This post is about the Labour Party, as seen through the eyes of one member (me) who is wondering how to vote in the NEC elections. I am being careful not to name names but I am going to give you a flavour of how I have approached my voting decisions and how frustrating the Labour Party is for me as a rural voter and one who is regarded as an eco-activist by many on the Right of politics.
I have to decide for whom to vote in the NEC elections by 30 August but I intend to vote after the upcoming Hen Harrier weekend, on Monday next week. There are 26 candidates and I can vote for up to nine of them – that’s quite a lot of sifting and considering.
There’s a candidate booklet which is really quite good. Each candidate has a page to set out their stall. I read through all of the 26 statements and found many mentions about racism, Brexit, the NHS, education and housing but practically none about environmental issues (one of climate change).
I then emailed 25 NEC candidates (one does not supply an email address) on the evening of the 28 July with the same mildly provocative email:
I’m a Labour member (Corby CLP) and I will definitely be voting in the NEC elections. I have already decided on two of my votes but I need some more help.
Corby is a rural constituency, and is a Labour target marginal.
My interests are in the environment and wildlife as well as social justice.
You look like a very urban bunch to me and ‘grassroots’ is the closest that most of you come to mentioning the environment.
Why should I vote for you?
There appear to me to be three groups of candidates for the NEC: the nine Momentum supporters, the nine centre-right supporters and the eight not obviously aligned candidates. The no-email-address-supplied candidate was from the centre-right group.
So far I’ve had 12 responses to 25 emails – much better than I expected actually. Maybe I’ll get a few more but the last one of the 12 arrived five days ago. I got two responses (out of nine sent) from the Momentum group, three from eight (from the centre-right group) and seven from eight from the non-aligned individuals. That strikes me as interesting in itself.
I’m planning to restrict my voting preferences to those who reply to me, so by these means I have whittled the choice down from 26 to 12 – that’s a lot easier. I just have to toss out my three least-preferred candidates.
And I have to say that the responses I have received have been very interesting and have somewhat reassured me that not all Labour candidates live in inner cities (not that there is anything wrong with living there) and argue with each other about anti-semitism all the time (even though it is an important subject).
Here are some quotes which I have found heartening:
‘life long bird watcher’
‘I routinely visit and spend time with wildlife trusts’
‘My [relative] is still a farmer ‘
‘I think removing carbon from energy production is the most critical of the environmental objectives along with improving the standards of housing in terms of energy efficiency’
‘I have a history of campaigning on matters linked to the environment’
‘I claim no expertise but am a regular visitor to RSPB [nature reserve] where my daughter volunteers’
‘Brexit is a major challenge for rural communities, the environment & wildlife’
‘I think climate change is the most pressing issue facing our world’
‘I’m supportive of those [environmental policies] outlined in the 2017 Election manifesto, summarised here’
‘like yourself I have an interest in rural affairs‘
‘have lived in rural [county] for over 16 years now’
‘…you’re not the only person to mail about this. Environmental concerns are currently running third, behind Brexit and anti-semitism’
That last comment was the most uplifting but it does prompt the question, why does Labour (as evidenced by these NEC candidates who will be helping to run the party) seem so reluctant, almost scared, to talk about environmental issues? I want an NEC, and a Labour Party, that strives for social justice but also one that strives for environmental progress. My frustration is that Labour is so weak on the environment that 26 NEC candidates almost completely ignore it and only when prompted do they let their passion show. That’s not very encouraging for we rural eco-zealots.
The Right attacks people like me as ‘activists’ (a label of which I am proud – who wants to be inactive in a world that needs changing?) or ‘eco-zealots’ and sometimes as ‘extremists’ (for disagreeing with them, I guess) but the Left, what I want to think of as my Left, does something worse – it ignores us.
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Only one out of 26 mentions climate change? The main-stream of our society is totally blinkered to only think about human concerns, but that’s ridiculous even for them. And human beings are badly affected by climate change already anyway. In which nuclear bunker have they been locked for the last 50 years? Pathetic.
And are the candidates right in their calculation that most Labour party members will be so un-concerned about nature that they are right to ignore even climate change?
But did you gain any impression that any of the candidates regarded rural issues as anything other than Eastenders with Fields?
A great idea to ask the candidates, but we should all be pressing our CLPs to take these things forward to the Party. I don’t live in a rural area but I do care about the countryside and have had to learn quickly if I want to help foxes, badgers and hares. Only by being active in the Party can we change it
Labour are formulating their policies and those with knowledge can help influence that.
See you at the Party Conference Mark?
Helen – quite possibly.
I appreciate that these are just quotes you have selected but it strikes me that a lot of them are rather lacking in substance. Comments such as ‘life long bird watcher’ and a regular visitor to RSPB ~’ are all very well but they seem rather cheaply made. Aside from the fact that the term ‘life long bird watcher’ can be truthfully applied to people with hugely different degrees of attachment to the activity from the occasional/casual to the utterly obsessed, what we really want to know is how much of a priority is it to these people that wildlife is protected. When it’s birds or development which way will they lean?
The ‘I have a history of campaigning on matters linked to the environment’ is potentially interesting but do they provide any detail? If this is a high profile member of the party has this history of campaigning been sufficiently prominent for you to have previously noticed it?
Comments along the lines of ‘I have lived in rural ~ for 16 years now’ or ‘My [relative] is still a farmer’ would not necessarily suggest any great commitment to the environment or to wildlife protection unless they are backed up by something more specific. As we well know many accomplished destroyers of wildlife have lived their entire lives in rural areas.
If these were the most heartening of the things your respondents said to you then I fear that there is little sign that protection of wildlife is about to become a more clearly high priority issue for Labour than it has been irrespective of who gets elected to the NEC.
Mark, you could ask them if you will see them at the ‘Walk for Wildlife’ on the 22nd Sept. A perfect chance for them to make new friends and show some commitment!
I’m not a Labour Party member and so don’t have a vote in this. But its a fallacy that the left has more interest in /a better record on the environment than the right. You can find plenty of awful examples and a few good ones from both sides.
Environmental issues are not #1 for most people, they are #2 or 3 or#6, so politicians know it won’t be the determining factor for more than a handful of votes. I’m an environmentalist by identity and trade, but I’d think twice about voting for Corbyn’s Labour Party even if they did have a halfway decent programme for environmental matters (which they don’t). I remember Militant, back when I was a Labour Party member, and Corbyn’s Momentum has the same smell about them.
Equally, rural Tory voters hate the idea of building on the greenbelt, even actively campaign against it – but they’ll still vote Tory.
We should be able to look to our NGOs to take a lead, but they’ve been pretty quiet and unchallenging of late.
Something is rotten in the State of Denmark, I think.
‘I think removing carbon from energy production is the most critical of the environmental objectives along with improving the standards of housing in terms of energy efficiency’
This is by far the most relevant comment.
I have the same problem with LP. SERA seem to have 2 initiatives, clean air and plastic wastes, six months ago it was just clean air. Not really forward thinking and definitely not up for the fight we actually need about fossil fuels. I hear rumours about new clean energy policy though. I look forward to testing it against fundamental thermodynamics.