Abstract
Scarrow highlighted two questions concerning party members: The level of engagement required and the extent to which this occurred within formal party structures. She proposed a task – rather than a people-orientated interpretation. Her framework is applied here to the British Conservative Party. A qualitative research design was adopted, which focused on the views and behaviour of local activists. This permitted an understanding of how the party organisation actually functioned. The findings revealed notable deficiencies in activity levels, member skills, member attitudes towards performance improvement and local managerial capacity. This meant reduced fitness for purpose. Hence, a shrinking of activists’ responsibilities and a simplification of their role has occurred, thereby changing the nature of engagement, but equally modifying the nature of political voluntarism. Increasing emphasis is being placed upon developing networks of supporters, with the implication that there has been a movement towards the American model of party organisation, but with the continuation of membership parties in a looser form. As such, the findings also reveal how the party is managing its declining membership organisation. Overall, Scarrow’s task-orientated approach was found to be apposite for the purpose of measuring local activist engagement.
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Notes
Conversations with local officers in 2011 suggested that party membership is now less than 180 000.
The 200 club aimed to get 200 people to contribute to a monthly prize draw. Half of the income was for the prizes, whereas the other half went to the association. However, Somerton and Frome, for example, were having difficulties in retaining 200. It dropped to 176 at one point.
A Patrons' Club comprises a small group of elite people who reside in the constituency. It is managed by the constituency association officer team, but is kept separate from the association mainstream; it is sometimes afforded branch status. The link to local business interests is prominent, although not exclusively so. Members typically receive better social events and dinner speakers in exchange for their greater financial contribution.
A random sample of 40 constituency association Websites was selected from the Conservative Party’s top 100 target seats.
Reported by several Somerton and Frome activists. This advice was given by the speaker, a senior frontbench politician, at an area dinner.
The CPF was a vehicle for local policy discussion, whereby members could communicate their views and ideas to the centre. Locally, it was established and maintained by the association deputy chairman responsible for political and campaigning. However, it was co-ordinated centrally by a director of the CPF and a small team. They decided the topic for discussion, presented as a policy brief with accompanying questions for discussion and answer and circulated it to the constituency associations on approximately a quarterly basis. Local members were not permitted to suggest additional questions or issues.
Conservative Training College 16 March 2005. The documents relate to ‘chairman’, ‘deputy chairman political and campaigning’ and ‘deputy chairman membership and fundraising’. They stress adherence to party rules and detail all the officer functions and ways to proceed.
Training to be a Conservative Party Agent, Conservative Training College, 28 September 2005.
Somerton and Frome Constituency General and Political Report 5 March 2005–3 March 2006. The report attributed the low number of agents to the financial position of the local parties after the 2005 general election and to constituency grouping. Somerton and Frome complained that finding an effective agent, should they have the money, would be difficult because of the shortage. The accuracy of the figure of 82 agents is given some credibility by a steering committee briefing in January 2006, which stated that ‘we expect to have 200 agents in the field by summer 2007, double our present number’. This suggests a figure of no more than 110 (Briefing about FRAC meeting on 12 January 2006). Senior politicians were present at the meeting.
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I would like to acknowledge Professor Andrew Taylor, University of Sheffield, for the preparation of this article.
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Low, M. The changing nature of activist engagement within the Conservative Party: A review of Susan Scarrow’s task-orientated approach to party membership. Br Polit 9, 93–119 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2013.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2013.10