Abstract
All British parties, with the one exception of the Conservative Party, have experienced membership surges in recent years, thus contradicting the assertion of many party scholars that membership is in terminal decline. The ebbs and flows of Labour’s membership since the 1980s are examined here before considering both the benefits and costs to the party of the recent spectacular surge associated with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The conclusion is that parties are not prisoners of broad societal trends; they have the ability to influence the ebbs and flows. To better understand and explain the membership trends requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative studies; something which is difficult in contemporary academic scholarship.
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Notes
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The steady decline in Conservative Party membership deserves a study in its own right. A significant explanatory factor is the increase in the powers of the Party Leader and the Conservative Central HQ and the reduction in the powers of Conservative constituency associations and individual members since 1998.
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Notwithstanding the fact that the Labour Party’s published membership figures until 1980 are flawed due to the way in which they were compiled, they nevertheless record a drop from 1 million in 1952 to 660,000 in 1979.
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245,520 individual party members (83.5% of the total number of individual party members) and 105,598 registered supporters (93.0% of the total registered supporters) cast a vote. 49.6% of individual members and 83.8% of registered supporters voted for Corbyn.
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A claim made by the Conservative Party in the 1950s.
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Power and Dommett (2018) analyse the weekly membership figures of the England and Wales Green Party in 2017.
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A study of members in 1989 concluded that the strongest factor in explaining an individual’s decision to join the party was ‘to get rid of Thatcher and the Conservatives’ (Seyd and Whiteley 1992, p. 74).
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See Labour Party, Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2017, p. 15.
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A treasurer of one city Labour Party with a current individual membership of 2,500 complained to the author that the local party is now no better off financially than in 2011 when there were 730 members. He stated that, as compared with a decade ago, this CLP now needs more local fund-raising events to pay for election campaigning.
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For the past 40 years, the Campaign Group has been the base for a small group of parliamentarians identified with the Left. In the extra-parliamentary party, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy has been the most prominent of Left groups. But today, the largest Left group is Momentum which originated from Corbyn’s leadership campaign (see, Klug et al. 2016).
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Corbyn only secured sufficient nominations to stand as a candidate because some of his opponents in the PLP ‘leant him’ their support—much to their later chagrin when Corbyn was elected leader.
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The number of constituency representatives on the NEC was increased from seven to nine in 2018. A change intended to strengthen the Left’s position on the NEC.
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Formby replaced Iain McNicol who was the party’s General Secretary from 2011 to 2017. McNicol was not identified as a Corbyn supporter.
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Katy Clarke, ex Labour MP, and a member of Corbyn’s leadership office. She was assisted by two members of the NEC. From time to time, the report uses the term ‘we’ and once refers to the ‘Democracy team’ but no details of other personnel engaged in the production of the report are provided.
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The report states that 11,425 submissions were received but no details have been published regarding the breakdown or tenor of these submissions.
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It is interesting to note how the underlying motives for internal party reform can switch according to the factional balance of power within the party. Back in the Blair/Brown New Labour period the introduction of all-member decision making at constituency level was supported by the party’s modernisers as a means of limiting the powers of the more left inclined delegates. Now, it is the Left which believes that its power and influence within the party can be strengthened by moving to all-member decision making at constituency level.
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Some of the proposed reforms, such as the replacement of the National Policy Forum by a new NEC Policy Committee, will not be introduced until after final approval at the 2019 annual party conference.
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Various newspapers reported, on the basis of an internal leak, that Labour’s membership had dropped by 12,000 in 2 months as a consequence of its stance on Europe.
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Twenty years ago, while conducting our research on Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party members, Paul Whiteley and I enjoyed access and collaboration from the party leaderships and the headquarters’ staff—and no attempts to influence our research. By contrast, in researching this paper, I experienced a blanket refusal from Labour Party headquarters’ staff to respond to my repeated requests for interviews. I am grateful to the two senior members of the headquarters’ staff—one an ex-member and the other still employed at party headquarters—who did agree to talk to me.
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One exception to this generalisation is Power and Dommett, 2018.
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I am grateful to Kate Dommett for her encouragement and advice.
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Appendix
Appendix
(25 February 2019)
Dear xxxx (individual name)
Play your part in writing Labour’s next manifesto
Last year, we asked you for ideas on how we can build on our exciting and positive programme of hope set out in the 2017 Manifesto ‘For the Many, Not the Few’. Thousands of people took the time to send us their thoughts, take part in discussions and attend events.
I want us to build on this activity in 2019, asking representatives of Labour’s policy-making body, the National Policy Forum (NPF) to lead on examining further important policy areas. I am again asking our members and stakeholders for their views, passion and expertise.
This year’s consultation documents cover eight key areas and running alongside will be a programme of activity to enable as many people as possible to get involved in our discussions.
Read the Consultation Documents
I encourage you to take a look at these documents, engage with our fellow members, hold discussions at your local party or affiliate group and submit ideas to the National Policy Forum, both as individuals and collectively in local meetings and events.
Together, we can deliver our vision for the many not the few.
Yours,
Jeremy Corbyn
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Seyd, P. Corbyn’s labour party: managing the membership surge. Br Polit 15, 1–24 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-019-00131-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-019-00131-6