Getting Labour Online

Southern Front research reveals that nearly half of Labour’s constituency parties in the south have no presence on the web.

Harriet Harman’s Guardian interview this week, in which she made clear that Labour would be fighting hard to make gains in the south in May’s local elections, and the NEC’s decision to endorse early selections in 18 southern seats both demonstrate that Labour is starting to look serious about winning in the south again.

At last week’s NEC meeting the deputy leader acknowledged that the party needed to “comprehensively re-engineer” southern constituency labour parties, especially those in the south west, to get them fit for purpose if Labour is to capitalise on growing discontent with the coalition parties.

A quarter of the 70 seat pick-ups Labour need to defeat the coalition government are in the south. Notwithstanding this parliament’s first two by-elections, May’s local elections are the first real electoral test for Labour under Ed Miliband. In what shape is Labour in the south, and how well placed is it to deliver the local campaigns necessary to make the gains Labour needs to demonstrate that it is on the path back to no 10?

It is indisputable that Labour needs to ensure it is active in communities right across the south, knocking on doorsteps, delivering leaflets, and leading community campaigns against the coalition’s cuts. As part of these efforts a website is a critical and essential part of any modern political campaign. It is a campaign resource that works 24 hours a day and reaches an audience that is difficult to put a message to by conventional means. Expectations will vary, with a bias toward social media such as Twitter and Facebook perhaps an obvious expectation of the younger generation of voters; however, voters across all age ranges are likely to expect their local political parties to maintain and keep up to date a local website.

Research carried out by Southern Front has unearthed worrying findings about the state of Labour’s web presence in the south of England.

• Nearly half of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) in the south do not have a website (93 out of 197)

• 13 of the 59 seats we won in 1997 but have since lost do not have a constituency website;

• 9 seats Labour lost in 2010 have no CLP website (Basildon South & Thurrock East, Bristol North West, Dorset South, Dover, Gloucester, Great Yarmouth, Kingswood, Portsmouth North, Somerset North East & Waveney);

• Over 10,000 members of the Labour Party are members in a CLP that doesn’t have a website

Should these findings really be a cause for concern? As one NEC member put it to me “my concern would be that many south west CLPs don’t exist in any meaningful level offline, let alone online”. The overwhelming majority of the seats without websites are in constituencies where Labour is in third place or worse, and has never won the seat before.

Without doubt, I think these findings should alarm us. They give an impression of local Labour parties struggling to recover from defeat last May, and of almost moribund parties unable to demonstrate that they are a part of their local communities, relevant to the challenges of local community life. In this modern technological age, what message does it send if the Labour party chooses not to or cannot maintain a basic website? It is the internet equivalent of a “closed for business” sign on the shop door.

Southern Front has five recommendations for the party, that we believe will help improve the party’s online presence in the south and enhance the party’s ability to win votes back to Labour;

1. The most urgent issue is to establish Labour websites in those 13 constituencies that we lost in 2010 that do not have websites at present.

2. In areas where the party has limited membership and no elected representatives, cross constituency party website should be established. A number of CLPs have already joined together to set up a joint website, often operating across local authority boundaries (Bournemouth, Swindon, Brighton & Hove).

3. The party should support efforts to establish a brokerage system whereby party members with web and internet skills can be put in touch with CLPs who don’t have the expertise within their own constituency. Party members across the country have set up some exceptionally good local websites and would undoubtedly be willing to help other CLPs establish their own sites.

4. The NEC should introduce a new position of New Media Officer within constituency labour parties, elected with other functional officers and responsible for ensuring that the CLP has an up to date and functioning web presence. Training should be made available through regional parties.

5. Finally, Labour should agree an objective of having a local website for every CLP by 2015, when the next general election is scheduled.

Integrating technology and social media into campaigning can no longer be seen as a gimmick or something to be left to tech savvy candidates. Technology is integral to modern campaigning, and every CLP and parliamentary candidate should, as an absolute minimum, have a functioning and regularly updated website. Labour in the south is some way off that mark.

Stuart King
Editor, Southern Front