In some cases it will force Labour politicians to recognise what actually concerns their constituents and force them to the left on issues.

This is excellent news. It will be great to see Labour listening to their grassroots supporters and also to the people who the party would imagine were their natural supporters but who are alienated by the distance between their lives and those of the policy makers. I’m a vocal critic of the direction Labour has taken and really welcome this chance for it to become again the party that represents the real concerns of people and for the party itself to get involved in help that is not just about setting policy in Westminster and balancing budgets.

I have Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” on order after reading a summary of his twelve rules. He seems like an inspirational man.

“Saul Alinsky, the man who developed community organising, the self-styled ‘pragmatic radical’, is my guide to a lot of political thinking” – and was quite an influence on Obama, perhaps the Millibands believe if it can work in America it can work here?

I assume the approach must have some potency, at least enough for strident right wingers to upload a rebuttal on YouTube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNvKShmG3Q&feature=related

Serious question. What exactly will Labour (still too full of New labbers, still tribally blinkered, still neo-liberal) bring of merit to those active at the grass-roots. Without any obvious benefit, it looks like trying to commandeer others’ efforts to prop up the Labour brand (just as the Tories have been trying to misappropriate the voluntary and community sector).

Community initiative is a GOOD THING.

Only if someone tries to organise or command it does it risk becoming a BAD THING.

Neither Cameron nor Milliband understand that because they believe that no one can do anything of value outwith their direct control.

That belief is in their DNA.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out. Connecting Labour to grassroots activism does of course have the potential to drag the leadership leftwards. I’m afraid though that we also need to be wary of the potential for this to neuter and co-opt the activists, with their absorbtion into Labour having a chilling, smothering effect. The urge not to rock the boat, be disloyal, undermine the party, etc, may silence people who at other times would have spoken out or taken action.

New Labour was far from a progressive, left-wing force, and its by no means proven that Labour has moved on from that in a meaningful sense. What we have so far are some nice words, which is great, but sensible people on the left should remain in wait-and-see mode where Labour is concerned. The burden of proof is very much on the party leadership to show that it has fundamentally changed. The right-wing of the party is right-wing in absolute as well as relative terms, and it hasn’t gone away despite its defeat at the hands of the Labour movement during the leadership election.

So the effect here can go in more than one direction. There may be a positive effect on Labour from the activists, and there may also be a negative effect on the activists from Labour. We will see how it works out.

One thing worth mentioning from the Guardian article is the £250k start-up donation to this initiative from Lord Sainsbury. It should hardly need pointing out that the interests of extremely wealthy men like Lord Sainsbury, and the ordinary people that the likes of Citizens UK are set up to defend, will frequently be very different. What effect will any reliance on sources like this for funding have on how the initiative functions? Again, this is something to watch with interest.

Neither Cameron nor Milliband understand that because they believe that no one can do anything of value outwith their direct control.

That’s certainly BS on Cameron, and I suspect it’s probably not true of Miliband E either. Cameron has devolved a lot of Govt power onto the relevant cabinet ministers, and is very keen to promote a ‘Prime Minister as chairman’ not chief executive ethos. He is also devolving power away from central Govt altogether in health, education and policing. As for Ed Miliband, if he was so desperate to keep power firmly in his hands, I doubt he’d have appointed Ed Balls as shadow Chancellor.

@ David Wearing (5). Well put.
some ominous sentences from Sunny’s account:

This is excellent news for the party

Which party? The neo-liberal one. Notably not said is that it will be good news for activists. Many currently active and protesting are incensed at policies and ideologies that Labour actively pressed for (eg marketisation/privatisation of the NHS, PFIs,outsourcing, atos and the workfare scandals etc), and that paved the way for the Tories.

It neatly brings David Miliband into the fold

Actually I want the likes of him very very fecking far from the fold, thank you. They are a huge part of the problem and their opportunistic attempts to co-opt others is nauseating.

Tend to be with Messrs Cameron & Wearing on this. Time will tell.

As for Big Society – I see Tim J has rather generously referred to Cameron’s offloading of local responsibilities to people with no resources as ‘devolving.’ If you mean removing money (council and voluntary sector funding), accountability for decisions (likes of the audit commission) and real options (people are already being told to throw themselves on the mercy of private companies to get rooms to use for ‘job clubs,’ etc – well, yeah, Cameron has devolved like a hot one. I accept that you refer primarily to health and education, Tim, but really – all I see at the local level is people being devolved into homelessness and powerlessness.

I have to say I was a bit put off by the first wave of M4C last year. In a spirit of goodwill I emailed in with details about how Labour councillors and activists might benefit from the training on offer in my area (West Lancashire) but was completely ignored despite follow-ups. It did seem the organisers at that time had a very specific view of who was a suitable person to be trained, and perhaps it shouldn’t have done but it got up my nose a bit that one of the first schemes was with Oxford University students; I’ve absolutely nothing against that group (and I know it’s a v good Labour club) being involved, but it just seemed to give out the wrong message about what community organisation is about.

That said, I’m still really interested in what’s being offered up now. That’s not least because, as the leader of a Labour group of councillors and a reasonably active ward councillors with lots of community initiatives under my belt, I see both myself and many of my colleagues as fulfilling the role of ‘community organiser’ in all but name. Sure, additional training would be welcome, but the relationship between what’s in our job description – community champion – and that of community organiser seems a very close one to me.

So I’d ask those in the know a genuine, non-rhetorical question: how will community organiserss be different from decent Labour councillors (and candidates)?

“Notably not said is that it will be good news for activists. Many currently active and protesting are incensed at policies and ideologies that Labour actively pressed for (eg marketisation/privatisation of the NHS, PFIs,outsourcing, atos and the workfare scandals etc), and that paved the way for the Tories.”

This is obviously good news for activists, because it involves £250,000 being spent on helping train people to run grassroots anti-cuts campaigns on all the issues you mention as well as local cuts to public services.

What’s not at all clear is whether it is much help for the Labour Party electorally. There is no evidence that this approach to community organising helps win elections, and as Dan Hodges notes, the Movement for Change did quite a lot of harm to David Miliband’s campaign:

“It was a disaster”, said one key aide. “We had these guys sitting down with constituency Chairs who had just fought off the Tories and Lib Dems by a couple of hundred votes, and they’re saying, ‘Right, we’re going to teach you how to organise a campaign’.”

*

“So I’d ask those in the know a genuine, non-rhetorical question: how will community organiserss be different from decent Labour councillors (and candidates)?”

Ideally, they shouldn’t be. The Labour Party should invest in training its activists about different approaches to campaigning and community development, of which the Alinsky approach should be one (but not the only one). Labour councillors, council candidates, members and activists would find the community organising approach an interesting one, and one which they might like to adopt in certain situations.

My worry is that this will be adopted by the leadership as the new and sole correct way to campaign, when (a) some activists find the approach deeply off-putting (for people who aren’t religious, it takes quite a lot of getting used to) and (b) it isn’t much help for winning elections.

I accept that you refer primarily to health and education, Tim, but really – all I see at the local level is people being devolved into homelessness and powerlessness.

That may be your experience, but you can’t simultaneously decry David Cameron for an ideological mission to cut back the frontiers of the state, and criticise him for being a centralising control freak. There aren’t many Govt reforms that I can think of that have increasing the power of the centralising state as their prime objective.

@ don (16) Sorry Don, but I can’t see the party genuinely giving out £250,000 to people who may (and very rightly) still find its upper echelons thoroughly objectionable. As Yorkshirecat put it on the Guardian thread:

So the Labour Party is trying to pull the SWP trick of infiltrating popular resistance and dissident movements to try to gain members and the appearance that its platform is supported? How deeply depressing.

Its clear that the aim of this is to neuter popular protest and make sure that it occurs in a way which is acceptable to the state. I for one don’t believe that the authoritarians of the Labour Party, whose record on protest against the Iraq War was so discgraceful, and who gave the green light for the undercover operations against environmentalists have suddenly changed their spots.

I can only hope that people have long enough memories not to be taken in by this. Its only by through truly autonomous independent protests that things will ever change for the better. Sure its a long haul, but its better than the endless batting from frying pan to fire.

@11 Can’t say I criticised Cameron for being a centralising control freak, Tim, although with localities being cast adrift at the rate they are, that’s what he’ll become by default.

And it certainly is my experience that people are being devolved to powerlessness, joblessness and, ultimately, homelessess. In the last two months, I’ve been to Manchester, West Lancashire, Shropshire, Wigan, Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesborough and Cambridgeshire among others area, and that is exactly what I’ve seen. Even boroughs that supposedly did well (Dorset is an example) by way of government settlement are crying poor and cutting – Dorset’s got 12 libraries up for the hit and says its settlement was extremely unfair. If others have other experience of local government council cuts going well and not hitting communities, then by all means let’s hear them.

I don’t know how any of you can fall for any of this shit. Lewisham Labour used to be full of community organisers. New Labour excommunicated all of them. New Labour is a top down structure. How is any Milliband any different? It is the nature f power. the nature of power needs to change. You don’t need to be affiliated to the party system to change things. In this country politicians always follow social change they never lead it, unless it is a social change for the worse then they lead from the front. Not with a barge pole mate.

you can’t simultaneously decry David Cameron for an ideological mission to cut back the frontiers of the state, and criticise him for being a centralising control freak.

Sad to say, with Cameron, the first is exaggerated and so far illusory and the second is understated.

I was referring to the difference between a genuine bottom up grass roots movement, say the tea party or UK uncut, and the top down initiatives that come from career politicians.

Dogs like these tell their tails when they can wag.

It strikes me that this is getting things the wrong way around. What we really need to push for is for community groups needs to create their own party.

In Holland, for example, the various local ‘Liveable’ campaigns eventually coalesced into the Freedom Party. The fact that this is fascist flavoured shouldn’t blind us to the organisational achievement of the people who saw a gap in the political market and built a party to fill it.

With Labour now being the play thing of bigots and control-freaks, and with the Lib Dems effectively merging with the Tories, we now have an equally big political gap in the UK.

The potential exists to create a new pro-community and pro-’common man’ party. A party which will stand up to the mighty, rather than follow the old LabCon orthodoxy of licking up and kicking down.

Where else can this party come from than the various community and action groups that are currently scattered about all over the place?

David W: I’m afraid though that we also need to be wary of the potential for this to neuter and co-opt the activists, with their absorbtion into Labour having a chilling, smothering effect.

To be honest, I doubt this will involve many left activists who are antagonistic towards Labour. They will continue to see Labour with a degree of suspicion.

For my part, who still views many parts of the party with some degree of suspicion, this is a welcome development and has the potential to help the party electorally and culturally.

The ones who don’t want to be smothered are welcome to carry on doing their own thing. There is space for everyone.

Alisdair: . Notably not said is that it will be good news for activists. Many currently active and protesting are incensed at policies and ideologies that Labour actively pressed for

As I said – why is it bad news for them? They’re welcome to carry on as they do. If they want to organise and get mobilised, who is going to stop them?

Don Paskini:
What’s not at all clear is whether it is much help for the Labour Party electorally. There is no evidence that this approach to community organising helps win elections, and as Dan Hodges notes

I don’t think the example of David’s campaign over a period of 3-4 months is a suitably good example to extrapolate over a longer period.

If the Labour party is to won electorally, it also needs a culture change that brings it closer to the communities it serves. I’m not sure one comment by someone we don’t know on a post by Dan Hodges really refutes my point.

“New Labour is a top down structure. How is any Milliband any different?”

New labour wouldn’t have tried this. I realise there is rightly suspicion about the motives behind community organising – but I think small steps need to be encouraged (and small steps are usually longer lasting than attempts at big bang style reforms). There is a battle internally in the labour party, and anything that chips away at the blairite control tendancy is a good thing.

@Sunny

To be honest, I doubt this will involve many left activists who are antagonistic towards Labour. They will continue to see Labour with a degree of suspicion.

It does’t really have to do with whether people are “antagonistic” towards Labour as such. Its more of a practical question.

The Darling plan involved cuts which he described as “deeper and tougher than Thatcher’s”. As time goes on, Labour will become clearer about which of these cuts it supports specifically. Some will be highly regressive. What do Labour’s community organisers do then – in respect of a regressive cut which Labour supports? Defy the leadership and their funders and campaign against the cut? Or not defend the ordinary people that they’re supposed to represent?

How much autonomy will these people have? How much freedom of action and political leeway will they allow themselves, given the funding and other ties to the Labour hierarchy? Again, the hope is that they’ll pull Labour leftwards. The danger is that they’ll be put off or prevented from getting involved in campaigns which they might otherwise have lent their energy and abilities to.

As I say, there are positive and negative possibilities here. The best way to avoid the dangers I’m describing is to acknowledge their existence from the start and to think about how to deal with them.

The danger is that they’ll be put off or prevented from getting involved in campaigns which they might otherwise have lent their energy and abilities to.

You’re assuming its a zero sum game. I don’t. And we’ll have to see how these things pan out, I doubt it will be a uniform response.

is to acknowledge their existence from the start and to think about how to deal with them.

The only way to try and push this in the right direction is to join the party and get involved

@1, @2, @Sunny.

Rules for Radicals? Yeah right!

I suggest that those of you who haven’t read Alinsky’s book do so.

You want to read the chapter on Means and Ends. There he talks about how Congress in India adopted pacifism because they knew that passive resistance would work against the British, but then dumped the idea as soon as they had power when they could use violence against their own opponents – just the kind of duplicity that I’ve sadly come to expect from left wing – and especially Labour – politicians.

Then there’s the bit where he explains that the community organizer’s first job is to create issues or problems. That’s right, patronise us some more will you, because we haven’t got a clue what our problems are.

You see, Mr Alinsky, like many of his ilk was very big on attempting to manipulating ordinary people for the purpose of achieving power that he could use to fulfil his own ends.

Why don’t you just listen to us for a change rather than trying to manipulate us you elitist bastards?

16. Chervil- absolutely. A HUGE gap and HUGE dissatisfaction with everything Westminster. Be the organisation which fills that gap and politicians will fall over themselves to try and associate with you- not the other way round.

Dave Bones @14:

Tend to agree – these kind of ‘initiatives’ almost inevitably end up being ‘managed’ by sharp suited ‘all-singing-from-the-same-hymn-sheet’ New Lab style commissars. They only hear the words of the hymn that they want to hear . Not ‘Fight the good fight’ – so much as ‘Oh Happy band of Pilgrims’ and ‘All things bright and Beautiful.’ Beware of the hymn-spinners!