Party Funding – Supporting the Grassroots
Article posted by Unlock Democracy
James Graham and Alexandra Runswick
The loans for peerages scandal has once again brought the debate about the funding of political parties to the fore. Part of the problem is that parties are caught in a vicious circle: faced with declining numbers of members and particularly activists, they depend upon large donations to fund professionally run election campaigns. This fuels perceptions of sleaze and reduces citizens’ commitment to parties still further.
The answer has to be the revival of parties as effective, locally-funded campaigning entities, able to truly represent the communities they come from. This pamphlet brings together our most recent research on the case for state funding to support local political activity, and explores how it might be implemented.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
[...] [...]
March 15th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
[...] In light of Sir Hayden Phillips’ call for trade union payments to Labour to continue so long as there is greater transparency, Unlock Democracy have spelt out how this might work in a new pamphlet. [...]
March 15th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
[...] In advance of the publication this Thursday of Sir Hayden Phillips report on the funding of political parties, Unlock Democracy and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd have published polling evidence that shows the public would accept the case for increased state support of political parties, but only if further limits on party spending and donations are introduced. [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 11:36 am
[...] The full pamphlet can be downloaded for free online. [...]
April 4th, 2007 at 9:11 am
in the leaflet it says restricting public funding to internally democratic parties and those which allow anyone to join, this would exclude the bnp. that reads like your campaign is in favour of increased public support for racialist facist groups
April 5th, 2007 at 8:49 am
How does stating that the BNP should be excluded from public funding mean that we want to give them increased public support? That is a frankly ridiculous statement.
April 9th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
What a surprise. And there I was thinking that an enormous number would be so confident
in the trust & respect their politicians had earned with an admiring British public by their clear differences in policy, their recognised honesty, sincerity and humility, and indeed the honour they have brought to the very concept of democracy, that they would be eager for them to relinquish their sinecures, assured of being returned to power even without a massive financial advantage over smaller parties; and with nothing else to aid them but: (complete) control of the media, reliance on a century of habitual voting, and legislation to criminalize dissenting views.
I put the self-opinionated assumption of ‘Lab/Lib/Con’ that they have an automatic right of tenure within the political structure – notwithstanding their policies and past record being antithetical to the welfare of this nation – to some officials of the British National Party. I was not surprised that they found such smugness infuriating, but impressed that they recognised it as just another example of the combination of blindness to reality and utter hypocrisy which exemplifies those parties.
Their reaction to the recommendation that the Review should “look into” excluding the BNP (on account of its ‘racist’ membership restrictions) was similar. They were amused by the wording, being fully conscious that George Brown had already ‘assured’ MPs that this would be done, shortly after expressing his desire that the law be changed to compel unco-operative juries to convict prosecuted BNP members.
The party would obviously not consider falling in line with either the gleeful enthusiasm found amongst senior Labourites or the weak acquiescence of many Conservatives, for the destruction of our nation’s racial identity ; but as the BNP is opposed to public funding on principal, there is no such ‘temptation.’ On the contrary, I think that taking into account their remarkable progress without the massive hand-outs relied upon by their opponents, they are content to keep their distance from the trough.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[...] In our past encounters, Dr Pinto-Duchinsky has sought to present the two of us as diametrically opposed in this debate. His new report suggests that we are rather closer in agreement than he might care to admit. I sense that he shares my frustration that, without criticising Sir Hayden Phillips himself, the negotiations surrounding party funding reform have been rooted in an attempt to establish a consensus between the three main party HQs rather than consider what is in the interests of party politics more widely. [...]