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862   8 November 2003   

863  10 November 2003  

Labour Party
Revolution

The whole structure of the Labour Party Constitution, as we have it now, was cast in February 1918.  Constituency Labour Parties, National Executive Committee, Party Conference - the lot - they were all there then, and they remain.  True, there have been changes - Party members have been brought into Leader selection, subscriptions are now collected centrally rather than locally, new statutory regulation has formalised Party systems - but what remains is far more important than what has changed.  And the "unitary Party" model has become more rigid and more repressive with the years.

Most important has been a change in political practice, occurring outside the four corners of the Party Constitution.  It is the professionalisation of politics.  In 1918, the first fifty Labour MPs had only just started to receive "state salaries" (1911), and the prospect of Labour ever forming a Government seemed impossibly remote, a distant dream.  Now, our elected representatives constitute a powerful and well-paid political cadre.  The cadre, which I have called a political salariat, is about 4,000-strong, if one takes in all Parties, across the UK as a whole.   Bright graduates aspire and scheme to join the salariat, jockeying for position from their early-twenties onwards.

And the world of "politics" has experienced new divides between the salariat and their respective Parties in the country.  The Tories are currently mired in such a divide, between their Westminster Parliamentarians and the rank-and-file, which remains unresolved.  In the Labour Party, there is widespread disaffection throughout the Party in the country, sensing that the Labour salariat is out of touch with grassroots perceptions and priorities.  And in neither Party do the Party Constitutions even recognise these tensions, let alone work to resolve them.

• Relationships between The Professionals and the voluntary Party must be reconfigured.  Solicitor Peter Fitzgerald and I argue for the creation, within the framework of the present Labour Party Constitution (by conventional amendment), of a binary Party structure.  This would explicitly accord greater freedom to The Professionals to determine Party positions in Government - programmes, manifestos, Parliamentary strategies.  It would also accord to the voluntary Party far greater freedom to explore Party principles and policies, and to control Party Conferences, without laying claim to any power of direction over The Professionals.  The Party in the country would retain only one key power at Constituency level, namely the unfettered right to reselect its candidates at every election, without any presumption of continuity for sitting members.  Such a Constitution would forge new links between professionals and amateurs, a new and more constructive relationship.

This would be the New Deal, for both elements in the Party.  All "Governmental Labour Groups" (Westminster, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, English Regions) would regulate their own affairs, and make their own rules (e.g. for Leadership selection) subject only to the overriding requirement of consistency with the Labour Party Constitution.  None of those leading Professionals would be entitled to play any other role in the wider Party: once in salaried position, they would have to play their political cards through the medium of that position.  They would not be eligible for election to Party office, nor the NEC, nor would they have any ex officio status at Conference - although they might well be invited to participate, and could attend as Visiting Members (as I have to...) and play leading roles at the Fringe. 

We suggest that local government councillors, however, even if in receipt of a salary, should remain eligible to play a full role in the work of the Party.  Of course, if elected to a major representative role (as MP, MEP, MSP, AM, GLAM, English RAM) they would be required to focus on that function, and to abandon any Party office or position they may have had. There would effectively be two Divisions within the Party - akin to the amateur and the professional in golf.  And the Party Constitution would govern relationships between the two.

The National Executive Committee would retain all its present powers, although the useless National Policy Forum would be abolished. The NEC would consist of 24 members elected by OMOV ballot from the ordinary membership, without intervention by any part of the salariat - there would no place for MPs, MEPs, Cabinet Members or the Prime Minister.  Gordon Brown could not get onto the NEC, even if Blair agreed.  TU affiliation rights would remain in position, although all Conference decisions should be taken without the full card-vote effect: each Delegate should simply have one vote, whether a CLP or TU or other affiliate Delegate. 

The NEC would run the "Party in the country", leaving the Governmental Labour Groups to determine the conduct of Party affairs in Government at all levels. It would be desirable also to regularise the formation of a series of Regional Executive Committees throughout the UK, corresponding with the mainstream constitutional regional structure.

Party Conferences would also become the territory of the Party in the country, without imposed intervention of any kind by The Professionals.  The national Party Conference, and all Regional Conferences (currently Scotland, London, Wales) would be entitled to debate and pass resolutions on any subject they wished, without salariat intervention - while recognising that there was no provision for such Resolutions to have any binding effect upon the salariat.  The salariat would lose any power to "fix" the Conference Agenda. The whole role of the Party Conference would be defused in power terms, and its "governmental aspirations" explicitly reduced.  On the other hand, it would have greater power to explore the development of Party principles and policies, and present its conclusions to the Governmental Labour Groups. 

And at each election, each member of the salariat would face mandatory reselection, without the protection of any reselection presumption. This single change would reinvigorate local Party life, and give Party members a worthwhile function to perform.  It would strengthen and deepen the quality of our democracy. And no politician of calibre should shrink from the discipline of having to win reselection, every four or five years, in open competition with challengers. 

Peter Fitzgerald and I have drafted all the amendments necessary to deliver a newly configured, binary Party along these lines - they could easily to introduced under conventional amendment procedures.   You will find them, in their legal splendour, at Party Constitution. 

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