Tuesday 22 December 2020

A Monologue on Labour's Dialogue Rewards

Even the dogs in the street have seen Labour's 'Dialogue Rewards' scheme by now, but I reproduce it here for the most sought-after commodity in the attention economy: opinionated commentary:



This has upset a few Labour people, and quite understandably. This is right up there with the blessed EdStone. This is what I'd expect from the galaxy brain genius of David Evans, an apparatchik who put in the hard yards during the Blair years. First is the crass assumption that competition is the best motivator, straight out from the New Labour public sector reform school of thought. Dangle some juicy carrots in front of the membership's noses and they'll be "incentivised" to hit the phones and rack up the voter ID. The second, which is a bit of a self-own if we're honest, is the idea the troops can only be rallied this way. I know Keir Starmer is yet to unveil his exciting vision for the future and so we're left with reading the tea leaves. Yet offering members the most gaudy of baubles suggests one might have difficulty supplying the necessary enthusiasm by conventional means. Say what you like about Jeremy Corbyn and his policies, there were plenty of hands when they were needed on deck. And they didn't need a phone call from Barry Gardinder to motivate them.

Anyone with a passing aquaintance with rational choice-influenced approaches to parties and social movements knows would spot the similarities between it and the assumptions informing this scheme: people get involved in politics because it appeals to their interests. Typically conceptualised in utilitarian/economist terms, variations on rational choice have emphasised the particular benefits accruing to one as an activist above and beyond saving the library from closure, or getting the boss to backdown on compulsory unpaid overtime. For some it's a sense of purpose, of belonging to something bigger than them. Others might be motivated by office-seeking behaviour, be it standing as a candidate or graduating to a position of leadership and/or trust in a movement. Either way, all voluntary political organisations beat out pathways for advancement, introduce internal stakes and, dare I say it, their own forms of cultural capital. For example, in Labour being known as a "campaigner" (of the conventional kind), having the ear of influential people, being a source of gossip, knowing how to produce leaflets, and factional affiliations are all markers of one's position in the local pecking order. Accumulating standing, if this is what a particular member wants, is fairly easy provided they have the time to invest and a modicum of cunning.

The production of this circular shows the top brass know this about their party. After all, if any lesson has been drawn from the Corbyn years it's how the threat to seats, career aspirations, and lay officer positions at constituency level held the Labour right together and gave them the cohesion no amount of Fabian pamphlets or Tom Watson diet books could. And, in the interests of accuracy, this circular is only putting into print what has been going on in the party since its inception. Think about the Christmas fundraisers with "celebrity guests" (ah, those heady Stoke dinners with Alastair Campbell, Alistair Darling, Alan Johnson, Mike Cashman), or special events with the stars (curries with Caroline Flint and Stella Creasy, Labour First meals with a Rachel Reeves stand-up routine), you get the overall picture. I remember not long after joining how miffed locals were because Roy Hattersley failed to show for a scheduled nosh. For some, party membership means special access or, for most, the illusion of special access. Likewise, regional offices have long operated schemes where councillors or MPs meeting their contact rate targets (or exceeding them by a certain margin) would receive extra literature or a centrally-paid mail shot. Not something volunteers are going to give much of a fig about as free literature means more trudging around, but enough for politicians ever eager to keep a high profile. This was also useful from the standpoint of the party machine. Voter ID/pieces delivered are fine and dandy, but who meets targets and who doesn't helps the local regional office and constituency offices, where they exist, sort between "their people" and the wastrels. It's a yardstick for determining who's clubbable and dependable and, mostly, who'll do as they're told in that particular patch.

In other words, the appearance of our "reward scheme" is a symptom of an unwelcome return. The old bureaucratic culture of manipulation and distrust is not just on its way back, it's getting pushed right from the top. Perhaps something worth getting awkward about if anyone reading this is invited to the thankyou Zoom event with Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner.

13 comments:

Alex Dawson said...

This is reminiscent of the old right wing trade union response to falling membership whereby reps and activists are “incentivised” to “sign up” members either through prizes or, in the most mercenary of unions, through cold hard cash payments for signing up a certain number.

Quite apart from the fact it doesn’t actually work (unless accompanied by a serious and sustained organising campaign to win better rights at work), at least with that approach you get something tangible I suppose. I’d rather get a tenner for ringing a hundred punters than a bloody zoom call with my local MP or a snivelling cut and paste note from the leadership’s office.






Phil said...

People on my local left group were talking about leaving, or else stepping right back, after this came out. Coincidence? I know its effect on me was anything but motivating.

Dipper said...

A phone call from Angela Rayner if you didn't make any calls would have been a better incentive.

Scott Newton said...

Nice one, Phil. I found the whole thing nauseating, I must say. Good on Roy Hattersley for being off message all those years ago! But then, Roy is old school after all. When I was a student I was a member of the Cambridge Fabian Society and we used to meet every Saturday (I think) lunchtime when a visiting speaker would turn up. Roy H came when he was Minister for Europe in Wilson's pre referendum government, and spoke about social democracy from a Gaitskellite perspective (as I recall it was a version of social democracy which would now be regarded as from the radical Left). He was very approachable, happy to share our lunch of apple, bread, cheese and pretty rough red wine, and insistent on paying his own expenses.

Sarah Whitelaw .. Sally Lawson 1967 to 1972 said...

Thank you for putting my unease, so eloquently, into an historical context as well as the referencing of rational choice influence and motivation ... I think you missed out 'patronising' ....

Anonymous said...

Very New Labour. Very Tory-lite. Yet... strangely... no-one is thinking about PASOKification these days, even though it was a major talking point on the left as recently as this time last year. It's never mentioned.

Ken said...

Public sector reform; a process to manufacture BS jobs, the phrase which comes to mind about this is middle management. When canvassing last year, our secretary had a row with an apparatchik over how/who to canvass. He insisted that his model was the way to win elections. He reminded me very strongly of administrators in the public sector. One example of this is a disagreement with an administrator over the need to fill an extra page in what was already a complicated form. The response I got was that this piece of paper was “evidence” that something had been done. Not that a piece of paper had been filled in, but that some action had taken place. It’s enough to make you suspect that Weber’s label of “rational” for bureaucracy was a tad hopeful.

Anonymous said...

People are still talking about PASOKifiation in my parts, but we're waiting to see what happens in the local elections. I am in Leeds and surrounded by what was the red wall.

Phil said...

This blog is literally riddled with fears and concerns about avoiding pasokification, even if it doesn't use the name!

Blissex said...

«rational choice-influenced approaches to parties and social movements knows would spot the similarities between it and the assumptions informing this scheme: people get involved in politics because it appeals to their interests.»

This seems to me a bit too generic: politics is about interests, but it makes an enormous difference whether it is pushed as being about a person's *individual* interests and the same person's *group/class* interests. It makes a big difference between getting involved in politics to get their nose into the trough, or doing it to improve the lot of their own group/class.#

What this crass "activist rewards" scheme does wrong is to push a bit too much the individual interests angle, the personal transactional aspect of politics.
Otherwise praising those who make efforts and take risks to help the politics of defending the weak and poor from predation is quite right and is a positive message. I guess that a reason why someone like Jeremy Corbyn is still motivated at his age and situation is the number of people who write to him or walk up to him to thank him for what he has been doing for the weak and poor. I doubt that many will write, never mind walk up, to Tony Blair or David Cameron to thanks them for tripling their house price and shafting the "scroungers" (but some may well do that).

Blissex said...

«the threat to seats, career aspirations, and lay officer positions at constituency level held the Labour right together and gave them the cohesion no amount of Fabian pamphlets or Tom Watson diet books could.»
«Roy is old school after all. [...] spoke about social democracy from a Gaitskellite perspective (as I recall it was a version of social democracy which would now be regarded as from the radical Left).»

An amusing aspect of this is that T Benn was originally a gaitskellite, and J Corbyn was originally much more radical, but eventually J Corbyn effectively became a gaitskellite, and H Gaitskell became retroactively a radical leftist.

«This blog is literally riddled with fears and concerns about avoiding pasokification»

As always I see a big difference between the Labour right, people like R Hattersley and G Brown, and the non-Labour Mandelson Tendency entrysts and the careerists, and there is a difference as to PASOKification too:

* The Labour right does not desire and rejects PASOKification, even if some of their politics may end up resulting in some degree of PASOKification.

* The Mandelson Tendency entrysts and careerists aim for PASOKification, because their goal is to destroy social-democratic politics and to ensure that all main parties are thatcherite, obedient to her command that "There Is No Alternative".

My usual quotes as a reminder of the huge difference between the Labour right and the liberal-tory entrysts:

Lance Price, 1999: “Philip Gould analysed our problem very clearly. We don’t know what we are. Gordon wants us to be a radical progressive, movement, but wants us to keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks that we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe.

Roy Hattersley, 2001: “It has been a difficult four years for the Labour Party's unrepentant social democrats. One by one, the policies which define our philosophy have been rejected by the Prime Minister. [...] In fact, success has emboldened the Prime Minister to move further to the Right. [...] Tony Blair discovered a big idea. His destiny is to create a meritocracy. Unfortunately meritocracy is not the form of society which social democrats want to see. [...] Now that the Labour Party - at least according to its leader - bases its whole programme on an alien ideology, I, and thousands of like-minded party members, have to decide if our loyalty is to a name or to an idea. [...] A Labour government should not be talking about escape routes from poverty and deprivation. By their nature they are only available to a highly-motivated minority. The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape.

Anonymous said...

If you do lots of voluntary work for the Labour Party you get a signed Christmas card from someone important in the party sometimes it is signed by a member of their staff but often just an electronic one that looks like the MPs signature. I think this is their way for saying thank you and we hope you will continue with your unpaid work for us or indeed me.

Anonymous said...

Worked in an MPs office a while. What Phil says does def. ring true.