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item0052E 828, 829
828
3 October 2003
It's my Party, I can
cry if I want to...
We need a Labour Party of
two Divisions, not just
one. The
professional political salariat
has finally taken over the Annual Conference, eliminating all effective
participation by the rank-and-file, the voluntary Party in the country. The dominance of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Old Queen Street, is
complete - and will not be displaced. They will remain the Premiership
of politics, and I neither dispute nor regret that. There is no going back.
But we must move on. The unitary
Constitution of February 1918, which we still have (albeit with tweaking)
takes no account of the assumption of Party power by a
professional salariat.
Just as professional managers have taken over the corporate sector, and
ousted the old "Directors", professional politicians have taken over the old
"political parties", and ousted the membership.
 To
counter that, we now need to construct a binary
Constitution, which accords honour, position and power both to
the new
political salariat
and to those who represent the "Party in the country".
For there is no continuing need for a
monolithic single Party. The professionals, paid handsomely by the State for
their work, can now organise themselves to regulate the exercise of power
within the legislatures (Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Scottish
Parliament). But to do that effectively, they
do not need to manipulate their
supporters in the country, in the obsessive way which they now do.
The Bournemouth Conference was a political
travesty. Conference has become a "Public Service
Roadshow", a target for every organisation "selling" to the state sector,
whether private company or public charity. It is now, essentially, a
conventional commercial exhibition, with speeches attached.
Just star speeches. For debate was
certainly not attached. For example, daily proceedings
did not start until 10.45 each morning: that massive hall, a huge expensive
resource, lay unused for nearly two hours every morning, when speakers from
the Party "in the country" could have been given a chance to participate.
This was an example of cynical dumbing-down - for the lion's share of the
timetable thereafter was devoted to ritual "Cabinet star" speeches.
The salariat would prefer to waste the money, rather than give Party members
a voice. Every rank-and-file speaker was limited to a brief sound-bite
moment at the podium: it was a political pantomime of the first order - the
truth is, we should be ashamed. On Wednesday morning, a further
45-minutes was devoted to nostalgic presentations to Jack Jones and Michael
Foot, the great nonagenarians of the movement. The talking did
not start until 11.30 am.
The salariat
has wrecked the Party Conference, and that wreckage contributes powerfully
to disillusionment throughout the Party in the country. We must devise
a new structure which excludes the professionals from the Party Conference
and the Party's power structures, except by way of specific invitation.
The salariat should run their own
Parliamentary Labour Parties, with the extensive state finances made
available to them. They have all the advantages of money and power -
they have no need in addition to compete with their own
rank-and-file for position within "the Party in the country".
Paradoxically, it is Plaid
Cymru that has already come up with this type of solution.
Recently, they elected two Party
leaders - the Leader of the Assembly Party (Ieuan Wyn Jones, AM) and
the President of the Party in the country - Dafydd Iwan, folk-singer and
local councillor. I do not know how their Constitution follows through
this binary reasoning - but it is a step in the right direction. If
public affairs are to command popular interest and engagement again, the new
salariats in every Party must
share their power with their own members.
- And that means re-designing our
Party Constitutions.
Do you think I am on the right lines? Drop me a line
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829
3
October
2003
The Fringe falls silent...
The Fringe has peaked. For the last twenty-five
years, the Conference Fringe has blossomed, as a "space" in which ordinary
political activists had the opportunity to have "have their say".
No more. The political
salariat
(and the related
commentariat,
the professional public affairs journalists...) now dominate the scene, and
the Fringe timetable has become clogged up with them, the exclusion of the
rank-and-file.
The process has been a complex one. The dumbing-down
of the principal Conference has forced activists into the more and more
expensive business of organising their own meetings "on the fringe".
This has demanded more and more commercial sponsorship, to meet the
outrageous costs involved - particularly as every participant now expects to
be offered generous "refreshments" as part of the attendance package.
In the 75-minute
lunch-break on Wednesday 1 October, there were no fewer that
46 (Yes, forty-six) fringe meetings
running simultaneously, and one could not attend more than one, in practice.
Next, the sponsors of
these meetings seek to command most of the time with their "star speakers" -
we are in a star system, and
everyone strives to bring star speakers to their top table. At
Wednesday lunchtime, for example, I chose Frank Field - as the man most
likely to throw new light on the pensions dilemma (and I was not
disappointed). But even at that meeting (lavishly sponsored by
Standard Life) the private-sector
speakers took up a great deal of the time, and there was only 10/12 minutes
available for questions "from the floor" - and certainly no debate or
discussion. At other Fringe meetings, the top-table commonly consisted
of three or four star-speakers, hogging every available meeting minutes, and
leaving the rank-and-file with no chance to participate.
The rest of us must look for
other venues, other forums, other space.
What do you think? Drop me a
line
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