Change-makers and the lessons from the US

Before heading off to Davos, Douglas Alexander MP kindly took an hour out of his hectic schedule on Monday evening to join a roundtable on the lessons learnt on the Young Fabian delegation to Ohio last October/November. He heard what ideas Young Fabians felt could be translated from Barack Obama’s incredible campaign to Labour campaigning in the UK.

Amongst the things discussed were trust and best utilising a campaign’s biggest resource – volunteers. Obama’s campaign, similar to other Democrat campaigns before it but differing to most Labour campaigns, did not exclude on the basis of not being a party member. Instead, volunteers had access to masses of information about both the logistics and the strategy of the campaign as well as policy. The idea that direction, but not control, should come from the centre is an important part of the process of empowering those of similar values who want to fight your corner.

Taking this on board is a massive culture change for the Labour Party. But Douglas was of the view that the best change in Labour organising has come in times of adversity. We are probably at that point right now. And there are some signs that the right ideas are being taken on board. But we have a fight on our hands. Douglas, in highlighting the important role of young people in our movement, challenged us to “be the change-makers we want to see”.

In his role as general election coordinator, he wants the concrete recommendations; our top fives; to know what the ‘war room’ of the Obama generation is.

It’d be good to hear what you think …

Inauguration Celebration – tomorrow

A quick post to remind you to RSVP for tomorrow’s YF celebration of the inauguration of Barack Obama.

It’s from 4.15pm to late in The Abbey pub in Westminster. Full details here or contact Adrian for more information.

Exciting new blog, exciting year ahead

I feel very privileged to be the first person ever to blog for the Young Fabians. Thanks must go to Sam Strudwick, the YF’s excellent web editor, for bringing our blog into existence. It’s not the only new blog on the left this week, as you may have noticed …

I thought I’d use this first post just to say a bit about what the Young Fabians are up to at the moment. On Sunday, in the slightly cold basement seminar room of the Fabian Society HQ, we held our co-options meeting. I’ll speak on behalf of the whole Executive Committee in saying that we were hugely impressed by the high standard of YF members who put themselves forward and we had some difficult discussions in deciding who to co-opt. We are delighted with the 5 choices we made though, and on a personal level I’m really excited about us now having an Equalities Officer. I’m sure you’ll hear more soon as these 5 new members of the Exec get to work.

We followed this up with our first Exec meeting of 2009. There are exciting plans afoot. After taking 80 YF and Labour Staff Network members over to Ohio for the final few days of Obama’s campaign, I’m now leading on the follow-up work around the lessons we learnt and how we can bring these back into Labour campaigns around the UK. And – you heard it here first – watch out for details soon of our inauguration celebration. There’s a new edition of Anticipations not too far away, a speech from James Purnell and the schools project is going from strength to strength. Vice-Chair, David Chaplin, presented a paper on how we can move forward our excellent policy work from last year.

Exciting stuff. Hopefully this blog will prove a good way for you to let us know your ideas for what you’d like to see the Young Fabians doing in the coming months.