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A Community and ACEVO (the third sector CEO association) fringe entitled ‘Organising our Communities’, at this year’s Labour conference, saw a discussion of the potential of community organising with in and with out the labour movement, not only with in organisations, but between them too.
Chris Gray reports for Unions21:
This fringe raised some important questions for those attempting to rejuvenate the labour movement. Primarily, as Blair McDougall, Director of Movement for Change explained: Although organising is core to the labour movement’s roots it encompasses many different traditions. His view was that all of these are valid and all must be utilised.
Joe Mann, Deputy General Secretary of Community, said that the trade union model of organising was distinct and must be evangelised further afield. He warned that all sections of the labour movement are now at risk of losing their connection with people, and with it the habit of action.
Blair went on to argue that if the Labour party is truly to ‘Refound’ itself it cannot do so from centre, and that it is community organising which offers the opportunity to organically collect the views of those who Labour hopes to represent. For the trade unions it also brings the opportunity to empower and develop the individuals they represent. At the same time community organising reaches out to draw on the full power of the relationships union members have with those outside, as well as inside, their workplace.
Mann agreed that the role of the trade unions is to act as an ‘enabling mechanism’ to empower people to act. Community has already seen the potential of such a reinvention of organised labour’s conception of solidarity in its successful campaign to save the Teeside steelworks. Elsewhere a similar campaign has developed around the Derby Bombardier plant, with the support of the Labour Party.
Both Ralph Mitchell, head of policy at ACEVO, and Michael Stephenson, the General Secretary of the Co-op party, agreed that the community power of organising could be a positive force. For the third sector it can produce positive change in the areas in which the financial and bureaucratic might not succeed. Mitchell highlighted public health as an example in which only the individual and community can guarantee of early intervention methods such as healthy eating. Similarly Stephenson pointed to the State’s failure to understand co-operatives which bring a power and control to communities which in turn fosters responsible business. The Labour movement, he argued, walked away from this great tradition of joint ownership in 1945.
In part this idea of empowering of members demands a rethink of organisations and their stakeholders. As Stephenson pointed out, members are corporate individuals with connections to multiple communities. Trade unions need to start thinking about what type of members they want to attract, and whether they would like them to also be involved in other organisations, such as the Labour Party and co-operatives, or the third sector.
Mitchell highlighted the failure of local councils to think of residents in terms of their wider potential in the community as individuals, rather than just as tax payers. He went on to remind the audience that trade unions are part of the third sector, both points serving as a worthy prompt for trade unions to start rethinking their model of membership.
In summing up Joe Mann concluded that all of this warrants an increased understanding and utilisation of the overlap between the organisations represented on the panel. Furthermore it prompts a rethink of the concept of membership, in terms of relationships rather than fees, and our idea of power in terms of outcomes rather than titles. Finally, as the blend of diversity and common ground on the panel showed, it is perhaps possible that we take the best from various organising traditions, rather than championing one in particular.
