Tweet by Richard Burgeon MP.
Good to see Labour returning to post-war mass-membership it held throughout the 40's to 70's. Should help with campaigning and funds for the next GE.
Wow. This makes it the biggest mass party in Europe by far. How do one join the Labour? All the parties I know have paid membership.
Well it's no doubt changed a little since I joined 6-7 years ago but you just go to the website and apply online. They then send you out a pack, with a membership card, and keep you posted if there's any elections/materials produced (and royally spam your email). It's about £50 p/y direct debit, but I think it's halved for those not in employment (you can choose what you like, I guess, but I can't imagine many people would bother signing up in the first place if they weren't prepared to pay £50 towards the party).
You know, 50.8 million dollars/year isn't that bad of an income. It's a shame that US parties don't really charge token membership fees like that. It would be difficult to introduce, and would require significant reforms to outreach, voting, and even the character of what parties precisely are in the United States. But I wonder if cultivating this sort of a committed, grassroots core of people isn't a thing worth looking into.
I know this is taking things a little off-topic, but interestingly, Canada seems to (kind of) be moving more towards the American way of doing things, with the federal Liberals having eliminated their membership fee at their last convention. In the recent CPC leadership race, Michael Chong was advocating a public political party registration system that also would have operated without membership fees.
Keep in mind, most Canadian party memberships are only about $10 or $20 per year. The Conservatives tried to raise theirs from $15 to $25 somewhat recently, but that attracted a backlash from enough people that they cancelled the increase.
