Earlier this month, Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, wrote to the national committee of the party’s youth wing, Young Labour, ordering them not to send a delegation to the International Union of Socialist Youth’s summer camp in Malta. The camp is hosted annually by either IUSY or the Young European Socialists (YES). The Labour Party has taken part for many years. This August, though, McNicol said he would rather young members ‘focused their efforts on campaigning in the run up to the general election’. Labour is not currently ‘engaged with IUSY in a meaningful way’.

Two years ago, I was one of around fifty activists who went to the IUSY camp in Croatia. We were the largest British delegation ever. During New Labour’s 13 years in government, the party struggled to attract young supporters. In the months after Ed Miliband became leader, thousands of new members – many of them young – joined the party.

When we met with delegations from other countries, it was obvious that Young Labour’s political compass was shifting. The delegation’s leaders were in their mid-twenties (membership is for supporters aged between 14 and 26). They toed the party line that we were opposed to the depth and speed of the coalition’s austerity, but accepted the need for cuts. Younger recruits heckled them.

Labour HQ decreed that only ten delegates would go to last year’s camp in Turkey. McNicol wrote to other European parties, saying that if Young Labour members tried to jump aboard their delegations it would be ‘treated as a disciplinary matter’. Kaisa Penny, YES’s Finnish president, told McNicol to stop interfering.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/06/23/conrad-landin/young-labour-grounded/