Unity South West has today written to every Labour councillor in the South West asking them to pledge to transform the Labour Party in their area to become a vehicle for community organising.
In our letter we argued that only by focusing on community issues, at localised branch level, can we build a mass membership party that allows local people to feel empowered to organise within it to action change; and that by doing so, we build trust with the electorate and win elections – not because we knocked on their house like a crazed encyclopedia salesman two months before an election but because we understand the community, its hopes and its concerns and we provide a vehicle through which to channel that energy.
Clearly we recognise at Unity South West that the focus needs to be on election campaigning at election time, and that party business can only be actioned by party members. But what we’re promoting is an extension of that administrative and electoral function, inviting non-party members to our meetings to discuss and identify key community issues from which we can organise campaigns and solutions. By doing so we will promote the broad church that the Labour Party has to be and gain trust from our communities that our values are the right values in difficult times.
Some people will no doubt disagree but we have a mountain to climb in the coming years, especially in the South West. The South West is the most rural dominated region in England and currently only has four Labour MPs and no Labour MEP yet we have the right values from which a vision for the South West can be drawn – defending public services, investing in public transport, providing a sensible housing policy, instilling economic growth to provide employment opportunities and ensuring educational quality – all of which provide some of the most complex and serious problems for people right across the region.
As an area with a high degree of ‘swing voters’ and a higher number of disenfranchised Liberal Democrat supporters we have a significant challenge to prepare our movement in readiness to take on a Conservative Party whose support is remaining solid or increasing; providing the progressive alternative in a region that either makes or breaks a Labour Government victory in 2015.
Unity South West will continue to get the right people around the table, identifying our shared values in the broad labour movement and agreeing to work together to bring a focus of community and a strategy of organising empowerment.
To find out more about the Unity South West campaign and how to get involved visit www.unitysouthwest.co.uk
Darren Jones was Labour's parliamentary candidate in Torridge & West Devon in 2010.
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