Blairite leadership makes members leave

Dear Julie
Which view do you support? You can't be for both can you? Cardiff North CLP has a hanful of members at meetings so where are the activists?

Contrasting letters in today's Guardian on Labour Party membership from Gaye Johnstone, secretary of Save the Labour Party and Mike Allott, the arch-Blairite.
Battle over Labour's Bolshevik party structure Wednesday January 03 2007 The Guardian
Mr Cruddas's figure relates to the period 2000-06. However, Save the Labour party calculates that the party lost 51% of its membership between the start of the Blair leadership and early 2006. It is futile for Hazel Blears to claim "our membership is broadly the same as that of other parties". The Conservative party currently has around 50% more members than Labour. But the omens for improvement are not promising while members are still subjected to the Blairite style of leadership. This is illustrated by the report, in the same article, that focus groups of the public and not party members are soon to be brought in to develop policy. This will be a further provocation to party and trade union activists. Policy resolutions, passed by the annual conference during the past three years, on NHS privatisation and the future of council housing and others have been ignored by the leadership. One of the main reasons members leave the party is that they are marginalised in the policy-making process. If the party is to survive and grow, then policy-making rights must be restored to members as a priority. Gaye Johnston Secretary, Save the Labour Party.
...........................................................................................................................

Party membership is surely not the real measure of Labour's success. What matters most is the ability to sustain continuity in government and to deliver policies that change society for the better.Against this measure, Labour has succeeded: cool Britannia has consigned traditional Conservatism to irrelevance. And as these old ideological differences no longer figure in mainstream politics, it is not surprising that fewer individuals wish to join the party (particularly when - amazingly - Labour still operates a 100-year-old membership structure modelled on the Bolshevik delegate and politburo system). When Mr Cruddas advocates "we get back to local pavement politics" he is looking back to the time of soap-box sectarian politics. But the recruiting days are over: our society is mature enough - and technologically advanced enough - not to need mass membership parties. Successful political parties need objective supporters who are truly representative of our society as a whole. Having permanent members is only a bonus. Mike Allott Eastleigh, Hampshire

Reply from julie morgans office so far .....Thank you for your e-mail to Julie Morgan MP, which will receive attention.

Rob Newman Research Assistant to Julie Morgan MP