It's my party...

Party membership has changed. Party members less so. How do parties manage their memberships in the modern age?

The photo above is of Keir Starmer and Richard Parker, right?

Well yes and no.

Those two men are certainly foregrounded, But what interests me here are the people in the background. Those who have - largely for free (this isn’t my photo - I got it from searching for free images of Labour Rallies so I can’t guarantee there aren’t staffers in it) - spent their time, energy and often not insignificant amounts of money getting those two elected.

A few years ago, I wrote a rather well-received play about Labour members (you can watch it on YouTube). My framing device was a trigger ballot against a sitting MP (something that was quite topical at the time) but my inspiration was a blog post I had been thinking about for years but never actually written which I titled in my head ‘The Four People You Meet in the Labour Party’. I was then and still am fascinated by the kinds of people who join political parties; their differences and their commonalities.

In part, this is self-anthropology. I have been a member of the Labour Party for almost exactly 34 and a half years having been given membership as an additional fifteenth birthday present by my Dad (himself a member since he was 17). As I have worked at different layers of the onion that is Labour politics - never at the centre but never completely removed from it either - thinking about members has been central to the work that I have done. Whether it was as Contributing Editor of LabourList or working for affiliated Socialist Societies I have had the audience of engaged Labour members as a key part of my work for over 20 years. So as well as being one, I have also had to make sure that I was appealing to them.

But not just to them. And how much members’ interests should be appealed to by the leadership and bureaucracy of the party has been an issue I have waxed and waned on over the years.

It’s a lot more complex than anyone who hasn’t held membership of political parties wrongly thinks it should be. People have a real snobbery when it comes to those who join political parties. But these people are the lifeblood of British democracy. They just aren’t the only people that parties represent.

So how should a modern party of government navigate the often challenging relationship it has with its members?