ORGANISATIONAL REFORM IN THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY SINCE 1983 Thomas Quinn Department of Government London School of Economics and Political Science University of London Submitted for the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree UMI Number: U615459 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615459 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Th £ S£S f %oZLt- 1 0 2 8 4 2 5 Abstract This thesis examines the organisational transformation of the British Labour Party since 1983. The main intellectual contributions are: (1) the development of a rational choice model of party organisation; (2) an explanation Labour’s organisational reforms, a subject that has attracted little academic attention. An exchange model of party organisation is developed, focusing on leader- follower relations inside parties. It builds on previous exchange models and extends the approach to the issue of party change, on which some general propositions are offered. The model is used to examine changes in leader-follower relations in the Labour Party. It is shown that Labour’s historic form of intraparty exchange consisted of that between the parliamentary elite and the leaders of the major trade unions affiliated to the party, institutionalised in the ‘block vote’. Labour’s problems with the unions in the 1970s and its subsequent electoral wilderness years persuaded party leaders to reduce union influence to broaden the party’s electoral appeal. The strategy was to enfranchise individual members at the expense of activist cliques and unions. Three areas of decision-making are examined - policymaking, parliamentary candidate selection, and leadership contests - and two trends are evident: (1) the erosion of Labour’s federal structure, based on union affiliation and its replacement by a unitary (individual membership) structure; (2) the centralisation of power with party elites. A new form of exchange, between party leaders and individual members, has increasingly replaced that between party and union leaders. This has given Labour’s organisation a greater degree of electoral legitimacy by reducing its reliance on the unions (who might extract policy concessions from Labour governments). However, centralisation has gone so far that it is questionable whether party activists and unions have sufficient incentives to remain inside the party, supplying it with labour and finance. To this extent, the exchange model alerts us to the possibility that Labour may no longer possess ‘equilibrium institutions’. 2 Contents List of Figures 6 List o f Tables 1 List of Abbreviations 8 Acknowledgements 10 1 Introduction 11 1.1 Introduction 11 1.2 Existing Work on the Labour Party 11 1.3 Aims of the Thesis 14 1.4 Structure of the Thesis 16 2 The Rational Choice Approach 22 2.1 Rational Choice and the Study of Institutions 22 2.2 The Downsian Model and the Study of the Labour Party 27 2.3 Incomplete Information and the Downsian Model 36 2.4 Conclusion 38 3 An Exchange Model of Party Organisation and Party Change 40 3.1 Introduction 40 3.2 Approaches to the Study of Party Organisation and Party Change 41 3.3 The Informational Functions of Political Parties 48 3.4 Politicians, Activists and Political Exchange 51 3.5 Party Organisations as Governance Structures 58 3.6 The Policy-Votes Trade-off and Politicians’ Autonomy 65 3.7 Institutional Change in Vote-seeking Parties 70 3.8 Conclusion 81 4 Political Exchange in the Labour Party (pre-1990) 83 4.1 Introduction 83 4.2 The Development of Political Exchange in the Labour Party 84 4.3 The Autonomy of the PLP and Party-Union ‘Pathologies’ 99 4.4 Coalitions for Change 110 4.5 Conclusion 117 3 5 Policymaking 119 5.1 Introduction 119 5.2 Policymaking in the Labour Party Before 1983 120 5.3 Party Policy and the PLP 125 5.4 The PLP and Policymaking After 1983 131 5.5 Trade Unions and the Party Conference in the 1990s 136 5.6 Policymaking in the 1990s: The National Policy Forum 141 5.7 Conclusion 153 6 The Selection of Parliamentary Candidates 155 6.1 Introduction 155 6.2 Local Party Organisation 156 6.3 Political Exchange and Candidate Selection 159 6.4 Selection in the Labour Party 163 6.5 Other Changes to Candidate Selection Procedures 177 6.6 Trade Union Sponsorship of Parliamentary Candidates 182 6.7 Conclusion 191 Appendix to Chapter 6 Candidate Selection Procedures 193 7 Electing the Leader: The Electoral College 195 7.1 Introduction 195 7.2 Rational Choice and Party Leadership 196 7.3 Labour’s Electoral College, 1981-93 198 7.4 The Electoral College After 1993 212 7.5 Accountability and the Electoral College 222 7.6 Conclusion 227 Appendix 1 to Chapter 7 Procedures for Challenging a Labour Leader 230 Appendix 2 to Chapter 7 Electing the Extraparliamentary Leadership: The NEC 231 8 Organisational Resources: Supply and Demand 236 8.1 Introduction 236 Part I Resources 8.2 Funding 237 8.3 Members and Activists 244 8.4 Party Staff 248 8.5 Conclusion 249 Part II Political Communications 8.6 Party Resources and Political Communications 250 8.7 Labour’s Political Communications Revolution 254 8.8 The New Communications: Techniques and Modus Operandi 257 8.9 Conclusion 270 4 9 Conclusion: Labour’s Transformation 271 9.1 Introduction 271 9.2 Explaining Organisational Change in the Labour Party 271 9.3 The New Labour Party 282 9.4 Objections to the Model 293 9.5 Intellectual Contributions of the Thesis 300 9.6 Conclusion 306 Appendix 1 From Federalism to Unitarism in the Labour Party 307 Appendix 2 UK General Elections, 1900-2001 309 Notes 310 References 318 5 List of Figures 2.1 Median Voter Theorem 29 2.2 Downsian Model of Party Competition 30 3.1 Curvilinear Disparity 57 3.2 Horizontal (Organisational) and Vertical (Factional) Cleavages 63 3.3 Efficient and Redistributive Institutions 68 4.1 Distributional Consequences of Block Voting 94 4.2 Labour Vote and TUC Membership 104 4.3 Institutional Preferences of Labour Factions 116 5.1 Policy Determination at the Labour Party Conference 122 5.2 Labour Party Policymaking Structure (mid-1980s) 132 5.3 The NPF and the Two-year Rolling Policymaking Structure 144 5.4 Preference Alignment between the Party Conference and the NPF 149 5.5 NPF Minority Reports and the Party Conference 150 6.1 Constituency Labour Party Structure 157 6.2 Candidate Selection Screens 160 6.3 Model of Reselection/Deselection of MP 164 6.4 Distribution of Preferences of Voters, and Labour Members and Activists 174 6.5 Union Involvement in Candidate Selection 183 6.6 Candidate Selection Screens and Party Lists 187 6.7 Sponsorship of Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, 1945-92 188 6.8 Sponsorship of Labour MPs, 1945-92 188 6.9 Sponsored MPs as a Proportion of Sponsored Candidates 189 7.1 Leadership Election Screens 201 7.2 Institutional Preferences: Traditionalists and Modernisers (1993) 214 8.1 Main Parties’ Head Office Expenditure 1959-97 (1997 prices) 237 8.2 Main Parties’ Head Office Income 1959-97 (1997 prices) 238 8.3 Labour Party Individual Membership 1980-2002 247 8.4 Trade-off between Activist Retention and Electoral Support 251 8.5 Communication Technologies 253 9.1 Simple Membership Structure of the Labour Party 273 9.2 Labour’s Two Phases of Modernisation 283 6 List of Tables 2.1 Perceptions of Electoral Strategy by ‘Hard’ Left and Other Factions 34 3.1 Reasons for Joining the Labour Party 54 4.1 Labour Party Membership 90 4.2 Strategic Options for Labour Factions (mid-1980s) 112 4.3 Labour Party Members’ Attitudes to Modernisation 115 4.4 Attitudes to Modernisation by Activism and Ideology 115 5.1 PLP-Conference Conjunctures 128 5.2 National Policy Forum Membership 143 6.1 Powers and Responsibilities of General Committees (pre-1989) 157 6.2 Ideology and Activism in the Labour Party 168 6.3 Labour MPs Sponsored by Individual Unions (1945-92) 190 7.1 Contests Under the Electoral College 210 7.2 Individual Unions’ Influence under OLOV 217 7.3 Electing the NEC 233 8.1 Labour Party National Head Office Income and Expenditure, 1959-97 237 8.2 Labour Party Annual Income (£m) 240 8.3 ‘Short Money’ to the Parliamentary Labour Party, 1980-97 242 8.4 Party Staffing Levels in the Labour and Conservative Parties, 1964-98 249 8.5 Use of Computers by Constituency (percent) 268 8.6 Mean Number of Computers used, by Constituency 268 8.7 Mean Number of Campaign Workers by Constituency (per day) 268 7 List of Abbreviations AEEU Amalgamated Electrical and Engineering Union (previously AUEW, now Amicus) APEX Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff ASTMS Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff (later MSF, now Amicus) AUEW Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (later AEEU, now Amicus) CCD Campaigns and Communications Directorate CLP Constituency Labour Party CLPD Campaign for Labour Party Democracy COHSE Confederation of Health Service Employees (now UNISON) CSC Campaign Strategy Committee EC Executive Committee (of unions) EETPU Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (later AEEU, now Amicus) EPLP