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1999 NEC ELECTIONSThe total votes cast in the 1999 election for the NEC Constituency Section was 585,274 - a fall of 20.5 per cent on last year and 45 per cent on 1997. The sharp drop in participation cannot be attributed to the fall in Party membership nor to the reduced period between the receipt of ballot papers and the deadline for voting. Rather it reflects members' growing realisation that the present NEC - still officially the Party's ruling body - no longer counts for much. Those who bothered to vote - about 20-25 per cent of the membership - belonged to the hard core still interested in Labour's internal politics. To most members the candidates' names didn't mean much. The slates have itOver 90 per cent of votes were cast for candidates supported by either the Millbank Tendency (MT) or the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance (GA). The two 'independents' received just 8.4 per cent between them. The 1999 and 1998 results (where comparable) are as follows:
Apart from the dominance of the slates this year's results reveal another feature. This is a significant narrowing of the range of votes cast for candidates supported by the slates. Whereas in 1998 45,279 votes separated the most successful candidate from the least successful, this year it was only 19,874. The distance between the six winning candidates has shrunk from 17,476 votes to 6,385. This indicates that all sitting NEC members have become vulnerable to a relatively slight shift in voting preferences. Apparent paradoxCandidates supported by the GA received 47.7% of the total vote, whereas those supported by the MT got 43.8%. The difference in votes cast for each slate remained the same as in 1998 - 3.9%. Yet, puzzlingly, the MT captured one seat previously held by a GA supporter. To understand how this happened one has to look at the pattern of voting. The gap separating successful MT candidates from their defeated ones was wider than that separating the GA candidates. The top three MT candidates got 58.9% of the total vote for their slate, whereas the top GA three members got only 55.87 of theirs. This indicates that more GA voters voted the full slate than did MT supporters. MT's top three candidates must have benefited from a substantially bigger personal vote. The relatively high vote for Sawyer and Cashman must have come from voters who didn't cast all their six votes. ConclusionsThe problem for the MT is to convince those who voted for Sawyer and Cashman also to vote for the other candidates on the MT slate. The task facing the GA is more daunting. The old Left's base is shrinking, with many of its former supporters leaving the Party. To succeed the GA must win over members who joined relatively recently. It also has to persuade the non-Left section of 'old Labour' that it was the record of Labour governments of the sixties and seventies which led to Labour's wilderness years, instead of (largely mistakenly) blaming the Left. Both groups, though increasingly disillusioned with "New Labour", are still reluctant to oppose it. The overwhelming majority of members, however, are unaware how the new, ostensibly more democratic party structures, are being used to deprive them of their rights. Nor do they realise the extent to which their NEC representatives are colluding in turning a democratic party into a monolithic top-down one. The presence on the NEC of GA-supported members is needed to ensure that the membership is informed of the growing stalinisation of the Labour Party and that this trend is challenged.
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Campaign for Labour Party Democracy