A couple of years ago, when we moved house and constituency, I had the new experience of going to Conference with a second class label hanging around my neck. I did what I could to carefully adjust my pass so that my picture and name was facing out. But these passes have always had a mind of their own and I would walk from Hall to Fringe all too often as someone labelled as ‘Member’ rather than the important or well-connected ‘Voting’ people.
And now we have thousands of new members, some of whom will be looking forward to their first conference. Pretty well all of them will be unable to vote. Nor will a good chunk of the party’s activists who have stood locally in May.
This distinction between voting and non-voting members doesn’t separate the activists from the sleeping members. It seems primarily to protect privilege, to protect the well connected, those with the ear of the constituency officers. It is a privilege in a thoroughly conservative sense.
In the meantime, the internal party debate about One Member One Vote rumbles on. It’s due to be discussed further this autumn, but OMOV is a wider discussion embracing multiple issues. The slow pace of internal reform should not be used as cover for those who want no change at all.
Change is always resisted – though it is a surprise to find it being resisted within the Lib Dems. If we looked at the situation in reverse: if we were completely democratic at Conference and every member had a vote, would we be agitating for a return to a narrower franchise? The answer is surely no.
There are good arguments for members needing to have been a member for at least a year to stop any suggestion of entryism, or that voting goes with a pass for the full conference. But these are details.
What would be wonderful, and reflect the rebirth of our party and a true welcome for our new members would be that the first motion of conference is an emergency motion or an extraordinary general meeting called to grant voting rights to every member at the conference.
* William Hobhouse lives in Bath and is co-founder of the Lib Dem Campaign for Manufacturing.
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20 Comments
This sounds like a lovely egalitarian idea, but there are consequences…
It’s week known that who goes to conference depends on where it is. A Glasgow conference will have a substantially different make-up to a Bournemouth one. Would it be fair to Scotland and the north of England then, that any votes taken at a Bournemouth conference would be dominated by voters from southern England? How do we some this problem, if it isn’t via constituency quotas as it is currently?
“Week”= well
Some of us never get to vote at conference as week can never go to conference due our impairments. I am unable to leave my bed, let lone my house so I am unable to ever vote. There needs to be some way ALL members cn tke prt, including people like me….
It would move conference away from being a representative conference to a rally of members.
There are other things we can do for instance .Conference is balloted on some motions to be debated .To ensure these topical or emergency motions genuinely reflect the concerns of the wider membership they could be voted upon both electronically and in person at conference .The safeguard would be a current membership number to access the voting on line. or evidence of membership to get a ballot paper at conference.
Great article William, punctuated nicely by Poppy’s comment. We don’t need internal class systems and restrictions on participation, we surely need to maximise the number of members that can vote. The current system isn’t fit for the modern world.
OMOV if done as discussed at the last Conference will do exactly this; among other things, all members registered for and attending full Conference will be able to vote. This requires constitutional changes, which are supposed to e happening this September. In the meantime, the number of voting reps per Local Party was increased substantially a couple of years ago, so in practice any member who wants to is almost certain to have a voting place available.
The only problem with this is the administrative issue of when voting reps need to register by – you can no longer just turn up with a letter from your Local Party Secretary and have a VOTING badge made for you.
The issue Poppy raises of people who cannot attend Conference is more difficult. People shouldn’t vote on a motion unless they’ve had at least the chance to listen to the debate, so we’d need to be sure every one was telecast in some way; I don’t think the BBC broadcasts ALL the public debates, and they can’t cover the closed session ones which are ‘Party Business’. Also, if any member could vote online we’d need to find a way to prevent a motion being massively voted on by people who’d been stirred up by a social media campaign about one person or group’s issue related to it, but had not read the actual motion or heard the debate. You’ve all seen how the Daily Fail and the like can distort something we do – if lots of members were mis-informed by such an article, we might find our policy set by the ill-informed fooled by the illiberal.
Is it beyond the capability of 21st century technology to have the main hall of your conference on an internet stream and have internet voting as an available option on each vote? Voting passwords could be sold to members in place of conference registration fees that those who would still attend physically would pay, raising additional money from those members who would not have been able to attend the conference in person, while at the same time widening access to your conference.
This would get rid of the need that MBoy points out to set limits on voting delegation sizes to prevent geographical bias and open up the conference to some of the new groups Poppy is referring to.
Just an idea.
If all members are going to have a say, can you explain how you’ll arrange for 60,000+ people to travel to Bournemouth, and put them up for the week of conference (once you’ve sorted out the absence from work of them all – supply teachers should have a good week). Otherwise, what you’re actually calling for is all members who have the time and money to get to Conference to have a say, with the rest even more excluded (now there won’t be specific representatives from their local party representing them there).
I don’t mind the idea of OMOV, I just wish it’s proponents would accept that it doesn’t magically solve every problem the party has with participation. The question should be how we can best debate and decide party policy with all members who want to be involved in this day and age, not accepting ‘it has to be done at Conference’ as sacrosant and trying to tinker around with it.
Oh, and if ‘people shouldn’t vote unless they’ve heard the whole debate’ then people should be banned from entering the conference hall once a debate has begun – I’ve been in plenty of conference debates when a whole swathe of people have been whipped into the hall and told to vote a certain way five minutes before the vote happens.
@Nick Barlow +1
Fine, debate motions at conference, and have the social side, but put the proposal out to every member to vote on (postally or electronically). Few members have the time or money to spend a week at conference.
There are two separate issues
Whether every member who wants to and can go to Conference can play an equal part (that is what the article is proposing).
And the separate question of how the party better engages with all 60,000 members (which I am not really addressing).
The question floated in the article is really whether those quietly supporting the status quo on voting and non-voting members are widening the debate out into the much trickier practical area of OMOV in order to delay or halt change.
https://williamhobhouse.wordpress.com/
William Hobhouse says he lives in Somerset and is therefore caught by the English Question.
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Greater London have their own governance, English regions do not.
Therefore it is difficult for regional conferences to make policy for their regions.
Representing the local interest of a constituency party at federal level is desirable, but usually not possible.
The deliberative policy process resulting from merger negotiations provides us federal conference representatives with plenty to read and decide on, but reporting back takes other people’s time.
There is often a two-stage process, a fringe meeting, usually within the secure area, at which panellists are often not party members, and the audience need not be elected delegates,.
At one meeting I was the only one, the others represented business interests.
Because of the cost of hire of rooms these meetings usually last precisely one hour, including questions.
The voting happens in the main conference hall the following day.
The conference committee should not restrict questions to the leader. Nick Clegg liked to do Obama-style meetings. Hopefully Tim Farron will be as free, or freer. He does not have coalition partners.
@William: There will be a vote at the autumn conference on introducing OMOV, so at most (if the vote is towards the end of conference rather than at the start) the vote is going to happen only a few days after you want it to and instead it may even happen on the day you want it to.
That’s not really delaying matters compared to your proposal, save that it won’t immediately apply to this autumn conference – but then it’d be unfair on people who have to decide in advance to book travel, accommodation or days off work only to set the rules for one conference after it has already started, so deciding at one conference for what’s done at the next makes a lot of sense if we want to be fair to members.
@MarkPack it may be worth considering having this vote as close to the beginning of conference as possible and making it applicable immediately. I’m fine with turning up at Conference as non-voting, but it would be a wonderful thing if that changed while I was there.
What a way to welcome the new members!
+1 to what nick Barlow said
I remember the days pre merger with the SDP when all Liberal attendees could vote at conference. Then after the new constitution local parties had a quota. Taking us to the old Labour ideas of voting and non voting members.
I do agree with a qualifying period before new members can vote as a safety measure. Correct me if I am wrong please.
We are allowed to petition our local council or parliament to put an important issue on to the agenda .So why can we not ballot Liberal Democrat members on topical or emergency motions .This does not take away the right of conference to debate and vote for the issue as a decision making body of the party. but does allow rank and file members who perhaps due to economic circumstances or work commitments cannot afford the expensive jamboree of attending conference.
It also retains the integrity of conference as a representative body.
An afternoon of coding and we could have a system that would allow internet participation and end the biggest class divide in the party (who can and can’t attend conference and vote). Until that happens we’re stuck in a past that’s unfair and discriminates against the poor, disabled and working people. OMOV is just the start of what needs to happen for the party to live up to its name as regards participation.
The lib dems have for some time perpetuated the decption that all members make policy-they don-0pt-confrerence reps make some of it-though at least one policy that was rejected by conference found itself int eh last manifesto because of a vote amongst nine people-anything that can be done to correct the great deception would be progress-and william’s ideas are a good strt
In my experience there is no trouble at all for anyone who wants to be a constituency rep at conference to be that. There are far more places than there are likely to be people willing to spend all that time and money.
What is valuable, and is worth preserving even under “OMOV” so that local parties continue to elect their reps, is that the reps have a duty to report back to the wider local membership who can’t afford to go and similarly to be available to be lobbied beforehand. The vast majority of members who would like to influence policy can’t attend conference, at least the main autumn conference.
Neil Sandison Emergency motions are a real problem. They have been abused. They have been ignored. They could be filtered by the conference committee, already busy at conference. They can be voted on by delegates in two stages, for a place on the agenda and for substantive debate. There can also be multiple, unconnected crises in the world, about which we may know very little, so that a policy passed overwhelmingly becomes embarrassing for lack of research and changing circumstances.
Sorry about the problems, needing solutions.