The people who controlled the Labour Party during the tenure of the now outgoing Leader set up what they called a "community organising unit". I think the unit was actually duplicating the work already done by good local Labour Parties and Labour Councils up and down the land and in an area where Brent Council was a pioneer.
The story starts more than twenty years ago when the Blair government was first elected. Back then the new Labour government wanted to change both the Party and the Councils by making them more outward facing and in touch with the public. There are some shocking instances of Councils that were completely divorced from their communities. For example, I recall meeting a councillor (Not a Brent one) who told me that he literally never knocked on a door during his more than twnety years as a councillor. Whereas he was an extreme case, he was not the only one.
The Labour Party first set about reforming itself to discourage this. It was hoped that the large new membership in 1997/1998, which back was over 400,000 would become more active in this regard, and to support that the Party started to streamlining its activities to reduce the number of dull and routine meetings by having more all member meetings, fewer acronyms and confusing committees and so on. It is fair to see that this was not always successful, but the effort was a genuine one.
In parallel, the Blair government put forward the crucial 2000 Local Government Act which abolished the old committee system which tied councillors up in seemingly endless town hall meetings, and sought to get councillors more involved in "frontline" activities, engaging their communities. There were a lot of successes in this. I listed some of the ones I was involved in on my Kensal Green page, and there are many more recent examples. Councillors were also encouraged to meet local people in events such as Local Democracy Week and in community groups. Naturally this can also involve a certain amount of protesting against unresponsive public authorities, although this should be just a subsidiary part of the whole.
An active local councillor, such Cllr Janice Long in Dudden Hill can clock up a lot of this provided she/he doggedly pursues it over time.
Brent became a pioneer on this setting up training and structures such as the ward working scheme to make it happen. Unfortunately ward working was abolished and replaced with councillors merely arguing for grants of CIL money to particular groups without really understanding what they are spent on or why. This replicates the potential dangers of things like ward working, of making it a vehicle for favouritism and patronage without getting the advantage in promoting the community aspect.
The Community Organising Unit was essentially replicating all this, presumably because its proponents didn't really understand how local government or good local Labour Parties worked.
A second aspect coming out of the recent General Election is that the Community Organisers got diverted from this into old fashioned transactional campaigning of the kind that community organising was supposed to replace. This is an understandable situation where political parties are struggling for funding, but destroys the whole idea of community organising which is more about longer term relationships. Of course, the Labour Party's internal review has also suggested that the organisers were sent to the wrong places either because the senior figures in the Party had a seriously misjudged optimism about the result or in some case a personal dislike for certain candidates.
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