NEW PARTIES/NEW POLITICS? a Case Study of the British Labour Party

07 Seyd (to) d/k 26/5/99 3:52 pm Page 383 PARTY POLITICS VOL 5. No.3 pp. 383–405 Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi NEW PARTIES/NEW POLITICS? A Case Study of the British Labour Party Patrick Seyd ABSTRACT Britain’s two major parties have rediscovered their members. For a variety of reasons both the Labour and Conservative parties have adopted pro-active recruitment strategies. At the same time, they have introduced direct democracy as an important part of their internal procedures. A detailed study of Labour’s reforms suggests various possible implications for the future, including the fact that the plebisci- tarian party might be an increasingly common feature in modern democracies. KEY WORDS n direct democracy n Labour Party n party membership n plebiscitary politics n political parties Labour believes in individual members having real power in the party (Labour Party, Welcome to Labour, 1995) We are going to make it a much more attractive proposition to join the Conservative Party. We are going to give our members a vote in the affairs of the party. (William Hague, Letter to Conservative Party members, 7 October 1997) For some considerable time academic observers have been suggesting the demise of mass-membership parties. They argue that party membership is declining because individual lifestyles have altered, the political market- place is now full of other organizations competing successfully for indi- viduals’ time and commitment, and party leaders have alternative, and more efficient, means of communicating with voters. Contradicting these appar- ently inexorable trends of membership decline, however, Britain’s two major parties – Labour and Conservative – have adopted active membership- recruitment strategies linked with the introduction of intra-party direct democracy. Labour began the process in the late 1980s, followed by the 1354-0688(199907)5:3;383–405;008637 07 Seyd (to) d/k 26/5/99 3:52 pm Page 384 PARTY POLITICS 5(3) Conservatives a decade later. In this article I propose to examine this stra- tegic and structural transformation that has occurred during the 1990s. First, I consider the adoption of active membership-recruitment strategies and direct democracy in both parties and suggest reasons why it has been introduced. Second, I examine in detail the procedural changes that have been introduced by the Labour Party, involving the use of both direct democracy and more deliberative policy-making forums involving larger numbers of members. Finally, I conclude by assessing the impact that these changes might have on the nature of parties and the party system. Introduction Britain has been renowned in the past among comparative scholars for its mass-membership parties (Duverger, 1954; Beer, 1965). In the early 1950s both Conservative and Labour parties claimed individual memberships of over two and one million respectively. The accuracy of these figures is ques- tionable; nevertheless, there is no doubt that a significantly large number of people were individual members of both parties. However, neither party made serious attempts to maintain the numbers in response to the steady membership decline which began in the late 1950s. Periodic recruitment campaigns initiated from the 1960s onwards were more symbolic than real, essentially because both leaderships became steadily convinced of the unim- portance of members. The development of a new communications tech- nology, television and advertising in particular, meant that so long as parties could obtain the money for election campaigning they felt less need for human resources. Members were regarded as less efficient a means of communicating with voters than the TV ‘fireside chat’ or the mass advertising campaign. This attitude was strongly influenced by an academic consensus that members were unimportant in influencing electoral outcomes (Butler and King, 1966; Epstein, 1967; Butler and Kavanagh, 1988). However, after almost 40 years of relative indifference to members, a transformation in attitude has occurred in which both party leaderships have openly and publicly committed themselves to the expansion of membership as an important feature of their political strategies. Labour’s declared target is 500,000 members by 2001 (Labour Party, 1998) and, similarly, the Conservative’s is 1,000,000 by ‘the early years of the century’ (Conservative Party, 1998). After expanding membership from 305,000 in 1994 to 405,000 in 1997, Labour has not settled back in government and relaxed its recruitment campaign. It is noticeable the extent to which Prime Minister Tony Blair constantly emphasizes the importance of members as part of his long-term governing project (see, for example, Guardian, 1 May 1998). Similarly, the Conservative Party, after a disastrous haemorrhaging of its membership in the 1990s, is now intent on reproducing Labour’s recruitment successes. 384 07 Seyd (to) d/k 26/5/99 3:52 pm Page 385 SEYD: NEW PARTIES/NEW POLITICS? This renewed commitment to members is linked to internal party change. Both parties have introduced major structural reforms. Over a period of 15 years the Labour Party has, first, abandoned the principle of delegatory democracy, which had prevailed since the party’s emergence as part of the labour movement in the late 19th century and, second, has modified the role of its annual conference in policy-making. More abruptly, following its election defeat in 1997, the Conservative Party became for the first time since its foundation in the late 19th century a single, constitutionally defined organisation rather than the ill-defined and separate parliamentary, extra- parliamentary and professional bodies. Most significantly, the century-old National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations has been abolished. Common to the internal reorganization of both parties has been the introduction of national membership ballots. Both party leaders are now elected by their individual members.1 In addition, Labour has used members’ ballots to approve major constitutional change (namely the reform of Clause 4), to endorse its 1997 general election manifesto and to elect one section of its National Executive Committee (NEC). Conservative leader William Hague first used a members’ ballot in 1997 to endorse his leadership and the broad principles of party reform which he proposed to introduce, then in 1998 to approve a range of fundamental, structural reforms to the party, and then again in 1998 to endorse his opposition to British membership of the European Monetary System. Further, he promises another ballot before the party issues its next general election manifesto. It might seem a paradox that the Conservative Party, for so long a party with a very powerful elite tradition, has now attempted to upstage the Labour Party’s democratic cre- dentials by resorting to direct democracy. Why this sudden commitment to the individual member, and to the ballot in particular? First, it has enabled party leaders to respond to the public’s growing political disaffection by demonstrating the renewal of their parties’ own grassroots. At least within their own organizations they are seen to be addressing the issue of the democratic deficit. Members may be a small minority of the general public but, by involving them directly in decision- making, leaders are demonstrating a commitment to openness and partici- pation which might help to restore the political legitimacy of parties. Second, ballots may provide the means by which leaders can demonstrate to the public that they are in control of their party. So, for Blair, ballot vic- tories enabled him to undermine Conservative accusations prior to the 1997 general election of an ‘old’, dogmatic Labour lurking in the background. And for Hague, ballots have enabled him to demonstrate his popularity within the party and undermine support within the party for his two major rivals – Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine. Third, and closely related to the previous point about the need for leaders to demonstrate control of their party, balloting the entire membership is a means of bypassing the activists if they appear to be unrepresentative of party voters. Increasingly 385 07 Seyd (to) d/k 26/5/99 3:52 pm Page 386 PARTY POLITICS 5(3) well-educated activists, operating in a less hierarchical and deferential culture, make the tasks of political leadership more difficult. One of the dilemmas for leaders is that, in an increasingly non-partisan electorate, they face the danger that their activists, if dominant, and if extreme in their opinions, could consign the party to permanent opposition.2 Fourth, party leaders still need members as both campaigners and fundraisers. For all the sophistication of campaign specialists, the legal restrictions on local campaign expenditure and the absence of large-scale state funding ensure that human resources remain vital. British parties are unable to purchase local campaigners and therefore there is no substitute for committed members. Recent academic studies suggest that members play a significant role as election campaigners and help to determine constituency election outcomes (Seyd and Whiteley, 1992; Whiteley et al., 1994; Johnston and Pattie, 1995, 1998; Denver and Hands, 1997). Many political actors and academic commentators argue that a reason for the introduction of direct democracy is to strengthen party leaderships. For example, the Conservative Charter Movement has commented that, as a consequence of the recent reforms, ‘the Conservative Party is set to become an authoritarian, “top-down” structure’ (Charter News, 53, March 1998). Tony Benn has argued that Labour’s recent structural reforms will result in ‘all effective power in the party ... vested in a new elite around the leadership’ (Tribune, 3 April 1998). Two ex-Labour MEPs, Ken Coates and Hugh Kerr, claim that ‘the new rules and structure of New Labour, pushed through in the 1997 post-election honeymoon, prevent Labour members and Con- stituency Parties having any control of, or even influence on, New Labour policy’ (Coates and Kerr, 1998) and they have described new Labour as ‘New Autocracy’ (Tribune, 9 October 1998).

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