West Ham Parliamentary Shindig.

On Wednesday evening our local Labour Party GC (General Committee) was held at the Jubilee Room in the House of Commons. West Ham Labour Party activists were also invited by our MP Lyn Brown for an informal meeting and thank you event for all the hard work done by members in the previous year.

Lyn had provided a cold buffet spread for us and she had managed to “persuade” (whip speak) 8 Cabinet Ministers and other high profile ministers and MP’s to come and talk to us. Instead of the usual sequence in these type of events of 3 minute (and the rest!) soapbox political speeches we had John Denham; Ed Balls; Ed Miliband; Hilary Benn; Douglas Alexander, Ben Bradshaw; Liam Byrne, John Healey, Stephen Timms, Gareth Thomas, Ian Wright, Chris Mole, Dianne Abbott and fellow whip Sharon Hodgson - just mingling and chatting with Party activists about their views and concerns. Which I thought was simply marvellous. Needless to say West Ham Labour Party members were not slow to give their Parliamentary comrades the benefit of their opinions!

A very good night was had by all (I had to rush off early to take the train to Manchester for the Thursday UNISON National Housing seminar where Minister John Healey was the keynote speaker - will post soon on this).

Apologies to West Ham members who were on the optional House of Commons tour when I took the Group photo (and those I could not get in the photo or cut in half!).

Operation Fight Back

I arrived at the end of Ed Miliband MP speech during the “General Election campaign” report but “Operation Fight back” is obviously on course.

Ed was followed by the co-ordinator Douglas Alexander MP. He noted the success that Hasting Labour Party had enjoyed by contacting a massive 16,000 voters. The national Party has done twice as well on voter contacts as last year.

Also that the Tories membership is down by 40,000 since Cameron took over as leader. He is still convinced that we can out organise and then out poll the Tories with 3 approaches.

1.Direct contact with public and earn the right for their support
2. Personal communication
3. Be rooted and reflect local communities.

He argued that new media is not so much a new medium but empowers traditional electioneering processes. For example “Virtual phone banks” get people to ring at home for the Party who simply would not do otherwise.

The General Secretary Ray Collins started his annual report to conference by promising that he has never knowingly kissed a Tory!

Conference finished with a “Candidates fighting to win presentation” which featured the Prime Minister amongst a backdrop of young Labour Prospective Parliamentary candidates. I thought this was quite clever but some “mature” delegates were complaining that this was ageist!

I thought that Gordon’s first speech and Q&A to conference was confident, comfortable and measured. A key theme seems to be to compare and contrast the Labour way of dealing with recession with that of Tories.

I will post next on the various fringes and events. Posting will be a little erratic not least that I hope to make a speech tomorrow.

Progress Labour 2.0 conference – will 2.0 help us win in 2010?

On Thursday evening I was at an important grass roots union and residents meeting in the Isle of Dogs being held in a tenant’s hall.

Yesterday I was back on the Island but this time at the glass and crystal globe of the East Wintergarden in Canary Wharf. Lots of light in the heart of Gotham City (joke). Of course, now that so many of the local businesses are publicly owned I should have felt very much at home.

This conference was organised by Progress and they had 8 sessions with some 26 panel members. That was a lot of information and opinions to take in 11am-5.45pm. I will just highlight some of the things I found interesting.

The opening address was by RH Douglas Alexander MP (who is also the Labour Party campaign coordinator for the General Election). Partly in response to a question that I put to him (which I think he misunderstood - it’s probably me) he suggested that the global Banking crisis last September is an Obama type issue which has changed the world and that it is traditional Labour values of “fairness...solidarity and collectivism” and the “strength of common endeavour” that is the future - this crisis is our “Hope” and “Change” theme (my interpretation).

Joe Rospars, the foundering partner of Blue State Digital was the next speaker and he is of course better known to everyone present simply as God, aka Barack Obama’s New Media Director. He played one of the many inspiring “making the hairs on the edge of your neck stand up” videos. What fantastic stuff. The 13 million supporters, 200,000 local organisers and $500 million dollars raised from 3 million contributors by the New Media Obama machine is an awesome achievement. The decentralisation of the campaign and its “bottom up” nature was key to its success. But as Douglas said with some venom, during question time, the central Obama campaign organisers where not just holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” together each night. They were leading and controlling as well as organising. We should not forget this.

Professor Andrew Chadwick reminded us that yesterday was the 109th anniversary of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and how the Party started off as a broad church and is still one nowadays. “Pragmatism, co-operation and solidarity”.

Ben Brandzel reminded us that “democracy is not a spectator sport”.

Gavin Shuker that the “narrative” is all important. Complying data without any use is itself useless.

Jag Singh (I finally met Jag for the first time in real life) who despite being unwell spoke amusingly but without bitterness about how as a Hilary Clinton election advisor he had lost his White House cubicle (by 0.5 %!).

Stella Creasy – PCC for Walthamstow has an email list of 2000 names gathered during campaign events which her CLP (usually Stella I suspect) sends out a weekly newsletter. . .......Blimey.

I had a sort of “row” during the last session with panel member James Crabtree (senior Editor, Prospect). He had quite gleefully (in my view) during his presentation predicted that the Labour Party would lose the next election and that they should use the opportunity of defeat to build the Party in order to win in future. I challenged him on this view since I could remember when I joined the Party just before the General election in 1979 I came across people who predicted that the Party would lose and tried to argue that this was a good thing. That opposition would enable the Party to regroup and win next time. This resulted in all these people losing their jobs (Shotton steel workers) and the Tories being in charge for 18 years not one or two terms. James said that he had never said that it was a good thing that Labour will lose the next election. I think he did. To be clear I think we still have a very good chance of winning at the next election. It is not helped by selfish and ignorant defeatist statements.

My big issue is as a Labour Party and Labour movement activist who happens to be a “blogger”. I want to help the Party and if possible help it to win. While I enjoy blogging, is it a useful practical political tool or campaigning weapon? Perhaps not and it is just an enjoyable avenue for activists and theorists to sound off and infuriate internal and external opponents. Or can we actually do stuff of political value to our Party?

What about setting up a central and regional distribution list of labour supporting bloggers who can be sent information and post upon (if they choose to) key issues. What about organising those Labour Party members who blog or post and who would rally to support the Party when it is being “beaten up” on national media blogs and web sites?

Or is there anything else we can do?

At the end of the conference I had a brief chat with Derek Draper (Labour List - right of photo) who I can report in my brief experience as being an extremely polite, constructive and courteous comrade.

Check out these posts on this meeting by panel members Nick Anstead, Andrew Chadwick, Tim Montgomerie (ConservativeHome)

UNISON/Compass/Tribune Rally

This is the first of a selection of posts and pictures with brief comments about fringes, rallies and seminars that I attended last week during conference that I didn’t have the time to post.

Sunday evening - Can the public services deliver the new "progressive consensus”?

Chaired by Compass Neal Lawson with Ed Milliband MP, Douglas Alexander MP, Angela Eagle MP and Heather Wakefield (from UNISON standing in for Dave Prentis).

Ed Milliband seemed rather “put out” for some reason by my suggestion in the Q&A that there will be no consensus if the Government continues to privatise and there is a political risk to the Party since some of our core vote may think they might as well vote Tory? Can’t think why?