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Cat Smith - Compass shouldn't change its membership rules
The Compass Youth Committee has voted to support keeping the current membership arrangements within Compass. I am confident that we made the correct decision in deciding this. We felt the benefits of the current arrangements outweighed any benefits of opening up voting to members of other political parties. Compass's strength has been to provide a coherent voice for the mainstream of the party membership. We therefore believe it should continue to focus its work on building new ideas within the Labour Party.
Membership of Compass is open to all but voting restricted to Labour Party members or people eligible to be members of the Labour Party. It was founded as an organisation to give new direction to Labour. I joined it a few years ago when I saw the space it was opening up on the centre-left of the Labour Party. It was good to have a campaign which, although specifically focused on Labour, was not afraid to have dialogue with other political parties in areas where there was some cross-over. No one party can ever have the monopoly of good ideas. We should always be open to working with all others, but our priority is to ensure the Labour Party becomes the changed party we have all worked for.
But Ed Miliband's election represents a shift in the policy of the Labour Party - we welcome his statement that the war in Iraq was wrong, and his wiping clean of our policy slate. Ed's leadership campaign gave voice to, and has helped popularise further, many of the issues Compass has campaigned on in recent years. We are excited to be involved with the Labour Party policy making and we are finding support for our ‘Compass-style' politics around the Living Wage, a Graduate Tax and the building of the good society. Now is the time to support and campaign with Labour. Since May thousands of young people have joined Labour. As young voters we have been particularly let down by the betrayal by the Liberal Democrats on top-up-fees, and many of us never had any faith in the Tories anyway. So those of us involved in Party politics have seen Labour as the sole mainstream progressive party left in British politics. To open our membership to members of other parties would mean Compass loses credibility within Labour. It will weaken Compass' ability to play a full role in internal elections, policy debates and much more and would inevitability see Compass failing to support Labour in many local and council elections.
Regardless of attempts to rewrite history now Compass is seen as a Labour Party orientated organisation because of the actions we have taken. We were right to ballot our members and support Ed Miliband in the Labour Party leadership, and it is right that Compass staff members speak to local Labour Parties up and down the country. All these activities are a great way of promoting our organisation's slogan; "direction for the democratic left". Compass has already played an influential and useful role within Labour from Jon Cruddas's bid for Deputy Leadership in 2007 to the recent NEC elections, and party conference decisions. We have built up too much to throw away.
Compass is a political organisation. It is right that we should promote our politics and support the Party which most reflects our democratic left beliefs. That party is the Labour Party and they have invited us to participate in policy and campaigning. Any move to change our internal membership now would be seen as a hostile move towards Labour and Ed Miliband. The Lib Dems, hooked to a Thatcherite government, have lost the support of these people and rightly so. They are helping the Conservatives carry out ideological attacks on the most vulnerable in our society. We should look to the new activists - sixth formers, university students, community campaigners, trades unionists and progressives - the 50,000 new Labour members and the millions still to engage in party politics to join in our work. They have joined Labour as the only mainstream progressive party in British politics. They share our politics and they want Labour to represent and campaign for them. Labour has moved towards Compass's values and we must ensure Labour challenges the Tory agenda - Compass has a key role to play in making that happen.
Cat Smith is Chair of Compass Youth
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Comments
on 01 February 2011, 9:26:45 PM
I agree with Victor and with M. It really is not tenable to say that Ed Miliband has 'wiped the slate clean' - honestly, it is cloud cuckoo land, and most ordinary voters will tell you so.
Labour is still committed to neoliberalism, still only skin deep on the environment, etc etc.
The real irony of your article is in your saying that, because you now have Ed, you don't have to bother about being genuinely pluralistic any more. One of the main points of having Ed is SO you can be more pluralistic - SO you are not dominated by New Labour and by Labour tribalism any more.
If you stick narrowly to Labour and to the 'big tent' theory, then you will have no-one to negotiate with in the 2015 hung parliament. You need to be serious about opening up to Greens, to Respect, to social liberals, etc. Otherwise, it will all be for nothing.
on 26 January 2011, 11:41:06 AM
Are you serious? I absolutely shared the Greens and social Liberals world view that we should not invade Iraq and that we need to tackle climate change and that we need to tackel poverty. These viewsa re not the sole domain of Labour party members.
"if Compass Youth have suspicions about the call to admit a wider membership to Compass, then they should surely be encouraged to share their concerns and not have them rejected out of hand".
Who did that? Cat put forward her view and others responded, for and against. Is that not allowed anymore or is Compass Youth attempting to shut down debate now?
on 25 January 2011, 11:31:31 PM
on 25 January 2011, 10:29:30 PM
(1) It is important in principle to oppose party tribalism, which too often stands in the way of sensible political co-operation and promotes a silly psychology of 'good guys versus bad guys'. It's like watching a television with the contrast turned up to the maximum. It just doesn't reflect reality. The long run trend of decline in 'strong party identifiers' as a percentage of the electorate shows that the tribal politics view of the world is attractive to less and less people.
(2) Party boundaries don't correspond to the real boundaries of where people agree and disagree. Most Compass members in the Labour Party have little in common with the right-wing of the 'Blairites' - except membership of the same party. They have a lot more in common with the left-wing of the LibDems and the more pragmatic people within the Green Party.
(3) Because of the fragmentation of party support, Labour is likely to often need people in other political parties to be prepared to co-operate with it, in order to form a majority government. The last general election result delivered a choice between two coalitions. Labour tribalism stands in the way of it returning to government. If a 'rainbow coalition' is to be formed, an organisation such as Compass where links between people of different parties can be created beforehand has a key role to play.
(4) Even if you are, despite everything, a Labour loyalist, you ought to see the value of Compass as an organisation where Labour members might learn something from discussion on equal terms - not non-voting 'associate member' terms - with people in other parties. Maybe some of our ideas might even help Labour to improve its own policies. Ed Miliband seems to understand that, I hope Compass members will too.
on 25 January 2011, 10:09:27 AM
There are real reasons why Social Liberals and Greens do not consider themselves to be Labour, beyond disgust at the advent of New Labour.
The anti-cuts consensus; as indeed the same also for the anti-Right consensus more broadly; is in a majority and, if it were through weight of numbers alone, would succeed to power. However, the consensus needs to be realized clearly and transparently: The broad area of agreement known, thrashed over and old news before any campaigning for parliament even begins.
Frankly, Compass has achieved very little whilst it has been reluctant to let go of (New) Labour altogether. Cruddas did not turn out well, at all. We must also distinguish between the Lib Dem leadership and all those - whether MPs, local councillors, activists or supporters who feel they have been betrayed by their leadership and found themselves to the Left of it; as happened to Labour supporters through the New Labour years.
on 17 January 2011, 10:21:02 AM
Maybe it should but without any policies to actually prove that, it is just words, and we've had plenty of those. Firstly from Blair then Brown and recently Clegg, but no real social democracy to solve the inequality and unfairness in this country. Don't know where you live Robert but the Greens, Scots and Welsh Nats are further to the left than the three main parties, and might be worth supporting at the moment.
on 16 January 2011, 10:50:48 AM
Because in no way shape or form would I vote New labour and boy is this a new labour party, it's moved so far to the right it's passed the BNP, second thoughts I'd have a better chance of getting a better deal in the BNP.
Millipede said lets see we would have cut 12% from the Police budget, thats a change because not to long ago he said we would never cut the police budget.
DLA has to go nice on mate, welfare needs reforming to true.
But in the end where do I go from here, Labours out Tories an over dose is better, Liberals or BNP the choice is Liberals.
on 13 January 2011, 1:50:44 PM
on 11 January 2011, 6:00:11 PM
has been a mistake in my view. Their record and Jon Cruddas's voting record does not add up to progressive politics, in fact it is the opposite. Ed Miliband has not grasped the mettle to relaunch labour as a social democratic party. The Greens and grass roots of the LibDems are to the left of labour. As an ex labour party member i felt utterly betrayed by Blair and NewLabour, and the same people are still in the majority in the PLP. Countless articles on these pages have called for change within the Labour Party, and still nothing has happened. Like the unions we should disaffiliate, and be a left pressure group supporting social democratic policies across the spectrum.
on 11 January 2011, 3:55:48 PM
on 11 January 2011, 2:19:40 PM
Which is also why I support a change to the electoral system. I want to see social Liberals, Labour and Greens working together not apart.
on 11 January 2011, 1:29:05 PM
on 11 January 2011, 12:59:04 PM
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