The Future of the Fabians: 3 suggestions

Fabianism is older than the Labour Party. Its tradition stems back before the Labour Representation Committee, before Keir Hardie and before version one of Clause 4. And yet Fabianism was crucial to every Labour government since it formed the party and must still be crucial to contributing to the formation of the next Labour government.

Sunder Katwala moves on from his service to the society and leaves it at time of renewal across the Labour Party. The Fabians and the Labour Party will both have new General Secretaries in 2011 and both individuals will have the challenges of making their organisations adapt to opposition.

Young Fabians and Young Labour members should rise to this moment and to Ed Miliband’s assertion that a new generation has taken over the party. In 2010 over 190 of the Society’s 320 new members were Young Fabians.

So here are three suggestions I would offer to the new Fabian General Secretary as an active member of the Young Fabians:

1. Membership is more than paying your subs

The Young Fabians pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation, where being a member means more than receiving a magazine and pamphlet in the post each month and going to conferences. Young Fabian members are encouraged to attend social events, contribute to policy commissions, join in online debates, write for our blog and for our magazine. We strive to make our members feel part of an organisation of like minded young people that they have ownership of and a space where they can debate and offer ideas. There is more the senior society can do to foster a sense that Fabians are part of a tradition, a community, a movement, where their ideas are valued and contribute to the future of the Labour party.

2. Campaigning is an important part of politics

Whilst we’re unashamed of being part of “pamphlet labour” and talking policy is our usp, the Young Fabians have a great tradition of being young campaigners as well as young thinkers. For local, general, European elections and even the US and Swedish General Elections, the Young Fabians have hit the #labourdoorstep and given the shoe leather needed to win elections for Labour candidates. There is a time for pamphlets and a time for action and the Young Fabians are as proud of our canvassing as of our policy and research. Without campaigning, Labour candidates would never get elected and our policies would stay in pamphlet books rather than getting on to the statue book.

3. Politics happens outside London

After some deserved criticism and a lot of hard work, the Young Fabians have made huge strides at improving our reach outside of London. The key lesson we learned, wasn’t to mandate a largely London based Executive to travel up and down the country running meetings. It was to learn that empowering non-London based members to run events with advice and guidance was more productive and brought better results. We still have further to go on this but there is much to be gained from empowering Fabians to run their activities, with relevant support, wherever they are. The new General Secretary should build and develop the Fabian local societies, encouraging them to become active parts of the Labour party in the regions and areas they work.

I’m sure there are more ideas that other Young Fabians would like to add to the debate about the future of the Fabians. Please join the debate and submit your contribution here.

Brian Duggan is Policy Officer for the Young Fabians.

The trouble with G.O’D.

The Guardian reports today that Sir Gus O’Donnell – head of the Civil Service – blocked an attempt by Gordon Brown to launch a judicial inquiry into the phone hacking affair because of the general election.

Given recent revelations, that looks like particularly poor judgement.

And it raises another important question: is Sir Gus O’Donnell too political to be head of the Civil Service?

On the one hand, you might agree with his analysis that it would “inappropriate to hold a judicial inquiry so close to a general election”, as the Guardian reports – any such inquiry would likely have become a campaigning issue due to (a) the fact former Editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson , was a key part of David Cameron’s so-called ‘inner circle’ and (b) Labour had lost the support of the News of the World (and the Sun).

On the other hand, the appointment of Andy Coulson – and his retention even when the evidence of widespread phone hacking continued to drip into the public sphere – calls into question Cameron’s judgement. It is entirely appropriate for political opponents to highlight this.

More fundamentally, the proximity or otherwise of elections should not be used to insulate politicians from poor decision making, and nor should it be used to obfuscate the judicial process – remember, victims of phone hacking were subject to illegal acts for which some reporters have already been imprisoned.

This is the second time in 10 months that Sir Gus O’Donnell’s advice has been called into question – the first related to his role in the coalition negotiations last summer.

Is it now time for him to go?

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

Fair pay please

I want a pay rise.

It’s easy to admit that reading today’s Guardian and realising that there are 170 senior civil servants who earn more than £150,000 left me feeling more than a little jealous (especially when you consider that the national average wage is a paltry £21,320).

To put this in context, these civil servants earn more than the prime minister’s wage with the most expensive being the Chief Executive of the Office of Fair Trading who is in the ‘respectable’ bracket of between £275,000-279,999.

Obviously we are all outraged and of course something must be done. Painfully the Coalition Government say that they are on the case.

Today was just a taster before they seek to publish the job titles and salaries of all civil servants earning over £58,000 next year. If you’re thinking “why are they doing this” then Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude popping up and rattling off something about wanting to “pull back the curtains to let light into the corridors of power” is all you’re going to get.

And it is at that point that I would say “hold on a minute”. I’m with the General Secretary of the FDA union for senior servants who pointed out that “Before this goes further we need to have a serious discussion about what it is ministers are seeking to achieve”; except I’m pretty certain what it is the Government is trying to achieve.

This is a massive case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Coalition Government is not doing this to champion transparency. It is no surprise that the Conservatives want to cut public spending and need an excuse to keep wages down or cut them.

During the election the Conservatives touted their 20:1 plan for the public sector, the highest paid in should get no more than 20 times more than the lowest paid. And they were clear that the scheme would mean that the policy was “designed to drive down high salaries rather than necessarily increase lower salaries”. Now that the election is over, Will Hutton has been appointed to lead this “commission into fair pay (sic) in the public sector”.

But it is duplicitous to call this a programme for ‘fair pay’ when the objective singly ignores the need to raise the pay of those languishing on low pay. If you look at the private sector the case for change is even greater.

If the bar for a well paid job is the prime minister’s salary then how do we feel about the finance director of Greggs earning £260k? When we consider that the ratio of pay in the private sector is as much as 80:1 or more then why have the Government not appointed the chair of a similar private sector ‘ fair pay commission’? Typically the Government (of this current hue at least) is making a misguided distinction between the private and public sectors, instead of treating them the same. The public sector has benefited from pulling in expertise by offering roughly comparable wages to the private sector. But the private sector has been allowed to accrue a ridiculously top-heavy salary structure.

When it comes to pay we need to go back to first principles. The strength of public anger was palpable when ordinary people realised what bankers in the city paid themselves in bonuses. The calls for windfall taxes and caps of bonuses were unanimous. And the minimum wage was only ever supposed to be an unbreakable legal floor for pay.

So between the criminal and the down right greedy there is the unfair, yet nobody is certain yet how to define it. I’d like to earn £100k+ and be able to buy that Ferrari I’ve always wanted but the key word has to be ‘earn’. Who am I to say that the Finance Director of Greggs isn’t worth every penny of his £260k, but is that wage really justified even if it is just on the basis of the ‘going rate’?

I wish Labour in Government had done more to tackle the incredible disparity between those who struggle on that minimum wage and those that count their salaries of 6 or more digits. But I’ll settle for a proper fair pay commission now and some real ideas of making pay fairer.

Lord Kinnock: voters will back experience and continuity like they did in 1992

Last night Lord Kinnock spoke to Oona King, former diversity adviser to the Prime Minister, and the Young Fabians at an event in Portcullis House, Westminster.

Lord Kinnock spoke about a wide range of topics including reflecting on his own experience of the 1992 general election and the parallels with the forthcoming national poll.

In the video above, Lord Kinnock says that he believes as we get closer to the election, voters will back experience and continuity and this make a Labour victory more likely. He also praises the way Gordon Brown handled the economic crisis.

GUEST POST: Fighting the stigma

Matt Murray is a Young Fabian member. In this guest post, he writes about the difficulties encountered by people with mental health problems.

The Labour government has elevated equalities from merely a peripheral issue and as Young Fabians we have been leading the call for a progressive social agenda. Removing inequalities goes beyond policy decisions and includes a societal dimension of tackling stigma and discrimination whilst also encouraging aspiration and well-being. It is especially important that we fully recognise the impact on mental health that the economic recession has caused on young people and their prospects.

Lack of societal understanding of the variety of conditions and the impact on sufferers’ lives has led to an attitude that ‘unseen’ mental illness is less important than ‘seen’ physical disabilities. The government’s report on Mental Health and Social Exclusion, published in 2004, identified stigma and discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems as the biggest barrier to social inclusion and 55% identified stigma as a barrier to employment. It is therefore of no surprise that those with mental health conditions may not feel comfortable with being honest about their conditions when applying for jobs for fear that disclosure may harm their application. If applicants choose not to disclose their mental health conditions then they will ultimately suffer from a dangerous lack of support in the workplace, if such support exists.

Evidence shows that more than one quarter of the population still think that people who have mental health conditions should not have the same rights to a job as anyone else and fewer than four in ten employers have said that they would recruit someone who had a mental health condition. Despite these misconceptions many people with mental health conditions are successful in their jobs and people must be allowed to reach their full potential.

The economic recession has provided a backdrop of greater difficulties for young people with mental health conditions. Increased levels of unemployment amongst young people, who already experience the highest levels of developing mental health conditions, have exacerbated the stress and worry for young people facing bigger competition for jobs. Many businesses are also not pro-active in advertising support for positive mental health in the workplace to potential applicants, even where such support exists.

Poor standards of practice in the workplace regarding mental health does not only affect sufferers but Dame Carol Black’s review of the health of Britain’s working age population estimated that the economy loses over £100 billion a year through ill-health and associated sickness absence and unemployment. Mental health accounts for between £30 and £40 billion of this. Government aims for reducing incapacity benefit claims are unlikely to succeed in the recession and a renewed focus on getting people into work is needed.

The government are recognising the importance of mental health in the Equality Bill. On 7 December 2009 a cross government approach was launched on mental health and employment titled: ‘Working our way to better mental health: a framework for action’. The report provides strong commitments to further increase mental health provisions but there appears to be a lack of focus on young people with mental health and the associated problems that exist in finding and holding onto employment.

There’s no substitute for policy thinking and campaigning

As we move closer to election day and the polls begin to tighten one thing is increasingly clear. There is no substitute for good policy thinking. You can spend money on billboards, pollsters, glossy leaflets and even gimmicks, but if you haven’t done the graft and got the ideas and arguments together, you run the risk of the press tearing you apart quicker than voters put the leaflets in the shred pile.

As Labour begins to put the detail on top of the core narrative of securing the recovery, protecting frontline services and building the new industries of the future, we are already starting to see a Tory party run fast out of ideas as well as direction.

For Young Fabians, sometimes unfairly derided as being a little shy to campaign on the ground, this is a time to step in and do some scrutiny of the Tory parties policy and detail. That’s why we’re re launching, Young Fabian Policy News and have included a brand new feature ‘Opposition Policy Watch’ to look at some of the thinking coming from the Tory right and put it to the test.

If you’d like to contribute to future editions of Young Fabian Policy News please get in touch and if you’d like to receive further information from the Young Fabians, you only need to join.

The press are right to say that this election will be a big choice, a big battle of competing ideas and visions. I think Labour has done the thinking and the graft in policy terms, I don’t think that the Tories have and it’s up to all of us to expose that.

But whilst it is true to say that Labour is winning the battle of ideas, we must also win the argument on the doorstep. There is no substitute for hard graft and thinking in the policy sphere, but there is also no substitute for knocking on doors and speaking to voters to communicate those ideas and I know that Young Fabians across the country will be helping Labour campaign on the ground as well as win the battle of ideas.

How Labour can make EU Policy ‘Back Young Britain’

The recent edition of Anticipations contains an article from Catherine Stihler, one of the Labour MEPs for Scotland.

Catherine argues that Britain must collaborate with EU states both to forge a stable recovery and to build a sustainable social market economy by 2020. The latter is the EU’s response to the Lisbon Agenda (to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy by 2010).

Vital to achieving this goal is the investment in education and skills by domestic governments to equip tomorrow’s work force with the skills for a global economy. This is the very nub of the interaction between the national and the international in policy making. Investment in the skills of its citizens by a national government will allow its workforce to compete for the high skilled jobs of a global marketplace.

Labour has a record of a sustained investment in schools, skills, universities, research and development running hand in hand with a jobs and growth strategy that is beyond Britain’s borders to ensure we look for the jobs of tomorrow.

We should continue this in the next election manifesto as we look beyond our borders for growth, jobs and trade. Labour should continue to make a commitment to young people to allow us to achieve our full potential in the economy of tomorrow. I believe the Backing Young Britain campaign should continue beyond the recession as a positive way of investing in our future to bring high quality jobs to Britain and allow us to compete internationally. Labour can co-ordinate our policies in Westminster and in Brussels to keep European policy working for young Britain and building for our future.

Labour should build on trade, Europe and a revised interventionism for a fairer world

This article was originally published here for Progress on the 15th January 2010.

A Labour campaign on foreign policy should argue that the values which define our party should also define our international agenda. Values of internationalism, a global solidarity with those in greatest need, and the need to protect those who are vulnerable and suffering are traditional Labour values which we apply at home and should apply abroad. These are the cornerstone of our movement. They define our approach to all policy areas and separate us from our opponents.

We should focus on three key aspects in Labour foreign policy campaigns. Firstly, we should continue to use foreign policy as a vehicle for economic growth within our nation and beyond our borders. Secondly, we should commit to drawing up a new doctrine for intervention and, thirdly, we should not being afraid of leading in Europe and in other international institutions.

To take the first strand, Britain is a trading nation and needs access to the wider European market. As we move from recession to recovery our agenda for growth will require continued access to the global market to secure jobs and prosperity at home.

In the second instance, there is a need to reassess how and when interventionism occurs, and place it in a consistent framework. This should be founded on a clear relationship between morality and the rule of law. Interventionism cannot be founded upon hubris, neocolonial ambition or economic aspiration. The burden of intervention must also be carried by those who can share it, using international action for military and humanitarian causes.

And lastly, a key component of Labour’s international policy has been to recognise that the EU is more than just a market to trade with and should be used to strengthen Britain’s role in the world. However, there is a need to settle the economic argument that EU membership costs Britain more than we get in return. We must also defeat the political argument that pooling our strength leaves us weaker rather than stronger. In this international context Labour should continue to argue for reform of our global institutions such as the IMF and World Bank in order to secure a stronger system for global economics and build a more equal world.

British voters stand much to lose if a Tory government were to represent Britain in Europe again. Many of today’s Tories are obsessed by ‘process Europe’ and rarely by ‘policy Europe.’ We understand that Britain is strongest at the heart of Europe.

Labour has shown strong influence on the international stage. Those who want to tackle our energy and climate policies, to forge a fair way out of the economic crisis, to protect us from threats of terrorism, to continue to build a European economic area of shared prosperity and stable growth, and promote a positive agenda for the developing world know that Labour has delivered and will continue to do so.

The Tories meanwhile are isolated, alienated and on the wrong side of the argument. Hague’s liberal Conservative approach would result in a disastrous marriage of isolationism and inaction, a policy that leaves Britain vulnerable and alone, and the world a less fair place.

Labour recognises that the world has changed since the fall of the empires. It is Labour that understands that to achieve for one nation you have to work with others. Labour’s foreign policy is an agenda for a better Britain and a fairer world and that’s a cause well worth fighting for.

This is an abridged version of the international policy chapter from the Young Fabian report ‘Fast forward: The next generation of progressive politics’

Brian Duggan and Marie Loewe are, respectively, international officer and equalities officer of the Young Fabians

Poll watching – when do oddities stop being odd?

@tweetminster has decided to spread a little early Christmas cheer by highlighting a new poll out tomorrow. Labour activists who were cruelly led up the garden path by the chatter around last weekend’s Ipsos MORI poll should read Andrew Grice’s latest blog post on ComRes’s latest poll coming out in tomorrow’s paper.

9 points separate Labour from the Conservatives. A drop to a single digit Conservative poll lead is the kind of news that Labour supporters could use to keep them warm during the cold months ahead (it is a mark of our times that we seem to have to measure political hope by falling Conservative poll leads).

The political poll watching website, Politicalbetting.com is a treasure trove of information and analysis to put polls in their proper context. Yesterday they blogged on whether the Pre-Budget Report had really made a difference to voter intentions. Mike Smithson ended his analysis with:

Looking back over the past fortnight the polling oddities seem to have been the last Sunday YouGov poll in the Sunday Times and Tuesday’s ICM in the Guardian. Both showed the Labour share increasing and it looked as though the PBR had had little impact.

So it this poll something to be get really excited about? Polls can be misleading, especially when it is the media driving how they’re understood by the public at large. This might be just another ‘oddity’. But there’s something particularly interesting about this latest poll.

Whilst the other polls have fluctuated throughout, ComRes hasn’t had the Conservatives on less than double-digit leads since May. Whilst this latest poll doesn’t see the Conservatives drop away from the magic 40%, it does see Labour take all the gains in it’s share of the vote. So I’m looking out for the analysis of this poll which is likely to be key reading.

In the end polls are just polls but it’s clear that Cameron’s team are not as confident as they feel they should be at this point in the cycle. That’s good for politics as it’ll mean more political debate (we now know we’re going to get televised leader debates for the first time). But if people are still in two minds about who to vote for, then the kind of electoral pact the Party decides to offer the public will matter more than ever.

Update: ComRes has put up their research on their website. Interestingly their poll sees:

by a margin of 49 to 45 per cent, people disagree with the statement that “the Conservative Party offers an appealing alternative to the Labour Party.”
Meanwhile, by a margin of 52 to 44 per cent, the public agrees with the statement that: “a Conservative Government would mainly represent the interests of the well-off rather than ordinary people.”

But the same poll has this too:

By a margin of 55 to 38 per cent, people support the Tory policy of raising the threshold for inheritance tax should be raised to £1 million.

Seems people are genuinely confused about the main parties at the moment.

Labour’s National Volunteering Taskforce – a West Midlands case study

50,000 marchers braved the rain to demand action on Climate Change as part of the Wave. But, surprising as it may seem, more exciting stuff was happening miles away in a Scout Hut in Halesowen and Rowley Regis.

That wet Saturday afternoon I travelled to the West Midlands to spend the afternoon with local Labour MP, a Government Minister, two members of the Youth Parliament and 30 local residents all eager to discuss what real difference to Climate Change they could affect locally here and now.

Best way to explain it is to watch what Mandy and Caroline, two residents who took part, and hear what they had to say about the event. This was intended to be different from the usual MP discussions that take place in constituencies across the country. The MP in this case, Sylvia Heal, said actually very little. The main point was to get local people talking about what they wanted to tackle Climate Change, what was holding them back and how the politicians in the room could help them. The difficulty is that local people are not used to being engaged with, they are used to “hearing what the Government are going to do” and being talked at. But they tend to forget that they can have an impact all of their own.

Unprompted, people were full of ideas about what they wanted to see happen in their area. Better local recycling services, more incentives for energy efficiency and microgeneration, and local businesses being more responsible about the energy they waste – these were all issues that people wanted to see action on. How we get people to take action is another challenge. In the same way that Labour’s Smarter Government initiative focuses a great deal on giving people greater control of public services, a similar focus is need to showing people how they can campaign and take action on the local issues that they care most about

One of the volunteers, Claire Spencer, has written about the event and building active communities on Labourlist. She’s right that it is just the beginning. The success will lie in getting people to take action.

Helping local MPs and candidates find new ways to engage with communities was exactly what Labour’s National Volunteers Taskforce was set up to do. Much of this has been influenced by the experience we, as Young Fabians, had when we went to Ohio last year to campaign for Obama (you can read our thoughts about the campaign here). If anything that trip showed us how powerful reaching out to communities could be, but also how difficult it is.

So was the second local discussion event in three months that we’ve helped Sylvia Heal organise. Both have been successful but now the focus will now be on building on the enthusiasm shown on that wet and windy Saturday by getting people to act in small but definite ways.

If you want to know more about the Taskforce, how you can get involved or if you are a Labour politician and want to know how the Taskforce can help you reach out to your community – then get in touch at vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk.