The Strange Disappearance of Arnie Graf

6 May

 

• Senior figures feel they are missing the advice of veteran US community campaigner Arnie Graf as polling day approaches.

 

• There are suspicions he fell victim to internal feuds.

 

• The new leader will have to examine how best to build as well as identify the Labour vote.

 

 

‘YOU CAN’T PULL out the Labour vote’ – unless you have built it up in the first place. That is the uncontroversial view of one of the most senior people in Labour’s ranks. How to build up that vote proved far more controversial. And the failure to do so cost seats Labour had targeted to win. Some organisers were regretting not having one man around as polling day approached.

The party machine is, as we established, geared up to identifying the Labour vote and getting it to the polling station, or at least to completing a postal ballot. This is the internal advice, for example, which one constituency circulated to its members: ‘The aim of any operation is to increase the turnout of Labour votes to ensure that Labour wins in key areas.’

What was needed in addition was to expand that vote in marginal seats. And Labour initially looked to someone who was said to have inspired Barack Obama – the American community organiser extraordinaire Arnie Graf.

He was introduced to Miliband by Lord Glasman in 2010 who had taken his advice in London Citizens, the grassroots group that campaigned for the living wage. Graf agreed to conduct a ‘root and branch’ review of Labour’s structures following field work in 14 different locations.

His report was completed in time for Labour’s 2011 conference but it wasn’t widely circulated. Some of the ideas were subsequently taken up, though in most cases not until after the Falkirk debacle – for example, building up a network of supporters. These cut-price ‘members’ voted amid some controversy in the recent Labour leadership contest. There was a restricted take-up for the idea of ‘open primaries’ where everyone who says they share Labour’s values – and not just party members – can vote for parliamentary candidates. Miliband wanted to limit this to areas where the local Labour Party organisation was moribund.

But his supporters inside Labour HQ say Graf’s true worth was sharing his expertise in community organising gained over three decades in Chicago. After his report was completed, he visited the UK every few months to dispense advice. As one insider put it:

His work was crucial to how we should rebuild for the future. What he did was show that you can pick up issues that affect people’s everyday lives even when you are in opposition and make a difference. Then, it becomes easier to get them engaged and involved, and you know you can count on them come polling day. You are expanding your activity and your base.

That ‘crucial work’ was undermined when in January last year The Sun ran a front-page story with the headline ‘Ed Aide Illegal’. It said that Graf had a business visa, which allowed him to travel regularly to the UK but not to accept a salary. Labour insisted there was nothing illegal in the arrangement, and that they had lawyers’ letters and correspondence with the Home Office to prove it. He was merely reimbursed for wages foregone in the States.

But the damage was done. One of his allies said:

After the furore over his immigration status – and as he is not an immigrant it should have been irrelevant – but after the fuss, Arnie felt he couldn’t really come here very often.

He did make a week-long trip in June 2014 to meet Labour officials and politicians but he wasn’t out and about in communities where his work was more valuable.

There is still immense bad blood within Labour HQ as it is assumed that the leak to The Sun could only have come from an insider in an attempt to take out a rival for Miliband’s ear. But while one man can provide inspiration, it’s hard to believe that an American in his early 70s could single handedly have delivered crucial marginals. Labour organisers say that despite Graf’s absence, similar ideas were put in to action in some areas, and this was reflected in better results – for example Wes Streeting’s successful overturning of 5,500 Conservative majority in Ilford North. And Stella Creasy’s work in taking on loan sharks in her community and pay day lenders more widely had helped strengthen Labour’s majority in her seat without the need for Graf’s advice.

Even if Graf had moved permanently to this side of the Atlantic, he could not have waved a magic wand in those areas where local Labour parties are moribund or don’t work with their wider communities.

Graf himself penned a post-election missive to party supporters, posted on 4 August on the Labour List website which at least diagnosed the problem he was originally supposed to have helped to cure:

The party’s failure in the last election had very little to do with the organisers in the field. The fault lies with their job assignments, expectations, and with the limited regard that too many of the national leadership hold them in. The organisers are not expected or assigned to grow the party. They have no time to develop meaningful relationships with people in the communities where they are assigned to work; therefore, the party remains out of touch with the vast majority of people throughout the country.

Labour’s membership has surged since the election defeat – up by a third to a little less than 300,000 – and there are also about 112,000 ‘registered supporters’ too, who have signed up at a cut-price rate and may choose to get more actively involved by the time of the next election. So with a potentially larger army of foot-soldiers, or ‘persuaders’, Labour may well have the option of running more campaigns alongside conducting more sophisticated canvassing if it can hold on to those who have joined as members or supporters over the summer of 2015. The party’s new leader may never have a better time – or reason – to look at a root and branch reform of the party’s organisation – and its purpose.