As I said in yesterday’s post, part of my reason for throwing my hat in the ring for the Membership Support Convener election is to hopefully kickstart a debate about thoroughly democratising the Alba Party’s internal structures. Of course if I was elected nothing would change automatically, but I’d at least be able to raise these issues and I’d have a mandate behind me to do so. The most important thing in my view is that the ruling body of the party, the NEC, should become fully elected by the whole membership. That’s not the case at the moment, with only around half the spots on the NEC elected by the rank-and-file – and, as it happens, all of those positions were filled without a vote last year, meaning that the outgoing NEC has a very limited democratic mandate. But I think there is a broader test that ought to be applied and it goes beyond the issue of NEC elections. Is there any actual good reason why the members should not be in full control?
As far as the NEC is concerned, the answer to that question is obviously no. The only logical reason I can think of for not allowing most members to vote for ordinary members of the NEC is to give people an incentive to pay the registration fee to attend conference and thus gain voting “privileges”, and that isn’t a remotely good enough reason. It’s wrong as a matter of democratic principle, because people shouldn’t have to pay extra for what should be their automatic democratic rights as members, and nor should the opportunity to purchase those rights be finite on a “first come, first served” basis. But it’s also completely needless, because I think we all know that enthusiasm for attending the conference would be just as great even if there was no exclusive right for attendees to elect ordinary members of the NEC. That’s not the main attraction by a long shot.
It’s the same story for the other committees being elected by the tiny subset of members who have voting rights at National Council – is there any good reason why the wider membership couldn’t be making that choice for themselves? Of course not. If it’s just to give the National Council something to do, well…come on. That’s not more important than maximising the power of members, not by a long chalk.
As was pointed out on the comments section of the previous post, the real reason why voting rights of members have been limited in this way may be more to do with making the party more controllable by the leadership of the day. Which may well be an innocent enough state of affairs for as long as we have a leadership we all approve of (which is very much the case at present) but becomes much more of a problem in the Starmer or Sturgeon scenario where a new leader takes over and then moves the party in a dramatically different direction without any prior indication that this was what they intended. Once that happens, it can very quickly be checkmate if the internal democratic processes do not allow the members to reassert control.
Which brings me onto the question of conference, which is the supreme decision making body of the Alba Party. We use the term “conference delegates” but of course that’s not accurate – they’re not delegated by anyone, they’re simply members who have registered for conference on a first come, first served basis. The best analogy would be the annual public meeting in a direct democracy such as the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, where any citizen can simply turn up and be a lawmaker for the day. It’s wonderfully empowering, but there is a limitation in Alba’s case – numbers are artificially limited due to the size of the venue, and in any case we all know that there are people who would love to go but are simply unable to do so due to personal circumstances. Again, we come back to the principle I suggested earlier: is there any good reason why all Alba members should not form part of the supreme decision making body of the party and thus have absolute control over the party’s destiny? Due to the current state of technology, the answer is inevitably and obviously no. The conference is already livestreamed for the benefit of non-attendees and it would be incredibly easy to allow those non-attendees to take part in votes on resolutions electronically. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to go even further and have a properly hybrid conference with remote speakers, but voting rights are always the bottom line. Extending voting at conference to all Alba members is so obviously in keeping with the logic of a conference open to all that it’s surprising it hasn’t already happened.
If I’m elected as Membership Support Convener, I will be trying to spark discussion on these issues of internal party democratisation, but I also want to prioritise engagement with members, particularly re-engagement with less active members, and to help resolve some of the communication difficulties between Alba members and the leadership that have plagued the party over its two-and-a-half year history.
One beauty of standing is that even if I don’t win, I can use my campaign to raise awareness of issues that are troubling members, and that might make it more likely that they’ll be resolved regardless of who is elected. So if you’re an Alba member and there’s anything you’d like to draw to my attention, feel free to drop me a line at: icehouse.250@gmail.com
Voting opens tomorrow (Friday) and all current Alba members can vote. You should receive an email link to the online ballot when the vote opens. It’s a preferential voting system, so although I’m asking you to give me (James Kelly) your first preference, you can if you wish give me your second or third preference instead, and of course I’d be equally grateful for that!
