The recent London elections made it very clear that, if the Lib Dems are to avoid becoming the victims of a mighty squeeze at the next general election, we are going to have to do more to engage with disenfranchised Labour supporters, and worry less about trying to take seats off the resurgent Tories.
Although we have scored notable successes against Labour (Hornsey, Brent, Manchester Withington, etc.) in recent years, they have not been of the number or scale of our victories over the Tories in the latter part of the 1990s.
This means that we need to adopt a new set of strategies to engage with the voters in the predominantly urban areas held by Labour. Many of these areas, including my own, Hackney, and its neighbours, contain large and diverse Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) populations, whose support for the Labour party has been key to their retention of those parliamentary seats.
Back when Ming was leader, he talked about how important it was that we resemble the communities we represent. He then appointed a white, middle-class male as his diversity advisor. This is typical of the way that the diversity agenda has been treated within our party. We talk the talk, but seem to walk a strange kind of shuffling gait when it comes to actually putting these things into practice.
Don’t get me wrong – I believe wholeheartedly that the inclusionist policies of our party best serve ethnic minorities (and indeed the wider population) – it’s just that we are failing miserably to engage with the people who need to hear them.
In reality, that means making sure that in an area with a 30% Turkish population (for example), a representative proportion of our councillors come from that community. It means making sure that we have Black and Asian voices in Parliament. And it means making sure that we ensure that we continue to engage with those members of the BME community who are elected, and put them at the heart of the party.
Last year’s GLA selection was a case in point. Every winnable position was taken by a middle-class Anglo Saxon from south of the river. In a city where a quarter of the population come from minority communities, that sends a strong message that we are not serious about equality. Although there was some debate in the aftermath, there was an awful lot of navel gazing and claims from certain circles that the lack of BME representation was the fault of those candidates who did put themselves forward not “working the system” sufficiently well.
We must face the reality that there is not a level playing field. BME communities have been politically excluded for much of their time in the UK, are likely relatively new to the party and may well lack the contacts and knowledge of the “system” of some of their colleagues. It’s ourselves that we are hurting by perpetuating this situation – we need the best candidates, not the best-connected candidates, and we are excluding good people.
Even the Tories have stolen a march on us, with effort rewarding them with a crop of solid BME candidates, councillors and indeed MPs. I hear the same arguments within the party that we used to hear about women candidates –“This area won’t vote for a woman” has become “This area’s not ready for a Black MP”. If Windsor is ready, everywhere’s ready – and I somehow don’t think I need to draw the obvious parallel from the other side of the Atlantic.
Going forward, we need to consult on a proper national diversity strategy, modelled on the party’s efforts to increase the number of women MPs. We need to ensure that the “networking gap” is closed through regular meetings for BME councillors and campaigners with senior party officials and Shadow Ministers, also helping us to retain those we have already had elected.
We need to build knowledge and skills on engaging with our communities – communicating in other languages where appropriate, and engaging with relevant community organisations. We need to reach out to electors who may not understand Focus and who may not feel welcome at traditional surgeries. And we need every local party to have to account for how it is engaging with the whole community.
I am well aware that in many areas we are doing all of this. There are, however, plenty of local parties who are doing little but believe they are doing enough. There has been a lot of talking from many quarters that has turned into little action – initiatives have been raised and then sunk without trace. We now need to take a decisive step forward and put serious action towards equality at the heart of all that we do, not simply the preamble to our constitution.
* Reuben Thompson is Vice Chair of Hackney Liberal Democrats.
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24 Comments
Agree with Ruebens point about the lack of representativeness of our candidates. This applies to gender mix in council teams too.
I agree even more with his point about needing to engage with core Labour voters better. However BME ehngagement is not the only answer.
The majority of Labour seats are not characterised by large BME populations. If we just target inner city seats and ones with large university populations we are missing massive areas of Labours heartlands.
My own region, the North East, has been one of the few regions in the country where we have been bucking the national trend, making big gains in council elections and polling very strongly in national and european elections. In this region there are 28 Labour MPs. We will only be making big progress when we can break into their heartlands. By-elections like Dunfermline show it can be done but it needs resources!
I think this post is mixing up two different issues.
One is diversity, where I agree with a lot of what Reuben has said.
But I do not think the lack of diversity is the main reason we have not yet broken a significant number of Labour seats.
In comparing our gains in the late 90s with our recent (lower number of) gains from Labour is not comparing like with like.
By 1997 we had had eighteen years to build up our organisation in a swathe of target seats against the Tories and that election was a rout for them.
2001 and 2005 are not comparable as far as Labour is concerned, although our by-election results in seats like Brent East and dunfermline have been every bit as good as our by-election successes against the Tories in the 90s.
Local Party organisation takes a long time to build. In ’97 many of the seats we won had been building up over several elections. We are now starting to see a similar effect in a sizeable group of Labour seats where we now dominate at local level, have squeezed out the Tories and are running solid target seat style campaigns.
This is primarily what will deliver gains from Labour.
But yes, it would be a lot better if these gains include a more diverse range of candidates.
I completely agree that the Lib Dems should be pursuing the floating Left voters as if their life depended on it. Sadly, now that you lot have voted yourself a leader who is to the right of the party and is blatantly a closet Tory, I can’t see this happening.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
LFAT, you are here to feather your own bed not to advance the general good, as a result we wait for you to add something constructive.
1)floating voters are by definition floaters, not left, not right, not anything.
2)Nick Clegg is openly liberal and overtly opposed to the backwardness of the torys in all his public statements and in his actions.
So I recommend you take your head out of your rectum to enable you to see more clearly.
He then appointed a white, middle-class male as his diversity advisor.
To be fair to Steve Hitchens, he does have a good record on improving the diversity of the party. You only need to look at our council group in Islington to see that. The party has now appointed a new full-time diversity adviser – Issan Ghazni – who is currently doing a lot of work on improving the party’s diversity.
At the moment the party tends to represent some of the least ethnically diverse areas in the country. Neil is right about us steadily building up our organisation in what have been Labour heartlands. As we do this in areas that are more ethnically diverse, we should also improve the number of activists from different backgrounds.
I know this could sound complacent, but it is not intended to be. There are many other things we should be doing, but I think this does have an impact on why we are currently such a white party.
I think there is a fair amount of conflated ideas swirling around this discussion – specifically that ethnic diversity refers to variability in skin coloration.
On that basis it is important to make an overt gesture towards groups which feel marginalised or excluded according to their appearance, but it doesn’t reflect the whole truth and won’t resolve the problem of antagonistic attitudes and inflexible or unresponsive services without painting a picture using the full palate of colours.
Now Anders isn’t exactly an anglo name, is it?
On my street there are Irish, Poles, Italians, Austrians, Russians, Ukrainians, Portuguese, Serbs, Slovenes and Scandinavians from European extraction alone (counting only nationalities), yet much of the diversity debate has been so broad-brush it has been used as a smokescreen for racial or religious lobby groups to gain privileges and has been at the expense of many fundamental bases of the original cause.
For this reason I really don’t like the dog-whistling manipulation that a ‘diversity agenda’ has come to engender and prefer to keep this discussion within the framework of normal liberal ‘democratic representation’ discussions which provide additional motivation for general constitutional and electoral reform.
Hmmm, I see that Haringey Lib Dems are now in the process of slow decline, despite all the efforts of Lynne Featherstone. Two councillors have defected to Labour meaning the chances of a Lib Dem administration through byelection attrition are now zero.
An agenda that picks people by groups is not my agenda. An agenda that looks for all the variety and vitality that naturally belong among the Liberal Democrats is my agenda. And to say that any area is not ready to vote for “X type of person” is simply a challenge to prove the person so saying is wrong.
Diversity: Your 2 points are not mutually exclusive. If you’re saying that its fine to have only 14.3% female Lib Dem MPs, because the remaining 85% -all white men- are… from the ‘variety and vitality that naturally belong among the Lib Dems etc’ then thats clearly not so. Whats wrong with headhunting and making an effort to widen the pool of potential BME and female parliamentary representatives? Its plain common sense.
I’m glad this has stirred up some debate – that was my intention when I wrote it.
Neil:
I am not suggesting that this is the only thing we need to change in order to really take on Labour in their heartlands – I just believe it is an important factor that we have not addressed sufficiently.
Anders:
The salient point here was not Steve’s abilities or knowledge – indeed that’s why I didn’t mention him by name – but the message that his appointment send out. I’ve met Issan and am thoroughly impressed; we do, however, need to move diversity (and that means in all respects) out from being a niche to being central to what we do.
Oranjepan:
I certainly meant all our communities when I said BME – three of the five largest minority groups in my area are white.
I do, however, believe that we are now effectively addressing many of the aspects of diversity much more effectively than we were a few years ago. We are growing the number of women representatives and are no longer the party of the Celtic Fringe. We have simply fallen behind on the cultural and ethnic angle.
A:
Are you Luke Akehurst?
Diversity:
You miss my point. I am saying that our ability to communicate with minority groups is essential, and if we’re doing our job properly, we will get an average proportion of councillors in an area that match its makeup. I am not suggesting we start shoehorning people in on quotas – although we should not discount the possibility of some sort of positive action if it proves necessary.
If 40% of your ward speak Urdu and little English, failing to communicate in Urdu too is neither liberal nor democratic.
Meral
I am in favour of people hunting to find more chiefs, and more indians. It is plain obvious that the untapped pool of potential chiefs is greater amongst women than men, and greater amongst those who came to Britain in this or the last generation than those who came in earlier generations.
The rule I would apply in candidate selection is: first, widen the field; second, if candidates appear roughly equal ALWAYS prefer the female, and/or disabled, and/or recent immigrant.
It is also obvious that we have a great pool of potential ordinary members among the present and previous generations of immigrants. Eastender is more than right about languages; failing to communicate in a widely used language is also bad manners and will be rightly resented for that reason.
I think this post is mixing up two different issues.
One is diversity, where I agree with a lot of what Reuben has said.
But I do not think the lack of diversity is the main reason we have not yet broken a significant number of Labour seats.
These aren’t two mutually exclusive issues at all. At the heart of this debate, the Libdems have to diversify to the point where they represent the population as a whole, by being as egalitarian and meritocratic as possible. That’s the only way they’l address concerns not only of minorities but the working classes and other groups that form Labour’s solid supporters.
Good article by the way, but I wish people wouldn’t treat ethnic diversity as an “issue” separate from say gender diversity or class diversity. All are important if the party is to grow bigger.
I’m sorry, I’m going to be all sweary now, but I hate this sort of shit. It’s as patronising as the “women won’t succeed without female role models” bollocks. Why can’t women have male role models? Why can’t white girls admire black ones?
We should not be selecting candidates because they tick some demographic box, we should be selecting the BEST candidate. The fact is that quite a lot of the time we are selecting candidates from a pool of one – I know at least one of our local PPCs was the only applicant, and when selecting candidates to stand in the council elections around here, there were eight of us in a room and people put their hands up when the ward they wanted to stand in came up.
This is not a case of the best people not being selected from the pool, this is a case of the pool being tiny.
Another little anecdote from me: about five or six years ago, the party had a big recruitment drive to recruit women, for gender balance and such, and gave out an email address. I emailed. Never heard back. Would probably never have considered joining the party again if I hadn’t met Mat (and various others).
If you want to recruit more people to the party so we have a bigger pool to choose from, I would suggest doubling, or even tripling, the membership staff so the poor overworked buggers actually get a chance to get through all the work that’s expected of them, and THEN having a recruitment drive in ethnically-diverse areas like Bradford and Birmingham and such.
It is interesting that the Lib Dems have the best policies on the diversity agenda; opposing illegal wars, opposing the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and Romanies, generally opposing the negative rhetoric of the right wing media, and yet they lack the representation and membership that reflects the diversity of ethnic groups in this country.
Compare and contrast with the gay/bi/trans representation within the party.
It seems as though role models are more important than policies in persuading ethnic minorities to join the party.
There is racism in every political party, and it exists in the Liberal Democrats but I believe it is mostly unintentional. After all, someone who really is racist would more obviously join BNP/UKIP/Conservatives.
It may in some circumstances be racism that holds back ethnic minorities in some areas, but if it is unintentional then I think there needs to be a 2 way communication between the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats and the local parties concerned to try to mediate and resolve these matters so that those concerned learn from their mistakes, and we avoid shooting ourselves in the foot.
Sunny, clearly there are links between these issues. But if we diversify our slate of candidates, but don’t build the organisation, all that will happen is that a more diverse group of Lib Dems will fail to win seats.
Yes we need more diversity – but that will have little impact on our fortunes in itself.
Jennie: I agree with the thrust of your argument – that it should be everyone’s business to ensure we have much greater diversity amongst our elected representatives. Where we part company is when you and many others tell us that we ‘want the best candidate’ This has been code, and quite frankly, an excuse for the status quo. Do we seriously believe that when we look around the House of Commons today (no disrespect to all the chaps there), the majority of MPs are there because they were the ‘best candidates’ for the job?
Without a wider pool to choose from we will make no progress. This is not going to happen till we take positive action (not discrimination…yet) to change this.
BTW, Diversity – could we use other phrases rather than ‘chief’s and Indians’?
Now, now, Meral, are you going all politically correct on us ;o)
Geoffrey Payne – I think you may contradict yourself a little in the point about us having a good proportion of LGBT members and this being down to role models.
Until relatively recently the Lib Dems didn’t have any out-LGBT MPs, but still had that LGBT membership base off the back of policy and campaigning.
To Jen, I was pointing out the paradox. For LGBT the policies won it without the role models.
Meral, no, of course they aren’t necessarily the best candidates AVAILABLE, but (at least in our party) I’d reckon they were almost certainly the best candidates that put themselves forwards.
We need to widen our pool, but I don’t think we need to change the way we choose from within the pool. Positive Discrimination (whether you term it “positive action” or “affirmative action” or whatever) is counterproductive and wrong. All it does is perpetuate the system where discrimination is allowable, and none of us want that.
If I got a job just because I was a woman, I’d have huge self esteem problems because of it. I’d feel like I got the job because of my genitals, not because of my ability. And quite a lot of other people would probably be thinking the same. This would hamper my ability to do the job, yes?
Jennie, your last paragraph is pretty much analgous with the point i was trying to get across in the first place – as I said “It’s ourselves that we are hurting by perpetuating this situation – we need the best candidates, not the best-connected candidates, and we are excluding good people.”
I do firmly believe that we’d be jumping the gun on positive discrimination (and I’m happy to pick up the d-word so we’re all clear what we’re talking about – thank you for drawing the distinction, Meral) if we didn’t try to widen the pool of potential candidates first, but should keep it open as an option if the situation doesn’t right itself. In an ideal world I’d totally agree that positive action is illiberal. We don’t however live in one. Positive discrimination is sometimes a necessary evil to try and level the playing field, at least as a temporary measure – indeed a view I didn’t take until I moved to London.
Diversity, I agree wholeheartedly with the point re rudeness in not communicating in appropriate languages.
“a necessary evil”?
I hate slippery slope arguments, but really…
A necessary evil is still evil. I’d rather not be evil at all. Whether or not you believe that positive discrimination does more harm than good, you surely must admit that it does harm?
Can we not just try and widen our pool of candidates and see what happens? It might be an idea if getting on the approved candidate list wasn’t such a stupidly long and bureaucratic process, for example. And I’ve already mentioned that the membership staff need help. Better software and stuff for them wouldn’t hurt either.
“Can we not just try and widen our pool of candidates and see what happens?”
Jennie, that was exactly what I suggested. The only point on which we differ here (and I am not even convinced that we are in particular disagreement there either) is over whether it is appropriate to consider positive discrimination after we have done everything possible to widen the pool and if and only if that has not had sufficient effect…