Hope, Heat, and challenging Hate with 3000 leaflets – next up fighting Tory Cash

The biggest Young Fabian turnout yet last Saturday for our weekend campaign days – this time as we headed out to Transport House, Dagenham and the home of the Hope Not Hate campaign.

Turnout for the day was so high that the Valence ward pre-assigned to the Young Fabians had been delivered to already by the time we arrived

This was far and away the single most impressive campaign day I’ve seen in the UK – and ultimately the most reminiscent of the various campaigns I’ve taken part in in the US. It wasn’t so much about sophistication as style, scale and very good organisation.

The scale spoke for itself – over 540 volunteers and over 90,000 HNH newspapers delivered across the whole of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and into neighbouring Havering. And Young Fabian members more than played their part, forming part of the small group that stayed out in the unseasonal heat into the afternoon, and delivering almost 3,000 copies of the literature to households facing the hate-fuelled and hate-fuelling onslaught of the BNP.

Local Labour MP, and former candidate for deputy leader of the party, Jon Cruddas was driver for the day for part of the Young Fabian campaign team

Style-wise, this day of action was about solidarity, about feeling part of something big, and about being inspired. Inspired by the cause, but inspired by the hundreds of other people who’d given up their Saturday for it. Instantly upon arrival we felt part of something big and important and were driven to get out and contribute to the mammoth efforts of the day. It was exciting in the extreme and reminded me very much of the feelings of many of the Young Fabian members who took part in the delegation I led to Obama’s campaign in Ohio in 2008. But also, the style was one of supporting volunteers, making them feel welcome, helping them to do what they came to do, and thanking them for their efforts. I’ve written much about the importance of people-focused campaign organisation and the little things on Saturday – the one page of briefing and tips handed to volunteers – and the big things – providing lunchtime curry for 500 to accompany a set by activist musician Billy Bragg – really did make a difference to the experience, and therefore the collective achievements of the day.

Next up we’re hitting Westminster North to help Karen Buck in her central London fight against well-connected Tory Joanne Cash and her temperamental local Conservative Association. Hope you feel inspired to join us whether you’ve been out already or not.

Healey says Young Fabians ‘Labour’s future’

Our new members’ reception last night followed some work at Labour HQ ringing first time voters ahead of the – now very near – general election.

Guest speaker was Rt Hon John Healey MP, Cabinet minister for housing and planning. After taking his turn trying to sell fundraising raffle tickets, Healey highlighted the Young Fabians’ span of appeal and the ‘fresh energy’ we bring with our ‘combination of organisation and ideology’.

His view that it’s not what Labour has done but ‘why we’ve done it’ that matters is sound. So we’re about more than just managing Britain through global recession: we’re about a focus on people – their lives, their jobs, their homes, and their families. Which is how, despite a deeper recession, we’ve seen half the business failures experienced in the previous recession during the last Tory government.

He ended with a question, perhaps a challenge. It came from a constituent of his in a supermarket in his south Yorkshire seat: “Mr Healey, Mr Healey – what are you doing to keep the Tories out?”

This is about taking responsibility and doing something. We win the trust, respect and support of people by – as Healey said – combining our ideas and our action. Labour can play to the strengths of its leadership here. It’s not polished presentation that is craved but it is principled action that people see missing elsewhere. As one first time voter, a 20-year-old female studying an FE course, told me on the phone tonight, “Get off my telly, Cameron – why as an MP aren’t you doing something for the country?”

Listen to a podcast of John Healey’s speech plus comments from Young Fabian members at tonight’s reception here.

The fight is not over: 50 years of fighting for equality and still more to do

It is fitting that in the year the Young Fabians celebrates its 50^th anniversary, that we hold our first ever ‘Equalities Month’. Issues of equality have been of prime concern to Fabians, young and ‘older’, throughout the society’s history; as seen in the Fabian Equality Project and reflected in the 2010 Young Fabian members survey, where equalities policy was amongst the top five interests of today’s young thinkers on the left.

Numerous legislative changes and cultural shifts, have taken place in the last 50 years which have moved towards (though not realised) an equalisation of experiences of life in Britain. I want to look all the way back though to two events in 1960 – the year the Young Fabians were founded – with impact both sides of the Atlantic, and indeed around the world.

1960 brought the death of tireless activist, Sylvia Pankhurst. The Pankhurst family (Fabianism was part of their DNA too, you know), as leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, had international reach and their determination and work is felt today, and will be forever. Whilst women are free to participate in the electoral process, we still see a deficit in involvement in political, business and civic leadership. In crude numbers, we’re talking 32% of board seats on public bodies occupied by women, just 12% on FTSE 100 boards, and 20% of seats in the Commons and Lords. (The only parliamentary figure vaguely representative is the 47% of the Welsh Assembly that are female.) Whilst these figures must change, we shouldn’t dismiss improvement – which has happened, and is happening, as a result of action by the Labour Party and this Labour Government.

Fifty years ago, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird was first published. Ahead of civil rights legislation in the United States, the story took as its main theme racial inequality and injustice. It has been a focus of classroom study from the early 60s to the present day and in 2006 Britain’s librarians named it as the one book everyone should read. For me, Lee’s skill in using a child narrator – rather than her lawyer father, Atticus Finch – exposes the simple views and flawed arguments of prejudiced individuals and an unequal society. Despite the election, to increasingly significant positions, of BNP politicians in the last couple of years, Britain has moved on, not least due to the work of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and its predecessor. But we as Young Fabians should take responsibility for preventing BNP ideas further permeating our society.

So, March 2010 is marked by the Young Fabians as Equalities Month. It is likely to be the last full month of this parliament. A month that will see the launch of Young Fabian Women, a new section of the society aimed at encouraging young women to become active in politics. And royal assent should be given to a single Equality Act.

We know these issues are important to Young Fabians, the wider labour movement, and Britain as a whole. And we shouldn’t forget – as we approach the general election – the threat that the right poses to the causes fought so passionately and adeptly by the Pankhurst family, Harper Lee, and millions of other campaigners for equality ever since.

Make sure you leave on time …

Today marks WYPHD – not an obvious abbreviation is it? But it’s one that effects much of the population and many Young Fabian members. Work Your Proper Hours Day is the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime would start to get paid if they did all their unpaid overtime at the start of the year. A whole two months into the year – pretty shocking, eh?

And that is just the average. The TUC report today that there has been a further increase in the number of Britons doing ‘extreme’ unpaid overtime – that’s more than ten hours a week above contracted hours. Their WYPHD will be not until at least 26th April.

There’s 3 interesting aspects to this.

Firstly, speaking from my own experience and that of friends and colleagues, I suspect this affects a large proportion of young people – perhaps trying to impress in their first job after leaving education – and even more so Young Fabian members, a number of whom have jobs that will be stretched to fit the anti-social hours of parliament.

Secondly, the context of the recession. Whilst more people are working more hours than they are being paid for, unemployment is rising. Could the sum of a team’s additional hours put in actually be enough to create new jobs? Are young school leavers or university graduates struggling in the jobs market suffering more than they need to? It seems that during the recession there have been more temporary contracts being offered where once there may have been permanent jobs – is the nature of such work pressuring young workers to stay in the office longer to secure the prize of permanent employment, foregoing short-term health for long-term security?

Thirdly, and very importantly, there is a gender divide. The group with highest proportion of people working unpaid overtime, and the highest proportion undertaking extreme overtime, is single women. Level pegging in numbers doing unpaid overtime with single men is the group containing married or cohabiting couples without children. A majority of Young Fabian members who are working will fit into these categories. We can but speculate why it is that women are working more for free. Is it a greater work ethic? Or is it a way to show one’s value in a country still blighted by unfair gender pay gaps?

The TUC website has some other interesting stats. And the WYPHD site contains an unpaid overtime calculator and some games and novelties worth a quick look (during your lunch break?).

Plus, eagle-eyed news followers may notice that the long hours advice clinic has been put together by a Professor who has found fame elsewhere this week.

A few hours left to complete YF Members Survey – prize draw closes at midnight

Our annual members survey gives you the chance to have your say on the issues and activities most important to you, and to guide the executive committee’s planning over the course of the next year. It’s also the first chance to sign up to this year’s policy development groups.

www.surveymonkey.com/s/youngfabiansurvey2010

All survey responses received by midnight tonight will be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 book token.

Please email me on aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk if you are having any difficulty completing the survey.

Adrian Prandle, Vice Chair

From ‘Twitter Bombard Tuesdays’ to Fabianism for a Fiver this February

Adrian Prandle, Young Fabian Vice Chair, offers some observations on the web as special edition of Anticipations, the Young Fabian magazine, looking at how the internet is changing politics, is offered free online for the first time.

SPONTANEITY AND CREATIVITY – The improv-stand-up Ross Noble, with his comedic-anarchic wonts, last month unfortunately called a day on his ‘Twitter Bombard Tuesdays’. This weekly event had briefly mobilised Noble’s micro-blogging followers to target confectionery companies, Dragon Duncan Bannatyne, and our very own Kerry McCarthy MP, with 140 character business pitches and bizarre questions. It was funny, but beyond Noble – the real spontaneity and creativity was coming from his fans; he was facilitating an opportunity for them to mirror his own unique style. Not too dissimilar from a certain US President who empowered his supporters to tell their personal stories and organise their neighbourhoods in a campaign that literally followed its leader …

WHO’S WATCHING? – Young Fabian member and current President of the NUS, Wes Streeting, writes in an article which argues that online campaigns can make a difference offline, on page 17 of Anticipations, that ‘thousands of people joining a cause on Facebook is nothing new today’ – and he’s right. But I know from a recent meeting during my day job that even much-maligned and oft-criticised quangos are watching out, and working out how they must react to online political or citizen activity such as the Facebook A Level Biology paper protest. Gradually, everyone is starting to notice what’s going on online.

REMEMBERING THE REAL WORLD – I write myself in Anticipations(page 26) on the importance of linking new media and established forms of communication and argue for the continuing relevance of the age-old people-centred campaigning methods we are accustomed to. The web fails politics when it is insular and a stage for the faux wars of the blogosphere. And is at its best when it retains a sense of humanity. MyDavidCameron.com works because it’s simple and because it connects with people. Sure, there’s some duff examples but the best, the funniest, the most poignant mock-ups of the airbrushed poster are all capable of resonating with people’s lives and experiences.

So, what does this mean? Well ultimately, it’s a movement away from the crafting of carefully, constructed messages specifically targeted and towards doing something different, doing something quickly and then creating enough involvement and momentum for it to snowball and make people sit up and take notice. Those that manage to merge the former with the latter, stamping their own personality in the process, during this election will likely find success be it in hits on a website or votes in a ballot box.

Young Fabian magazine, Anticipations, is available online in its entirety for the first time ever. We are offering Fabian members over the age of 31 the chance to sample an edition which includes Sarah Brown, Ben Bradshaw, Kerry McCarthy and Alex Smith. And we are encouraging our supporters under the age of 31 who enjoy the magazine to join the Young Fabians for just £5 to receive every edition of Anticipations, as well as our pamphlets, and to take part in our full range of activities.

Don’t Belize all you read

I met up last night with Kunal Khatri, formerly of the YF Executive Committee, who readers will remember as the excellent organiser and host of our pub quizzes last year. Hard to escape, we discussed the election and the potential impact the outcome could have on our respective day jobs. Amongst other things, we talked a bit about the polls, which have improved in the last couple of weeks in a much more convincing way than the Labour boost towards the end of last year.

I’m pleased with the direction of travel of the national voting intentions. But the point I made to Kunal was that the media are reporting a minimal amount of data from the marginal seats in comparison to these headline figures, coupled with comments about uniform swing and the likely balance of seats in the next parliament. The reality is that Labour can be narrowing the overall gap in intentions but that it could be making little difference to the outcome of the election if those people aren’t living in the right constituencies. My hunch was that were we to see more polling from the key seats, we’d probably find the Tories with a wider gap than the 7/8 per cent that has been accepted right now as roughly the difference nationally. Morale-wise, this close to the election – and given how the parliamentary party in particular has reacted to polls in recent years – it’s perhaps best that we don’t see such polls and stay focused on the task in hand …

However, there are some out there and today I’ve come across an interesting analysis by Anthony Wells for UK Polling Report of Ipsos-MORI’s aggregated data for 2009 (that is, all their polls combined), followed up on by Andrew Sparrow. What we see is the Tories – last year, so not accounting for the recent downturn in their fortunes – having a 5% larger lead (a somewhat formidable 21% lead) in Lab-Con marginals. The swing to the Tories in these seats is greater than the swing in safe Labour seats and quite significantly better than that in safe Tory seats.

In other words, they appear to be winning over voters where it matters. There’s one reason for that: a certain Lord Ashcroft. Which is why it’s so important his personal tax situation is clarified.

The lesson is that we mustn’t get complacent about the direction of travel and about the electoral system working in our favour. And we mustn’t stop the fight.

UPDATE: I forgot to include a link to some recent ICM polling of marginals for the News of the World.

Running on empty: are energy companies the new banks?

A somewhat dramatic headline over at The Guardian’s website – ‘Ofgem: UK cannot trust energy companies to keep the lights on’, referring to an Ofgem report released on Wednesday which proposes moving energy supply away from the competitive markets model.

Actually, the gas and electricity regulator’s Project Discovery is clear that such an option is the most radical of the potential reforms it suggests.  The Guardian reports that the carbon tax that Ofgem advocates as an incentive for the big energy suppliers to build new, more environmentally friendly, power stations, may appear in the pre-election Budget.  

We often hear of being taken to the brink of a shutdown – particularly during harsh winters – but what if the lights did go out?

Well, for one, I’m pretty sure the public reaction to the energy companies would rival that which Britain’s bankers have experienced in the last 18 months. Profits would be highlighted, bonuses lambasted, and the limits of regulation put under scrutiny. Nationalisation would likely be back on the agenda. But hopefully Britain’s commercial gas and electricity suppliers don’t see their business models as being in a similar vein to high street banks.

The view that the basic product they offer – the power we need to live our lives, both in business and in leisure - is so essential to everyday life that they can ride the storm is dangerous for us. Yet this is exactly what the banking world has succeeded in doing. You can’t immediately boycott your gas and electricity supplier the day after their sailing close to critical levels of supply has backfired.  So can they be relied upon to do the right thing?

It’s one to watch – but what is certain is the protests and hatred that would ensue. Not least because without electricity, 21st century Britain wouldn’t know what else to do other than take to the streets.

Have your say in the Young Fabian Survey 2010

Bright ideas? Burning issues? Got a suggestion? Or just want to take the first opportunity to sign up for this year’s policy development groups?
 
The executive committee wants to hear about the direction Young Fabians want the organisation to take during the next year. Young Fabian members are invited to have their say today in the YF Annual Survey 2010:
 
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/youngfabiansurvey2010
 
All responses received by the closing date of Monday 15 February will be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 book token.
 
The survey is quick and easy to complete, and is your chance to tell the YF executive committee what issues and activities are most important to you. This year, as Vice Chair, I am responsible for our policy development groups. These will be launching soon and you can sign up to join them by completing the survey.
 
The survey will be used by the executive committee to guide our planning over the course of the next year. Individually and collectively, our members are the heart of our organisation and it would be fantastic if you could feed in your views. If you have any problems, comments or questions about the survey then please email me: aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.
 
Here’s the link again – http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/youngfabiansurvey2010.
 
I look forward to seeing your responses.
 
 
Adrian Prandle
Vice Chair, Young Fabians

Labour Campaign for International Development

A number of Young Fabians have been involved in the establishment of the new Labour Campaign for International Development. Here, LCID Chair, David Taylor tells us what the organisation is about, and invites all YF members to the official launch with Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP.

Labour has transformed the lives of many people in the last decade, and nowhere has the impact of a Labour Government been more acutely felt than in international development. For many of us, eradicating poverty is the reason we joined the Labour Party, and there is much to be proud of.

Since 1997, Labour has helped lift 3 million permanently out of poverty each year. We’ve helped get some 40 million children into school. Polio is on the verge of being eradicated and 3 million are now able to access life-preserving drugs for HIV and AIDS. 1.5 million people have improved water and sanitation services.

Tackling global poverty has been high on the agenda of our Party, and we want to keep it that way. That’s why we, a group of Labour activists, have recently set up Labour Campaign for International Development.

We want to keep international development high on Labour’s agenda, and to push our Government to build on its success and be bolder and go further still, in a similar way to our fraternal friends at SERA do on the environment.

We also want to use it as a vehicle to bring people who care about global poverty and other single issues in to the Labour Party. Be they young people engaging in politics for the first time, or former members who’ve turned away from party politics, we want to engage them.

First and foremost, we need them to vote Labour. In the lead up to the election, we’ll be scrutinising the Conservatives to show just how much damage they would do to everything we’ve fought for over the last decade. Even if their promise to match our pledge to spend 0.7% on aid could be believed, it is what they would spend our aid money on that is most damaging – the same failed private sector solutions that failed in the 1980s. No one must be complacent of the Tory threat, or think that a vote for the Greens or Lib Dems will bring any more than a Tory Government.

But we can and will be more positive than that. We’ve got a proud record on development and we intend to shout about it to anti-poverty campaigners. By encouraging them into the Party, we can gain from their skills and energy and, we hope, help invigorate the Party in the process.

LCID is a growing organisation, and we’d love to have your involvement. We’ve set up a blog with regular news and comment at LCID.org.uk, and you can become a fan of our Facebook page to get regular updates.

To formally launch LCID, the Rt Hon Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, will be speaking at an event in the House of Commons on 02 February at 7pm. Please visit our website to RSVP.

We look forward to working with everyone in the Party over the coming weeks and months to keep Labour in Government transforming people’s lives and lifting millions out of poverty.

by David Taylor, Chair, Labour Campaign for International Development