21st century pterodacytl bytes 3

21^st century pterodactyl bytes 3

 

Building council housing

Housing, for a very long time, has been a subject dear to the heart of  many in the Labour Party. It almost seems that  it is the one remaining area that  rank and file members are out of step with the leadership. In most policy areas commonsense no longer prevails and all progressive thought is ridiculed by the machine unless and until government wants to take it as its own. If only government spoke with  normal people we wouldn’t find ourselves replacing trident, going  to war based on a lie nor suggest that ID cards will allow us  to all sleep securely at night.

 

For three years running , despite the best efforts of the SLM,  conference voted for the fourth option and a level playing field for the funding of council housing.  I am a big supporter of the pressure group Defend Council Housing – they have almost  single-handedly kept council housing at the top of   the Labour Party policy making agenda. I hope in years to come the Labour movement will have the good grace to recognise the efforts of all those involved within this pressure group. 

So overwhelming has been Labour Party support for the ‘fourth option’that the government, who have continued to ignore Labour Party policy in this area , decided that democracy needed a further makeover, so  debates which ended in meaningful votes were abolished. This year we  discussed instead, statements, and not motions , we voted on the sustainable communities policy document and the annex report on housing that came out of last year’s conference discussion on housing. Confused ? The outcome of all of this is that we accepted a report welcoming government progress on moving towards the fourth option and then sent the whole process back to the NPF for further discussion as we now  want government to finance a programme of council house building. While I am very pleased to see the pressure maintained on the government and it looks like I will be invited to meet the policy commission to further the case for council housing ,  my CLP  having submitted  a ten word statement on council housing, the whole process is nothing short of  bonkers.

 

Who needs shelter?

I  spent much of my time attending housing fringe meetings and from what I saw it seems  as if ‘Shelter’ are working for the government ! Gone it would seem are the days when Shelter offered radical solutions to the housing crisis. Is Adam Sampson looking for a safe Labour seat ?  I don’t like cross over careerists and I  am pleased to recount, following a chance conversation,  that it appears , (thank goodness)  that the  integrity fuelled  pocket rocket Shami ( not Hazel)  is unlikely to consider becoming a Labour MP. 

 

An exercise in bondage

 The bond between each part of our movement can at some times be a little fragile. We all need each other  but we would in particular like to see the unions support the ‘right’ CLP positions a little more often . It is clear that those in powerful positions can and, from time to time, do gain concessions from our government. A single CLP delegate is never going to have the same impact as, say,   Tony Woodley. What I cannot understand is why do the unions refuse to support progressive positions that will benefit their members unless it happens to be on their particular wish list on a given day?  This continually sees them voting different ways on the same issues on a regular basis. TBC

21st century pterodactyl bytes 2

21^st century pterodactyl bytes 2

Reading Monday’s ‘yellow pages’ I was immediately drawn to   ‘Shenanigans’   It reports that party staff continue to bend the ears of delegates.  This is now so widespread that all concerned feel that this is just part of the legitimate role of a helpful Labour staff member. One CLP delegate told me  that his  Regional Director  asked him to vote against the emergency motion submitted by the GMB, UCATT and Unite. The motion calls for the ’opt out’ currently in place within the working time directive to end.  Just why would the Labour Party want to oppose improving the working lives of millions, and support instead, the business friendly agenda of the free marketers.  Perhaps the Labour staff  have lost any sense of the real world, as they labour hour upon hour on behalf of the machine. This perhaps has distorted their own sense of social justice and I can only guess that they think if they have to toil for sixty and seventy hours a week then so too should the Great British public. I heard that a complaint went into the CAC, response came back as ‘duly noted’ Not, ‘thanks for letting us know we will speak to the offending party worker.’

The loveable pit – bull snaps and snarls

As I walked across the conference floor I became aware of a conversation taking place between what I thought were two delegates, ‘well I’m in two minds,’ spoke delegate A.  The other person who it turned out not to be a delegate at all, but my favourite regional pit-bull, went in for the kill. On this occasion the uncertainty of the delegate gave the pit-bull the rare opportunity for a moment of integrity when he responded by saying that perhaps abstaining would be the best approach. This is clear evidence of staff feeling completely comfortable manipulating conference votes.  I am a party member with every right to discuss and promote policy positions within our party, party staff are at conference to facilitate the smooth running of conference and should and must be politically impartial.

Missing manifesto

A moment of farce takes place each lunchtime when junior ‘boy wonder’ ,  invites us all to recommend policies for our next manifesto .Scrawled across an otherwise blank white board, ‘labour manifesto’. Is this another example of government loosing important documents or do we have so few policies we now need to ask passers -by to suggest  new ones?

I did hear that one delegate suggested ending the 11+. This is another policy area that I feel, that we have been guilty of letting down the most vulnerable, by maintaining the status quo that we inherited from the Tories.  Labour on an emotional level, is committed to end all forms of selection based on academic ability but this is considerably watered down to allow thirty –six  education authorities to overtly select while many more do so covertly. Our party keeps this very quiet and so most delegates repeat the party line that we are against selection. Tell that to the families whose kids attend secondary- mods in Kent, Buckinghamshire, Yorkshire and many other authorities across the country.  Families and neighbourhoods are segregated, as we continue to pursue educational apartheid. 

A man in charge

Driving up to Manchester we stopped off at a petrol station, and as I went in to pay, I glanced across at the banner headlines of the tabloids. Keith Vaz it is suggested,  is involved in some kind of scandal and is possibly linked to the race row playing out in the Met. With understated irony the Labour Party asked the aforementioned MP to sum up the Crime, Justice, Citizenship and Equalities Debate.

The return of the big eyebrows

As I write Alistair Darling is attempting to calm the markets and reassure the electorate that all will come good again. Just a thought, is there any link between the size and distinctiveness of a chancellor’s eyebrows and economic meltdown? Think Darling, Lamont and the mother of all eyebrows, Healey.

Back to the politics, conference has just voted on a number of motions, documents, statements and emergency motions all relating to ‘building prosperity and fairness’ It’s all very confusing these days, no wonder we all need to be told how to vote. The session chair for most votes only called on the delegates to vote in favour, how strange is that? After the shenanigans of my regional staff I am pleased to record that conference voted to end the ‘opt out’

When 4 + 4 makes 5

Our government has trumpeted the improvements in education particularly in subjects such as English and maths.  Why then do conference delegates consistently fail master the most basic of sums.  School children of any age if asked to add up 4 + 4 would respond with the number 8. Conference delegates consistently get this question wrong.  This year, when voting in the contemporary issue priorities ballot they came up with 5, three debates short of what is on offer.

When will delegates learn that if trades unions propose a motion it will effortlessly make its way through the ballot on account of the size of their block votes. CLP delegates who also vote for the same motions just build up the total of the votes at the expense of other motions.  Delegates need to avoid these subject areas, however worthy the subject matter.  Energy, the economy, tackling fuel poverty and workers in the global economy were all supported by the main unions.  CLP delegates were needlessly drawn to these subjects to such an extent that only housing came through on the CLP list. This practise of CLP delegates voting for the same subject areas as the unions prevented debates on pressing concerns on topics such as Georgia, climate change and greener lifestyles, and the BNP.

Delegates need to take a crash course in conference comprehension ahead of next year so that we can get the right answer to this simple piece of arithmetic.

 

21st century pterodactyl bytes

Here we go again, its conference time and my entrance pass fails to work.  I’m sure I’ve been here before. I trot off to the late accreditation office to fix my pass and once more get that asylum seeker feeling. The pass was quickly rectified, this year.

Let me tell you from the start I have no time for this type of celebrity, style over substance conference.  Today we are now left with a hollowed out annual gathering that attempts to fool the membership that they still have an important role to perform in discussing, developing and creating party policy. This clearly is not the case.

For years we laughed at the Tories as we watched the main players strut across their seaside stages to rapturous applause from the party faithful. Their conference involved no votes or indeed any debate, they were rallies and no more. We told ourselves that our people would not stomach such treatment. We are idealists, strident and passionate in our views, committed to the furtherance of a multitude of left of centre causes, we cannot be easily herded.

It is not true, we have collectively and with enormous enthusiasm embraced   the ruination of our party.  The SLM started the process long before we returned to power in ’97, and it has continued under the watchful eye of successive general secretaries and NECs.

New leader, same approach.

My CLP refused to nominate Gordon Brown last year when he at last forced his way to the top of the greasy pole. His exertions in getting there appear to have left him feeling rather like a weekend hill walker summiting Everest without oxygen. It was not that we opposed GB but it was simply that we are in favour of democracy. Democracy in my book includes such old fashioned notions of discussion and debate and, yes, an election. I have no time for those mad hatters now calling for a leadership contest. Where were you all last year?  Why did all those MPs sign GB’s nomination papers?   Democracy needs support; it must be nurtured and fed, to ensure that it thrives.

News flash!  Jack Straw has just completed yet another boring and pointless speech to conference.  I like Jack and I have a strange feeling that he just might be our next leader, but Jack why do I always nod off the moment you rise to the rostrum?

So how has the party with Gordon and Harriet as our leaders continued the slide from democratic member based party to a supporter driven fan club?  I can hear GB reciting the mantra of ‘change’.   They both wooed the membership with promises of greater involvement in policy making and then GB pushed through a rule change that even the blairites resisted, he effectively abolished the contemporary resolutions at a stroke. New Labour scrapped the delegate led, resolution based conference early on, as it was seen as too unpredictable and lacked the required media friendly glow.  In its place they came up with a proposal to allow contemporary events  ie those that would not have been discussed by the newly formed National Policy Forum , to be debated.

Following a number of inconvenient defeats for the leadership, notably on public ownership of the railways, council house funding (The Fourth Option) and corporate manslaughter, this process too needed fixing. Gordon wanted change and instead of widening participation at conference he snuffed it out.  In its stead and don’t fall about laughing, conference voted to replace contemporary resolutions with    ten word contemporary statements.  These may be discussed at conference provided the conference arrangements committee, (CAC} decides it fits the new criteria. 

Below are a few examples of the cutting edge, razor sharp, ten word statements that we will have the opportunity to consider this week.

• More should be invested in cycle paths in rural areas
•  2012 Olympic Games to benefit all regions of the UK 
• A strategy for water

Try as the leadership might to rake out the few remaining embers of a once great democratic movement, the party adapts and keeps coming back -for further humiliation. We collectively submitted more than 150 ten word statements, and while I have no time or respect for the latest attempt to control the membership, I was heartened to read the quality of many of the  supporting arguments to these  statements.

What I have not yet worked out is why the party work so hard to control the agenda, we are so close to being irrelevant beyond the conference ring of steel, I just don’t know why they bother.

But control and spin they continue to exercise as they dump the last remaining vestiges of integrity along with the  putrefying remains of past conference misdemeanours into the bin liner of history.

Now what do we do with our ten word statements?

Delegates vote on their top four issues for further consideration. Now, what is a little strange about this process is that anyone, and at any time can send any of these statements and supporting arguments straight to the policy commission, so what benefit is there in show-casing a select few?

The latest spin pumping out of the apparatchiks is that this new conference making process is a learning process for us all.    CAC / SLM speak  for, we will continue to bully and abuse delegates in  order to come up with the ‘correct’  outcomes , but please conference we are all in this together as the latest new system of party democracy beds down.

Feel the quality of the debate

The culmination of four years policy deliberations were rubber stamped in a debate that wasn’t a debate on Saturday afternoon, when three NPF plants were called,  miraculously selected at random, from the floor to wax lyrically about the quality of Warwick 2 outcome.  This was followed by a request for the session chair, a safe member of our National Executive Committee, for the NPF chair to sum up the debate. ‘What debate’, was quietly uttered from the lips of an incredulous conference, but will the silent delegate ever find its voice again?  I do not support the endless navel gazing that is the NPF, but not to seek a single contribution from the  CLP delegates,  at this most important of moments in our policy , is a disgrace.  Pointless, worthless, valueless ….

Up close and personal

For the last five years conference has continued to vote to discuss housing, this year was no exception.  Labour Party members want to see a significant increase in the delivery of affordable housing. Labour in government languishes behind the Tories on affordable house build. Labour has the warm words to offer the electorate on housing but it is the Tories who historically, have delivered.

Unlucky Gordon, says that he wants to build millions of new homes and then the very next year we have a collapse in house building, with the lowest rate of new build in a generation.  Eight CLPs send in a ten word statement supporting the view that we must begin a government financed council house building programme and conference votes to discuss this issue.

Under the evolving process the delegates are called in to a meeting run by CAC with no notion of what or how this new process will work. Delegates for sure will need to exercise a little quick thinking as CAC, government ministers and special advisers have a spot of form in the stitch up department.    We have all seen party workers going beyond supporting delegates in coming to policy positions but with a new system, hope springs eternal that this practise would cease. While waiting outside the meeting room one of the SE Region’s staff, a loveable pit bull, sidled up to the delegates and told them which statements to support – not the majority position but those offering inane platitudes. Fixing the result at conference does not form part of the ‘ written ‘ job description of a party staff and so must stop.

The meeting was allegedly controlled by CAC and appears to have little to do with the substance of the statements, conference had voted on only hours before.  We will gain a sense of how effective the control was when conference discusses the sustainable communities document, as a proposer and seconder from the mini delegation are set to report back. Worryingly the CAC stitched this up too as  they ‘chose’ the delegates with the most on message statements.

What is it that drives people in our movement to intimidate, and often bully delegates into doing what the party wants, when the outcome is often so insignificant? Why can we not respect each other and in a spirit of comradeship work collectively towards a positive outcome. Many of the delegates on leaving the meeting felt abused with their self esteem diminished , with one saying that they would seriously consider leaving the party.

 An evolving and developing process, but never any lessons on decency and respect learnt, nice one Gordon.