This is a cross-posting of a piece I wrote for Labour Grassroots (a site well worth a visit).
Last month, the Labour administration on Brighton and Hove City Council stepped aside, making way for the City’s second Green administration. To understand the circumstances in which this happened it is important, first of all, to understand the politics of the City, and secondly, the politics of the local Labour Party.
It is more than twenty years since Labour won a majority on the (then) recently unified Council for Brighton and Hove. In no election this century has any Party won a majority of the 54 seats on the City Council and, over this period, the Green Party have grown to be a major force in a way that is true in very few other local authorities (although they fell back badly after the City’s first experience of a Green administration between 2011 and 2015).
These are the results of the five sets of four-yearly elections since the turn of the century, showing the number of Councillors elected for each Party from the 54 seats on the Council;
Party | 2003 | 2007 | 2011 | 2015 | 2019 | |
24 | 13 | 13 | 23 | 20 | ||
20 | 26 | 18 | 20 | 14 | ||
6 | 12 | 23 | 11 | 19 | ||
3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | ||
The biggest factors driving the changing fortunes of the parties locally have generally been national (and international) politics, as well as local demographics. Green gains have been made mostly at the expense of Labour (and, to a lesser extent, the now absent Lib Dems), with Labour making some compensatory gains at the expense of the Tories – who are now decisively relegated to the position of third party.
The unpopularity locally of New Labour economic policies and, in particular, of the Iraq War, drove the Green gains in the first decade of the century and buoyed them to becoming the largest Party in 2011, in the aftermath of the election, in Brighton Pavilion of the first (and only) Green MP in 2010. The crisis-ridden minority Green administration of 2011-15 set that Party back considerably, and even arrested slightly the decline of the Tories, but Labour still fell five seats short of a majority in 2015.
Our hopes of a Labour majority in 2019 were dashed by a further Green surge, this time driven by their uncomplicated opposition to Brexit, which played well in the strongly “Remain” supporting parts of the City – and saw the Greens take 15 out of 20 Councillors in Brighton Pavilion (where their sitting MP has increased her majority at each successive General Election since 2010). However, another significant feature of the 2019 results was that the combined number of Labour and Green Councillors was at its highest, with all 39 members of the two Groups having been elected on manifestos which had striking similarities.
At least as remarkable as the rise of the Green Party locally, for those of us who grew up and became politically active in the Labour Party in Brighton and Hove in the 1970s and 1980s, is the decline of the Conservative Party from its previous position of absolute pre-eminence. This probably reflects long-term demographic changes which have seen formerly “True Blue” areas become home to a progressive population who, at election time, choose between Red and Green.
Recognising that a large majority of local voters had voted for the very similar manifestos of the Labour and Green parties, the Labour Group, under the leadership of Nancy Platts, came to an agreement with the Green Opposition to work together constructively in three key areas – reaching the target of a carbon neutral city by 2030, tackling the City’s housing and homelessness crisis with an ambitious programme of building new homes and responding to the threat of austerity with an approach based upon community wealth building.
This radical approach to putting the people of the City first has not been without its opponents in both Parties. Given that the history of the Green Party in the City is a history of fighting seats previously held by Labour, that Labour was a strong voice against the 2011 Green administration and that the Greens were vigorous opponents of the 2015 Labour administration, at least in its first three years, many, particularly longer-serving, activists and Councillors in both Labour and Green parties find it hard not to focus on party-political point-scoring even to the exclusion of implementing manifesto commitments.
However, the Labour administration elected in 2019, working constructively with the Green opposition, has agreed, for the City Council, a corporate plan for the period 2020-2023, based upon progressive policies outlined in the manifestos of the two parties. This is an indication of the possibility of joint working between two progressive political parties to deliver radical policies for the benefit of local people – reversing the experience of the past twenty years, in which senior Council officers have been empowered (and elected Councillors of all parties disempowered) by circumstances in which the Chief Executive, when given strategic direction by the Council Leader, could always turn around and ask “but do you have political support for this?”
The organisational culture of Brighton and Hove City Council has been shaped by twenty years of minority administrations having to navigate what has, since 2003, been a “hung” Council. The “memorandum of understanding” agreed between Labour and the Greens last year, whilst fraught with difficulties, represents the first realistic plan to change this culture in the direction of greater democratic political accountability.
How, then, did we reach a point at which the Green opposition and the Labour administration have swapped places? This is a story about the Labour Party, and some of its former members, and it is one that can only be told in outline if it is being told by those who respect the Rules of the Party and the rights of its members.
This story also needs some historical context. Following the loss of all three Parliamentary constituencies in the 2010 General Election and of the City Council in the 2011 local elections, there was majority agreement to replacing the three constituency parties with a single City (or District) Party unit, governed by a small elected Executive (elected annually at a meeting open to all members in the City).
This Executive oversaw the selection of candidates for the 2015 local elections, which preceded the massive growth in Labour Party membership associated with the election (and subsequent re-election) of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Party. The Labour Group on Brighton and Hove City Council which greeted the accession to leadership of Jeremy Corbyn reflected to a considerable extent (like many other Groups up and down the country) the politics of the Party under Ed Miliband (if not even under Gordon Brown and Tony Blair).
The dramatic growth of the Party membership in 2015/16 saw an influx of new members (and former members re-joining) who found natural allies in the long-serving left-wing members of the Party in support of radical policies associated with the newly (and unexpectedly) elected Leader.
A majority of the Labour Group – and some of the sitting members of the City Party Executive – clearly felt threatened by this radical transformation of the Party membership, who were beginning, quite reasonably, to demand democratic accountability of Party officers and Labour Councillors.
The burgeoning membership did not appreciate how isolated and put upon the small group of Councillors and activists who had been running the Party locally had come to feel, and this lack of sympathy helped to lead to the local Party “establishment” circling its wagons against a membership seen as hostile.
In the summer of 2016, when attendance at the City Party AGM so exceeded the capacity of the meeting room which had been booked by the outgoing Executive that the meeting had to take place in three shifts, the antipathy of some of the local “leadership” to the rapidly changing membership of the Party boiled over into allegations of misconduct at that meeting, which led to the National Executive Council agreeing a recommendation from Party officials to suspend the City Party.
The bad feeling to which this measure gave rise further poisoned what were already difficult relationships between most of the Labour Group and the majority of local Party members. When the three constituency Labour Parties were reconstituted in early 2017, supporters of the the (then) Party Leader more or less swept the board in the elections of the new Executives.
Relationships between the membership and the Group were not improved when the (then) Council – and Labour Group - Leader chose to make public criticisms of alleged conduct at Labour Party Conference 2017, which local Party officials felt should have been raised within the Party.
In the absence of a City-wide Party structure, the Party also needed to reconstitute a Local Campaign Forum (LCF) to oversee the selection of candidates for the 2019 local elections (a process which, according to Party Rules, should have been concluded one year in advance).
The reconstitution of the LCF depended upon the Regional Party, and did not take place until late November 2017. The LCF then moved, as swiftly as possible, to select candidates, adopting an approach to membership of the panel (from which candidates would be selected) which was broad and inclusive (in recognition of the diversity of views within the local Party and of the importance of allowing local branches the widest choice of candidates).
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out to the reader that I was elected (unopposed) as Chair of the LCF at that initial meeting and have held the position ever since.
The former Council Leader chose not to put himself forward to be a Labour candidate in 2019 (as did some other sitting Councillors), whilst a small number of other sitting Councillors were not selected by members in the branches. However, no sitting Councillor who sought to be on the panel was rejected by the LCF.
Having also stepped down as Leader of the Group, the former Leader then left the Party and sat (briefly) as a Councillor for the short-lived “Independent Group” (for which he would go on to stand as a candidate in the 2019 European elections, thereby putting himself outside the Labour Party for the immediately foreseeable future).
The process of selecting candidates for the local elections was not without controversy, but was generally comradely. The LCF had neither the time nor the resources to police the social media of every candidate who came forward or was selected and, during the election period, two candidates were suspended by the Party (with minimal notice to the LCF) following complaints which came to light about social media posts.
A year further on, and additional complaints emerged, one by one, about three more Labour Councillors. Either the complainants or someone else with knowledge of the complaints, made sure that details of the complaints were released (inappropriately) into the public domain.
I make no comment or observation about the validity of the complaints or the action which the Party should take in response to them because that would breach Party Rules (and, as far as I know, the complaints have still to be investigated). I am sufficiently old-fashioned to believe that people are innocent until proven guilty, a view which does not seem to be shared by the former Council Leader (and former Party member) who names all three in a list, published online, of thirty local Party members he clearly feels need to be disciplined by the Party of which he is not a member, having stood against the Party as recently as last year.
In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that I am one of the thirty (although I am in good company, alongside the Labour Group Leader and one of our Labour MPs).
The divisions between local Party members which were entrenched by the circumstances in which the City Party was suspended in 2016 have, regrettably, continued (at least in the minds of some) – even where some of those obsessed with the division are now, for one reason or another outside the Party. Disciplinary action has been taken against members on each side of the divide, for various reasons, of which the three Councillors are the latest cases.
One of the three Councillors is now suspended by the Party (but is still required to follow the Labour Group whip and counts, therefore, as a member of the Labour Group for the Council’s purposes). Two other Councillors chose to resign from the Labour Party and Group rather than be subject to the Party’s disciplinary processes. This changed the composition of the Labour Group, which now has one fewer member than the Green Group, and led to the change in administration of the Council.
This is the lengthy and complex narrative which has led to Brighton and Hove City Council losing its Labour administration (which had been the first administration since 2003 to retain control at the end of a four-yearly electoral cycle) and gaining its second ever Green administration.
This is not a simple story about antisemitism, as some would have it. Nor is it a simple story about unjustified disciplinary action, as others would have it. There are significant issues for the Party about how it handles complaints, when it administratively suspends members and office holders and how it deals with complaints which are released to the press and Party simultaneously – but these are not issues which are susceptible to simple resolution.
What matters most is what these developments may mean for the progressive policies on which Labour candidates in Brighton and Hove were elected in May 2019 and how Labour members can continue to support the radical political project of our local 2019 manifesto.
The new Green administration will still be implementing, as far as possible, the corporate plan drawn up under the previous Labour administration (in cooperation with the former Green opposition) – and the people of Brighton and Hove are the same progressive electorate who voted overwhelmingly against the Conservatives, dividing their votes evenly between Labour and Green candidates.
Maybe, just maybe, a path of political cooperation will remain open to be taken. The Labour LCF will certainly seek to consult the thousands of local Party members to get their views on how we move forward.
1 comment:
Interesting as always.
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