Labour Party Democracy, Indeed

The death of the 94-year-old Vladimir Derer, the son of a Social Democratic Cabinet Minister in Inter-War Czechoslovakia, reminds us of a time when it was "Loony Left" to aspire to anything better than procedurally irremovable MPs who would alone elect a Party Leader with the sole say over policy.

Departure, even in principle, from that state of affairs caused the secession of the SDP. Remember that that, and especially the first part of it, was the reason. There was no other. They considered it an intolerable affront that Constituency Labour Parties might have even the notional power to deselect Labour MPs as parliamentary candidates.

Of course, that seems like an entirely different world now. Only this week, Ian Austin, which effectively means Gordon Brown and his entourage, was calling on the floor of the House of Commons for a referendum on EU membership in this Parliament. 

I still do not understand this fixation with a referendum, which is a most un-British device. A UKIP breakaway as sceptical about a referendum as it was opposed to NHS privatisation and in favour of rail renationalisation has just taken nearly a quarter of a million votes, depriving UKIP of two MEPs.

But support for a referendum is undeniably a very long way from believing that MPs should be impossible to remove as parliamentary candidates even by bodies so select as the General Management Committees of their respective Constituency Labour Parties.

As is the increasing momentum towards advocating, with very strong public support, the return of Local Education Authorities pretty much as they existed in 1978, including the relationships with the churches in place in those days.

There are no "secular schools" in this country. Most are nondenominational, especially at secondary level. But none is secular. Does any substantial body of people want to ban their Christmas Carol Services, and  their Easter Assemblies, and all the rest of it? Really?

But of course no Government would ever attempt to do so. Conservative and  Labour Governments have huge rows with the churches. But that happens in families. The family members continue to get along afterwards, one way or another. They do not kill each other.

Likewise, however critical of or disappointed in a Conservative or Labour Government the churches might be, the first kind would never destroy much of the Anglican organisational base, nor would the second part ever destroy the whole of the Catholic organisational base, by removing those bodies from their networks of state schools.

One does not do such things to one's family, no matter how much one's family might annoy one. Moreover, the family responsibilities of each party effectively safeguard those of the other.

Churchgoers are far more likely than average to vote, and vastly more so to be politically active at every level. Anglican attendees are generally Conservative voters, although that is now a minority interest among the clergy.

The  Labour Party's relationship with the Catholic Church, with the old Nonconformist churches, and, which is one to watch, with the black-majority churches, is more or less symbiotic, especially in areas with lots of Catholics, or with lots of Methodists (which are rarer than not long ago, but such places do still exist), or with lots of black-majority church members.

Those last are both the reason why London is far more observant than the rest of the country, and a key part of the reason why London is far more Labour-voting than the rest of the South. As I said, this is one to watch.

In many ways, the black-majority churches are taking over where the old Nonconformists left off. One of those ways is the connection to the Labour Party, where they are providing the locally concentrated balance to the huge Catholic presence that the Methodists, especially, used to do. The specific localities are mostly different. But nothing else is.

Moreover, many of them, including the whole of the Holiness movement and of Pentecostalism, do in fact have Wesleyan theological roots. Hence their continuing emphasis on temperance, on Lord's Day observance, and so forth. Such considerations have been driving forces within the Labour Movement for as long as the Labour Movement has existed, and remain so in relation to Sunday trading at this moment.

Set alongside that are mounting public and parliamentary expressions of what has always been the simmering grassroots distrust of the EU, and just wait for the TTIP to blow up. The broad hints about things like rail renationalisation. The hugely popular actual policies, such as the capping of energy prices. And a complete departure from the Blairite, Thatcherite hatred of local government in general and of its role in education in particular.

That last always did especially annoy the grassroots, which were and are both heavily municipal and full of teachers. Not only is that base now well and truly back in control of a party with a permanent poll lead and which has just stormed the local elections, the more serious and grown-up elections on that day. But the suggestion during the Blair years, which very nearly came to pass, that that base might be stripped of any role in the selection of parliamentary candidates, is now a dim and distant memory, if it is remembered at all.