During the summer of 2010, Movement for Change trained 1,000 Labour members and supporters in community organising skills. While some used those skills immediately in their CLPs with great effect, others found the challenges they faced were more complex. What happened next? James Austin, a Labour activist from Yorkshire, describes the frustration he felt in a largely inactive rural Party… and the subsequent value of the training in his current political work.

In 1981 Shirley Williams wrote about the death of Old Politics and that it was ‘possible, just possible, that [new politics] will be a politics for people.’ Perhaps she was a wee bit premature in announcing the death of Old Politics but certainly that sentence encapsulates the hope I had for community organising after I completed an introductory training session run by Movement for Change in the summer of 2010. The Movement seemed to epitomise many of the beliefs I had about politics: that it is about communities working together, that it is possible to achieve change from bottom up and that the Labour party should be about solving people’s problems rather than being mainly inward looking.

I then promptly boarded the 20:52 train to Skipton and forgot all about it.

Actually that’s not true.

There were some attempts for those of us from Skipton and Ripon (a safe Tory, largely rural constituency) to meet up with each other. A campaign was proposed to deal with the need for a road barrier in Skipton where two youngsters had been killed last year. But confronted with the big challenges of clashing work schedules, the long distances and the poor public transport which are facts of life in the Dales any ideas we had eventually fizzled out. The culture of inactivity within our local party seemed so ingrained that attempts to organise felt pointless. Faced with those odds, along The culture of inactivity seemed so ingrained within our local Party that attempts to organise felt pointless. Faced with those odds, the initial Movement for Change training session did not lead me to change my local Labour Party fundamentally.

So, what was the point?

While I didn’t change my local Labour party fundamentally, I still found that the training was an important factor in giving me the confidence to become more politically active. Whether it was become an Oxfam organiser, chairing my university Labour Students club, working as a Rugby Coach or become involved in various community projects I found that I could use the skills which the training taught me to great effect. In each of these projects I tried to bring a ethos of inclusion and openness, involving anyone who wanted to involved and using community organising techniques to work with a wide variety of organisations. This month, that work has come full-circle as I’m now working with an MP who is committed to using community organising in the local Party and is working with Movement for Change to achieve that.

Like many of the other first Movement for Change trainees, the fact that I came across challenges within my own local Party has not stopped what I learned helping me to have a political impact. I am both active and more committed than ever to using the skills I learned to strengthen the Labour movement at a local level. If anything, my story shows there is great potential that, as Movement for Change develops and expands, it will be able to build a national network of Labour people working for change across their local communities.

James Austin, Skipton Labour Party activist

Alexandra Kemp, Vice Chair of North-West Norfolk Labour Party, explains the rural context that led local Labour activists to build a strong local party through community organising – and win practical change in the process.

Norfolk Labour activists after a Movement for Change taster session

We wanted to create a new democratic space for Labour, more fluid, relational, intergenerational and inclusive, more family-friendly and racially diverse. We wanted to bring more power back to members and break a few unwritten rules. Firstly, we wanted to send out the message that you don’t have to be elected before you can campaign. That you can bring along children to Labour events too so there is real accessibility for parents and grandparents. That you are equally important however old you are and wherever you live. That your ideas are valued and you have the freedom to express them.

We wanted to take interactive political debate out to the remoter rural areas of the constituency where it didn’t exist and to make it fun to take part in and feel relevant and responsive. Every member in an isolated village can be a powerful ambassador for Labour in their own community. 80 year-old Labour members run local village halls but Labour invisibility leads to an assumed Tory hegemony. So we had to increase the involvement of Labour members beyond the usual core of public and party office holders in the main town and open out to Labour sympathisers and supporters. We were Refounding Labour in one of the toughest Tory safe seats in England, North-West Norfolk.

So last Summer we launched Political Discussion Events with a Free Lunch, or Meet, Greet and Eat Events. Welfare, the Economy and Fair Pay formed some of the debates. In November we were recognised with Labour’s East of England Best Practice Award. People decided to set up a Living Wage Campaign which had its first success within the first week. Kathryn Perera from Movement to Change came to speak.

From the start, we designed in new structures to encourage political engagement. Out went tables, pieces of printed paper and formalities of address in favour of seating in the round and less hierachy. Everyone speaks, there is always food and no visible agenda. The result is more eye contact and social interaction, people feel empowered to speak, there is a more relaxed feel. From Plato’s Symposium onwards, creative political discussion and food have always gone together.

We encourage the presence of lifelong members with a rich tradition of Labour involvement spanning most of Labour’s history who hold the key to village networks. Evening Labour meetings in the main town were out of bounds for most members in rural areas, particularly older members so we meet in the villages late on Saturday mornings for a two-hour meeting over lunch time and we offer lifts as public transport is usually out of the question. Events are free to encourage people to come whatever their means and venues are usually members’ homes to keep costs down. As lots of older members do not have e-mail or use it rarely, invitations are made over the telephone.

There has been a transition from towncentric to more village-focused member involvement, a new springboard for campaigning round the year not just at election-time and a wider age spread at meetings.

The Living Wage success came after a conversation with the Minister at the local Methodist Church after the Living Wage Launch and the new cleaner is now paid the Living Wage.

This is just the start of a new political voyage into awareness-raising and empowerment, a reinvention.

The countryside is the natural home for Labour. With low pay and low expectations in ex-farming areas, concentrations of older people increasingly reliant on social services, the NHS and public transport, children in poverty, young people looking for work, there is everything to gain.