Liberating the NEC

Up and down the country, Labour members are receiving their ballots for the elections to the National Executive Committee (NEC) and National Policy Forum (NPF). What are these organisations and who makes up the membership? More importantly, are they still fit for purpose in the modern Labour Party?

The NEC is the governing body of the Labour Party, responsible for setting its strategic direction and overseeing internal policy-making processes. Today, 33 members sit on the committee, drawn from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), affiliated trade unions and socialist societies, and Constituency Labour Party (CLP) representatives. A handful of special positions are also set aside to represent Young Labour, Labour councillors and members of the Labour Party in the European Parliament. The link with rank-and-file members is sustained by the practice of directly electing CLP representatives, which is meant to ensure that the NEC speaks for the party as a whole, rather than just for specific stakeholders.

The purpose of the NEC is to govern in the interests of members. However, the New Labour project sought to govern the party in the interests of its leaders, and set about this by diluting the influence of trade unionists and CLP members on the NEC. This project reached its climax in 1997, when Blair published the ‘Partnership in Power’ reforms, which substantially altered the party’s internal decision-making structures. The affiliated unions share of seats declined from 17/30 to 12/32, and a new Joint Policy Committee (JPC) was established with the right to review the policy decisions of the NEC and NPF, and to overrule them when necessary.

Understandably, ‘Partnership in Power’ was seen as a ploy to transfer power from the NEC and concentrate it in the hands of the leadership. The new JPC was made up of appointed, not elected, members, and dominated by frontbench MPs under the watchful eyes of the leader. Ordinary members were placed in a perplexing situation whereby they voted for the membership of a decision-making body that had a good deal of its decision-making powers stolen away from it.

Ed Miliband has sought to remedy some of the more upsetting aspects of ‘Partnership in Power’ through the ‘Refounding Labour’ campaign. However, the final report remains vague on the future of Labour’s internal democracy. To date, it remains the case that ordinary members have no say over the composition of the JPC, and that ordinary members only have the right to vote for roughly 20% of the total NEC membership.

This does not seem in keeping with the image of a vibrant, democratic party that Labour seeks to make its own. The NEC must be liberated from the old-fashioned procedures that restrict the membership from having the final say on its composition. Members should have the right to vote on all the positions on the NEC- bar the leader and deputy leader. In addition, Labour has to wake up to the fact that in order for its governing committee to truly stand up for equality, it needs to create new positions allowing for the broadest amount of participation possible. To this end, dedicated Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish representatives should sit on the committee, which will allow the NEC to speak for Labour members in all corners of the Union.

They should sit alongside members who promote the key liberation campaigns present in Britain today- Women, BME, Disability, and LBT. Yes, the NEC has an Equalities Sub-Committee where the voices of these minorities are heard. However, if Labour wants to be seen as serious on gender rights, disability rights, and ethnic issues, it needs to put such representatives on the governing body proper.

Labour has always sought to be the pioneering party in terms of equality and representation- think about all-women shortlists and LGBT Labour. Now it must take the next logical step and place liberation officers on a new NEC, one that is fully elected, and fully representative.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

The Ethics of Personal Protest

The limits of peaceful protest are defined by the media and popular perceptions rather than the scale of the real threat to society.

On Saturday, the ethics of direct action were called into question following UK Uncut’s street party outside Nick Clegg’s London home. During the early afternoon, upwards of 300 activists- many of whom had brought along their families- followed UK Uncut stewards to Putney to protest against austerity measures sanctioned by the Deputy Prime Minister.

Almost inevitably, internet forums soon began humming with debate over whether it was right for the activists to engage in this form of “personal protest” against an individual. Tory MP Louise Mensch suggested that targeting Clegg’s home was “intolerable bullying”  and re-tweeted opinions that the protest was likely to frighten his children (if, that is, they were there at the time). Jamie Reed, a Labour shadow health minister, similarly argued that it was “inexcusable to target Clegg’s family.” 

The protestors hit back with picture evidence testifying to the peaceful nature of the protest, and made it clear that they never intended to threaten Clegg’s household. The police revealed that no arrests were made at the street party, and no attempts to harass the Cleggs were reported.

What is interesting about this exchange is that it suggests the public do not have the right to directly protest against individual politicians or target their families- something the national media do every day.

As the reach and power of the British media has grown, so the personalisation of politics has increased. Today, the personal is political, and the majority of politicians are fully aware that public office comes at the cost of their private lives.

MPs and journalists cannot rage against the public’s targeting of the individual when they do the same themselves. Sir Stuart Bell was the victim of a defamation campaign in 2011 when a local paper claimed he was a candidate for the dubious honour of the country’s laziest MP- a story that quickly did the rounds in the national media. Regardless of whether the accusation was true or not, certainly this was direct barracking of an individual. Why did the papers focus on Sir Stuart, rather than turning their fire on the Labour party or the parliamentary system as a whole? Because that would not have made as interesting a story.

The national media does not spare politician’s families, either. Think back to Tony Blair’s days as PM, when his son Euan was detained for being drunk and disorderly. The incident caused a brief media storm and brought into question Blair’s wisdom in suggesting on-the-spot fines for larger louts, not to mention bringing untold humiliation and unwelcome attention to the 16-year old Euan.

Those who complained about UK Uncut’s actions on Saturday see the ‘private’ individual as out-of-bounds to public protest, while daily reading stories about the personal shortcomings of their MPs and the scandalous indiscretions of celebrities.

Why shouldn’t protest become personal, when government policies attack the ability of the vulnerable to live private lives at all? When cuts to benefits prevent the sick and disabled from living autonomous lives, when parents are forced to work two jobs to make ends meet, and when students are obliged to use those hours put aside for studying in order to pay their way through university, private lives are taken away.

In such a time, isn’t “personal” protest justified?

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog 

Is Labour the party for labour?

Bringing Labour more closely in line with the interests of organised labour is the solution to the party’s electoral woes, not the problem. 

This week, I took part in a debate at my university between our campus’ Labour Party Society and a branch of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), a UK-based network of socialist activists who seek to create a working-class movement against capitalism. The debate sought to answer the question: “Is Labour the party for labour?” and explored the relationship between the party, Trade Unions, and the working-class over the course of the 20^th century.

Labour has been entwined with the interests of organised labour since its birth in 1900. Back in the 1940s, Nye Bevan described how Labour “grew from the bowels” of the Trade Union movement, and Ed Miliband stated earlier this year that “the link [between the unions and Labour] will stay and I believe in that link.”  The Unions have traditionally been seen as the political vehicles of the working-class, and have been courted by Labour throughout the 20^th century in order to provide funds, members, and activists for the party. Labour’s alliance with the Unions has also historically been seen as legitimating its claim to be “the people’s party.”

However, the course of history shows that Labour has not always been as close a friend of the Unions as it likes to profess. As a speaker for AWL explained,  the problem with the party is that it committed itself from the very start to parliamentary democracy, disavowing other methods of political expression in order to pursue representation in the Commons. This principle is blamed for limiting Labour’s ability to accurately represent the interests of labouring men and women. AWL promotes a much broader conception of democracy, where the working-class can gather together, make decisions, and take action as a self-organised collective.

Labour has also always shied away from openly taking the side of the unions during industrial actions. This tendency originates way back to 1926, when Labour lent only lukewarm support to the General Strike of that year, and continued right through the 1980s, when the party sought to distance itself from the ‘ultra-leftists’ leading the Miners’ Strike. Again, this is a result of the party’s commitment to established political practices. Labour’s first Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald, argued that the party had to win “respectability” in order to compete meaningfully for control of the Commons, and claimed that this could not be gained by endorsing disruptive strikes and direct action.

This tendency has frequently set the Unions at odds with the party leadership. In recent years, there has even been talk of certain Unions disaffiliating from Labour in order to dramatically demonstrate that the party is no longer seen as representing working-class interests.

How important is it that Labour is seen to be on the side of the working-class and organised labour? In this age of austerity, the answer is self-evident. Labour’s next majority can arguably only be won by regaining the 5 million voters it lost between 1997 and 2010. These ‘lost voters’ were overwhelmingly working-class or unemployed men and women who gradually came to believe that the party they once supported no longer represented them. In the last Labour government, where was the policy on employee rights, union freedoms, and a living wage? Today, talking about continuing to chop away at the welfare state in a similar- if not identical- fashion to the Tories will not win those voters back to Labour.

The Unions can help Labour here. The number of Union members in Britain far exceeds the number of Labour party members, and as political organisations they produce policy ideas and suggest reforms that can be utilised by the party to bring it more in line with working-class needs.

The AWL speakers at our event suggested that Labour must democratise its internal party structures in order to incentivise working-class people and union members to take a leading role in the policy process. For too long this has been in the hands of the party leadership and MPs, out of reach of the vast majority of party members. Perhaps a full-scale review of internal decision-making procedures will ensure Labour’s policies will be more in line with the people it says it represents- and win back those 5 million voters to boot.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog 

A new approach to public health

How much do the government and the market affect people’s ability to pursue a healthier life? In this Guest Post, Amrit Caleyachetty says ‘not enough.’

The Conservatives generally think that the answer is not much.  Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, believes that reducing nutrition-related chronic diseases such as obesity, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cancer, can be achieved by individuals taking personal responsibility to eat less and move more.

In the UK, socioeconomic inequalities in avoidable illness and premature deaths for chronic diseases are directly attributable to socioeconomic differences in dietary patterns.  Research has demonstrated that lower income households generally consume more calorific, nutrient-poor foods and drinks compared to more affluent households, which are more likely to subsist on a diet of healthy fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and fish. Therefore, belonging to a lower socioeconomic group carries with it a greater likelihood of becoming overweight and obese.

At a time when Labour is thinking about developing progressive policies in the context of there being less money to spend, reducing the burden of NHS healthcare spending is an important consideration. Last summer, The Lancet reported that if the current obesity trends continue into the future, by 2030 there will be approximately 8.5 million incident cases of diabetes mellitus, 7.3 million incident cases of cardiovascular disease and more than half a million new cancer cases, with treatment costs approximately £2 billion per year.

The food and drinks industry’s response to this has a sense of déjà vu. The tobacco industry systematically undermined tobacco control policies, claiming that increasing the price of tobacco via taxation was regressive and that regulating tobacco interfered with individual freedoms. They aggressively lobbied government to endorse a policy whereby the industry would regulate itself free from state constraints. The current government has mollycoddled the food and drinks industry, suggesting that it will not let widening social inequalities in health frustrate big business’ pursuit of profits.

In upholding commercial interests over the public’s health, the Conservatives are at least consistent with their ideology. However, this does not mean Labour can be too pleased with its own record. The party failed to recognise that an unfettered market combined with loose government oversight was a recipe for enduring social inequalities in chronic diseases. When Labour left office, a sign of this unhealthy relationship was that 40 of England’s 170 NHS trusts had signed long term commercial leases to fast food restaurants and high-street coffee shops.

Reform is desperately needed to prevent an obesity epidemic in the future. An unhealthy food tax should be introduced, alongside marketing regulations that restrict advertising to children and put an end to confusing food labelling. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has recommended that rather than taxing fats and sugars, unhealthy snacks should be targeted with exemptions for products that meet certain threshold nutritional requirements. This would shift food purchasing behaviour towards healthier foods and encourage the snack industry to produce healthier products.

Given many low-to-middle income households are understandably wary of food price increases, a food tax may be considered regressive since individuals on lower incomes generally spend proportionally more of their income on food, purchasing more energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods than relatively affluent individuals. However, a tax aimed at unhealthy snack food and drinks combined with subsidies for fruit and vegetables or improving the nutrition of school meals, would not be regressive as there would be a range of cheap, healthier alternatives. Furthermore, a reduction in the consumption of less healthy foods would decrease the proportion of individuals with lower socioeconomic position suffering from nutrition-related chronic diseases.

Labour’s new generation cannot see the problems it sees and not try to change it approach to public health. There will be fierce opposition to any effective policies that aim to rebalance industry interests. But this is the time to find the spirit of past public health movements which responded to the widespread health problems created by rapid industrialization.

We must make the argument that effective government action to reduce inequalities in chronic disease is a pro-health and pro-economic choice. If public health is defined as what we, as a society, do to assure the conditions for all to be healthy, then clearly we have not done enough.

Amrit Caleyachetty is a member of the Young Fabians

Budget Anatomy Aftermath

On Tuesday 24th April, Fabians came together to discuss the 2012 Budget at the first session of Anatomy, with special guest Chris Leslie MP.

The two hour session was packed with strong and focused debate, and from the encouraging words of our guest and results from feedback forms distributed to participants can be judged a success. The session involved devolving discussions to four small groups, with the groups reporting back to the floor after sometime discussing the topic.

We ran two phases in the session – the first specialised phase covered a different elements of the budget, while the second phase questioned who the budget was really for. The specialised areas discussed were the following:

* Impact of the budget on SME and social enterprises
* The fairness of taxation
* Government and financial markets
* Regional investment and development

The participants are now digesting the results of the session with output to come. If you were unable to make Anatomy but want to get involved in the Young Fabians budget response then please get in touch at financenetwork@youngfabians.org.uk. For everyone else, stay tuned.

Alex Adranghi is chair of the Young Fabians’ Future Finance Network.