The Whipping Boys

As council meetings go, Tuesday's turned out unexpectedly uncontroversial.  There were even a few fleeting glimpses of sweetness and light, that the usual suspects, goading the opposition at every opportunity, couldn't entirely dispel.

For most of us, the big issue was, again, the threatened sale of green spaces.  When it came to the vote, Members would be faced with a tricky balancing act, weighing up issues of localisation, social justice, quality of life, revenue, home-building, maybe even soil, wildlife and water conservation.  Oh, and electoral advantage!

In the public forum, we strutted our stuff as best we could in the very limited time available.  I'd wondered, not for the first time, if there was any point in this ritual, and this time I seized my moment with the mike to ask them to declare (for once) whether the vote was being 'whipped'.  After all, if that order's already gone out, what's the point of debate?  What's the point of the public forum?

In the event, it turned out that a deal had been struck before the meeting, and it finished with a unanimous vote.  Whipping would have been irrelevant anyway - just like the statement I introduced on behalf of Friends of Stockwood Open Spaces.  The deal was already sealed.

OK, my whipping question wasn't 100% innocent.  I knew that the two Greens on the council ('Leader' Tess Green and 'Whip' Gus Hoyt) had formed independent and different views as to how to vote on the choices in the original motion.  Fair enough. They'd both looked at the complex issues in great depth, the voters and the party had entrusted them to use their common sense, so why try to override that with some kind of whipping system that forces either of them to go against their consciences? 

The three bigger parties don't seem to operate like that.  I don't doubt that most of their members joined up because they found something in the party line that chimed with their own world views.  But on an issue of parkland sales, which had been endorsed years before by all three, (only the Greens questioned it then) it's hard to see why any of them should have changed their views...  what is so different now from the situation then? 

The only thing I can think of has nothing to do with principle, it's simply electoral opportunism. Those party groups, as always, seem to define themselves primarily in electoral terms, and don't hesitate to silence any possible dissent within their ranks by telling their councillors how to vote.  They even see such enforced obedience as a virtue. 

How long before I'll witness in the Bristol council chamber what I once saw happen in my (then) local town hall?  The debate was staged, the party positions were pre-defined, and the whips were out.  The Leader of the majority Labour Party returned to the chamber after answering a call of nature, just in time to hear the mayor call for the vote.  He put his hand up.  Falteringly, his fellow members followed his example.  So, to the Leader's surprise, did the opposition benches.  By that time it was too late to rectify his mistake.  Council policy had been dramatically and unexpectedly changed. 

After that he listened much more carefully to what vote was being called. 
They still routinely use the whip, though.  They're still proud of their party discipline, too.

Whipping Yarns

"We're not being whipped" Cabot's LibDem councillor Alex Woodman told the council debate on abandoning the sell-off of the city's green spaces.

Technically, he was probably right, because a Labour amendment had just been introduced, and any formal whipping on it was impracticable. But only the previous day the LibDems had announced that "Bristol City Council’s ruling Lib Dem group (38 members out of 70) will amend the Tories’ motion on the Green Spaces Strategy (PGSS) at tomorrow’s full council meeting (Nov 16th).". It's hard to know how Alex could have any choice but to do what his party had agreed.

You'd think that the selective sale of green space wouldn't really be a big 'party' issue, except maybe for the Greens - but right through this debate, every vote was conducted entirely on party lines. LibDems in wards threatened by proposed sales still voted for it; Tories and Labour in wards that could only gain voted against. The usual disciplined tribal voting patterns, in fact.

Why this 'default' of routine voting as a block? Don't parties trust their own councillors to make their own judgements?

I put in a Public Forum statement to the same full council meeting to suggest that where a whip is in force, speakers should say so, and say why. I explained that "If an election or manifesto promise is involved, or some intrinsic party values, then a whip is understandable; but for the majority of council decisions (for instance the motion to be heard later about the funding for the Area Green Space Plans) it is very hard to find any rational difference between the parties."

The statement's been referred to the respective party whips. So far, only Labour has responded; I'll come back to this when I hear more.

As a footnote, it's worth noting that Alex Woodman and his fellow Cabot councillor Mark Wright (defender of Green Belt except when it involves a stadium) have put out a 'Cabot E-News', acknowledging that "that there is opposition to the sale of some of the sites (around 15 of the 60 proposed)". It turns out that the 15 are not actually sites, they're protest groups, while the 60 are proposed sale sites - so it's grossly misleading. It's still not been corrected though.

Meanwhile my own Freedom of Information request for the officers' assessments of the various suggested disposal sites remains unacknowledged, a couple of weeks after the statutory date for a full answer. With decisions imminent, you have to wonder why such a delay.