When I decided to pay my £3 (Dh14.29) to the Labour party to sign up as a registered supporter just 12 months ago, I can’t say I expected much for my money. I’d been a paid-up member in the past, but after moving to Brighton to study, I voted for the Green Party. While living there, I never looked back.
Voting in last year’s leadership election was a punt, a show of defiance; I wanted Labour to remember I existed. Like so many others, I wanted the party to represent a socialist politics, but as a child of the 1990s it felt like something I wouldn’t see in my lifetime.
That all changed as the long summer of 2015 wore on. The excitement and sense of opportunity that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership offered was infectious. On his election, the next step seemed clear: (Re)join the party as a sign that those of us who had helped ensure his election were truly committed to helping to build a Labour party that could deliver change.
The reality has been somewhat different. Just a year later, with Corbyn being challenged, polls showing Labour struggling and the PLP (parliamentary Labour party) looking beyond repair, I headed to my first constituency Labour party (CLP) event, expecting to find hundreds of fellow Corbynistas — but a smattering of attendees was all I could see. Where had the hordes disappeared to?
My fellow Corbyn fans have been quick to point the finger of blame, but we too must take some share of it. I’ll hold my hand up, and admit that I haven’t done enough in the year gone by — and I’m sure that’s true of many others.
Yes, I’ve tweeted and shared supportive articles, voted for Sadiq Khan for London mayor and set up a direct debit to pay my fees. But that’s pretty much it. I’ve been absent from my local party meetings. I’ve failed to join others canvassing, week on week. Speak to long-standing members up and down the country, and it’s a frustration you’ll heard time and time again.
The reasons are clear. Joining Labour was for many the first time they had considered party membership — CLP meetings and internal democracy seemed complex and cliquey. Watching the infighting at conference unfold this year will have done nothing to dispel these concerns.
For others — myself included — activism and campaigning were all that we knew. The idea of electioneering and party political campaigning felt distant and quite hard to relate to.
Constant stream of slurs
However, the Labour party establishment must take its fair share of the blame too. Ejecting new members for past support of other progressive parties hardly makes people feel welcome. Suspending CLP meetings when we finally started attending, just as Corbyn’s leadership was challenged, didn’t suggest they wanted us around.
The constant stream of slurs in the press — especially labelling new members a dangerous rabble of Trots, despite the fact that the vast majority couldn’t tell you any more than the most basic of details about Leon Trotsky, is hardly the ideal way of bringing people in.
However, the easiest way for new members to reassure the old Labour guard, which fears a dangerous insurgency is taking place, is to turn up, get talking, and prove that we’re all just fighting for a fairer society.
Labour conference may have been consumed by party infighting, factional posturing, and endless debate of internal rules, but The World Transformed — Momentum’s inaugural annual conference — was taking place down the road.
Sessions on phone banking, crowdfunding, community organising and planning were peppered throughout the long weekend, a clear sign that this new, invigorated membership is interested in more than rhetoric and backslapping.
Labour Party members’ engagement isn’t just about reassuring the Labour faithful. The polls are a stark reminder of just how much work there is to do. The members must turn the party into a movement that can be radical and can win. As Corbyn said in his speech at the conference, this wave of new members is in fact a “vast democratic resource” — not, as some people see it, a threat.
Those on the right of Labour seem to have no plan for achieving this change, having shifted little from the last two failed election attempts. Corbyn and his supporters are offering an alternative, but the members need to communicate this in their communities if it is to have any chance of success. It’s just getting started.
And, after this conference, I know I need to do more.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Michael Segalov is the News Editor at Huck Magazine and a freelance journalist.
