There was a time, about ten years ago, when the Labour left thought that
the most important single issue in
British politics was how the Labour Party selected its parliamentary candidates. Compulsory reselection of
MPs was at the core of the Bennite left's attempt to exact revenge for the
Wilson-Callaghan years: today it stands as just about the only monument to the
Bennite moment in Labour Party history.
It is worth defending, of course: there is no reason to deprive local
Labour Parties of the right to choose their candidates for parliament once
every parliament.
Nevertheless, compulsory reselection has not resulted in any great change
in the accountability of Labour MPs to their local parties, let alone the sort
of transformation of left political culture that the Bennites believed would
follow from the procedural changes. Under current rules, even the most indolent
and incompetent MPs find it relatively easy to keep their positions. More
important, most of the people selected for winnable seats in the next election
are, at best, decent folk skilled in the banal arts of local government, public
relations or trade union machine politics. Compulsory reselection has resulted
in more of the same rather than a rejuvenation and democratisation of the
Labour Party.
But what could rejuvenate and democratise Labour? The leadership put its
faith in a membership drive to give the party sufficient numbers to sustain a
one-member-one-vote organisation which can do without the traditional deal
with the unions – block votes in return for cash. Unfortunately, the membership
drive has not worked.
Partly because of head office mistakes and partly because Labour's bland centrist
image, however essential for winning uncommitted voters, is rather less than
inspirational when it comes to membership recruitment, Labour is still as far
from being able to get by without union money as it ever was. The party
leadership is, moreover, still as reliant as ever on the unions delivering
"sensible" candidates for parliament and "moderate"
policies at conference.
The upshot is that the leadership faces a serious dilemma. If it goes for
one-member-one-vote for selections and key policy decisions, it alienates the
unions. They rightly feel that they have kept the show afloat for years and
now, with a Labour government at least a strong possibility, do not want to
throw away their most important means of influencing Labour.
If the leadership opts for the status quo, it perpetuates a system
which almost invites bureaucratic intervention to stifle democratic
decision-making – alienating individual party members and putting off would-be
recruits who wonder what point there is in joining Labour if they are to be
effectively shut out of important decisions in the party.
In the long term, the
only answer is the creation of a democratic party which generates enough income
not to need to use the unions as a crutch and in which all members have an
equal say. That will not happen overnight, especially if there seems to be
little particularly exciting or radical in Labour’s programme to attract new
members. In the short term, compromises to keep Labour from bankruptcy are
essential. The one on offer now on parliamentary selections, for all its
potential difficulties, is not as bad as the Labour Co-ordinating Committee has
made out. Nevertheless, it is essential that the thrust of these compromises is
to advance a model of internal Labour Party democracy clearly based on the
simple principle of one-member-one-vote. In the end, there really is no
democratic alternative.
