The
Future of the Conservative Party
Introduction
Conservative Party
membership throughout the United Kingdom was estimated at 3.1 million in 1951,
falling to 1.5 million by 1975 at the time of the Houghton Report into the
financing of political parties. It continued to fall and went down to between
350,000 and 450,000 by 1996, according to estimates compiled by Michael
Pinto-Duschinsky, a leading authority on Party organisation and finance. After
the 1998 reorganisation of the Party, membership picked up a little, but by
nowhere near as much as the Tories hoped. The total had fallen to 320,000 by
2003. When David Cameron became Leader in 2005 membership was 258,239. By the
time of the 2015 General Election membership had fallen to 134,000. In 290
Constituency Associations there were fewer than 100 members. Only two
Associations had over 1,000 members and just fifty had more than 500 members.
In 1959 there
were 500 Conservative Party Agents. By 1994 this had fallen to 200. Today there
are fewer than 40. At a time when modern technologies such as computers have necessitated
a more professional organisation, the need is greater than ever. This loss has been
hard for the Conservative Party to bear. Agents take care of legal
requirements, but more importantly they are motivators and organisers. At
election time their loss could be disastrous.
Party
organisation in many weaker constituencies is nonexistent. Some have
effectively no Party organisation. Without radical change the Conservative
Party as a Party of mass membership will cease to exist.
History of the Voluntary Party
To understand
the reasons for the decline in Conservative Party membership we must go back to
the origins of the voluntary Party.
The Reform Act
1867 brought an extra 1 million voters on to the electoral register. The new
rules introduced by the Act and preparing for elections on the new boundaries
ensured that an appeal to the electorate could not take place until the end of
1868. Disraeli’s Conservative Party lost the General Election. It had
spectacularly failed to learn the lesson of 1867 for they had not prepared
adequately to face the new electorate that they themselves had brought into
existence. Nevertheless, the passing of the Reform Act 1867, and even to an
extent the anticipation that it would be passed led to the creation of more
active Conservative groups in the boroughs and to the first organizations aimed
at the newly enfranchised working men voters.
Conservative Working Men’s Clubs were encouraged and together with the
local organizations created the National Union of Conservative Associations
The parliamentary leaders were anxious not to
patronise working men’s organizations too openly, lest they offend the middle
class, at a time when middle class voters were rattled by the events of 1867
anyway. They were equally concerned not to allow too much room to these new
Conservatives lest they ask for more. The remarkably deferential tones of those
working men who actually attended the first conference of the National Union
would have reassured them and there would indeed prove over time to be no great
danger from the National Union, created (as the mover of the resolution that
brought it into existence put it) not to rival the parliamentary leadership,
but to be its “handmaid”.(1) Until World War I all Presidents of the National Union
were members of the House of Lords.
Disraeli created
Conservative Central Office as his own private office. The three separate parts
of the Conservative Party were thus brought into being – the parliamentary
party, the voluntary party and the professional part of the Party, but they
were not one body under one constitution. Each part was a separate entity. It
was not until the Hague reforms of 1998 that a single body under one
constitution came together.
In the 1880s
Lord Randolph Churchill unsuccessfully called for the accountability of
Conservative Central Office in the first attempt to create a democratic
Conservative Party. Churchill wanted
Conservative Central Office accountable to the Council of the National Union.
When
Lord Randolph Churchill emerged as the Leader of the movement for Party
democracy in 1883 and 1884, Salisbury set his face against anything that he
considered liable to fetter the complete independence of parliamentarians, as
originally enunciated in Edmund Burke’s 1774 address to the electors of
Bristol. He was not about to allow parliamentary sovereignty to be
circumscribed by caucuses of Party bureaucrats, let alone rank-and-file Party
members. Control of Parties from outside parliament both seemed to Salisbury
impractical, as it could not take into account the fast-moving mood swings of
the Commons chamber, and repugnant in a Constitution in which an MP was
expected to represent his whole constituency, not just that part of it which
voted for him. There were therefore philosophical as well as practical
considerations why Salisbury and Churchill were set upon a collision course.[2]
What Lord Randolph Churchill wanted was the transfer of
all-executive power and financial control in the Party away from the nominees
of the Leader of the Party to the Council of the National Union of Conservative
Constituency Associations. In December 1883 Lord Randolph opened negotiations
with Lord Salisbury, but Salisbury would not agree anything without assent from
Northcote, who was the Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons. On
the 1st February 1884 Lord Randolph Churchill became the Chairman of
the National Union defeating Earl Percy by 17 votes to 15. This really put the
cat amongst the pigeons. Salisbury communicated his displeasure through Percy,
a Tory MP who later became the Duke of Northumberland.
On 6th
March Salisbury and Northcote wrote to the National Union:
making
it quite clear that the National Union was not going to be allowed to replace
the Central Committee, which was “appointed by us, and represents us: and we
could not in any degree separate out our position from theirs”. Churchill
replied the same day with the observation that: “In a struggle between a public
body and a close corporation, the latter, I am happy to say, in these days goes
to the wall”. A meeting of the Council on the 14th saw Percy
suffering another defeat – this time by nineteen votes to fourteen – when he
failed to reject the Organisation Committee’s new definition of its own powers,
even after reading out a letter from Salisbury opposing it”. Undeniably rattled
by the course of events, Salisbury and Northcote then sent Churchill, via the
principal Central Office agent, G.C.T. Bartley, an ultimatum, threatening to
have the National Union ejected from Conservative Central Office altogether, “to
avoid any confusion of responsibility”. As the National Union had been
faithfully paying its £175 per annum rent ever since 1872, Salisbury and
Northcote were on doubtful ground legally, and relations merely worsened
further. [3]
Bitter negotiations dragged on between Churchill and
Salisbury until 2nd May when Churchill unexpectedly resigned as
Chairman of the Council after losing a minor vote.
The 1884 NUCCA Conference opened on 23rd
July in the Cutler’s Hall in Sheffield, and resulted in an overwhelming
personal victory for Churchill, who came top of the Council poll and Percy only
eighth. As Churchill’s majority on the Council had nonetheless fallen, there was
room for a compromise, and at the Prince of Wales’s garden party at Marlborough
House on 26th July Salisbury and Churchill discussed the outlines of
a peace deal.
[4]
Agreement was
reached. Whilst Salisbury gave way on several minor points the central concept
was abandoned and even today the Leader of the Conservative Party wields
enormous power by appointing nominees to vital positions. Why did Churchill
give way? We will never know, but perhaps the unwritten promise of a future
post in Salisbury’s government proved a temptation too far.
Thus the first attempt to make the Conservative Party a
democratic organisation failed, but other attempts followed. At the
Conservative Party conference in 1905 members supported a demand for a
democratic Party. Echoes of Randolph Churchill’s attempt reverberated, but this
was a more serious attempt to bring about change. Robert Blake noted: “Joseph Chamberlain had a clear cut policy which everyone could
understand; Churchill had not. Moreover, Chamberlain, from long experience of
the Liberal caucus, was a past master at the art of mass organisation – a real
professional; whereas Churchill for all his genius was a mere amateur at the
game.”
Balfour suggested the appointment of a committee. There
were long delays before the committee was set up. While Chamberlain believed he
could control a democratic Party.
Balfour did not think that he personally could. In classic Conservative
Party style, if you want to crush an idea set up a committee. This they had
duly done and nothing was heard of it again.
There were early moves within the autonomous Constituency Associations to
make themselves democratic. As they grew, the demands increased. With the
increase in members the demand for representation in return for their subscriptions
became more vocal.
The autonomy of Constituency Associations was both a weakness and
strength. They kept their political independence, but sometimes to the cost of
the National Party. In the 1910 General Election many seats went uncontested by
the Conservatives because many Associations did not have enough money to fight
an election, and although Central Office gave out a large sum in subsidies most
of it went into hopeless seats and was wasted.
After the
Representation of Peoples Act was passed in 1918 giving the vote to women aged
over 30, the Conservative Party reacted by allocating a third of all positions
in the Party to women. This stood them in good stead for after this they
regularly obtained a majority of the women’s vote.
During the 1920s the strength of the Conservative Party grew as it was
realised that involvement and participation were the keys to success for the
local Associations. Strenuous efforts were made to involve everyone. The result
of this local democracy was a large increase in middle class members and in
particular the women’s organisation flourished.
In the 1930s most Constituency Associations had a Central Council and an
Executive Committee on which the branches were represented. The Officers of the
Association were elected by ballot and could only sit for a specified period.
In some cases the Executive Committee, the most important body within an
Association would meet on a Saturday so working people could attend.
The development of the Conservative Party organisation came to a
screeching halt with the start of the Second World War. Mass participation
became impossible and there was no appetite for political propaganda. Agents
were dismissed; offices closed and as a result income in the constituencies
dried up. Rich benefactors were as always notoriously unreliable. By the end of
the War the Party organisation was in dire straits. In the General Election of 1945
it was to be tested and found wanting.
The end of World
War II was a political watershed with the Conservative Party suffering what was
then its then greatest electoral defeat. The desire for equality and a new era
brought the Labour Party to power. The Conservative Party responded to the
challenge by bringing in Lord Woolton as Party Chairman. Woolton was to serve
nine years as Party Chairman and was probably the most successful Chairman in
the history of the Conservative Party. He brought in the Maxwell Fyffe reforms,
the most important of which were:
(a) To limit the amount of money
a Member of Parliament could donate to a Constituency Association to £100.
(b) To recommend that Central
Office should publish its accounts.
The
recommendation to publish Central Office accounts was not implemented in full
until 1993, some 45 years later. During that time the ordinary member could not
force the Party to publish accounts because the Conservative Party had no legal
existence. In a tax case in 1981 – Conservative and Unionist Central Office v.
Burrell (H.M. Inspector of Taxes) – which was to determine whether Central
Office should pay corporation tax or income tax on its investment income – it
was decided that not only did it not have a legal existence, but it was not
even an unincorporated association. The democratic power of the ordinary member
was non-existent. You cannot easily
change a body that is said not to exist.
With party
membership at about 250,000 in 1945 Woolton realised that he had to build up
membership in order to create, once again, a mass membership Party. He believed
that one of the reasons for the defeat in the General Election had been that
the Party had forgotten the “little
people”.
A membership
campaign was launched in 1947 and by the summer of 1948, overall membership had
increased by a million to 2,250,000, a spectacular success. The official
(membership) campaign ended at the Party Conference in October 1948.
Woolton took on over 150 paid “missioners” who worked
mainly in the marginals at Central Office’s expense, and visited in 1948 over a
million homes; at the peak in late 1949, there were 246 paid missioners
covering 70,000 homes a week; their contracts were terminated for the 1950
campaign to conform to election law (though many were temporarily put on a
different payroll as collectors of local political intelligence for Central
Office). [5]
The “missioners”
resumed work after the 1950 General Election but when the Conservatives were
returned to government in 1951 the scheme was abandoned.
After another
membership campaign in 1952, in which over 100 constituencies each raised over
a 1,000 members, party membership rose to 2.8 million in England and Wales. If
Northern Ireland and Scotland were included the total membership was a
staggering 3.1 million people.
Participation was the key to this success. Swinton College was opened
in 1947. Its role was to educate activists, train agents and volunteers and
arrange lectures. The Conservative Political Centre encouraged local discussion
groups and by 1947 there were 557 of them, meeting regularly in a member’s
house and all putting forward ideas and views on policy. The views were taken
seriously by Central Office. It was part of the quid pro quo for the deference of Party members.
The young were
not forgotten. In the summer of 1945 there were only 50 Young Conservative
branches in the country. By 1946 this had increased to 1,546 nationally and by
1948 to 2,129 branches with no less than 150,000 members throughout the country.
The figures for
membership were staggering. In 1949 in Winston Churchill’s own constituency of
Woodford there were 12,898 members including 1,172 Young Conservatives. City areas were not neglected, with 60,000
members in Birmingham, two thirds of them women.
When Harold Macmillan resigned as Party Leader and Prime
Minister in 1963 the National Union Executive was consulted on the change of
Leader. This was a significant step for it was the first time that the
voluntary Party had been involved in choosing a new Leader. In 1964 the process
for choosing a Leader was changed. Hitherto “the men in grey suits” had done it with no formal process. The
Leader emerged! Now, the Leader was to be elected by the Parliamentary Party -
a step forward for democracy.
The political
success of the Conservative Party during the 1950’s and early 1960’s led to
reduced interest in making the Party more democratic but the defeat by the
Labour Party in the General Election of 1964 brought attention to the lack of
democracy in choosing the Leader of the Party. Edward Heath became the first
Leader of the Party to be democratically elected by Conservative Members of
Parliament.
The late 1960’s
and early 1970’s saw the Young Conservatives at this time reported to have had
250,000 members try to bring democracy to the whole party by publishing a
pamphlet called “Set the Party free”.
It made a trenchant call for democracy at all levels of the Party including
open selection of candidates and democratic control of the Standing Advisory
Committee on Candidates. In spite of the support of Iain Macleod, the President
of the Greater London YCs nothing came of these proposals.
In 1970 the
National Union Executive Committee set up a committee chaired by Lord Chelmer
to investigate “the extent to which the
Conservative Party in all its aspects outside Parliament might be made more
democratic.” Chelmer’s Committee had more than sixty meetings and produced
a lengthy report. A motion, which called on the Executive Committee to prepare
rules based on the principles of the Chelmer Report, was passed at the Central
Council in 1973, but an amendment was also carried postponing action until
after the General Election. The Central
Council was the main forum of the National Union. It mainly comprised of Area
and Constituency officers including the Women’s organisation and the Young
Conservatives. In this democratising mode minor changes were instituted. Balloted
motions at Party conference were allowed for the first time. Also Constituency
Associations were instructed to use the same rules for the selection of
parliamentary candidates, the first time indeed that any part of local procedures
had been imposed on the Constituency Associations by the National Union as a
condition of affiliation. After the Election the motion was quietly abandoned
and nothing further happened.
The political
success of the Conservative Party during the 1980’s deflected any attempt at
democratic reform. The Parliamentary Party began to believe that it did not
need members and found it was convenient to ignore them. After all it was the
members that held an MP to account.
Without members there was no accountability. There was no national
membership campaign until the “Bulldog” campaign at the end of the 1980s. By
then the fall in membership was catastrophic.
In 1990 the
party created Conservative Associations in Northern Ireland. For the first time
the Conservative Party became a National Party representing all parts of the
United Kingdom.
The General Election of 1987
was a turning point in terms of Conservative Party finance. Having finished the election with an
overdraft, the Party embarked on an expensive refurbishment of Central Office
and expenditure generally began to run out of control. By 1993 there was a £19
million accumulated deficit and a bank overdraft of £15 million.
In the two years to 1995 the
deficit was reduced to £14.5 million. At 31st December 2015 it stood
at £4.5 million.
In 1995 the Board of
Management in its Financial Review referred to the fact that “the Party’s
Officers and Directors are satisfied that it is appropriate to produce the
accounts on a going concern basis”. Accounting rules were tightening and
without this qualification it might be argued that the Party was bankrupt.
The Board of Management had
been set up by Sir Norman Fowler (Party Chairman) after I published a paper in
1990 calling for such a Board. The idea was to bring all three parts of the
Party together i.e. the Party in Parliament, the voluntary Party and
Conservative Central Office. It was the
first step in creating a Constitution for the Conservative Party.
In 1993, the Leader of the
Party, John Major, asked me as an experienced campaigner for Conservative Party
democracy to produce a paper on creating a Constitution for the Party. This
paper was subsequently published by The Bow Group in 1994 and a campaign was
started for the Party to have a democratic Constitution. The Bow Group paper
was seen by Archie Norman MP who brought it to the attention of William Hague.
The Conservative
Party suffered massive electoral defeat in the General Election of 1997. The new Leader William Hague immediately set
in train a reorganisation of the Party. Initially he set out a vision of a
democratic Party but by the time his proposals were finalised his vision had
been watered down by vested interests. Primarily the Parliamentary Party was
determined to retain and if possible increase its power. Initially the
Parliamentary Party was only prepared to give the ordinary Party members 50% of
the votes in a Leadership contest but in a speech at the 1997 Party Conference
I demanded “One Member One Vote” this
was then conceded. The Party at last got a constitution in 1998, but in
accepting the changes the voluntary Party effectively gave up the autonomy of
the Constituency Associations. They paid a heavy price.
Although the
Conservative Party now has a constitution, that constitution cannot be changed
without the agreement of an Electoral College consisting of members of
Parliament on the one hand and the National Convention, which consists mainly
of Constituency Chairmen, on the other. The real power resides with the
Parliamentary Party. The Chairman and Treasurer of the Party are appointed by
the Leader so are unaccountable to the membership. There is no Annual General
Meeting of members so there is no formal forum for members to raise questions
about the Party’s organisation or policies. The Annual Accounts of the Party
are not tabled for approval at an AGM. The Parliamentary candidates of the
Party are controlled centrally. The Party Board can take control of any
Constituency Association, which does not toe the line and has done so. When Slough
wished to elect its own candidate for the 2005 General Election the Association
was taken over by Central Office and effectively a candidate was imposed on
them. Basically the Conservative Party
is a self-perpetuating oligarchy.
The National Convention was set up by the 1998 reforms of
the Party and is the senior body of the voluntary party. It was created to be
the voice of the members and in its early days there were motions for debate
and discussion of organisation. Gradually over the years it has changed and now
it is a top down organisation with no debate or meaningful discussion. It has
become a rubber stamp for the party hierarchy. It should be abolished.
Political Parties
Political
parties play a major role in our democracy. At a General Election they issue a
manifesto setting out their policies and use it to persuade the electorate to
vote for them. The parties choose the candidates who will stand for election.
From those candidates Members of Parliament are decided by the electorate.
Members of Parliament from the Party capable of obtaining a majority in
Parliament then form the Government, sometimes in conjunction with other
parties - which have been through the same process - as happened in 2010, or
sometimes alone.
The political parties choose their Leaders and one of
them will become the Prime Minister. This is all very well if our political
parties are democratic organisations open to all, but what if they are
undemocratic organisations? Who exercises power in our political parties? Does it matter if they are oligarchies of
the political elite? In such a case a
small group of people will determine who governs our country and hence the
policies by which we are governed.
Political parties are part of the democratic process in
the United Kingdom. Their role is recognised by Parliament. In the current
financial year nearly £7 million of public money, known as “Short” money, will
be paid to the opposition political parties. During the period that the
Conservative Party was in opposition, 1997-2010, it received over £40 million
of public funding. In Government the
gravy train does not stop. £8.4 million was paid in 2014 to the Conservatives
and Liberal Democrats for 103 political special advisers. All this money is
supposed to be given to enhance our democracy: it does no such thing. All it
does is perpetuate the power of the oligarchs who run our parties. As long as
the parties are able to rely on the State and/or big donors like businessmen or
trade unions they can ignore their party members.
Both of our main political
parties – Labour and Conservative, are undemocratic organisations run and
controlled by oligarchies. Who are these oligarchs? They start with the Party
Leaders, who are elected by the Party memberships. The Leader appoints the
Front Bench. He or she exercises a great deal of patronage by creating Peers
and giving out Honours. The oligarchs include businessmen who advise the
Conservatives, and trade unionists who advise Labour. All are totally
unaccountable to Party members. The net is spread wide. If the Parties had been
successful in retaining the trust of the people, perhaps one could understand
their desire to maintain the status quo, but
the reality is that they are failed organisations whose membership has suffered
long term catastrophic decline, and public confidence is in free fall. Soon, as
membership organisations they will cease to exist. The recent increase in the
Labour Party’s membership since the General Election is due solely to its
Leadership contests; these always bring an increase in membership because it is
the one time when members know that their vote counts. In the two weeks after
David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister the Conservatives gained 50,000 new
members who believed they would have a vote in the leadership election. In the
event no vote was held but at least the new members replaced the 40,000 members
the Party lost in the first few months of 2016. A year later and many of those 50,000 have
not renewed their membership fees and once again membership is plummeting to
the 100,000 level.
Since
the General Election of 2015 the Labour party has had two leadership elections
and in the process gained some 400,000 new members and registered supporters.
There are about 140,000 registered supporters who initially paid £3.00 to join,
but of these 40,000 were deleted from the electorate for the 2016 leadership
election for supporting other parties.
William Hague said that the Conservative Party was “like an absolute monarchy moderated by regicide”
The Country abolished absolute monarchy and regicide 350 years ago. It is
time for all parties to follow suit and examine the powers exercised by their
party leaders. For too long they have behaved like absolute monarchs.
Candidates
Why cannot any registered member of the Conservative
Party be a candidate, subject only to vetting to ensure that they have no
criminal convictions and comply with electoral law? It should be up to the members of the Party
to determine who shall be their candidate. This is a fundamental principle. If
the members do not decide, who does and how are they accountable to the
members?
The selection of parliamentary candidates of the
Conservative Party is controlled centrally, by controlling the Approved List of
candidates.
We have heard a lot recently about how the range of
candidates should be widened and the Conservative Party have made much of Open
Primaries. The model for Open Primaries is the United States so how do
Conservative Open Primaries compare?
In the United States anyone can stand. In the
Conservative Party the candidates are centrally sifted and three or four
candidates put forward. In many States electors have to register support for
the Party in order to vote. With the Conservatives anyone on the Electoral Roll
can vote in an Open Postal Primary or an Open Meeting Primary, even if they are
members of another Party.
The candidates in the United States raise their own funds
for campaigning in the Primary. The
problem with this is that candidates who win primaries are often those with
most money to spend. “Pork Barrel” politics still has a big role to play in
United States politics. The Conservative Party pays for a postal primary. The
costs in Totnes amounted to £38,000. There are only half a dozen constituencies
in the country that could afford this, so unless the Party at national level
pays, or State Funding is given, postal Primaries will be few and far between.
Campaigns in the United States are usually prolonged,
giving plenty of time to investigate the candidates. The campaigns run by the
Conservatives are strictly limited in time.
Caucus meetings of registered voters are held in the
United States at which the merits of the different candidates are debated and
then voted upon. These are banned by the Conservative Party.
A distinction should be drawn between Open Primaries
where there is a postal ballot as in Totnes and Open Meeting Primaries. The
most common, because of costs are the Open Meeting Primaries. The Conservative
Party imposes a number of restrictions on Open Meeting Primaries:
The meetings are
advertised in the local paper so there is no guarantee that every elector is aware that the selection is taking
place.
At the meeting no debate is allowed between the
candidates – they are not even allowed
to be on the platform together.
The elector must
be present for the entire meeting and cannot leave the room for any reason.
Contrast this with a postal primary where the elector doesn’t have to hear any candidate before voting.
Limits are imposed by Central Office on the amount of
money candidates can spend on
their campaigns.
The vote on the final adoption of the selected candidate
is by Conservative Party members.
It can be seen from the above that there are major
differences between what the Conservatives call Open Primaries and what in
practice most people understand as Open Primaries. The Conservative Open
Primaries are a gimmick. The people and the media have been hoodwinked into
believing that the process is open. It is not. The process is controlled in
detail by the Party hierarchy. There is also the danger that the selection can
be manipulated by the members of other parties, who can vote for the weakest
candidate. The Conservative Party does not care, because it has decided on who
the candidates will be.
Some Constituency Associations now run Open primaries for
local government elections. In these
cases, the sift of candidates is done by people accountable to the members of
the particular Association, so the fundamental objections do not apply.
One of the objections to allowing the members to
determine who their candidate shall be is that in many constituencies there are
very few members and they may be unrepresentative of the voters. In the
Conservative Party it is estimated that about 130+ Constituency Associations
have virtually ceased to exist. In such circumstances it is reasonable for
there to be a minimum number of members taking part in the selection process
and where that minimum is not reached Party Headquarters has to take over the
process.
In Hong Kong in 2014 the
people took to the streets in protest at the Chinese Communist Party imposing a
short list of four candidates for the people to choose from. Yet this is the
very same process that is used by the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom.
Whenever
Approved lists are used or procedures are implemented for the selection of
candidates those taking the decisions should be democratically accountable to
the ordinary Party members.
Membership
A major factor
in the reduction in turnout at General Elections is the long term decline in
the membership of our traditional three main political parties. Coinciding as
it does with growing popular dissatisfaction with the political process, this
has produced a toxic mix. Party activists represent approximately 10% of
members and the decline in membership has led to a corresponding decline in
activists. It is the activists who work to get the electorate out to vote. Critically it is feet on the ground that
gets that last marginal voter to the polling station.
In 1950 when
turnout at the General Election was 83.9% there were approximately 310,000
party members working to get out the Conservative vote. By the 2015 General
Election when turnout was 66%, there were 13,400 members trying to do the same.
Activist members of the Conservative Party are now primarily local Councillors
and their families. After the elections of 2016 there were 8,496 Conservative
Councillors in the United Kingdom
Individual Labour Party membership in 1951 was about 1
million. At the time of the 2015 General Election it was less than 200,000, so
activist numbers had declined from 100,000 in 1951 to 20,000 by 2015. The
Labour Party gets significant help from trade unionists but we have seen a
decline in the membership of trade unions also, from some 12 million to 6.5
million. Some 70% of Labour MPs are
linked with the trade unions.
So from a party activist base of a combined total for the
two main parties of over 400,000 in 1950, it declined to 33,400 by the time of
the 2015 General Election.
Why has this happened? What effect will it have and can
anything be done to change this disastrous trend?
The number of people not properly registered to vote has
risen substantially from 3.9 million in 2000 to 7.5 million in 2012 per the
Electoral Commission. As at December 2015 the Electoral Register was only 84%
complete meaning that over 7 million people were not registered. A major factor
affecting voter registration is the decline in membership of the political
parties. Political parties originated in their modern form as registration
societies set up in the 1830s after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act. Their
function was to ensure that all those entitled to vote were registered and did
vote. Today this function has almost ceased, except in some marginal
constituencies, because there are no longer the activists to do the work. Under
the Reform Act only if a person’s name was on the electoral register could he
vote. Eligible voters had to register for a fee of one shilling (5p).
Let me expand on
this point from my own experience. I was Chairman of the Gerrards Cross branch
of the Beaconsfield Constituency Association from 1977 to 1980. Gerrards Cross
was the largest Conservative branch in the country with a membership of over
2,000. It was one of some twenty branches in the Beaconsfield Association. The
Beaconsfield Association today, in total, has about half the number of members
of the Gerrards Cross branch in 1980, and yet it is one of the largest Constituency
Associations in the country.
In 1980 Gerrards Cross had a committee of 38 people elected
annually. It was a requirement of standing for the committee that you had to
take on a road in the town where you would do the canvassing and collection of membership
subscriptions. The membership was approximately 40% of the electorate. Each
year when the Electoral Register was published one of the prime functions of
the branch was to check that all members and all Conservative supporters were
on the Register. A list of errors was sent to the Electoral Registration
Officer so that the Register could be altered before the Register was
finalised.
The result of all this work was that few people were left
off the Register and the final Register was accurate. Branches of political
parties throughout the country were doing the same as Gerrards Cross.
So what are the costs to society of low voter
registration and turnout? Potentially the costs will be significant. There will
come a point when the legitimacy of the elected government is questioned
because of the low turnout. Democracy is a process by which you determine the
will of the majority. If the gap between the views of the majority and those
elected becomes too great the people may say “What can we do to change this?”
The only solutions will be major electoral reform, reform of the political parties,
or revolution. Time is running out.
Research from the 1990s on party membership published
in the book “True Blues” showed two
main reasons why people join political parties. The first reason was for social
purposes. People like to be and feel more comfortable with others of a like
mind. There is a tribal instinct.
The second reason is participation. This has to be
meaningful participation i.e. they either vote on decisions to be taken or vote
for the people taking the decisions. It is this latter motivation which has not
been met by the two main political parties. Party members like to be led, but
they also like to know that the Leader has listened to them before he or she
takes a decision. Effectively large numbers of people join these parties each
year wanting to participate. When they
find that they have no voice they leave, usually after a couple of years. Only
by adopting a radical approach will we break this cycle of decline. I set out
below the measures that need to be taken. It is a check list to which all
parties should adhere:
·
Party constitutions should be capable of being
amended or changed by the members of the Party at a General Meeting of the
Party on the basis of one member, one vote given a majority in favour of
amendment or change. Proxy voting should be allowed.
·
There should be an Annual General Meeting of the
Party to which all members are invited. (Note: this meeting should not always
be held in the same location so as to prevent it being skewed in favour of
members from a particular Region.)
·
The Chairman should be responsible for the Party
organisation.
·
The Chairman and Treasurer should be elected by
the members of the Party.
·
The Chairman should present an Annual Report on
the Party organisation at the Annual General Meeting of the Party for adoption
by the members.
·
The Treasurer should present the Annual Accounts
to the Annual General Meeting for adoption by the members.
·
The Chairman of the Committee on Candidates
should be elected by the members of the Party and should present a report on
candidate selection at the Annual General Meeting of the Party.
·
The Chairman of any policy groups should be
elected by the members and should present a report on their workings at the
Annual General Meeting.
·
Motions for debate on policy should be allowed
at the Party’s Conference and voted upon. If due to time constraints all
motions submitted cannot be debated the members at the Conference should be
able to choose at least three motions for debate. All motions duly proposed and
seconded should be put on the Party’s web site.
·
Regional/Area/Constituency officers should be
directly elected by the members of the Party.
The
most important of these provisions is the ability to change the Party’s
constitution on the basis of One Member One Vote.
If we
believe in democracy the fundamental requirement for political parties is:
“No political Party should be registered with the Electoral
Commission unless it has a democratic constitution which can be changed at a
General Meeting by a clear majority of its members on the basis of one member
one vote.”
By adopting
the above, participation would be guaranteed for party members. Some parties
already have some of the above provisions in their constitutions. The
Conservative Party has none of them. The Labour Party is still dominated by the
trade unions although the Labour Party constitution has been changed so that
its Leader is elected on the basis of One Member One Vote including registered
supporters. Both Conservative and Labour operate electoral colleges which
distort democracy by breaching the principle of One Person, One Vote of equal
value.
With all the
advantages to be gained from an increased membership why hasn’t the
Conservative Party adopted these proposals? After all, nearly every
organisation has an Annual General Meeting at which elections take place and
reports are adopted. The answer lies in the use of power, patronage and vested
interests by those that get to the top and a determination not to give them up.
Having
climbed the greasy pole and got into parliament, MPs are primarily accountable
to their electorate at a General Election held every five years. Making them accountable to the Party members
who selected them during the five years adds to their sense of insecurity.
Having effective control of the Party’s constitution enables them to put a
barrier between the party members and the parliamentary party. The Party
hierarchy are unaccountable except in a very limited way to their parliamentary
colleagues.
Patronage is
the second factor which comes into play. The Party whips control the
backbenchers with promises of promotion, knighthoods, peerages, overseas trips
etc. and patronage is extended to the voluntary party to keep them controlled.
Party Treasurers, Chairman and President of the National Convention, Chairman
of the Women’s Organisation etc. more often than not end up with a peerage or
an honour as long as their tenure of office has not had any problems.
The third
factor at play is vested interest. It is easier to raise £20 million from 40
donors in large donations than it is to raise the same amount in £25.00
subscriptions. Subtle allocation of government contracts, access to the Prime
Minister and other Cabinet Ministers, promises of a seat in the House of Lords,
other honours are the tools of the trade in keeping the party organisation
running smoothly.
It is said
that the Party Chairman and the Treasurers have to work closely with the Party
Leader and that is why they are appointed rather than elected, but these
arguments apply to every organisation so why is the Conservative Party any
different?
The problem
with these old fashioned methods of control is that the public is now more
aware of them and the clamour for change is getting louder.
Policies
Who determines policy? Of
the two main political parties, policy in the Conservative Party is decided by
the Leader and is constructed by a small coterie of people around him or her.
In the 2014 European Parliament election the Leader of the Conservative MEPs
only discovered what was in the manifesto on the day it was published! The
Conservative Party no longer goes through the charade of pretending that the
members of the Party have any say. There are no motions for debate at the
Conservative Party Conference. The Conservative Policy Forum has little, if
any, influence on policy. The Labour Party has the National Policy Forum and
policy discussion papers. Its conference sets the “framework” of policy, but
the days when it was the conference which decided policy are over. The National
Policy Forum has severe limitations. Few members know who sits on it or what it
talks about. There is very little reporting back to members or consultation
with members before issues are debated.
With the development of the internet Party members could
and should be much more involved in policy making. The priority of policies has
to be left to the Party Leaders but in determining those priorities they should
be aware of the strength of feelings of the membership.
2017 General Election
At the time the General
Election was called on 18th April 2017 the press were forecasting a
200 seat majority. Opinion polls were
showing the Conservative Party on 50%. The
Party’s biggest problem was complacency. In the event incompetence became a
major factor. The result of the election was disastrous for the Party. So what went wrong?
The Boundaries
Commission proposals were not yet law, thus giving the Labour Party a twenty
seat advantage. The Election result
showed that the Conservatives lost thirteen seats. If they had waited they would have had a
majority!
The Labour Party
had a financial war chest so couldn’t be outspent by the Conservatives. It would appear that Labour spent their
money more wisely. The Tories poured a
million pounds into advertisements attacking Jeremy Corbyn on Facebook, whereas
for a fraction of that money Labour persuaded their members to share positive
messages about Labour. Negative
campaigning harms not only the victims but also harms those perpetrating it.
It was clear
that at some stage the opinion polls would move in Labour’s favour and Labour
would then claim momentum. Exactly that
happened.
It was also
clear that at some point there would be some bad news and the Conservatives
would get terrible publicity. I didn’t
expect the bad news would come as a result of the launch of the Conservative
manifesto. It was an appalling document
with hardly any positive points in it and the presentation was abysmal. Instead of saying Winter Fuel Allowance was
to be mean tested why didn’t it just say that it would be taxed in the same way
the Old Age Pension is taxed. The poor
would get it in full and the rich would lose some of it. That is fair. The case on Social Care went by default
because instead of saying how much we had increased the amount people would be
able to keep we did not include a cap on how much people would have to pay. A Free Vote on fox hunting was promised
which we know a large number of people oppose.
Why antagonise them by putting it in our manifesto? These stupid errors would not have occurred
if there had been a wide involvement in drawing up the manifesto. In the past, the Cabinet, Back Benchers and
even some members of the voluntary party have been involved. It is the wisdom of the crowd.
After the
General Election was announced on the 18th April, two days later the
following announcements were made by Conservative Central Office to
parliamentary candidates:
We will
not be advertising seats, due to time constraints. Each Conservative-held
seat and opposition-held Target seat that is selecting will be given a
shortlist of three candidates to put to a General Meeting of the Association.
There will be consultation between the Candidates team and the Officers of the
Association in drawing up the list.
In the
case of the remaining seats that are not targets, the Chairman of the Party and
Chairman of the National Conservative Convention will be appointing candidates
after consultation with local officers.
This was totally contrary to the
rules for selecting candidates and was only pushed through using the clause in
the Party’s Constitution which gives the Party Board the power to do anything
in the interests of the Conservative Party. This is a clear abuse of power and
it was totally unnecessary. With seven
weeks to the General Election due process could and should have happened. There was much complaint as the candidates
list had been culled after the 2015 General Election and new candidates were
barred. Effectively only candidates
chosen when David Cameron was Leader were allowed to take part. This caused great resentment in a number of
constituencies, which wanted a local candidate or a member of the European Parliament
on their short list. It is not a very
good idea to upset your volunteers at the start of an election campaign.
The
campaign started as a very personal campaign with the emphasis on “Theresa May
– strong and stable” and vicious personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. The electorate does not like personal
attacks. I had an official
communication from my MP, Dominic Grieve, which did not mention the
Conservative Party once. If you are
going to make the campaign personal, it was a mistake for Theresa May to refuse
to debate with Jeremy Corbyn on television.
This gave the impression of being afraid. It highlighted the problem with a personal
campaign. There was no hope in the
Conservative manifesto - nothing for people to look forward to. No vision of the future. Yet Labour’s manifesto contained a lot of
hope and promises which the Conservatives failed to counter attack. Our manifesto was the most miserable manifesto
in my memory.
In the week before Election Day the
Prime Minister visited Slough. I went
to the meeting which was held in a large industrial unit which was “To
Let”. Only Party members were invited
and about 400 turned up. We had to wait
in the rain for half an hour to get into the building. The Party’s coach turned up and drove into
the building and became the back drop for the speeches. The Prime Minister walked in with Boris
Johnson. Boris took the platform and
gave a five minute introduction to Theresa May. All written down – no ad-lib. Then Theresa May gave a speech of about
10-15 minutes all about “strong and stable”.
No questions. They both then departed leaving me thinking “What was that
all about?” Any Leader knows that on an
occasion like this you wander round the crowd shaking hands, motivating the troops
and giving them hope for the battle to come.
My constituency of Beaconsfield –
one of the strongest constituencies in the country was asked to help in Slough
(a Labour held seat with a 7,000 majority) and Harrow West (a Labour held seat
with a 2,000 majority). In 1979 I took
110 members from one branch of Beaconsfield to help in Watford. This election the whole constituency
struggled to get 25 members to help in Harrow West
After leafleting in my own
constituency I decided to go to Slough to help there. When I was Constituency Chairman of
Beaconsfield we paid for a full time Agent in Slough, gave other financial
support, manned several committee rooms and polling stations on Election Day
after carrying out a full canvas of the constituency. We won the seat in 1987 and in 1992. Unfortunately in 1997 Central Office wrote
off Slough and we were sent elsewhere - big mistake! It has deteriorated ever since and now has
less than 100 members.
I looked for the address of their
committee room on their web site. It
was not there. Eventually I got the
address which was on a rundown industrial estate with hardly any parking. I
arrived at approx. 6.30 pm and when I said I would bring the canvassing returns
back to the office the two volunteers told me that the office was about to
close and that the industrial estate locked its gates at 7pm. I arranged to return the canvass sheets the
next day. The canvass sheets were
provided by Central Office and included questions where you marked the answers
out of ten. Each elector had a
sheet. They would take at least ten
minutes on each doorstep. Great if you
have 500 helpers in a by-election but totally impractical if you can number
your helpers on one or at best two hands.
I asked how much of the constituency had been canvassed and was told
20%. There was no way that canvassing
would be completed by Election Day.
Feeling concerned at this I asked where the committee room would be on
Election Day. They did not know. I then asked if the polling stations were
being manned on Election Day. They didn’t know. Next I asked if they had a list of
helpers. No they hadn't. Tearing my hair out I then asked who was in
charge – I was told it was a woman from Central Office based in
Southampton. We did our canvassing and returned the sheets
the next day at 3.30pm. The office was
locked so we pushed them through the letter box. The result in Slough was an increased Labour
majority of 17,000. I gave up.
The day before the General Election
I went to Harrow West arriving at 7pm. Once again the address was not on its
web site. On arrival I was told that
the Harrow West committee room was closed but they were sharing a building with
Harrow East which was open so I delivered leaflets for the Conservative MP Bob
Blackman who got in with a majority of 2,000.
On Election Day I returned to Harrow West to
help in knocking up. The knocking up
sheet was excellent with lots of useful information, except it did not show the
address of the polling station. To my
surprise I came across several strong Labour supporters, and then I noticed
that in some cases the last contact with them was in 2012! We not only were knocking up Conservatives
but also Undecideds. The Labour
majority went up from 2,000 to 13,000.
It seems all these constituencies
were following Central Office instructions.
I am afraid to say that the clever clots in CCO have never fought a
General Election on the ground. The
result was a disaster. On Election Day
party members were being directed to constituencies like Slough where there was
no chance of us winning whereas constituencies which we lost were starved of
people. It is quite clear that Central
Office did not have a clue as to what was happening. At the same time Labour were pouring
supporters into constituencies boosted by their membership of 550,000, (it has
now increased to 700,000 since the election.)
Approximately one third of Labour canvassers had never canvassed before
so were part of the huge increase in new members.
The Conservative
Party fought the 2010 and the 2015 General Elections by targeting marginal
seats. They had to because they did not have sufficient members on the ground
to fight a National campaign. There are huge dangers in this. What and where are
the marginal seats? Some “guess work”
is required to decide where to put our resources but it is “guess work” and it
can go horribly wrong.” It did go
horribly wrong.
Party
organisation should be the responsibility of the Party Chairman. He or she should control the campaign. All consultants, special advisers etc.
should report to the Chairman and he or she should be answerable to Party
members at an Annual General Meeting.
The Leader determines policy and priorities. He or she must take responsibility
for the political aspects of the campaign.
Without radical
change the Conservative Party will cease to exist as a membership organisation
and if that happens, oblivion awaits the Party. The Leader of the Party has to take radical
action to change the structures of the Party to ensure this debacle does not
happen again and if she doesn’t then we will have to get a Leader who will!
Conclusions
In all my years
as a member of the Conservative Party I have never known a General Election so
badly organised and a manifesto so incompetently presented. This election was the final warning call to
the Party – reform or die!
The most
important factor in the next General Election will be “feet on the ground” At the margin it is the canvassing and the knocking
up that will count most. For that you need volunteers and the most committed
volunteers are members. Political parties will ignore this at their peril and
unless our two main parties reform themselves into democratic organisations
their decline will continue until they cease to exist.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that our two main
political parties must embrace democracy, member involvement and participation
and otherwise, like the dinosaurs, extinction will be their destination. The
Labour Party must break its link with the trade unions other than as an
affiliated organisation. Voting rights should be reserved solely for the
membership. Within the next five years the Labour Party faces a great danger of
implosion. It is vulnerable to attack from the newer parties which will target
its seats
The Conservative Party must break its link with big
donors who wield influence by being members of organisations such as the
£50,000 club. There is still a danger of complacency in the Conservative Party
which having just won the largest number of seats and the highest share of the
vote in a General Election, has a belief that they can just carry on in the
same old way and results will come right in the end. Nobody has taken
responsibility for the shambles of the organisation. The party Chairman who is nominally in
charge is still there. The Chairman of
the national Convention who should have stood up for the rights of the voluntary
Party is still there. There is no
accountability. Lots of information was
gathered during the campaign, but unless you can get hundreds of supporters into
every seat on Election day there will inevitably not be enough people to get
the vote out. The Conservative Party can
no longer fight a General Election campaign on the ground. Labour has shown that by giving hope to
people, by promising to involve Party members in policy making, by promising to
make Labour a more democratic Party it can build towards success. Can The
Conservative Party do the same?
Notes:
1) Ramsden J. An Appetite for Power
2) Roberts A. Salisbury Victorian Titan
3) Ibid
4) Ibid
5) Ramsden J. The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940-1957
JOHN E. STRAFFORD
John Strafford is the author of “Our Fight for Democracy” – a history of democracy in the United
Kingdom.
John Strafford joined the Conservative Party in 1964,
and was a Councillor from 1968 to 1974. He has served at nearly all levels of
the Conservative Party including as a member of the Party’s National Union
Executive Committee for nine years and three years on the Conservative Board of
Finance. Within the Conservative Party his political achievements include:
·
As
Treasurer and then Chairman of Beaconsfield Conservative Association from 1980
to 1990 increased the Constituency’s income per annum from £30,000 to £100,000.
·
Successfully
campaigned for the Conservative Party to be recognized in Northern Ireland and in recognition of
this was made the Hon. President of South Belfast Conservative Association, Hon
Vice President of the North Down Conservative Association and Hon. Vice
President of the Northern Ireland Conservatives.
·
In 1990
published a Paper on the Reorganization of the Conservative Party proposing a
Board of Management. This was introduced in 1993.
·
As
Treasurer of Wessex Area in 1991 raised over £250,000 from the Constituency
Associations for the Conservative Party. This still is the highest amount ever
raised in one year from an Area.
·
In 1995
wrote a Paper for the Bow Group – “The Conservative Party for the 21st
Century” proposing a Party Constitution. This was introduced in 1998.
·
Member of
the Management Committee of the National Conservative Draws Society since its
formation in 1994. Since its formation the Draw Society has raised over £15
million for the Conservative Party.
In 2011 John was Chairman of the Conservative “Yes”
Campaign in the referendum on the Alternative Vote.
No comments:
Post a Comment