.
So how do we engage?
I want to start by sharing with you Clinton’s words this week in which he said that one of the single biggest challenges for the 21st Century will be how we relate to one another. How we find common ground.
I believe that the common ground between the Labour Party and faith communities is clear. Its in our values… we all believe intrinsically in people and want the world to be a better place.
We all believe in service, that to work for and to serve others is an important part of contributing to society.
We all have a vision of ensuring that each and every person has the opportunity to maximize his or her life chances and to be the best they can be.
And we all are a little strange… as we do things most other “normal” human beings would consider odd (like door knocking, campaigning in the freezing cold) because its part of our ‘vision’ for a different world.
But where do you start?
Well I always believe in starting from where they are, going to faith communities rather than expecting them to come to you.
Work out in your community who the most influential faith communities are by asking your ‘religious’ friends and go to them in the spirit of service.
If you are elected always offer to hold surgeries at faith community venues, and ask them to promote this internally within their community. It’s the quickest and most effective way to build rapport with a group and become easily accessible to them.
Get to know the leadership, and identify where you can mutually support one another with your objectives.
For example, are they organising a sponsored walk, run in aid of an international mission? (We do one to raise money for Haiti) Could some local party members join in or support the work?
Could you jointly campaign on a local issue that impacts both their members and yours, for example, street lighting, security cameras, vandalism?
Is there an opportunity for you to come and talk about campaigns you are running to specific groups within the faith community?
Is there an opportunity for you both to campaign on a national or international issue?
The living wage is often a key issue for faiths communities in poor urban areas and will not only win you brownie points, but can also transform the lives of their membership.
What do they do locally as a faith community? Our church has 25 Ministries, or volunteer social services from prison visiting and rehabilitation, and homeless support, to professional counselling and drug rehabilitation. Is there a volunteer service they provide that you could work in partnership with them to provide with local labour volunteers?
Could you identify any grants or local support from the council that can assist them to improve their existing voluntary work?
Can you get the local council involved?
Do they have a vision to create something for the local community in which you may be able to find the right people in local government or central government to assist? When we were in government we brought faith leaders together regularly to discuss the challenges facing their communities and identified what we could do to ameliorate these.
Can you run a voter mobilisation campaign with local communities?
We’ve done this before where we arranged for the electoral commission to deliver voter registration materials to each of the large black churches in London and then members were was reminded that it was ‘their civic duty as Christians to register and to vote’ that many had fought and died for the right to vote.
We even brought the prime minister to speak at an event to mobilize the black churches to vote.
I’d always recommend inviting down senior politicians and influencers to address them. We in the party get so used to senior figures we often forget that its incredibly special for others to get to meet and hear them.
If you are invited to an event, try and attend we host an annual ‘Prayer for the Nation’ event to which all local politicians are invited. It’s an opportunity to meet a large number of the community on their terms but also network with the leadership of the organisation.
Stella Creasy MP has one of our churches in her constituency and I’ve noticed her and the pastor now have a tweet relationship. Its important to have the confidence of a local community leader that you know you can rely on and who respects you.
If there is a multi–faith organisation in your area find it. These people will be experts on finding common ground and will have worked tirelessly to bring faith groups together. You should meet them and offer to host joint events, campaigns, and surgeries with them.
There will be challenges, as you will not agree on everything. It’s so important to begin from a place of common ground and understanding rather than recognizing and criticizing differences.
One of the common challenges are the assumed views of religious communities on, for example, lgbt issues.
My view of dealing with issues in which there are differences of opinion is to recognize that as humans we will never agree on everything, but we need to identify what binds us to work together and work from there.
I’d gently discuss issues in which there are obvious differences with the leadership once you have worked out how you and the faith community can work together in the long term. Once you’ve share your views openly and honestly you may find yourself pleasantly surprised and find more common ground than you expect.
So I’d say the key to working with faith groups is to find common ground between the Labour party, our values and their values, their vision and our vision; and then find ways to bring that alive on their ground. You may surprise yourself and start to see a trickle of new members coming into the local party from this approach, once you both find common ground.
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Dorothea Hodge is the director of Aequitas Consulting, a former special advisor to Valerie Amos and is a trustee of Ruach Ministries
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