partnership in power? party reform and membership empowerment: the case of the british labour party
TRANSCRIPT
Partnership in Power? Party Reform and Membership Empowerment: The Case of the British Labour Party. Dr Danny Rye, Liverpool Hope University
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Abstract:
This article examines the extent to which reforms to the Labour Party’s internal organisation under
Ed Miliband’s leadership empowered members or represented a continuation of the controlled,
managerial regime of Tony Blair. It makes use of a framework for analysing power in political
organisations which accounts for its operation in several different modes: at individual and
organisational levels, in culture and practice and in the techiques and technologies employed in the
pursuit of party goals. Key aspects of the reforms are discussed, including community organising,
flexibility in the organisation of local parties, the idea of candidate contracts, the role of training and
the impact of the registered supporters scheme, particularly on the franchise for leadership
elections. The analysis suggests that whilst there was a genuine desire to give more power to
members and local parties, it was tempered by a reluctance to fully relinquish managerial control.
Empowering measures were taken, but important safeguards preserving the control of the party’s
parliamentary leadership were built-in. The failure of MPs to properly use these safeguards in the
2015 leadership election, however, has opened up the possibility of further, more radical change.
Keywords:
power, empowerment, Labour Party, political parties, organisation.
Organisations with social and political goals, particularly democratic ones, contain within them an
inevitable tension between the capacity of leaders to control and direct the organisation in the
efficient pursuit of those goals and the extent to which its members, participants, supporters or
beneficiaries are empowered to influence and shape that direction (Rye 2015). From its earliest
days, the Labour Party has been subject to precisely these tensions, precipitating periodic conflict
between activists and the party’s parliamentary leadership (McKenzie 1955). As a result, the party
has veered between what might be characterised as relatively centralised controlling regimes, in
which the parliamentary party leadership is dominant, and more liberal, ‘empowering’ regimes that
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provide more participatory opportunities for activists and members. ‘Social Democratic Centralism’
in the 1950s (a response to far left entryism in the 1930s), characterised by strong managerial
control, concentrated power and enforced ideological hegemony (Shaw 1988 292-293), gave way in
the 1960s to a more relaxed, pluralistic regime as the party left and grassroots reasserted
themselves. The catastrophic election defeat of 1983 – blamed on the left and lax organisation – saw
managerial control return, spearheaded by a resurgent right with support from the ‘soft-left’ (Shaw
1988, 299-302) and trade unions (Minkin 1992, 315) who wanted a ‘respectable, orderly and united’
(Shaw 1994, 108) – and therefore electable – party. Key reforms that followed weakened the power
of constituency activists and trade union executives by enfranchising the wider unorganised
membership in leadership elections and candidate selections (One Member One Vote [OMOV]) and
reforming policy-making machinery in such a way as to shift the focus away from the party’s annual
conference (through Partnership in Power and subsequent reforms). Although change was not
wholesale and important elements of the old system remained, these were key transformations that
curtailed the power of activists and created the conditions for a ‘radical overhaul of [party]
programme and strategy’ (Shaw 1994, 123). They set the stage for a transformation in the balance of
power in the party (Russell 2005, 281). Pluralism and institutional dispersal was replaced with
‘powerful central authority’ and tight organisational control. Subsequently, under Tony Blair, the
party became ‘the most heavily managed and integrated party in Labour history’ (Minkin 2014, 699),
designed to enable leaders to govern without interference from troublesome activists.
It has long been noted that political parties have become more opportunistic as vote-seekers
(Wolinetz 2002) and more centralised around Parliamentary elites (Webb 1994; Mair 1994; Farrell
and Webb 2000), adopting features of the ‘cartel party’ (Katz and Mair 1995) and the ‘Market
Oriented Party’ (Lees-Marshment 2008). However, although the tightening of control in key areas
like direction and strategy arguably enhances the capacity of parties to ‘sustain the competitive
aspect of democracy’, it saps the capacity to perform tasks associated with participatory and
deliberative democracy (Allern and Pederson 2007, 85) and weakens integration and mobilisation
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functions, particularly their role as articulators and aggregators of social and political interests (Mair
2013 93-4). In the light of this, Mair (2013) paints a gloomy picture in which parties abandon civil
society for a firmer integration into the state, forming ‘part of the process by which parties and their
leaders exit from the arena of popular democracy’ (Mair 2013, 90).
However, what Mair’s pessimistic vision overlooks is that the dynamics of power in organisational
contexts are more complex than he implies. If power is understood, not just in negative terms, as
being a vehicle of domination or control (‘power over’), but also as a means of building and shaping
the capacities of agents to be effective political actors (‘power to’) then there is not an inevitable
drive towards domination and elitism as Mair seems to imply, but an interplay between two
dimensions of power in tension with one another (Rye 2015, 318). Thus although there may be
periods of leadership domination, there also may be periods in which grass-roots members and
activists are resurgent and regimes more liberal and relaxed. This may in part be due to the simple
observation that a successful electoral party is dependent at least in part on an active membership
(Scarrow 1996; Denver, Hands and McAllister 2004; Seyd and Whiteley 2004) and thus a leadership,
however dominant, cannot jettison the membership entirely. This level of mutual dependency sets
up a dynamic of struggle between a tendency towards the control of party leaders – driven by the
logics and demands of electoral competition and the pursuit and maintenance of political power –
and the empowerment of party members and activists, driven by the desire for participation.
Thus even the highly controlled, managerialist regime of the Blair-led party, power relations
remained ’subject to movement and counter-movement in both directions with extensions of
control but also regular contestation and sometimes revolt against overbearing or threatening
management.’ (Minkin 2014, 701). In other words, New Labour under Blair was not the end of the
story. The struggle and tension between the empowerment of activists and control of leaders
remained an essential feature of party life. This is arguably apparent in the events of the post-Blair
era, which has culminated in a resurgent grass-roots defying the parliamentary leadership by
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electing Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran radical left-wing backbencher with little conventional experience
of political leadership and minimal support amongst the parliamentary labour party. This, some
commentators have suggested, is at least in part the outcome of reforms conducted during Ed
Miliband’s tenure as party leader between 2010 and 2015, Refounding Labour and the Collins
Review.
Refounding Labour and the Collins Review
Following Blair’s exit, the electoral defeat of 2010 under Gordon Brown brought home to the party’s
new leaders that there was a need to address the problem of declining membership and activism
and that part of the answer lay in the role and powers of members, local constituency labour parties
(CLPs) and other constituent parts of the organisation including trade unions. Two reviews, one
planned and one forced by political circumstances, claimed to reshape the role of activists in
different ways by providing them with support, resources, organisation and rights that would
empower them to be more effective political actors. The first of these was the Refounding Labour
consultation (Labour Party 2011). Commissioned in 2011, it suggested that part of the solution may
lay in looking beyond traditional models of membership and opening up the party to a wider
community network in the form of a new category of ‘registered supporters’, consisting of those
who might be willing to assist in practical ways (such as leafleting at election time) without joining as
a full member. Behind this was an attempt to emulate a number of constituency parties who had
bucked the trend of an otherwise bad election result in 2010 by mobilising support beyond the
normal party boundaries.
In his introduction to the consultation, Peter Hain claimed that previous reforms, such as the
(partial) move to one member one vote in leadership elections, had ‘empowered the membership’
but had not gone far enough in transforming party culture:
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sometimes it still looks inward rather than outward, is stuck in its structures, and is not
engaged with local communities or national civil society. Over time certain parts of our
membership began to feel disengaged and disillusioned. Now is the time for this to
change. (Labour Party 2011, 6).
However, The Collins Review, hastily commissioned in 2013 as a response to negative publicity
surrounding apparent trade union manipulation of the parliamentary selection process in Falkirk1,
was arguably more far-reaching and radical in effect. It claimed to complete the creation of ‘a
genuinely mass membership party’ based on ‘broadening and deepening the party’s relationship
with ordinary men and women’ (Labour Party 2014, 5). It did this by abolishing the electoral college
for party leadership elections replacing it with a genuinely one member one vote franchise in which
the votes of all members, including MPs, would count equally. In fact, the reforms went even
further. The party would reach out ‘beyond [the] … membership’ (Labour Party 2014, 17) to engage
a broader body of support and participation by giving Registered Supporters the unconditional right
to participate in leadership elections on equal terms. A new category of ‘Affiliated Supporter’
(individual trade unionists signing a declaration of support) would be given the same right.
At the time of writing, it appears that the consequences of these developments have been far-
reaching. The leadership election of 2015 conducted under this new franchise has, on the face of it,
tipped the balance of power dramatically away from tight leadership control and back towards
activists and members, including substantial numbers in the new supporter categories. The contest
bore witness an extraordinary phenomenon, whereby the Labour Party’s electorate expanded from
less than 200,000 in 2014 (House of Commons 2015, 10) to (by some estimates) well over half a
million2 and saw the election of Jeremy Corbyn, an otherwise long-standing obscure left-wing
backbencher, over three other mainstream, moderate party candidates, despite the opposition of
almost the whole parliamentary party. This dramatic turn of events would seem to indicate that
Miliband’s reforms undid the tight managerial control of the Blair period in favour of a more liberal
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regime that empowered activists, and of which Corbyn’s election was an outcome. But how far is
this really the case and to what extent are the Miliband reforms responsible for it?
In answering these questions, it should first be noted that the reforms overall dealt with more than
just leadership elections and merit further examination in the light of the key tension between
empowerment and control. Looked at more broadly, have these reforms had real significance to the
struggle between leaders and members? Have they been genuinely empowering? To what extent is
the 2015 leadership election outcome an unexpected by-product of these reforms? Was there a
genuine attempt to roll-back managerialism and loosen control, thus opening up a new liberal
regime within the party? Or does the rhetoric in fact mask an attempt, albeit perhaps a failed one in
important respects, to tighten control?
Political Organisations and Empowerment
In order to examine the question of whether the Miliband reforms can be said to have empowered
activists I draw on an analytical framework devised by Rye (2015) which both recognises that
organisations are complex and multi-layered entities in which power may be seen to operate on a
number of different levels and in a number of different modes whilst also recognising the dynamic
between ‘power over’ and ‘power to’. This framework provides a means by which the relationship
between the empowerment of members and control by leaders can be examined. Rye posits five key
elements relevant to the structure and operation of power in organisations with social and political
goals. These are: first, the individuals that participate, compete and cooperate within them; second,
the rules by which their participatoin is governed (e.g. the structure of decision-making processes
and election franchises); third, the administration, hierarchy and management by which the
organisation’s business is carried on; fourth, the norms, culture and practices of organisational life,
including accepted repertoires of action, behaviour, language and so on; and fifth, the techniques
and technologies deployed to support the pursuit of the organisation’s goals (Rye 2015, 302-4).
Conducting an analysis that accounts for these different elements recognises that the relationship
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between leaders and party members and activists is not one-dimensional and that power operates
in a variety of different modes in the same context (Rye 2014 193-5). Each different element of
organisation has a distinctive contribution to make to illuminating power and power relations in the
organisation as a whole. By recognising this, the framework is able to account for power’s structural,
organisational and cultural modes as much as its individualistic and strategic ones.
Empowerment and Control in Organisations
Power here is understood as a heuristic tool for analysis that is concerned with the capacities of
human beings to formulate, articulate and realise human goals (Rye 2014, 44). Political organisations
especially contribute to this on a collective level because they provide a means of aggregating
‘interests’ or preferences and formulating them into coherent political goals in the form of political
programmes and provide a means of realising them in government. On an individual level, they can
invest agents with the resources and capacities they need to be effective political actors and citizens
in their own right as well as the freedom and opportunity to use them (what might be thought of as
‘power to’). However at the same time organisations can impede and restrict the capacities of
agents and closely direct the political activity of members and participants. They are rather more
subject to control and their ability to carry out and participate in political activity is limited to that
which either originates at the centre, or is controlled or approved by it.
The different modes by which power operates either as empowering or controlling draw on an
eclectic understanding of power which cohere into an analytical framework linked with the analytical
elements of organisation highlighted above. Firstly, individualistic power draws on a behaviouralist
understanding formulated originally by Dahl (1957) which recognises that power may be exercised
when one uses superior resources to persuade or defeat others in a contest over preferences. Thus
an empowering organisation provides individuals with the resources they need (which may be
money, or other people or information, access to networks, training etc) to formulate, articulate and
pursue goals, whilst a controlled one restricts fields of action and carefully manages and limits the
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distribution of resources. Secondly, Strategic Power, drawing on Schattschneider (1960) and
Bachrach and Baratz (1970) recognises the agenda setting power of powerful individuals and groups
within the party which control access to decision-making arenas. Thus an empowering organisation
allows wide access to – and the ability to contribute to –decision-making processes rather than
seeking ways to block and exclude voices and opinions, whilst a controlling one carefully regulates
opportunities for participation and manages access to debates. Bureaucratic Power, which originates
in Weberian sociology (Weber 1978) concerns the nature of the managerial regime of political
organisations. It highlights the way that routines, hierarchies, procedures and management govern
and shape possibilities for action. Thus in terms of organisational structure, an empowering
organisation will be relatively flat and loose and decisions relatively easy to take and implement.
Participants are not subject to large amounts of paperwork or formal process and administration
supports organisational goals rather than overwhelming them. On the other hand, hierarchical
command and a unitary structure in which there is freedom of action for leadership groups but little
at other levels characterises the controlling organisation. Also, an extensive administrative or
management structure dominates and ensures organisational continuity. Constitutive Power makes
use of Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus and Giddens’ (1984) concept of structuration to
emphasise the importance of organisational culture in the form of habitual and customary patterns
of activity that often go unquestioned but shape, produce and reproduce the party’s structure of
power relations. An empowering organisation is more likely to be open to a diversity of practice at
the roots, edges and margins, and provide the conditions for a ‘participatory community’ in which
members are active and which welcomes new ideas and experimentation, whereas a controlling one
will tend towards a largely proscribed and managed monoculture, with a focus on organisation-
oriented politics and learning through training and instruction rather than action and participation.
Finally, Disciplinary Power is inspired by Foucault’s elaboration of discipline (Foucault 1977) which
focuses on how the body is trained, surveyed and organised, underpinned by techniques of control,
surveillance and adjustment to certain norms. This kind of detailed control is apparent in the
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techniques and technologies that are employed in organisations to support the carrying out of day
to day business (Rye 2014, 162-3). Such technologies and the means by which they are employed
can both be empowering in that they produce disciplined agents equipped with the appropriate
capacities to be effective political activists and controlling on a very deep level in that they are
oriented towards controlling and distributing people, their roles and functions, and providing
discipline through surveillance and normalisation.
Three notes of caution should be sounded at this point. Firstly, it is of course very unlikely that any
organisation would display either the full set or even individual instances of these empowering or
controlling tendencies in pure form. In any given organisation empowering tendencies are likely to
be offset by or in tension with controlling ones and vice versa. For example, an organisation may
invest heavily in resources that enable individuals to act whilst limiting how they can actually apply
them. This is part of the organisation’s ongoing dynamic and the tension between these tendencies
that underpin it. Secondly, the relationship between empowerment and control is a complex and at
times apparently contradictory one. I have pointed out that an empowering organisation will provide
an individual with resources and capacities to exercise power in her own right. However, in order to
do this, the relationship that the organisation has with the individual must in some sense be one of
control. In other words, to become invested with ‘power to’ achieve social or political goals,
members, activists and participants need to submit to another’s ‘power over’ them. This means that
it can at times be difficult to disentangle the two. Thus it is important to recognise that
empowerment is not simply the absence of organisation. Organisation could be understood as ‘the
collective bending of individual wills to a common purpose’ and thus intertwined with power, but
the power exerted by organisation is ‘not necessarily constraining, negative or antagonistic’; it can
be ‘creative, empowering and positive’ too (Clegg, Courpasson and Phillips 2009, 2). Thirdly, this
framework does not, it should be emphasised, provide an index or a means of measuring levels of
empowerment and control, nor does it seek to. Its purpose is to provide a framework for analysis
which can be employed to make judgements about the extent to which a particular organisation
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supports the empowerment of its participants or control by its leadership elites. It is a lens through
which to examine the structure, organisation and operation of power in political-organisational
contexts.
Taking a relatively eclectic view of power in this way enables us to identify the sources of control and
empowerment as happening on a number of levels, in different locations and in different modes
within the party organisation. Thus we are not only concerned with the relative freedom of action
for local parties and activists, but also with the extent to which party rules support or restrict
opportunities for open participation in debate and decision-making, with the extent to which
hierarchical authority and management is strengthened or loosened, with the relative openness of
the organisation culturally and politically and with the effects of the techniques and technologies
employed by the organisation. This framework generates a number of specific research questions
which are summarised in Table 1 below.
[TABLE 1 here]
Analysis of Key Recommendations: Refounding Labour and the Collins Review
Using the framework set out above, five key proposals from Refounding Labour and the Collins
Review are analysed: the stated commitment to community organising; the organisational flexibility
granted to local parties in some areas; the introduction of candidate contracts as an accountability
tool; the use made of training to embed new culture and practice in the party and, finally, the
introduction of the Registered Supporters scheme in its first phase.
Community Organising
First, behind ‘community organising’ is a recognition that successful organisation is built around
relationships rather than tasks, that building and sustaining power is a long , patient game of
building those relationships, listening to and responding to people’s concerns by building campaigns
around them (Graf 2015, 73-4). Writing this into the party’s constitution re-emphasises, at least in
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theory, the ‘representative’ functions of the party over its ‘procedural’ and electoral ones. By
encouraging CLPs to engage with local communities as part of building participatory communities
rooted in their localities. From this would emerge ‘a party fit for the future, a genuine movement
where the connection between the party and the public is strong’ (Labour Party 2011, 11) and one
open to new support at the margins and boundaries, welcoming ‘members and supporters alike’
(Labour Party 2011, 11). This would be supported by sharing best practice and experience with ‘our
best community organisers’ and providing ‘peer-led training and advice in community organising
techniques for Labour elected representatives and candidates’ (Labour Party 2011, 16). Training of
this kind is important for investing the appropriate capacities for community organising in activists,
members and supporters, but the flipside of training is that it is also a means by which control can
be maintained over how they are applied. Control is also exercised through application of ‘standard
models and guidelines for developing relationship networks, identifying talent and key people and
organising community campaigns’ (Labour Party 2011, 16), and mechanisms to ensure community
campaigns are established and community engagement happens’ according to ‘minimum standards’
(Labour Party 2011, 17). Whilst the measures are facilitative (and thus in some sense empowering),
the danger is that community organising is reduced to a set of techniques and templates.
Although these proposals seek to support and empower activists by investing in the development of
appropriate capacities, resources and skills, they do so by carefully circumscribing the fields of
accepted action and activity and designing mechanisms by which these can be monitored, measured
and the behaviour and practices of members disciplined according to certain standards. A
combination of hierarchical management and disciplinary techniques of surveillance, measurement
and ‘normalisation’, key components of a Foucauldian disciplinary regime (Foucault 1977, 181-4),
point towards a kind of ‘managed participatory community’ in which members are empowered and
facilitated through training and reflection, but also to some extent impelled and disciplined through
the application of managerial techniques and approaches. Thus elements that extend areas of
discretion for local parties and activists are managed carefully and kept under control.
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Organisational Flexibility and Output Management
Accompanying community organising is, secondly, a commitment to freeing up Constituency Labour
Parties (CLPs) to organise in ways that ‘that suit their local geography and circumstances’ (Labour
Party 2011, 11-12), removing ‘layers of bureaucracy that act as barriers to involvement’ and creating
‘local parties that are open and welcoming of members, supporters, affiliated organisations, and the
community’ (Labour Party 2011, 11) allowing for ‘greater involvement of the wider membership’.
This, on the face of it, suggests an increased degree of empowerment for local parties. However,
CLPs would not be free to do as they pleased. Choice would in fact be limited to specified ‘options
for organisation … appropriate to different circumstances’ (Labour Party 2011, 12) from a range of
options or templates approved by the NEC. Thus an ostensibly empowering move is limited by a
reluctance to actually cede full control to CLPs. It recognises the benefits of loosening control, but
does so only partially and in a carefully circumscribed and managed way.
Furthermore, whatever form of organisation they were to adopt, all constituency organisations
would be required to submit a Constituency Development Plan to their regional office. These were
local party management tools already in use in many local parties, but which would henceforth
become expected standard practice providing ‘a sense of direction and purpose’ and helping ativisits
‘build their CLP and map out activities into the future’ (Labour Party 2011, 13). The plans would
include a number of ‘key targets’, including membership recruitment and development, voter
identification contacts, leafleting and newsletter plans, budget and fundraising targets; campaigns
and events. The best performing parties against these plans would be held up as an example to
others, with rewards for meeting targets and for improving CLPs (Labour Party 2011, 14).
Taken together, these moves reflect changing thinking around party management. Whilst a limited
organisational flexibility is granted, greater control is exerted over the outputs of organisational
activity. In other words, rather than relinquishing control, the focus of accountability shifts from
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process, structure and governance (following party rules and procedures correctly) to delivery by
means of Community Development Plans which provide a focus for managing the outputs of local
parties, suggesting a shift from hierarchical and process-driven forms of bureaucratic power to a
more disciplinary kind. Moreover, this represents a degree of discipline and monitoring that activists
effectively impose on themselves, since it is their job to devise the plans. Thus, control meets
empowerment in the application of solutions which equip local parties to deliver, but within the
limits of centrally determined priorities and by means of contemporary managerial techniques and
organisational technologies like setting targets, and through the application of rewards and
incentives. This encourages disciplined, effective representatives and campaigning organisations.
Candidate Contracts
Thirdly, ‘candidate contracts’were proposed as a means by which local parties could hold candidates
to account for their activities. They would include ‘agreed mandatory elements’ but would be ‘locally
determined and relevant to type of seat and the post the candidate or elected representative holds.’
(Labour Party 2011, 17). The party would, to this end, produce models for local parties to adapt to
their own specific circumstances, and it should include ‘specific and measurable targets for campaign
and community engagement activity’ which should be ‘taken into account as part of the re-selection
process.’ (Labour Party 2011, 17). Whilst on the one hand, this places an important power in the
hands of activists and local party members, it represents on the other an extension of managerial
control and disciplinary / organisational power. It does so by formalising roles and subjecting them
to rules, mechanisms of detailed control, measurement and normalised judgement. Thus the
performance and behaviour of candidates could be measured, judged and – by linking it with the
reselection process –disciplined according to specific and measurable targets. However, the
significance of this in terms of party culture is not that it introduces accountability where it did not
exist, but that accountability is more clearly formalised and managerial than democratic as such. So
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whilst this change represents on the face of it a degree of activist empowerment in terms of their
relationship with candidates, it could also be understood as a mechanism by which members
become implicated in implementing, developing and extending the managerial regime.
Training: Empowerment as Control
Emerging from this analysis is a sense that in our understanding of power, the relationship between
the dimension of empowerment and the dimension of control is often overlapping and even
intertwined. A number of analysts have highlighted this interdependent relationship. Pansardi (2012)
points out that power to do something often comes from having power over institutions or
resources that facilitate that possibility. Rye (2015), drawing on Warternberg (1990) highlights that
the power of agents to achieve goals may in some sense be an outcome of being subject to the
power of another. In organisations like the Labour Party this is especially evident in the design and
dissemination of training programmes. Training may be understood on the one hand as a means of
empowerment in that it supports the development of useful capacities by ‘instilling appropriate
habits and ‘know-how’ that contribute towards [the] … constitution [of] … effective agents’, but is on
the other hand controlling because it does so by shaping their behaviour and governing their
interactions ‘in such a way that reproduces the structures and patterns of relationships in the party.’
(Rye 2014, 147).
In attempting to address the party’s shortage of activists, Refounding Labour puts a strong emphasis
on opening up opportunities for participation and investing capacities in people through training,
making it compulsory for key formal positions of trust like agents and treasurers and extending
programmes for candidates and elected officials (Labour Party 2011, 22). Programmes are also put
together for CLP officers and even new members are offered (web-based) training on party life and
equality and diversity. Even (or perhaps especially) the ‘volunteer force’ of trainers whose role it is to
deliver training locally, will themselves receive ‘Train the Trainers training’ and will be allocated ‘a
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mentor and fixed training’ (Labour Party 2011, 22). Individuals are thereby empowered to act
because they are provided with the resources they need to support effective political action. At the
same time, the training they receive sets the boundaries within which they are expected to act,
prescribes the structure of choices they have, and shapes the modes of decision-making used to
decide between them. In other words, they are provided with resources and opportunities for
participation, although within specific limits defined from above, suggesting a facilitative vertical
relationship and freedom to act within set boundaries.
Looked at from an individual point-of-view, then, activists are empowered: they are provided with
resources which enable them to pursue particular goals or activities. Scratch beneath the surface,
however, and we would need to ask to what extent are those goals theirs? That is to say, although
individuals are provided with the capacity to pursue goals, to what extent are they formulated or
even articulated by them? In this case, training provides the means of equipping individual activists
to pursue goals, and perhaps to articulate them, even embed them as part of their ‘practical
consciousness’ (Giddens 1984) and thus adopt them as theirs, but they are nonetheless goals which
are prescribed and defined by the organisation. In questions like this, the relevance of and the
relationship between the different modes of power that I have identified as operating in
organisational contexts becomes apparent. Something that we might look upon as a factor in the
empowerment of individuals – providing them with power to act – is at the same time an instance of
power over, an exertion of control by the organisation through the embedding habits of thought and
practice in training programmes; constitutive power, in other words. Furthermore, this opens up
additional questions that resonate with other modes of power in the framework. Strategic power
prompts a question about the level of input individuals have into the formulation of organisational
goals or priorities. Bureaucratic power examines how much of this emanates from managerialism
and an overwhelming concern with the priorities and imperatives of the organisation rather than
political goals as such. Disciplinary power is concerned with how such techniques actually shape the
subjectivity of political actors. Indeed, the provision of these resources to individuals is coupled with
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close control of how they are used and careful management and monitoring of the activities of the
‘beneficiaries’.
Registered Supporters
Perhaps the chief underlying concern of Refounding Labour was the problem of declining
participation, in particular the capacity of the party to mobilise support at election time. Inspired by
CLPs like Edgbaston and Oxford East in the 2010 election which had been successful at mobilising
support beyond the usual party membership, it proposed to extend and broaden individual
participation beyond the membership and encourage local parties to maintain a network of local
support through a ‘Registered Supporters’ scheme targeted at sympathetic non-members ‘who can
take part in our party, improve our organisation on the ground, build our links into communities and,
most importantly, help deliver successful election results.’ (Labour Party 2011, 15).
A key benefit of the scheme for CLPs lay in its potential for generating and building campaigning
resources by reaching out beyond the formal party membership, thereby both extending and
blurring organisational boundaries. Despite this, the reform itself was rather limited. Whilst it
signalled a more open attitude to organisation and a willingness to include a wider range of voices, in
order to ‘safeguard the membership offer’ it stopped short of giving any real rights to these
supporters (Labour Party 2011, 15). Registered Supporters would not be permitted to vote at party
meetings, get involved in selections or vote in leadership elections.3 Nonetheless, softening the
boundaries of the organisation even just a little was highly significant, because it opened up
potential new organisational space that the Collins Review stepped into.
The Impact of the Collins Review
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The Collins Review was concerned largely with the issue of party democracy, in particular the
election of party leader.4 The franchise was still based on a three section electoral college,
comprising of MPs and MEPs in one, union members in another and individual members in the final
section, each section was balloted on a one member, one vote basis. However, the electoral college
was inconsistent with a purely one member one vote system in at least three key respects. Firstly,
because they constituted a section of the college in their own right, a substantially greater weight
was put on the votes of MPs and MEPs than any other group of individuals, meaning that the votes
of a couple of hundred or so could be worth the same as a couple of hundred thousand members or
more. Secondly, because trade unions ran their own ballots, they were in a position to steer the
electorate in one direction or another by coordinating nomination, canvassing amongst their
electors and making strong recommendations alongside ballot papers (Jobson and Wickham-Jones
2011) which, according to Richard Jobson and Mark Wickham-Jones (2011), had a decisive impact on
the result of the 2010 leadership election won by Ed Milband (although perhaps not quite as much
as some media commentary made out at the time – see Dorey and Denham 2011). Thirdly, many
people had more than one vote because they qualified in different sections of the college. A party
member who was a Member of Parliament for instance, who also belonged to a trade union and
perhaps a socialist society too might end up with four votes across all three sections of the college
(Alderman 1995, 450-1). These anomalies left over from the reforms of the 1980s remained
untouched by Refounding Labour and it took a high profile controversy over trade union
involvement in the candidate selection process in Falkirk to bring these issues – in particular the role
of unions in party election and selection processes – to the fore. Given the role of unions in his 2010
leadership election success (Jobson and Wickham-Jones 2011), this was a particularly sensitive issue
for Ed Miliband. He commissioned Ray Collins, a former trade union executive and party General
Secretary from 2008 to 2011, to come up with proposals for further reform that would neutralise
this issue once and for all.
`18
The abolition of the electoral college meant that henceforth the votes of members, MPs and
participating trade unionists would each count for the same. There would be no weighting in favour
of MPs, no union control of balloting and no multiple votes. This step meant ‘the final realisation of
the OMOV (one member one vote) process that was begun by John Smith thirty years ago’ (Labour
Party 2014,26). In fact, of course, this ‘purer form’ (Labour Party 2014, 26) of one member one vote
went radically further by creating two new categories of elector. Firstly, to qualify for a vote in
leadership elections, levy payers would have to register as ‘Affiliated Supporters’ by signing a
declaration of support and providing the party with their personal details, creating a direct,
individual relationship between the party itself and trade unionists for the first time, and secondly,
‘in line with the principle adopted in Refounding Labour’, the Registered Supporters established by
that review were finally given a vote in the party’s leadership contest allowing ‘individuals outside of
affiliated unions … to register as supporters and participate in the ballot’ as long as they sign a
declaration to the effect that they support Labour’s aims and values and pay a small fee (which was
set at £3). Crucially, however, MPs retained a significant power in being able to decide the final
shortlist of candidates: anyone wishing to stand would require at least 15% of the House of
Commons members to nominate him or her (Labour Party 2014, 26).5
These reforms indicate the extent to which individuals (members, affiliated supporters and
registered supporters) have become a key, if not the primary, source of legitimacy in the party whilst
the organised voice of labour – through trade unions – and activists has become further diminished.
This new direct relationship with Affiliated Supporters would, the report claimed, realise the party’s
founding aim ‘to ensure that voices of ordinary working people are heard in the democratic process’
and to ‘engage more directly with men and women who are in touch with the issues that concern
the great majority of working people in communities in Britain’ (Labour Party 2014, 24). This
represents a direct challenge to the collective, federal and representative traditions of the party, in
which unions as institutions have played a key role and brought about a more unitary structure in
the franchise with a stronger emphasis on vertical relationships, thus strengthening the
`19
organisational power of party leaders in relation to trade unionists. In the spirit of the claim to
widening engagement, it further empowers individuals, by directly enfranchising them as such, but
at the expense of the collective power of trade unions as organised intermediate levels of power and
authority. Union members effectively become a pool of potential individual supporters to be
recruited.
The implications of this in terms of power are significant. The individualisation of participation in
political parties, has often been thought a way of by-passing troublesome organised activists and
strengthening the power of the centre. A larger spread of more docile, ‘obedient’ members is seen
as a useful means by which leaders can dilute the influence of more difficult and ideologically radical
activists (Scarrow, Webb and Farrell 2000, 133)6. Indeed, the enfranchisement of a wider group like
this is consistent with trends towards both centralisation and greater inclusiveness in which party
leaderships seek legitimation from grass-roots members via plebiscites whilst at the same time
strengthening their own control and veto over policy and strategy (Scarrow, Webb and Farrell 2000)
which Mair (1997) describes as ‘stratarchy’. Making participation easier and cheaper, provides a
route for less committed, perhaps more mainstream supporters to take part in the selection of the
leader, the all important public face of the party. From this point of view, reaching out beyond the
traditional membership base to the wider public, then, might be expected to dilute the influence of
activists even further.
What this argument overlooks is the restraining power and control that is embedded in
organisational life – in its routines and practices and culture and in the relationshps, hierarchies and
sub-hierarchies that form part of its operation. Being mindful of the different modes in which power
operates in political organisation, as set out in the framework of power I have elaborated can
illuminate this. Routine Bureaucratic Power, for example, operating through activities and
established procedures like meetings and canvassing, acts as a means by which the conduct of party
activists is restrained and by which political action is governed in the service and perpetuation of the
`20
party organisation (Rye 2014, 124-6). Constitutive Power is embedded in party culture in which the
norms of conduct, the practices of party life serve as a means of constituting loyal party activists and
reproduces existing patterns of relations and structures of power (Rye 2014, 141-2). Strategic Power
operates through the rules that govern who is able to participate in decision-making in the first
place, and what level of influence they are likely to have (the electoral college, for example,
effectively weighted the vote in favour of MPs). In short, the operation of power at these levels in
organisational contexts can help support the relative docility and loyalty of party members.
However, if the established system of organisation becomes disrupted or if party culture is subject to
disturbance (say because of a rapid influx of new supporters) things may shift rapidly. A crucial
function of organisation is the demarcation and defence of its boudaries (Pfeffer 1997) – hence
people usually need to formally ‘join’ an organisation by paying a fee, making some kind of pledge or
being sponsored by another. How the organisation chooses to police those boundaries and the
conditions under which it grants entry to the organisation, as well as who does the policing, is likely
to have some knock-on effects on the make-up of its participation and of organisational culture
itself. Rye (2014) for example outlines how the stranglehold of traditional conservative elements in
London CLPs in the 1970s blocked access to the party by younger, often more radical groups and
individuals (Rye 2014, 93-97). An effective use of Strategic Power can ensure that certain kinds of
activists are ore likely to be kept out. However, should such restrictions be removed this could in
some circumstances impact on the organisation more widely. For instance, a large influx of
supporters could, given time, have the effect of altering organisational culture. Different practices,
ideas and ways of doing things can take hold and become embedded as part of party life as new
generations come through with different understandings of their roles as party members, supporters
or activists. They bring with them their own habitus which interacts with the existing practices of
party life and in ‘a process of continual feedback’ produce ‘new configurations and new modes of
political life’. In other words, an activist base that is becoming more middle class or that is more
protest-oriented is likely, eventually, to be reflected in the practices of party life (Rye 2014, 135). By
`21
drastically lowering the threshold of commitment, effort and financial outlay involved in
participating in leadership elections, the party was running a risk as much as it was opening ip new
participatory opportunities because these new categories of participant would be likely less subject
to the restraints and responsibilities of formal organisation and a commitment to the local party
machine that has often gone with active membership, thus disrupting the indirect but nonetheless
significant control exerted by organisation and political culture.
These risks are perhaps why, despite the risks of opening up to a wider, less constrained electorate,
an important safeguard in the form of MPs’ nomination rights would ensure that only candidates
broadly acceptable to the Parliamentary Party were likely to get through to the ballot. Here, then, a
key agenda-setting (or candidate-selecting) power, a form of Strategic Power, is held by key players,
enabling them to shape the terms of debate in their own favour. Despite this, the reforms described
seem to have led the party to a position where activists, members and supporters have been able to
impose on the parliamentary party a leader that very few of them support in the form of Jeremy
Corbyn. This suggests on the face of it a substantial shift in the balance of power in the party
towards the empowerment of activists as a result of the Collins Review reforms. However, although
equalising the voting power of MPs, members and supporters suggests a genuine attempt to
redistribute power to the grass roots, the retention by MPs of the power to nominate remains a key
bulwark against the wider membership: no amount of members or supporters could vote for
someone not on the ballot. The problem for the parliamentary party is that in the 2015 leadership
election this power was not effectively used to keep an unfavoured candidate out of the race. Had a
significant number of MPs with no intention of voting for him had not lent their nomination to
Jeremy Corbyn in the interests of ‘widening debate’, then the huge surge in his support within the
party would not have happened and a candidate broadly acceptable to the Parliamentary Labour
Party would undoubtedly have been elected.
`22
This opens up some intriguing questions about the future of the party. The influx of new supporters
and members (as well as returning ones) may, as suggested, have a significant effect. A new leader
supported by them may be even more influential on the ongoing structure of party organisation and
participation. It remains to be seen how strong Corbyn’s grip on the party is likely to be, but his
significant victory and popularity amongs the membership and supporter-base suggests that perhaps
other aspects of the relatively controlled system of party decision-making might also be subject to
reform with the potential for a complete change in the culture, organisation and structure of power
in the party. What this analysis reveals is the careful balance that has to be struck by political leaders
between control and empowerment. The liberalisation of barriers to participation in leadership
elections combined with the failure of MPs to use their power to filter the candidates had the effect
of empowering new groups of supporters who coalesced around an enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn’s
candidature. It has released and provided an outlet for an energy, empowering members and
supporters – including new ones – enough to defy the existing party establishment.
Summary: The Changing Structure of Power in the British Labour Party
Overall, the changes to party rules and practice proposed by Reforming Labour and the Collins
Review extended opportunities for action, for example by encouraging community organising and
providing resources to support it, as well as giving more freedom to local parties organisationally.
Similarly, the provision of training in key areas is (on the surface at least) an empowering move in
that it provides resources to support effective participation by individuals. However, these
allowances were constrained and directed by careful definition of what constitutes the limits of
empowerment. A degree of opening out in the organisation and a level of empowerment in which
parties and activists are equipped with resources to support effective activism is tempered and
bound by the agenda setting powers of party leaders. Thus, the extension of community organising
encourages outreach and supports it, but it does not give parties the right to act as they see fit.
Similarly, greater organisational flexibility provides CLPs with options but does not give them licence.
`23
Training underlines these kinds of limits by (necessarily) being targeted at specific roles and setting
the boundaries within which they are sanctioned to act. Thus, an extension of Individualistic Power is
strongly tempered by judicious use of Strategic Power, ensuring an extension of action possibilities
but within a limited field.
On a more organisational level, whilst the vertical relationship between leaders and members was
retained, many of the provisions encouraged the development of a more ‘facilitative’ kind of
relationship designed to support and encourage more effective outreach and greater participation.
Training plays a role in this by helping to shape disciplined party members with the requisite skills
and repertoires rather than through issuing commands. Part of this depends on the extent to which
the reforms have affected organisational culture at the level of actual practice and whether as a
result, there is more openness to different ways of doing and organising politics. Whilst many of the
reforms point towards a more participatory and action-oriented political culture, or at least seem to
reflect some desire to encourage one there seemed, as suggested, to be an unwillingness to
relinquish control. Thus there is a more positive, empowering direction to the use of Bureaucratic
Power in the organisation, which indicates that, although it adds to the capacities and capabilities of
members, how they are exercised is carefully managed.
It also depends on how effectively supporters and members might become disciplined through the
practices and techniques employed to facilitate their participation. A recurring feature of reforms
and their implementation is the use of organisational and management techniques and technologies
that set targets and measures by which the activity, performance and outputs of local parties can be
measured and judged. The actual implementation of ‘community organising’ for example would be
managed through its translation into standard models, guidelines and templates to direct and
measure activity; the management of more ‘flexible’ organisational structures would be off-set by
constituency development plans which, by requiring constituency parties to set targets and
implement systems of incentives and rewards, would effectively recalibrate the means of control so
`24
that CLPs would provide the criteria and means by which disciplined, effective representatives and
campaigning organisations could be shaped. Through similar mechanisms like candidate contracts,
the performance and behaviour of candidates and representatives could also be judged.
Furthermore, the extensive use of training for party officers, candidates and activists is an important
tool for instilling self-discipline and of investing in and producing disciplined subjects in key
positions. It points towards a developing management approach which – instead of directing or
bypassing activists and CLPs – provides frameworks, templates and guidance with which local party
organisations and activists are impelled to design and implement their own disciplinary regimes. The
extension of discipline supports a ‘transformative’ kind of empowerment (Wartenberg 1990) on the
one hand because it produces agents with the capacities to be effective political actors, whilst on
the other, the conditions under which these capacities are able to applied are kept under relatively
close management.
The Registered Supporters scheme created a category of individual support that provided
opportunities for action on the part of new categories of supporter, but its initial importance was its
role in providing a means of boosting the campaigning capacities of local parties amongst less
‘committed’ (in party terms) supporters. Whilst this supports the enhancement of local campaigning
resources and facilitates more independent action, it does so by imposing a model of what that
should look like from the centre. Although this would certainly be beneficial for many parties, the
effect may also be to stifle the very opportunities for innovation which inspired the scheme in the
first place. The subsequent extension of their rights was significant in increasing the effective power
of individual members’ and supporters’ vote against those of MPs and represented an individualist
challenge to the party’s federal, collective, representative traditions and the shaping of something
approaching a more unitary structure (at least in terms of the franchise). As suggested, this could
have one of two impacts: by atomising and diffusing the supporter base further, it may make it more
docile and manageable or conversely, it might bring about a more dispersed mass of supporters who
are harder to control.
`25
Arguably the scheme represents the facilitation of a more participatory community, more open at
the roots, edges and margins and oriented towards action to some degree by providing
opportunities for a local constituency party to reach beyond its boundaries into a wider community
of support. But it also has had the effect of diminishing the power of intermediate bodies (such as
trade unions, local party organisations) whilst at the same time making it far easier for individuals to
influence the results of party leadership elections (by signing up as Registered Supporters). As
suggested above, this can be problematic for hierarchical control (even though it may have been
implemented in order to enhance it) and opens up the possibility that a large influx of supporters
could have the effect of altering organisational culture. The design of the Collins Review reforms
were clearly cognisant of these problems: into the proposals a requirement was added, insisting that
candidates must achieve a threshold of support amongst MPs (of 15%). Thus a small extension of
individual rights and power is tempered by a strategic device that limits access to the process and
sets the limits of choice offered to the wider party electorate.
Conclusion
Overall, then, the reforms in themselves represent a tentative move – very tentative in some
respects – towards the empowerment of activists and supporters without significantly challenging
the habits of the previous heavily managerialised regime. Despite the grand claims made for it,
Refounding Labour did not radically transform power relations in the party. It proposed small
adjustments largely designed to ensure that the party machine was cultivating and resourcing its
presence on the ground in areas where its electoral machine at risk. The Collins Review was more
consequential because it paved the way for a radical shift in the structure and behaviour of the
party’s internal electorate. Even so, its radicalism was somewhat limited in relation to the structure
of power within the Labour Party. Nonetheless, these reviews, though relatively small and
unambitious in many ways, have opened the door to a a challenge to the prevailing party culture.
The diminishing position of trade unions, the inclusion of a wider mass of activists, less committed to
`26
the party’s recent priorities has already led to a radically altered party leadership and has the
potential to change the balance of power in the party permanently. The 2015 leadership election
represented a victory for activists over the the parliamentary elite. However, this was in the end
made possible by a failure of MPs to make use of the advantage built into the system, allowing them
to strongly influence the choice of candidates. This indicates how significant Strategic Power can be
to the outcomes of internal organisational struggles. Whether this is simply a temporary setback for
party elites or a permanent shift in the balance of power within the organisation depends largely on
whether the new party leader can make changes to the party’s decision-making structures. For
example, if he were to replace or amend the current system of policy-making through the National
Policy Forum which has been viewed largely been a means for party leaders to keep control over the
party policy process [refs], with a more direct system of party democracy and internal consultation,
this may have the effect of both empowering the wider party membership whilst tightening the grip
of party leaders over the parliamentary party. This would make for a curious dynamic of power in
which the party leadership and empowered party activists effectively collude in order to control the
parliamentary party.
The significance of these measures, then, is not so much in the specific recommendations put
forward at the time but in the potentialities they opened up. The need to enhance and grow the
party’s grass-roots campaigning capacities through the empowerment of the membership was
clearly at the heart of the proposals, if not whole-hearted in its application. As suggested, although
there was a small shift in that direction, it was controlled by placing carefully defined limits on
action, retaining vertical management structures and applying disciplinary techniques designed to
monitor, measure and direct behaviour. These reforms, therefore opened up possibilities for further
change given the right political circumstances. There would need to be much greater liberalisation in
the party management structure. Furthermore, significant reform to the party’s policy-making
structures, including the party conference would be needed for the collective basis of party
organisation to be undermined further. It is possible to imagine this, however, since the collective,
`27
representative culture of the Labour Party has already been challenged by the reforms examined
here as well as previous ones. As the expectations of party members and supporters change in the
wake of this, particularly amongst those newer supporters and members who may be less attached
to party traditions, it is possible to imagine the party evolving into something that looks more like a
mass organisation based on more direct forms of democracy. Whatever the consequences, there is
no denying that the knock-on effects of the changes to leadership elections could be very great. It
exposes that key tension in the Labour Party that has been part of its dynamic since its earliest days
and which is a manifestation of a tension in democratic political parties more broadly: that between
the empowerment of members and activists and control by electorally-oriented parliamentary
leaders.
9,317 words
10,533 words including abstract, notes and references.
`28
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Table 1: Empowering and Controlling Tendencies in Political OrganisationsElement of Organisation Mode of Power Empowering Tendencies Controlling Tendencies Research Questions
Individuals Individualistic Power Provides resources to support political action by activists
Restricted fields of action for members and activists and limited distribution of resources
To what extent does the party centrally support the work of local parties by providing them with reseources such as finance, advice, training and other physical resources?
Rules and Decision-making
Strategic Power Provides opportunities for participation and supports relative equality of voice within the organisation.
Restricts or controls the participatory opportunities for members and activists and inequality of voice.
To what extent are opportunities for participation open or restricted? Are some groups systematically excluded? What opportunities are there for activist opinion to be heard?
Managerial Regime Bureaucratic Power Limited hierarchy and facilitative vertical relationships.
Strong emphasis on hierarchical command and control of activity.
To what extent is hierarchy strengthened or weakened by the reforms? Do they emphasise command and control or something more facilitative?
Cultural Norms and Practices
Constitutive Power Open to a diversity of practice at the roots, edges and margins: an action-oriented participatory community.
Tendency towards monoculture; resistant to diverse practices and unmanaged change: an organisationally-oriented, managed community.
How closely managed is organisational culture? To what extent do reforms encourage or discourage openness or diversity of practice?
Techniques and Technologies
Disciplinary Power Facilitative techniques and technologies: supporting production of effective political actors
Managed technology: subjection to control, surveillance and normalisation.
How is technology and knowledge applied to facilitate or control the activities of members and activists?
`33
`34
`35
1 The Labour Party (2015) One Nation Politics – Speech by Ed Miliband http://archive.labour.org.uk/one-nation-
politics-speech Accessed 21 December 2015.
2 See Labour List (2015) Number of voters in leadership contest revised down to 550,000, 25 August,
http://labourlist.org/2015/08/number-of-voters-in-leadership-contest-revised-down-to-550000/ (Accessed 15
December 2015).
3 It was proposed that they could be in future included in the electoral college, but union unease ensured this would
only be triggered once their number reached 50,000 (Williams and Paun 2011, 28; Labour Party 2014, 19).
4 The selection of candidates had been subject to membership ballots on a one member one vote basis since 1993.
5 Although the party leader wanted to set it at 20%, but met resistance from MPs The Guardian (2014) ‘Labour NEC
meets to debate Ed Miliband leadership election reforms’, 4 February,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/04/labour-nec-debate-ed-miliband-leadership-reforms accessed 30
January 2016.
6 Hence New Labour’s concerted membership drives in the 1990s and continued development of ideas such as
supporter networks.