The Changing of the Praetorian Guard?
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The Political Quarterly The Changing of the Praetorian Guard? The Size, Structure and Composition of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee and the Enduring Importance of Labour’s Trade Unions CHRISTOPHER MASSEY Abstract This article investigates the history of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee. It argues that the party’s trade unions, outside a brief period of left-wing NEC control between 1972 and 1981, formed a Praetorian Guard at the Executive around the party leader from Labour’s foundation until 1997, and have continued to serve in an enlarged Praetorian Guard since then. From 1900–97, the unions maintained effective control of over half of the NEC’s seats. Although widespread changes to the Executive in 1997 shifted the unions into a minority on the Committee, they continued to guard the leader. However, following the election of Jeremy Cor- byn in 2015, factional disputes led to a breakdown of the Praetorian Guard during heated battles for control of the NEC. Since this period, it is argued, Labour leaders have built new guards in which the unions continue to serve, but which also include soldiers from across the labour movement. Keywords: Labour Party, National Executive Committee, trade unions, Britain, the left LABOUR’S NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COM- seats thereafter. In 1964, Robert McKenzie MITTEE (NEC) is the governing body of the claimed that the unions acted as a ‘Praetorian party and the highest source of internal power Guard’ to protect the ‘parliamentary party for the leadership, trade unions and activists. from overt attempts by the “activist” element’, Control of the NEC is crucial for Labour but this was challenged in 1978 by Lewis Min- leaders and competition for places on the Exec- kin, at the height of the left’s ascendancy inside utive is fierce. This article argues that until the party.1 However, this article argues that 1997, the trade unions served as the Praetorian the Praetorian Guard reformed by the mid- Guard to the party leadership on the NEC, out- 1980s as the unions returned to their support- side a period of left-wing ascendancy between ive role, shielding the Labour leadership from 1972 and 1981. Owing to changes in the Execu- left-wing constituency opinion until 2015. tive’s structure in 1997, the unions shifted into Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a minority on the Committee, but largely con- both he and his successor have had to forge tinued to guard the leader. However, it is alliances from across Labour’s internal spec- argued that Labour’s ideological divides from trum. Between 2015 and 2020, prominent trade 2015 and further alterations to the NEC in union representatives at the NEC shifted to the 2016, 2017 and 2020, have forced Labour left to form a new alliance with left-wing con- leaders to cast their nets more widely in search stituency members at the Committee, as they of a majority at the party’s top table. had in the 1972–81 period, creating a compet- An NEC alliance between the party leader- ing centre of power to the parliamentary party. ship and the unions has afforded Labour leaders incredible stability for much of the 1R. McKenzie, British Political Parties, London, Mer- ’ party s history. The trade unions held a de facto cury Books, 1964, p. 597; L. Minkin, The Labour Party majority at the Executive from Labour’s foun- Conference, Manchester, Manchester University dation until 1997 and held one-third of the Press, 1986, p. 121. © 2021 The Author. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC). 1 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Consequently, upon his election in 2020, Keir seats on the NEC and from this position served Starmer could no longer rely solely on the as the Praetorian Guard of the party’s leader- unions for a majority. Instead, Starmer and ship. This provided stability for party leaders his supporters built a new Praetorian Guard outside a period of left-wing ascendency from by breaking the left’s hold on the constituency 1972 to 1981. Between 1929 and 1997, the section alongside securing the support of unions directly appointed twelve union places some, but by no means all, trade union mem- and indirectly controlled a further six seats fi ’ bers at Labour’s top table. (the ve-seat women s section and the post of treasurer). These six places were elected at party conference where the union bloc vote Structural changes, 1900–2021 was worth 90 per cent of the conference total The NEC oversees the direction of the party, until 1993, and 70 per cent between 1993 and the manifesto, and the policy process, whilst 1995. This gave the unions a huge majority sub-committees of the Executive deal with dis- on the NEC, which featured only twenty-three – fi – cipline, the rulebook, and finances. As the (1918 29), twenty- ve (1929 37), twenty- – – party’s conference usually meets only once seven (1937 53), twenty-eight (1953 72), and – per year, the NEC is the key director of day- twenty-nine (1972 97) members, respectively. to-day operations. However, despite the sig- The non-union seats, before 1997, comprised fi – nificance of Labour’s Executive, examinations ve (1918 37) and then seven (from 1937) in a of the body’s role are mere footnotes in the constituency section, one each for the leader historiography of the party. Four excellent (from 1929) and deputy leader (from 1953), analyses do extend beyond this. Robert one from the socialist societies (from 1929), McKenzie, Martin Harrison, Lewis Minkin, and one from the Labour Party Young Social- and Meg Russell all devote chapters to the com- ists (LPYS) (from 1972). The constituency position, membership and work of the Execu- section was, from 1937, directly elected by tive, but these, in turn, only investigate the local party delegates. The left held a majority NEC between 1900 and 1953, 1935–59, 1956–60, in this section between 1952 and 1963, – 3 and 1979–2004, respectively.2 1967 89 and 2014 to date. ’ The NEC’s structure has changed through- The structure of Labour s Executive was ’ ‘ out its history, but at its core remains a mixture radically altered in 1997 under Blair s Partner- ’ of politicians, activists, and senior trade union ship in Power reforms. In this package, the members. The Committee traces its roots to the NEC was realigned with its membership Labour Representation Committee’s twelve- increasing to thirty-two. The unions lost their member Executive in 1900. In Labour’s 1918 majority on the Committee with the deletion fi ’ constitution, the NEC was enshrined as the of the ve-seat women s section and the addi- party’s ‘administration authority’ and its tion of three seats each for the PLP and membership was set at twenty-three members: Shadow Cabinet, alongside two seats for local thirteen from affiliated organisations, five con- government and a seat for the European Par- stituency representatives, four women, and a liamentary Labour Party (EPLP). A further treasurer. Although numbers on the NEC have seat was assigned in 1997 to the Black Socialist increased since 1918, the broad sections in Society when their membership reached 2,500. which members are elected and, crucially, the This occurred in 2007. ’ working majority of the trade unions, From 2015, Corbyn s leadership saw the remained largely consistent until Tony Blair’s NEC become a battleground between the ’ 1997 changes as shown in Tables 1 and 2. party s left and right. Constituency and trade ’ Between 1900 and 1997 the trade unions union support for Corbyn s leadership controlled the appointment of a majority of allowed him to build a fragile majority. Yet, tweaks to the Executive’s structure were made 2McKenzie, British Political Parties, pp. 516–531; M. Harrison, Trade Unions and the Labour Party since 3P. Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left, Basing- 1945, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1960, stoke, Macmillan, 1987, p. 207; P. Seyd, The Labour pp. 307–323; L. Minkin, Labour Party Conference, Left, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Shef- pp. 242–70; M. Russell, Building New Labour, Basing- field, 1986, p. 63; Labour Party, Conference Reports, stoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 172–89. London, Labour Party, 1952–1990. 2CHRISTOPHER M ASSEY The Political Quarterly © 2021 The Author. The Political Quarterly published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Political Quarterly Publishing Co (PQPC). in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, seats for the Scottish 1 and Welsh Labour Parties increased the size of the Executive to thirty-five, with these appointments wrestling control of the NEC away from Corbyn. In 2017, the left reclaimed their grip over the Executive with the addition of one trade union and three constituency places, taking the number of members to thirty-nine. In 2021, as shown in Table 2, the NEC continues to have thirty-nine seats with the EPLP seat replaced by a new disability rep- resentative in November 2020. The NEC before 1970 1122 Despite left-wing dominance of the constitu- ency section in the 1950s and 1960s, a change of attitude in the union section was required to alter the political balance of the NEC and 55777 45555 to break the Pretorian Guard. Before 1956, no major trade union leader supported the left until Frank Cousins was elected as General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). However, by the 111111 mid-1960s, the previously loyal unions were beginning to slowly shift away from the lead- ership.