This week marks two years since the last election was held for the National Executive of Conservative Future, the youth wing of the Conservative Party for members under 30.
It’s clear that Conservative Future (CF) is dead beyond branch level. The last anyone heard, its national executive had been suspended and 63-year old Baroness Chisholm had been installed as chairman in its place.
By coincidence, this week also saw the publication of the report by Clifford Chance into allegations of abuse which culminated in the death of young Conservative activist Elliott Johnson last September.
In a nutshell, in 2014 the national executive was taken over by the so-called RoadTrip slate, which was so closely associated with the subject of the allegations that it was deemed necessary by party headquarters (CCHQ) to suspend the whole executive, regardless of their involvement. CF should have been celebrating a famous general election win, and yet now it is moribund.
By contrast, two years ago CF was on a roll: its membership was over ten thousand strong; it was thriving at all levels, from the branch to the regional; receptions had been held for CF members at Downing Street by the Prime Minister two years in a row; national and area CF conferences had been held for the first time in years. For all the complaints of cliques and careerists, the movement was still motivated by a healthy balance of political debate, campaigning, and social life. It was something in which many people wanted to be involved.
So what went wrong? The problem is a party hierarchy which did not particularly care. For example, the national executive was meant to be re-elected every 12 to 15 months at the order of the party board (the constitution was surprisingly vague), yet repeatedly that august body ignored this requirement.
Over the course of three years I repeatedly tried to get the board to honour its constitutional obligations to CF, but in every instance it failed to act. I know others also tried to make the party do its job. Even reading through the Clifford Chance report, one is struck by an apparent unwillingness by party HQ to take action in certain situations. In a rare intervention in 2014 it took the unprecedented step of combining regional chairmen elections with those to the national executive, thereby chaining the former to the irregularity of the latter. Traditionally, many regions elected their own executives at AGMs. Needless to say there have been no official regional elections since.
Earlier this year the party published a review. Not a single member of the panel was under the age of 30. Because there was “no clear agreement” amongst those members canvassed on the issue of CF structure the report skirted the question and recommended further development “at Association level”. Anyone who has chaired a branch knows that it’s not easy on your own, and this was where having area, regional and national levels came in – a support network there to help you. The report noted that “there was often a lack of awareness of who was coordinating youth and student activity within the party and how it was being done”.
It’s not surprising when the CF desk at party headquarters usually consisted of one person with other roles to fulfil, if you even knew how to get in touch with them. Given the party’s neglect of CF in general it’s also not surprising that it failed to keep the rank and file of the associations acquainted with the organisation of the youth wing. Many was the time at Party Conferences when I was manning the CF stall and older association members would come and ask “What is Conservative Future?” It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
To its credit the report also recognised that “this topic needs considerably more discussion than it has received as part this review”. There’s an easy solution to that: The Party Chairman should appoint a committee under a respected party figure to inquire into the youth wing. Gerald Palmer and Iain Macleod headed committees in 1944 and 1965 respectively, whose recommendations were implemented and each lasted a generation. The party needs to stop passing the buck, take a long hard look at itself, and decide what it wants to do with the youth wing. And it needs to do it soon, before it really is too late.
I was active in CF for nearly a decade before I hit 30 last year. Many of my best friends are people I met through it. Some aren’t even Tories, but people who I met through other friends. I’ve done my fair share of campaigning, but I’ve also had more than my fair share of fun. In the past 10 years I met Margaret Thatcher twice, visited 10 Downing Street twice, went to Brussels, went to Warsaw, visited God knows how many villages, towns, and cities in the UK, worked in Parliament for a month, had lunch bought for me by the Association of Hereditary Peers, and so on and so on.
I even met Brian May of Queen twice. All of which I couldn’t have done if I hadn’t been in CF, and, what’s more, if I hadn’t been able to get involved in the many other levels of CF that lay beyond what was then my local branch. Not bad for the grandson of a coal miner who until three weeks ago was a hygiene operative in a food factory on minimum wage.
My concern is that if the Conservative Party carries on down this ultra non-interventionist, hands-off path of keeping the youth wing confined to the “Association level”, then other activists will be denied the opportunities and experiences which I and so many others have been fortunate enough to enjoy over the last few years.
Every member of the party, whether they agree with the idea of a separate youth wing or not, should be disappointed at the depths to which it has sunk, and should be asking why the party has allowed it to happen.
