It’s grim being a Labour party member at the moment. But the Labour party is about so much more than Cabinet ministers with three homes, forgetful junior ministers and backbenchers redefining the boundaries of honest and acceptable expenses claims.
Meet Ann Black. Ann Black is vice chair of Labour’s National Executive Committee. The NEC is the body which oversees the running of the Labour party and to whom the party leader is answerable. Ann Black is directly elected by the rank and file members of the Labour party and regularly comes top of the ballot. She therefore has one of the largest mandates of any person in the party.
You won’t see Ann Black pontificating on the TV. “Friends of Ann Black” don’t give briefings to The Guardian. Ann Black doesn’t give speeches to thinktanks accompanied by briefing from “advisers” who reveal the coded warnings in the speech.
Instead Ann Black travels the country listening to the Labour party. She will attend meetings of 10 people in a safe Tory seat. She will attend meetings of 100 people in a marginal constituency. She will go to no-go areas for Labour in the south west and Labour-only areas in the north east.
Ann Black does this all at her own expense (or largely, I don’t know if the NEC covers the cost of attending meetings). She stands for election at her own expense. She goes to Labour party conference at her own expense (£100s) and all the other events, conferences and meetings that she can.
Ann does this because she believes in the Labour party and she believes in doing her job dilligently: representing the rank and file membership to the Labour leadership. She appears to do this without a personal agenda. On every big issue she emails me and thousands of others asking our view. And she always replies when I’ve given my opinion – and will even continue the debate. And she reports back from meetings quickly and comprehensively.
I first knew Ann Black in south east Labour politics. My Millbank Chip was fully operational and she was a member of the disaffected awkward squad, the Grassroots Alliance. I was programmed to be suspicious. However, Ann Black is no permanent critic. She doesn’t just say ‘united we stand, divided we fall’, she believes it. She stands up to the leadership when she needs to, but acts in the spirit of party unity where necessary.
I don’t believe Ann Black has ever sought higher office. She doesn’t appear to be an aspiring MP. She does her job well and has won the respect of her peers.
It’s embarrassing being a Labour party member at the moment. I wince when I leave my home and see the Vote Labour poster in the window. I felt huge pity for my wife, out campaigning in the rain last weekend.
And then I remember Ann Black. It’s thanks to people like Ann Black that we have a Labour government, a minimum wage and people lifted out of poverty. The Labour party will outlive Gordon Brown. It will never live without the likes of Ann Black.
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Sadly, its not enough to know that the saintly Ann Black is still in place. I know equally good people in the Conservative and LibDem camps, but so what? It is futile to judge political parties in terms of the quality of their support staff. We have to judge them in terms of their policies, and the way in which these impact on the electorate. The list of New Labour policy disasters is too well known and too long to go into here, but the contempt they show for the preterites – well illustrated by their decision to breach established political protocol and elect the placeman Martin – reveals a complete inability to see beyond tribal boundaries and short-term gain. The damage that Tony and Gordon have done to the body politic has reluctantly forced me to abandon a life time of Labour voting. And I am devastated about it.
@PaulC I hear your anger – and of course the Ann Blacks of the Labour Party don’t stand for public office so they are not who you judge a candidate by at election time. But I hope that you would recognise that there are good decent people who are involved in politics for the right reasons.