Where are the young ones?

Submitted by martin on 20 September, 2018 - 8:14 Author: Martin Thomas
Labour Party meeting

Above: a Labour meeting. It's good to see older activists coming back into circulation. But where are the young people who are the overwhelming base of Corbyn-Labour's support in society?

Even after the Corbyn surge, which has swelled Labour membership to a size not seen for decades, the average age of Labour members is 53, only a bit below the Tories' average of 57.

More Labour members (29%) are over 65 than are under 44 (28%). Only 4% of Labour members are under 24 - a lower figure even than the Tories' 5%.

According to a recent survey by academics at Queen Mary University of London, we would be very mistaken to look at the high overall figures for Labour Party membership, and think that the live forces of left-wing and working-class sentiment have all been drawn into the party since Corbyn became leader.

The best predictor of Labour voting and left-wing views, as we saw in the 2017 general election, is being young.

And of course, young people are more likely to be active and energetic than older people. It is good that many activists from the 1980s have been brought back into circulation, but a really lively Labour Party needs to recruit the young.

Of those who are members on paper, 41% said they had had no face-to-face (rather than electronic) contact with other Labour Party members - although the survey was done straight after the general election, which must have mobilised some previously inactive people - and only 28% said they had "frequent" face-to-face communication.

Asked how they'd come to join, only 4% said they had joined because approached by someone from their local Labour Party - a much smaller percentage than for the Tories (15%) or Lib-Dems (10%). 93% had approached the Labour Party (i.e., presumably, electronically) on their own initiative.

A long way still to go. Most potential Labour activists have not yet been drawn into membership, and most of those who have been drawn into membership haven't been drawn into attending meetings or activities.

Labour is doing dismally at getting out into communities and workplaces and asking people to join. And even worse at recruiting the young people who should be the lifeblood of the movement.

It is said that the coming Labour Party conference (22-24 September) will do something to open up democracy in Young Labour - at present non-existent, since Young Labour has no constitution of its own and is dependent on the whims and preferences of party officials as to when and how conferences can be called, how attendance is decided, what is discussed, and what the votes mean.

Let's hope it is a real something. That would be a start.

"Party Members Project" report 2018: bit.ly/pmp-18.

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