Cornwall is a long way from London but am I really so out of touch? While getting on with winning a council seat, working for the most vulnerable and pounding the streets to win more seats for Labour in 2013, I seem to have, without noticing, become a member of an organisation that fellow lefties are trying to ‘outlaw’.
Even writing that down seems so bizarre. This is the trade unions we are talking about? The same ones just about to celebrate the Tolpuddle Festival in memory of the workers who were transported for belonging to an organisation the Tory state wanted to ban?
Let’s get one thing straight. I’m a leftie too and proud of it, also proud of my family’s union traditions. My father is a shipwright and lifelong member of the GMB and six of my seven uncles were dockers (back in the day).
I’ve voted Labour all my life. Given the opportunity to vote tactically once to ‘keep the Tories out’, I even considered it but in the privacy of the ballot box realised I’d have to chop off my right arm afterwards for betraying everything I think and feel about politics. I still have the arm.
It’s not me the Labour party has to win over. It’s the thousands – millions – of ‘don’t knows’, floating voters and those who just don’t care any more. Yes, I agree New Labour lost many left leaning voters we have to win back. I also know that many working people, vulnerable and disabled people and even some union members voted Tory at the last elections. It wasn’t because they were offering ‘no cuts’ or ‘no austerity’.
Politics is not as simple as ‘working people vote Labour, toffs vote Tory.’ What Labour has to do is bring our left wing passion and radical roots into a form that speaks to the majority – including people who barely give politics a second thought for most of the time and people who will vote for whoever seems the most competent regardless of values or ideals.
New Labour did that very successfully for a time but that time has gone and we need to move on. I am a member of Progress because I feel other members share that view – that we need to win elections to deliver anything and finding the policies, messages and aspirations that inspire people with our left wing values is the most difficult balancing act of all. I am also member of Progress because they are talking about how to win the seats that the Labour party seemed to abandon before the 2010 election and because they actually do the knocking on doors stuff as well as the talking and thinking.
I am a member of Progress because of its record, as Ed Miliband said of ‘challenging old orthodoxies and championing change’. That is what the Labour party is all about to me. Why would I be a member of an organisation that worked against Ed Miliband? I voted for him for many of the same reasons I joined Progress.
I would not dream of trying to ban union input to Labour’s policy development. We need it – but we also need to connect with voters who are not our natural constituency. We need to be a broad church and we need to stay close to our roots. Sadly, though, whatever the outcome of this nonsense and despite my respect for the work unions do for so many people, I don’t think I will ever feel quite the same about them again.
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Jude Robinson is the only Labour and Cooperative councillor on Cornwall council
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Photo: Louisa Thomson
I only plugged into Progress after reading Neil’s piece in Compass. I’m 83 and have been a middle of the road Labour voter all my life (with occasional angry gaps). I despair now. How can we be at each other’s throats while children go to school without breakfast?
The Unions are tough. Their job is to look after their members. I think the problem of not being able to rally round Progress is the uneasy feeling that Tony Blair (a good man in his time) and slippery people like Mandelson are still lurking in the wings.
We have to represent and look after all the people of this country. So somehow the decent people have to get together. Even the lib dems.
anthony @evelynwilliams.com
I have read a few of these “I joined Progress because…” articles but I’m yet to be convinced.
They seem to be based on setting up Aunt Sallies to knock down again.
“I joined Progress because I want Labour to win elections,” Like the rest of us non-Progress aligned Labour members don’t want Labour to win elections?
“I joined Progress because they haven’t given up on seats in the South,” Like many of us in the South that are working very hard but are non-Progress aligned have given up?
“I joined Progress because they do the knocking on the doors.” Like the rest of us non-Progress members don’t?
I see lots of Aunt Sallies but I don’t see any convincing reasons why Progress have the right ideas to win elections, aside from sticking close to the Tories who, let’s face it, haven’t won an election in 20 years.
I would certainly argue that we need to occupy the centre ground if we are to win elections but I also think the centre ground has moved considerably since 1997 and I don’t think it is where Progress seems to think it is. I think “middle britain” is a lot more suspicious of corporate power, high finance and neo-liberalism than it used to be.
“I also think the centre ground has moved considerably since 1997 and I don’t think it is where Progress seems to think it is”
Fair enough but is that a reason to ban Progress from the Labour Party?