Problems of Labour meetings

Simon Hannah
Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read

Read Peter Hain’s take on the problem of Labour Party meetings he wrote in 1983, sound familiar?

“Suppose, for example, that you are a typical new member. You decide to join Labour — a big step in itself — and you send off your application form. You are enthusiastic and wait expectantly for a reply or for someone to knock on your door. The first week goes by. ‘Oh, well’, you say to yourself, ‘it’s only a voluntary outfit. It’s unreasonable to expect an instant response.’ The weeks drift by. Six months later, when you have already almost forgotten you applied to join, someone knocks on your door with a notice of your ward meeting. Fortunately this person has enough sense to apologise for the delay and to persuade you to attend the meeting. ‘All right’, you say without much conviction as your eye catches the agenda: an unexciting list of Apologies, Reports and Any Other Business.

You turn up on the night, walking shyly through the door and into a strange new atmosphere. Others are milling about, chatting. Nobody seems to notice you, nor explains what is going on. When the meeting begins everybody talks in code language, about ECs, GMCs, LGCs, PPCs (Executive Committee, General Management Committee, Local Government Committee [Today the Local Campaign Forum -LCF] and Prospective Parliamentary Candidate respectively). Minutes are approved, officers give boring reports about meetings they have attended and motions consisting of a series of platitudes are discussed, with a handful doing most of the talking. Then everyone goes off to the pub — except you, because they’ve forgotten you! Still, you are a persistent sort, keen on Labour policies and anxious to fight the Tories. So you keep turning up to meetings. Slowly you start to find out what is going on. You note that whenever something needs to be done, a meeting is called to discuss doing something usually means holding another meeting! You find that you could happily spend every night of the week going to meetings: to decide other meetings, or to discuss what to do next after the meeting that has just been called. This sort of institutionalised ‘meetingitis’ substitute for the much more demanding task of go outside and campaigning for Party policies.

Another thing you may note is that much of what passes for political activity is a kind of ‘declaratory politics’. Local discussion is followed by passing a motion, demanding this or that. Fine speeches are made, full of passion and commitment. The motion is then passed, to be sent somewhere up the Party ladder, and local activists leave the meeting content that they have done their bit for socialism. Not only does this pass the buck — usually to a leadership which can then be blamed for failing to take note of it — but the pressing problem of implementing socialist policies goes by default. CLPs have rarely discussed ways of campaigning to win support for the Party’s policies and socialist ideas.

Consequently, too much of the Party’s politics have been exercised in a vacuum divorced from ordinary voters and from day-to-day working-class struggles. This has also meant an unwillingness to face up to a structure of power that can make passing motions irrelevant. Significantly, the left of the Party has often been just as guilty. Far from its activities justifying the Fleet Street tag of ‘revolutionary politics’, the Labour left’s approach has tended to be one of ‘revolutionary politics’. Ritual denunciations of sell-outs by right-wing leaders and extravagant rhetoric may encourage a self-satisfied belief that one is waging the class war. But those with the most reason for satisfaction are the ones who know that such activity does not challenge their monopoly of power and wealth.”

It is worth considering how things could be organised differently and what it means to make Labour into a campaigning party.

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