YOUNG CONSERVATIVES, YOUNG SOCIALISTS AND THE GREAT YOUTH ABSTENTION: YOUTH PARTICIPATION AND NON- PARTICIPATION IN POLITICAL PARTIES. by MATTHEW LAMB. A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Political Science and International Studies The University of Birmingham September 2002 i University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis is an investigation into participation and non-participation by young people in British political parties. Falling turnout in British elections has lead to concern about the level of popular participation in the political system, especially amongst the young. Those between 18 and 25 are less likely to involve themselves in political activity than any other age group. This thesis argues that political parties and their grassroots members are still vital to British democracy and that the failure of both parties to recruit young members is leading to increasingly aged and inactive parties. Even measuring the extent of youth membership of the main parties is problematic due to a lack of accurate membership figures. The figures available show that whilst neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party has enjoyed unqualified success in recruiting young members, Labour has enjoyed comparative success in increasing its youth membership in the period 1970-2001 both absolutely and as proportion of the total membership. I have argued that whilst there is research on participation and non-participation there is little specific on the particular area of young people and political parties. I have suggested and evaluated competing explanations of this problem and I have been able to develop and test a youth-specific model of participation and non-participation. This model builds on the general incentive model developed by Seyd and Whiteley but provides a more comprehensive, and youth specific, model of both participation and non-participation. This new model builds considerably on our understanding of why young people choose to join, or not join, a political party. ii However, a static sample only takes me so far. A study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations also shows that they have contributed to their relative success or failure through popular perceptions of their image and through the relationship with their parent parties. My improved model of participation and non- participation is complemented by a consideration that the mobilisation model contributes to understanding trends in membership. Those youth organisations that are able to recruit actively with support from the parent party are more likely to succeed than those who are not. I have provided a detailed and critical study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations, the first such study since 1970. From this study I have helped explain the comparative success of the Labour Party and the comparative failure of the Conservative Party in recruiting young members. Both party’s youth organisations suffered from poor perceptions of extremism, infighting and unfashionability at certain times in the period under study which helped deter potential members. These problems were often compounded by a poor relationship between the youth organisation and the parent party. However, whilst, eventually, the Labour Party was able to solve these problems to a certain extent, the Conservative Party has yet to find a solution to its recruitment problems amongst young people. iii This thesis is dedicated to my daughter, Angel, to my father, for all his help and support, and to my mother, who is greatly missed. iv I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of my supervisor, Professor David Marsh, without whom this thesis would have been impossible, the help and support of many others in the Conservative and Labour Parties, those who completed questionnaires, and the help and support of my good friend, Kingsley Jolowicz. v Contents Chapter: Page: 1. Introduction. 1 2. The membership figures of the Conservative and Labour Party 14 youth organisations, 1970-2001. 3. A review of the existing literature. 31 4. Explaining participation. 90 5. An alternative model of participation and non-participation. 125 6. The questionnaire and its results. 152 7. The Conservative Party youth organisations, 1970-2001. 200 8. The Labour Party youth organisations, 1970-2001. 255 9. Conclusions. 310 Appendix 1: An example of the questionnaire used. 340 Bibliography. 349 vi Tables Table: Page: Table 2.1: Membership of the Labour youth organisations compared 23 with that of the Labour Party as a whole. Table 2.2: Membership of the Conservative youth organisations 26 compared with that of the Conservative Party as a whole. Table 4.1: The Most Important Reason for Joining the Labour Party 119 (Membership Survey). Table 4.2: The Most Important Reason for Joining the Conservative 120 Party (Membership Survey). Table 5.1: ‘General Incentive Theory of Participation and Non- 149 participation for Young People and Political Parties’. Table 6.1: The demographic make-up of the sample. 170-171 Table 6.2: The level of political activity in the sample. 175-176 Table 6.3: Reasons for participation in a political party. 180 Table 6.4: Reasons for not participating in a political party. 188 vii Abbreviations. B.E.S.- British Election Survey. C.C.F.- Conservative Collegiate Forum. C.C.O.- Conservative Party Central Office. C.F.- Conservative Future. F.C.S.- Federation of Conservative Students. L.P.Y.S.- Labour Party Young Socialists. N.E.C.- National Executive Committee (of the Labour Party). N.O.L.S.- National Organisation of Labour Students. N.U.S.- National Union of Students. Y.C.- Young Conservative. Y.L.- Young Labour. Y.S.- Young Socialist. viii Chapter 1. Introduction. The turnout of the 2001 General Election has once again brought the issue of political participation onto the agenda. The lowest turnout in modern democracy in the United Kingdom at 59.1% has lead to considerable discussion amongst politicians, political commentators and political scientists. The poor turnout in 2001 has led, once again, to a discussion as to whether we are facing a crisis of democracy. Some argue that poor turnout is an indication of disengagement and disillusionment with the political system and that an election in which the number of votes for the winning party was outweighed by those who did not bother to vote at all shows a deep malaise at the heart of our political system. Furthermore, poor turnouts in local elections (often between 30 and 40% but, plunging to below even that in some areas) and European Parliament elections (a turnout around 30% is normal, but the turnout fell to only 24% in 1999) have also become a cause for comment and concern with politicians casting about wildly in search of new and more ‘convenient’ ways to encourage the electorate to vote. 1 It is important to note that concern about what were seen as falling levels of participation preceded the 2001 election. One of the driving forces behind New Labour’s programme of radical constitutional change (the ‘New Constitutionalism’) was a perception that disengagement with the political system was partly caused by 1 See Broughton, D. ‘Political Participation in Britain’ in Politics Review, April 2000, page 12-15. Curtis, A. ‘The 2001 General Election’ in Politics Review, January 2002, pages 3-6. 1 the centralised nature of the British state. The advent of devolution, the introduction of electoral reform (at least in the new devolved institutions), the greater use of referenda on constitutional and local issues (such as the one in Bristol in 2001), the introduction of directly elected mayors and the continued reliance on focus groups can be seen as an attempt to improve the link between the citizen and the government. Through the use of these channels, the government could claim to be communicating directly with the voters and handing down power from the centre to a more local level as a way of reinvigorating the democratic process.2 It is worth commenting however that not everyone sees the low turnout in General Elections such as in 1997 and 2001 in such apocalyptic terms. Others argue that the low turnout does not indicate dissatisfaction with democracy or the political system but instead it shows a broad level of satisfaction with the existing status quo. Economic prosperity, political stability and unprecedented wealth ensure that some voters are broadly happy with the way things are and will only vote if they feel a change to the existing government is needed, which in 2001 many thought was not. This explanation is often used to help explain poor turnout in American presidential and congressional elections.3 Nonetheless, low and falling turnout must be a cause for concern for politicians who claim a democratic mandate for their actions based on the strength of their electoral support. As that support falls away into non-voting and apathy, for whatever reasons, our politicians have a far weaker claim to legitimacy. 2 See Mair, P., ‘Partyless democracy: solving the paradox of New Labour’, New Left Review, 2, 2000 and Smith, N. ‘New Labour and Constitutional Reform’, Talking Politics, Volume 4, Number 1, 2001. 3 See McKeever, R. Politics USA, Prentice Hall, London, 1999, pages 204-207 and McKay, D. American Politics and Society, Blackwell, Oxford, 1997, pages 116-128.