Southern Front's submission to Refounding Labour

Southern Front welcomes the decision to undertake a fundamental review of the party’s structures and set our contribution in this response.

Outward looking party

The profile of membership of Constituency Labour Parties varies from region to region; from district to district; and from community to community. We believe it is important that each CLP should be allowed to determine its own local organisational structure and the frequency and nature of the meetings it holds. What is right for an inner city CLP with a large membership is not necessarily the best model for a small rural or market town CLP.

There are few organisations or businesses that operate in competitive environments that do not have a presence on the web. Research carried out by Southern Front earlier this year unearthed worrying findings about the state of Labour’s web presence in the south of England.

• Nearly half of CLPs in the south did not have a website (93 out of 197)

• 13 of the 59 seats we won in 1997 but have since lost did not have a constituency website;

• 9 seats Labour lost in 2010 had no CLP website - Basildon South & Thurrock East, Bristol North West, Dorset South, Dover, Gloucester*, Great Yarmouth, Kingswood, Portsmouth North*, Somerset North East & Waveney*;

*(since this research was undertaken Gloucester and Portsmouth North have re-established local websites, and Bob Blizzard, the former MP in Waveney, is maintaining a personal site)

• Over 10,000 members of the Labour Party are members in a CLP that didn’t have a website

These findings should alarm us. They give an impression of local Labour parties struggling to recover from defeat last May, and of almost moribund parties unable to demonstrate that they are a part of their local communities, relevant to the challenges of local community life. In this modern technological age, what message does it send if the Labour party chooses not to or cannot maintain a basic local website? It is the internet equivalent of a “closed for business” sign on the shop door.

Southern Front has five recommendations for the party, that we believe will help improve the party’s online presence in the South and enhance the party’s ability to win votes back to Labour;

1. The most urgent issue is to establish Labour websites in those six constituencies that we lost in 2010 that still do not have websites at present.

2. In areas where the party has limited membership and no elected representatives, cross constituency party website should be established. A number of CLPs have already joined together to set up a joint website, often operating across local authority boundaries (Bournemouth, Swindon, Brighton & Hove).

3. The party should support efforts to establish a brokerage system whereby party members with web and internet skills can be put in touch with CLPs who don’t have the expertise within their own constituency. Party members across the country have set up some exceptionally good local websites and would undoubtedly be willing to help other CLPs establish their own sites.

4. The NEC should introduce a new position of New Media Officer within constituency labour parties, elected with other functional officers and responsible for ensuring that the CLP has an up to date and functioning web presence. Training should be made available through regional parties.

5. Finally, Labour should agree an objective of having a local website for every CLP by 2015, when the next general election is scheduled.

Integrating technology and social media into campaigning can no longer be seen as a gimmick or something to be left to tech savvy candidates. Technology is integral to modern campaigning, and every CLP and parliamentary candidate should, as an absolute minimum, have a functioning and regularly updated website.

In many parts of the South Labour has neither an MP nor local councillors. Consequently, Labour’s local leadership positions are all elected as the result of internal elections. The Chair of the CLP, and other borough or county officers, are elected to positions that are inward facing. So in a constituency without a local MP or parliamentary candidate, there aren’t any party officers elected (or indeed unelected) with a remit to proactively promote the party to those outside membership of it. In these constituencies the role of CLP Chair should be recast to include a responsibility to promote and represent the party to the local community. In the absence of that role Labour parties in many parts of the South are insular without any meaningful interaction with the community they seek to serve.

Voice for members

One third of the UK electorate lives in Political South. Labour cannot regain the keys to 10 Downing Street without an improvement in its position in the South. Yet party members in the South are not adequately represented throughout the party’s structures.

John Denham is the only member of the current Shadow cabinet who represents a constituency in the south, and only two members of the National Executive Committee (Labour’s ruling body which has a membership of 31), are from the south. Indeed, there isn’t anyone from the East of England or South West regions on either of these bodies. The absence of southern voices at Labour’s top table makes it less likely that the party will develop and deliver policies that will chime with the aspirations of southern swing voters.

It should no longer be acceptable for three English regions that constitute a third of the UK’s electorate to be so woefully represented in the shadow Cabinet and the NEC. The proposed move to dispense with elections to the shadow cabinet is welcome as it will give the leader greater opportunity to establish a better regional balance to his or her top team.

With only 10 MPs in the South, and most council or group leaders focussed on their own locality, Southern Front believes that the chairs of Labour Party Regional Boards should be encouraged to play a greater public role for the party in the regions. In order to provide a mandate for this role, we advocate the direct election by OMOV ballots of regional party chairs, who could serve two year terms of office. Directly elected regional chairs could play a powerful role as advocates for the South. The regional chairs should attend the NEC as ex officio members, thereby ensuring that each region of the UK is guaranteed a seat around the NEC table.

In addition, the NEC should be encouraged to explore other ways in which a better regional balance can be delivered in its membership.

Southern Front notes the regional nature of elections to the National Policy Forum, and welcomes this as a good basis on which to ensure all parts of the Labour family can be represented on an important party body.

Renewing party

Smaller CLPs and those which are not target seats in parliamentary elections get a raw deal in comparison to their larger and more electorally successful neighbours. The flat rate levy employed to fund European elections is unfair and depletes too readily smaller CLPs’ fundraising efforts – often for very little tangible return. A per member levy should be introduced as an alternative more equitable means of funding cross constituency elections such as these.

Labour needs to maintain the efforts that began earlier this year to ensure a greater proportion of council seats are contested by Labour candidates. With the Conservatives and Liberal democrats in coalition, it is even more essential that there is a Labour alternative on voter’s ballot papers. In constituencies where local council candidates are difficult to find consideration should be given to standing the same candidates in more than one seat – thereby ensuring more Labour candidates appearing on the ballot.

There are still too many CLPs that under perform in this area. Why is it that in Spelthorne we only contested 3 of 39 seats, yet in Sevenoaks – a party with a smaller CLP membership - we fought 20 of 46? The party can no longer tolerate a lack of ambition or electioneering at constituency level. The Labour party exists to fight and win elections, not debate and theorise on politics in dusty village halls.

We need to improve the links between the PLP and those constituencies that do not elect Labour MPs. In a technological age there is no reason why the parliamentary reports that Labour MPs produce for their monthly GMCs, cannot be shared with a twinned constituency that does not have a Labour MP. A formal twinning process should be adopted with the basic expectation that a Labour MP will as a minimum:

• Provide a written parliamentary report for the twinned CLP on a monthly basis in time for their GMC;
• Attend at least one GMC meeting in person in order to ensure Labour party members wherever they live get to meet Labour MPs;

Southern Front remain open minded about the use of primaries to select parliamentary candidates. While we recognise the potential that primaries might act as a disincentive to recruitment of new members, we are concerned that too few people are involved in the process that selects the candidates who contest parliamentary elections on behalf of the party. The Government’s proposals, set out in the Coalition Agreement, to fund a number of primaries as part of a trial should be accepted in order that we can explore if and how primaries can be deployed.

Winning back power

Labour’s path back to power must run through the South. A quarter of the 70 seats Labour need to win to return to power lie in the South. A national party, seeking to govern on behalf of all of the nation, cannot accept such a poor level of representation in large parts of it.

Winning again in the South will not happen as a result of even harder work by the party in the South. Labour nationally needs to understand why we need to perform well in the South, an area many outside of it see only in terms of privilege and affluence. We need to dispel the myth that exists in some metropolitan Labour quarters that assumes that to win in the Conservative-leaning South Labour must ditch policies dear to our core values. That places a responsibility on Labour MPs outside the South to not only understand why the South matters, but to also ensure that the South’s concerns are not marginalised or sidelined.

The decision to continue to have “champions” in the shadow cabinet for each of the three southern regions is welcome. So too are the efforts of PLP to Win, which if successful will help ensure that the PLP has closer and better ties with the party in the South.

Labour should convene a Listening to the South commission and roadshow, to ensure that the distinctive requirements of the south are heard and reflected in the party’s forthcoming policy reviews and deliberations. The process should be outward facing, with civil bodies and experts outside the Labour family invited to participate.

During 13 years of Government only four of the 55 MPs who held Cabinet office, represented seats in the South or East (Charles Clarke, Andrew Smith, John Denham & Ben Bradshaw). Labour Government’s of the future need to look a little more southern in outlook.

Finally, Labour needs to take the South seriously as a political issue because its long term future relies on it. Over the course of the next 25 years the rest of the UK will look like the South. Indeed, our policies in Government actively sought that: increased home ownership, a high skills economy. If we don’t take seriously the need to win again in the South, then it is only a matter of time before Labour becomes a small, regional party with limited prospects of forming a national government again.


Stuart King
Labour Southern Front