A Do-It-Yourself Labour Party
JVL Introduction
Mark Perryman, a member of Lewes Labour Party and Momentum, argues that we need a deep change in party culture: “Corbynism enabled the left to seize the levers of party power, but did little to reform them.”
In an article buzzing with ideas he asks us to think about what a genuinely open, plural party would look like: “We need a manner of talking with, not shouting at. Listening to rather than shutting out those we disagree with.”
The key, he believes, lies in going local, rooting the party in our communities. But equally, he argues, it will not be a “one-size-fits-all version of the Labour Party any more”, if there ever was such a party…
This article was originally published by Renewal on Thu 19 Dec 2019. Read the original here.
A Do-It-Yourself Labour Party
After Corbynism, Mark Perryman argues Labour’s radical left needs to jettison a one-size fits-all politics to embrace the plural and the local.
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A huge transformation of Labour Party culture is what Mark is suggesting. Changes that will make local people feel they ‘own’ their local council, not that it does things to and for them.
And recognition that Labour is not the repository of all wisdom, that others, in other parties have good ideas and something to contribute, and that others who aren’t in any party at all should not be sidelined either. After all, I do work which I regard as ‘for JVL’ though I am only a supporter, not a member (as I am not in the Labour Party). I find bridging that gap so easy, I always talk about ‘we’. By contrast, after much agonising, I couldn’t bring myself to track down a not-too-distant Labour Party who were having to fight for votes and could use me during the election, because I didn’t want to spend five weeks feeling like an outsider.
Labour had lots of good policies – perhaps too many – but it doesnt need to develop any more for at least three years! What it needs is to think about how it works internally, and how it relates to the wider community and how it can build that sense of wider and unsectarian ownership. This is also the sort of change that is best done openly and transparently – if done with comradeship, it wont matter if people disagree, that is human. But in the end, it has five years to transform its inner culture and its way of communicating outwardly – I urge comrades – dont waste it.
And one final point – Mark focuses on the local, which I am sure is crucial. But I am going to pick up a key national point. Mark says unequivocally that Labour in Scotland has got to ditch its unionism – and I totally agree. I wish he, and other commentators, would start looking therefore at England’s party and the way it relates to England’s people. Once again, a non-English nationalism is respected, while the very fact of English national identity is either ignored or is an embarrassment (right wing, a colonial relic etc etc etc). Come on – let’s start making the English welcome too. Lets start even talking about England.
Agree entirely with Naomi that Labour has to ditch unionism. We can’t depend on it – just for votes – and it deserves an exciting independence, alongside reuniting Northern Ireland with the South. Apart from perhaps a later Welsh independence, this will leave England to work out what it really means to be English in a much changed world since colonialism. Painful but necessary.
Great article by Mark – really valuable. I am not sure about ditching unionism – I would like Labour to stress democracy. To say we do not fear another referendum and will not oppose it on purely dogmatic grounds.