The Liberal Democrats have an image problem. We are predominantly a party of middle class members, which I know because I’ve met a lot of members and they nearly all talk like me.
Because of the depressingly predictable socio-economic data, this also means that, since our members are better off, they are more likely to be male, white, and able bodied than your average Briton. The only conventional diversity stream that is not underrepresented purely by means of the economic correlations is LBGT, and this group is well represented in the party which hopefully also has something to do with Liberal politics and attitudes (in my experience which may be unrepresentative.)
There was a hot debate on the issue of our Parliamentary Party’s ethnic diversity (or lack thereof) at conference a few days ago, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter since (in spite of writing a motion that was merged into it) I was not called to speak.
Diversity Streams – a Drafting Issue
Firstly, I would like to criticise the narrowness of the motion’s focus and the selected amendments. The motion wholly talks about diversity of ethnic origin, and Amendment 1 implied falsely that job shares and reformed parliamentary working hours would only benefit women.
There are many under-represented diversity streams in the Houses of Commons and Lords, Scottish and European Parliaments and Welsh Assembly, and all the discourse our party produces, whether strong words or actionable party business should refer to diversity streams in general, unless picking out a particular example that affects a subset of streams. This would not only mean we save time in debates because people wouldn’t need to point out missing streams, but it is also future proof as the party automatically endorses the representation of undiscovered streams, and displays our wider commitment to freedom for all, not just those we remember to include.
I understand that EMLD’s Lester Holloway wrote the motion and Hammersmith and Fulham (i.e. CGB’s Dinti Batstone) wrote Amendment 1, and so each was representing their own sphere of interest, but, as I will say at the end, we need a co-ordinated and united approach on these issues; our campaign groups need to co-ordinate better and FCC need to be more open in their process for redrafting and merging similar motions (I know we all submitted our own version of this in June.)
Action Not Discrimination?
Lots of people spoke against shortlist quotas and all-BAME shortlists, saying things like “positive discrimination is still discrimination.” This is valid theory for “pure liberals” or libertarians, but we are not a party of libertarians, and it is inconsistent with many other areas of party policy to be knee-jerk against positive discrimination.
Take our attitude to Market Economics as an example; we are quite happy to discriminate against those earning large incomes by charging them not only more tax but more tax relative to their entire earnings. As social liberals we are happy with restricting the freedoms of over-powerful (rich) individuals to balance out the real and measurable freedom outcomes for those on low incomes; social mobility, healthcare that is free at the point of delivery, and so on. To suddenly abandon this interventionist evidence-based and outcome-focussed approach in the name of absolute freedom when it comes to candidate selection is philosophically inconsistent and, dare I say it, hypocritical. Make you minds up if you believe in equal opportunity or equal outcomes, and remember that the former was Thatcher’s dog-eat-dog holy grail.
Having said all that, I do not think the party actually needs to resort to positive discrimination. I think something needs to be done, we need to take Positive Action, but reserved places on shortlists is a lazy approach that doesn’t address the underlying problem of membership background bias. Our approach should be quality not quantity focussed, and should embody our Lib Dem perfectionism to the core.
Proposed Areas for Investigation and Consultation
So, having had a good poke at the motions proposers and detractors, I want to outline what, in my personal judgement, the party needs to do to Reflect Britain as well as Represent her.
Firstly, we need an extensive outreach programme. In some regions, we currently leave too many white working class and ethnically diverse areas off our canvas cards, because we target wealthier areas where our natural vote might be higher. We have excellent policies for and excellent skills to offer these areas, and our negligence to them, and their electoral indifference to us, is a vicious cycle denying us members, votes, a diversity of experience that would make our party richer and stronger, and a diversity of presentation (both speech patterns and physical appearance) which would help us appeal even more in these areas. If you start reflecting the population, you might just get to represent them.
Now we already do this in some areas, but this doesn’t seem to have improved the diversity of MPs and PPCs. So, once our outreach operations are well underway we need to start membership drives in these areas; hold events in their communities, inviting speakers interested in issues that matter locally, and encourage new grass roots participation, encourage people to stand for local party executive, so that the pool of members that our candidates are drawn from is more diverse in itself.
Secondly, we need a better system of pastoral care for our candidates. Campaign for Gender Balance already has a system for mentoring female candidates; I think this should be extended (and expertise shared) to all approved candidates, to give them support even while looking for a seat. Resources are finite, so priority should be given to those from diversity streams (including those with low incomes, in my opinion.) This duty of pastoral care that we have as a party to our hard working candidates especially applies to those who are unsuccessful, something which I am glad Sal Brinton is looking into as part of the Review of Candidates.
Thirdly, I still believe that a small amount of means tested candidate funding would be of significant benefit to some potential candidates, and an excellent candidature-selling tool for those in the groups we should be targeting in our outreach and mentoring programmes. I appreciate that my study on this doesn’t go into anywhere near enough detail, for example I was unaware that one can spend hundreds of pounds and several weeks off work phone and doorstep canvassing members merely trying to get selected for a target seat, but we are restricted by the lack of funding and I chose a model that was at least realistic in terms of the support we can afford to give: I’d love to go further.
Fourthly, we need to reform the way Parliament operates to make the job of MP more like a job and less like an endless fairground ride. Job shares should be considered and their feasibility evaluated (I for one believe they would work fine, but I am sure others would require detailed evidence to be persuaded of this,) and parliamentary sitting hours badly need reform. Someone (female or male) with a young family, or a chronic disability or illness, cannot and should not be expected to stay at the office until 2AM simply in order to vote. Hopefully the report submitted to Nick Clegg’s office by the 1st of December from Amendment 1 will form the basis for these reforms.
Finally I would like to make the point that we need a coordinated approach on this. There are actions proposed here for grassroots activists like myself, for those conducting the various consultations and reviews in the next few months, for conference to consider and for the party’s executive bodies to ultimately act on. We need a multi-faceted multi-level approach to this problem, and the party movers and shakers should not consider the measures proposed as a shopping list but a package, albeit no doubt with some omissions.
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28 Comments
I stopped reading as soon as you tried to morally equate taxation and racial discrimination.
Since you mention jobshares as a way of improving access, I’m going to take the opportunity to repost what I said on a previous thread that had, I fear, gone dead just before I found it. (I’m going to assume it was that way round.)
I think this sort of proposal probably misses something quite central to the nature of politics. Being an MP isn’t really a “job”. MPs aren’t busy because there’s so much for them to do – the amount of “work” they could taken on is no doubt infinite (so jobsharing makes no difference, because infinity divided by two is infinity), while the amount of work they have to do is actually zero, because there is no contract that specifies their duties (so again jobsharing makes no difference because zero divided by two is zero).
The reason that MPs work such incredibly long hours is that becoming an MP is a ferociously competitive business, in which the chief requisite for winning is lots and lots of publicity: being seen to be working, turning up at constituency functions, speaking in parliament, getting your face on the TV and your voice on the local radio. So what would the effect of a jobshare MP be? Well, you would have two people, so you could do twice as much work, and thereby increase your competitive advantage perhaps – and you’d have to, to have any chance of offsetting the negative effects of being a slightly indistinct team rather than a clear individual. But of course, that means that whatever disadvantage women or other underrepresented groups face is unaffected.
In fact, plenty of Councillors effectively work as jobshares already – what else do you call it when you have two or three Councillors, usually from the same party, representing the same ward? I’m not sure they work any less hard than their single-seat equivalents; though it would be interesting to know whether there are significantly more women representing multi-seat wards than single-seats.
I wonder whether we as a party should consider having just one body devoted to promoting equality and diversity, rather than having EMLD, WLD/CGB, Delga and LDDA all operating in their own small fields. While there are dangers in a single body not taking the concerns of one or other interest group seriously, it strikes me that many of the problems and challenges each body faces are quite similar and there is scope for a substantial amount of joint working.
We probably also need to investigate to see whether candidates from all these groups are coming through adequately at a local level (I suspect they are, but I don’t know for certain) and what barriers there are in getting these people through to being candidates or parliamentarians.
“Lots of people spoke against shortlist quotas and all-BAME shortlists, saying things like “positive discrimination is still discrimination.” This is valid theory for “pure liberals” or libertarians, but we are not a party of libertarians, and it is inconsistent with many other areas of party policy to be knee-jerk against positive discrimination.
Take our attitude to Market Economics as an example; we are quite happy to discriminate against those earning large incomes by charging them not only more tax but more tax relative to their entire earnings. As social liberals we are happy with restricting the freedoms of over-powerful (rich) individuals to balance out the real and measurable freedom outcomes for those on low incomes; social mobility, healthcare that is free at the point of delivery, and so on. To suddenly abandon this interventionist evidence-based and outcome-focussed approach in the name of absolute freedom when it comes to candidate selection is philosophically inconsistent and, dare I say it, hypocritical. Make you minds up if you believe in equal opportunity or equal outcomes, and remember that the former was Thatcher’s dog-eat-dog holy grail.”
THIS. Thank god someone is finally pointing out the hypocrisy of a bunch of white, mostly male members saying that positive discrimination is tantamount to eugenics.
“The only conventional diversity stream that is not underrepresented purely by means of the economic correlations is LBGT”
The G strand of LGBT, I’ll grant you, but the other strands are far less synonymous with the demographic described.
“positive discrimination is still discrimination.”
I would actually turn this on its head and say “lack of positive discrimination is discrimination in itself”.
People from a certain demographic are more likely to be financial and professionally successful, regardless of their actual merits. I know because I belong to that demographic and it has been much easier for me to succeed than for some of my friends who are equally intelligent but have had less chances due to their parents’ financial circumstances. Plenty of academic studies confirm that the primary driver of a child’s likelihood of academic success is their parent’s income band.
In particular, if your parents are from an ethnic minority then their parents were still from the time when people of different races were activiely denied better-paying jobs, so their current economic situation still has a large component of what you could call “post-racist hangover”.
By putting in place measures to favour people from ethnic minorities or from outside the middle-class professional bubble, we wouldn’t be ‘discriminating’ but just counterbalancing the already-present effects of discrimination.
A candidate from a disadvantaged financial background who has the same apparent level of skill or ability as a candidate from a well-off background is likely in fact to have more skill or ability. By failing to take this into account, our current system is just importing existing ethnic and class-based discrimination into our party’s field of candidates.
@ Bernard Salmon
This sounds like a very good idea – or if they don’t want to merge completely (which I could understand given that there are some issues specific to each), then at least we need an umbrella organisation to there’s a bit more of a coherent message.
Blanco, you are right to some extent, but I did oppose the EMLD amendment this time round as I thought it not well-drafted or appropriate given the cirumstances – I am strongly opposed to libertarianism mind, and will actively campaign for better representation.
However, I think this article is interesting, and Adam Bell’s comments disappointing. Socio-economic factors have in the past gone hand-in-hand with racial discrimination, and I think tackling one could help tackle the other. I completely agree that one is worse than the other, but you should at least consider the proposal further than you seem to.
Incidentally, someone I know sounds incredibly ‘posh’ as if from a high-income or privileged background, but the individuals parents, and upbringing and own personal income are not. So be aware that sounding like X isn’t necessarily the best indicator or X. Strangely, for an LDV article, I agree with at least one point made in almost all the comments and the main article (particularly your point Catherine – society can itself be discriminatory without an individual actively intending it to be so).
Tell all that to the man on the street who lost out because he had the wrong colour skin or because he married the wrong gender. It should NEVER happen.
It’s a real shame that an otherwise good article had to make the specious and inflammatory comparison between taxation and discrimination. It wasn’t necessary for the point to be made about taking steps to encourage diversity in the party. It’s certainly not a good way to build consensus; especially when most people are likely to agree with the action you actually propose.
I like the language of ‘diversity streams’. It addresses the party’s core problem here, which is a ‘conformity stream’ of white, middle-class, university-educated professionals.
If we want to return to the social profile we had in the Liberal Party in the pre-merger in (at least) the Westcountry, we need to stop emphasising the high “standard” membership fee. This has encouraged the development of a different profile party, just mentioned by PhilW. Irrespective of the gender, ethnic, and other balances in the party, to build up lower income membership would be a good thing, and in many communities would build the BME numbers. That way, there would be a much wider spectrum of members to come forward as candidates at various levels.
As I posted on Davina Kirwan’s thread, however, there is a great need for financial support for PPCs if we are to seriously widen our base at that level. Sorry, but this is the single biggest issue, and we have to address it somehow – it’s difficult so people haven’t tried much yet!
Adam Bell
“I stopped reading as soon as you tried to morally equate taxation and racial discrimination.”
That’s funny, so did I.
I think there might be some positive action that the party should take in this area. It should get each local party to identify people from under represented minority groups within the local party who would make good candidates and encourage them to consider standing. It should mentor them and find suitable training for them so they are able to become candidates. Rigging selection procedures is still discrimination and is not purist. We should take action, but it should be the right action.
@Catherine, you are of course right sheen you say: ‘
@Catherine of course you are right ‘lack of positive discrimination is discrimination in itself’. Reminds me of 1984:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Just to say, that the party has a body called the Diversity Engagement Group, which acts as an “umbrella” organisation for all diversity strands with representatives from Delga, LDDA, WLD, EMLD etc.
Hi all, Thanks for your comments.
@Adam Bell, @John Richardson, @Colin Green, @Smcg
I don’t think we will ever agree on this. I believe passionately that you need to measure the freedom people have by how many of them are able to use it, and do, not by the fact that they are technically able to use it.
Luckily, we don’t need to agree on this principal because compromise measures are there for the taking; we can have the endless debate without ever persuading one another and still get something done.
Can we agree to disagree?
@Jen.
Perhaps this is true; I don’t have any actual data on this as I don’t work for the party membership department. It was, as I tried to point out, only anecdotal evidence, so I apologise for implying that this stream deserved less attention; this was not what I meant.
@Malcom.
I am afraid that I disagree, being a politician is a career like any other. It requires skills, qualifications and regular performance review and is not purely the game of building up one’s own fame (although this seems to help some of them hold their seats).
Certainly from the point of view of persuading people to stand, it is essential that we think of it, and argue the case, in this way.
@Bernard, @Catherine,
I think this was what I was leaning towards, yes.
I don’t think we necessarily need yet another diversity SAO, to add to the collection, and I’m not sure that the specialist SAOs should merge, as they each do lots of work attracting members of their own diversity streams to the party and encouraging them to be candidates.
I think a co-ordinating role, such as a Cowley Street based diversity team (if only we had the money!) to help spread good practise between the groups and co-ordinate funding (again, if only!) would be a great step forward. It would also be easy for these groups to start sharing conference motions and policy lobbying as a team of teams now, which would be a small boost to cohesion for free.
Let’s see what we can achieve on this by March, especially following the review to be submitted to Clegg by December. You can all help – remember you don’t need to be a member of a diversity stream to join their SAO.
@Dave Page
Ah, that would be it then! 🙂
@Henry,
You are of course right; my posh accent is the product of a comprehensive school and I’m sure many others’ are too. But as Martin Shapland said at the podium last Wednesday; “Look around! we are a predominantly white, predominantly male party,” and the economic statistics don’t always lie (sadly).
@PhilW
I like it too; I picked it up hanging around the CGB lot and my feminist friends. I don’t know who to credit for the language though; it probably originated outside the party.
@Tim13
Do we have a high membership fee? Scrap it now! As far as I knew it was £15 per year, compared to the Labour party’s £40-odd.
@Joe. We can agree to disagree. As you say, there is plenty that can be done that doesn’t involve discrimination. Poke the hornets’ nest though and out we come. 😉
Btw, minimum membership fee is £10 standard and £6 concessions (under 26 or on benefits). The recommended fee is £52.
Joe – the Minimum Membership fee is / was £10pa – but the more publicised standard (“recommended”) fee is well over £50 now (?£58). Fees are going up, I understand, agreed by Conference, which I didn’t attend this year – I assume your figure of £15 is the new Minimum (there is also a concession fee which was £6 for those on specified benefits).
Sorry, John, for repetition, hadn’t seen your post until after I had posted.
As a state educated founder member `Coalition’ L/D `die-hard’ I rate this post as right on the money with need not only to recognise that Conference is dominated by middle class demographics.
I suspect amongst the Party Cllrs across the UK. however,there would be a much wider diversity but still with a massive gap to narrow on recrutment of women and ethnic L/D Councillors and more `Activists’ .
`Activists’ should purge their Constuences with `Membership Drives’ to drive up membership and youth diversity and women talent from a `knock-up’ of all doors.
Good character and forthright Liberal values is no respecter of social background .
The majority of the RAF fighter pilots who heroically fought for liberal values in the `Battle of Britain’ were from Englsh Public Schools.
The lost 5 million Labour voters between 1997 and 2010 are up for grabs as is the nailing of the so called`middle ground’ in politics by 2015.
The debate on `Diversity’ was really a febrile admission that L/D travel up has to make provison to sign up and involve a new base of `grass-root’ supporters from the `Marked Registers’ post haste, as there is all to play for.
I agree with Joe Jordan who is right on the money with her 4 main areas of concern .There has to be more `Diversity’ amongst L/D MP`s but `positive action’ is clearly more fair and sensible.
There has to greater `pastoral care’ for candidates and recognition for help for women in running for `Target Seats’.
All elected Women MPs from all Political Parties posit the same complaint thatis namely that the `Mother of all Parliaments’ is not particularly gender friendly to real mothers and must be more gender balanced with practical resources for children/nappy changing or creche provision and so on.
Similarly male MPs should have the right to use any new child centred resources as fathers are equal to parenting roles.
I would be interested in any research on this resources question by any studies with Holland,Sweden and Iceland etc.How do they treat their Women MPs?
Job shares are more feasible in Council Cabinet roles and would not work for Parliament in my view.
New ground has to be broken.
I predict that it will be the L/D`s who get the `Diversity’ moving forwrd by next Spring and set a new benchmark for increased recognition for people from all parts of our diverse communities.
Don’t worry I’m sure you’ll have lots of disability claimants, poor , working class people and northerners at next years conference. If its in Liverpool again I’m sure there’ll be lots of people with lots more time to attend. Diversity indeed !
Joe Jordan
“Can we agree to disagree?”
Sure, no problem. I have no ideological fixation with my opinion. It’s just that after quiet reflection, I hold it to be true. I wouldn’t even object to a bit of mild affirmative action, if it didn’t exclude other groups. On a scale or rightness or wrongness it is far better than some other things. I would be mindful of the fact that it can create problems as well as solve them, though with care I’m sure there would be a net benefit. It should be something we do as a temporary measure rather than official policy.
I take your point about equality of opportunity being practical rather than theoretical. Theoretically I could become a PPC for a winnable seat. Practically, I couldn’t afford to give up work for a year to campaign full time which is more or less what is required. The fact that I am white, middle aged, middle class and with a middle income means nothing. It is just as much a barrier to me as it is to someone of a less over represented demographic group. The barrier that prevents ordinary people becoming MPs is not race related nearly so much as wealth related. Ordinary people can become MPs but it is easier if you can afford to give up work and move to another part of the country. This, I suspect, is where racial barriers have their effect.
I’ll be interested to see if Davina has any joy getting those stats on BAME selection/election out of Cowley Street. But pending that, my instinct is that whoever said above that this is mainly about income is bang on, and I would really like to see some movement on your funding suggestion, in particular.
Last time all this came up I remember having a conversation with someone (quite possibly myself) about the potential ways we could provide co-ordinated funding “in kind” – ie members volunteering to provide services to candidates that usually cost time and/or money to help them do their job as a PPC. American politics is much more advanced in this area, I believe. Transport and domestic help would be the obvious two, but there could have all kinds of skills out there which the party doesn’t currently tap.
“there is a great need for financial support for PPCs”
Too right – I am on a reasonable salary, but even I had difficulty squaring the circle, and if I hadn’t had to worry about money, I would have had more time to throw myself at the campaign freely. It is all too easy to feel this pressure.
See, that’s why jobshares are a non-starter. It’s not so much that you can’t jobshare being an MP, as that you can’t meaningfully jobshare being a candidate. It’s probably also why parliament is becoming dominated, as is often complained, by “professional politicians”: if you work for a political party, you’re likely to get as much time as you need to nurse a seat, not to mention an obvious advantage in making yourself known to activists. That’s probably true too of paid union officials, so long as they’re Labour Party candidates.
Alix’s suggestion is a good one, though I’m not sure it’s effect would be more than marginal; better than nothing, of course. Paying candidates — not a professional salary, for sure, but enough to make it feasible for someone on an ordinary income to scrape through for a year — is probably the best idea. Except … it’s not as if there aren’t any black or women professionals with control over their time and a financial cushion, yet we are doing very badly, even in comparison with other parties. Can we really be confident that income is the real problem here?
We need the people at the top of our party to be selling it in terms of something you can join to get politically active and change things, and not just as something you vote for because you’re a fan of Nick Clegg. That is, we need to break away from this passive consumer model of politics, in which the political parties are sold like consumer brands. So perhaps we ought to chuck out all those people at the top of our party who have come from that sort of background. If you’re an ad-man, your job is to sell your client’s brand of beans, not to get people involved in actively developing their own sort of beans. Chuck out the ad-men, and make our party back into what it ought to be – a movement of the people challenging established power.
Joe, I agree totally that we need to recruit and outreach to BAME communities, and other under-represented groups in the party, however this is just one part of the solution. Yes, we need this but we cannot let this pressing task take our eye off the ball of ensuring that we are not overlooking the current BAME talent we already have. After all, a visibly diverse party is a recruiting agent in itself, and the people from BAME backgrounds currently members can assist with recruitment every bit as well as anyone else if they feel they are recruiting people to a party that practices what it preaches regarding equality.
I don’t see a need to merge EMLD with CGB, DELGA and LDDA, because while there are commonalities between the different equalities strands there are also differences in the dynamics of each area. The bringing of these strands together is the job of the Diversity Engagement Group, chaired by Vince Cable. We have a diversity unit who’s remit is also cross-equality. However each ‘group’ is about people who identify speaking for themselves. Part of the reason why EMLD and CGB have broadly different ideas about how to move forward is because the issues of women and race are not in exactly the same place. However I agree totally there is a greater need for cooperation, which I really hope will happen from now, but the review agreed in the motion may well have to grapple with different perspectives, with some wanting change to selection procedures and others – mainly in CGB – who put faith in more training and mentoring as the way forward.
And yes lots of people did speak out against positive discrimination in the conference debate. The problem was that the proposals were not about positive discrimination – i.e guaranteeing an outcome – it was about positive action by creating more opportunity for BAME hopefuls.
“We are predominantly a party of middle class members”
That is so unfair, at least a quarter of my branch are upper class.
It’s not just a question of money – the Party had a grant of nearly a million pounds solely to improve minority representation at this election, and ended up worse off than before. Perhaps that money should be better targeted towards PPCs – as white millionaires seem to have done quite well from our party – or towards grassroots membership drives – which in hardened agent’s minds can be a distraction from keeping seats held in vulnerable areas and thus the political gravy train that supports everything else the party does.
The question of whether AV passes or not matters to this debate – it will change the way people vote and campaign and it will change the ability of a professional politician to have a full sway over a constitutency. I hope the Diversity unit (which is new) is a real mover for change working amongst all of us and that we can return to a conference (maybe Sheffield, maybe Birmingham) with a full and comprehensive set of proposals that are not destroyed by ignorance or misinformation from any viewpoint.
RobB
LY Mem/Dev