“But is it a nice place to be?”. I know that I’m not the only active member of the Labour Party who faces this sort of question from time to time, returning from an evening meeting or while trying to interpret the contours of the latest heated exchange over WhatsApp. And I am sure that I am also not the only person who might struggle to answer that question. Is “niceness” even something we can aspire to in political activity?
For one school of thought, the response is very clear. Internal party politics is essentially a matter of managing utilitarian outcomes; a party is a machine whose constitutive elements either work together effectively or fail to do so. The better machines are, the more honed instruments which succeed in winning and maintaining power in an electoral system so that they can maximise their influence in government. Issues of interpersonal culture are not necessarily irrelevant, but they almost always have to be sacrificed as a concession to reality. In a brutally competitive political environment - and with a merciless media - any display of internal doubt or division will automatically translate into a loss of momentum. We put on our armour when we enter political activity and we only take it off again when we are safely back in our private spheres.
I can well understand how our political system has engendered this perspective, but it is not serving us well. We can do better. As part of Mainstream’s project to build a more hopeful alternative for theLabour Party and wider movement, we need to be as attentive to our political culture as to our concrete policy programme. And the benefits will not just accrue to Labour; they can help create a virtuous circle for our denuded democratic culture more generally.
Our party: mechanistic or associational?
The somewhat cynical, mechanistic view outlined above would be easily recognisable to Robert Michels, the Italian sociologist who analysed the functioning of political parties (and trade unions) at the turn of the 20th Century. Michels is often cited for defining the “iron law of oligarchy”, whereby even ostensibly democratic parties degenerate into patronage systems controlled by a ruling faction. Beyond a subset of naive idealists, the only motivation for participation in such an institution could be self-advancement through internal party structures and eventually public office. For who else would voluntarily subject themselves to the machine?
We all know people who fit Michels’ careerist description, either personally or in the wider public sphere - the rolling Mandelson-McSweeney scandal of the last few weeks is proof enough of that. But we also know that this is a radically insufficient account of democratic politics. Most of us joined the Labour Party because we believe in our collective ability to change our society for the better. Those of us who are active members further give our time to canvassing, leafleting, fundraising, meetings and other activities because we want our prospective and elected representatives to be of the greatest possible service to our communities. Sometimes this translates into further opportunities for ourselves, but that motivation is just one among many.
This alternative view is one of associational power, the spirit of common endeavour captured by clause IV of the party rulebook and consistently upheld by the parts of our movement like Mainstream, Open Labour and the Co-operative Party. This perspective is not only what inspires us; it is how we most compellingly connect with the communities we serve, and where we stand the most chance of transcending political divides to reach people who may have given up on democratic politics altogether. But it is something that we barely ever speak about, let alone proactively hoist up as an alternative to mechanistic cynicism.
There is something else critical to the associational view. Because it recognises party members as people first and foremost, it also understands that disagreement among us is not only inevitable but constructive for our wider political project. Disagreement between party members and factions, within the bounds of interpersonal respect, is a sign of deep engagement and a healthy democratic culture. On the mechanistic view, disagreement is at best an obstacle to be overcome, and at worst a dangerous tendency to be rooted out.
Framed in these terms, which of these two views - the mechanistic or the associational - do you feel best characterises the present culture of our party?
Together, we can change
So to return to the original question: it is important whether or not the Labour Party is a nice place to be. And as things stand, it quite often is not. But it does not have to stay this way.
We can start by committing as individuals to respect our fellow party members - not merely as a matter of compliance with internal policies, but as a genuine recognition that we all deserve to be treated fairly and have our views heard. We are, after all, a democratic party: we should be disagreeing with each other frequently, openly and constructively. Good democratic culture also means not just standing by when we see others disrespected, whether or not they belong to the same faction as ourselves.
If we start in our own branches and CLPs then we can also model the kinds of behaviour that we want to see both at the higher levels of the party and in our wider politics. We have lived under mechanistic party management from both centrists and Leftists, each in their turn intolerant of dissent and paranoid to the point of bullying and harassment. Meanwhile, groups like Compassion in Politics and More in Common are trying to shift British political culture away from the intensifying division of recent years and onto terrain of greater respect. We can all contribute to those efforts in how we conduct ourselves as party members.
And what better place to start than the upcoming NEC elections? Will we have a campaign that welcomes a broad range of candidates from different wings of our movement to openly debate the direction of the Labour government? Or will any criticism of our first 18 months in power be treated as an existential threat to party discipline? And if we do end up with four Mainstream candidates elected to the NEC, will they be treated fairly and respectfully by their colleagues, or isolated from performing their democratic function within our party structures?
As members, from Mainstream and beyond, we do not have to wait around and find out. We ourselves can determine what kind of party we want to live in.
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James Bartholomeusz is a branch secretary in Hackney North and Stoke Newington CLP and a former Unite representative. He writes here in a personal capacity.
All blog posts represent the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of Mainstream.
