Anybody who has worked in any sort of office job will be familiar with the phrase “death by powerpoint” to describe the arse-numbing boredom of sitting in one place while being subjected to a stream of bar charts and bullet points. This week I coined the phrase “death by democracy” when faced with a local Labour party AGM.

By the way, that is not to say it was a bad meeting. The atmosphere was great, which you would expect under the circumstances, there were no arguments, and everybody was on the same side. In the past there were times when there were factions and fierce competition for one side or the other to grab the levers of power. There were also times when every decision by the Chair would be challenged, and the wording of proposed changes to standing orders would be debated in Jesuitical detail.

But there was none of that. It is not just that everybody was in a good mood from having won the General Election last week both nationally and locally. When I was unwell I stepped back from all this sort of thing. With a knackered immune system I was avoiding contact with anybody as far as possible, and then Covid came along and everybody else joined in with that distancing. With Corbyn in charge I had little enthusiasm for diving back in even when I was up to it, so there were a lot of old friends I had not seen for a long time and it was great to catch up with them. There were also some newer faces. Even one person who only joined the party a week before.

So why “death by democracy”?

The thing is, it would be great just to sit down and swap war stories about the election, or discuss potential policies that might deliver real benefits to the country, but the sad fact is that this is a business meeting and there is certain business that has to be done, according to the rules. In a nutshell, at the AGM the membership has to agree any changes to the local standing orders (this cannot be done at normal monthly meetings) and elect people to the various positions within the party.

As I said, this has led to heated debates in the past but this time round the rule changes were straightforward and uncontroversial, and there were no serious differences between candidates for positions – either political, ideological or personal. The problem is now just one of scale.

This is not just a matter of picking a Chair, Secretary and Treasurer, though those do have to be selected. There is a huge list of officers: Vice Chair, Women’s Officer, Trade Union Liaison Officer, Youth Officer, Policy Officer, Fundraising Officer, IT Officer, and many more. On top of that there are auditors to appoint, up to 8 ordinary members of the EC, Group Observers for the borough council, appointments to the county committee that organises the county selections next year, and probably more that I can’t remember.

Within all those jobs there are some constraints. There are blocks of roles (like voting EC members and non-voting EC members) that have to have a gender balance. It used to be worse when some posts could only be voted on by trade union members.

Some of the positions only had one nomination so were easy enough. In those cases you just need a confirmatory show of hands, but the rest needed a vote on each one. In those cases there is usually an opportunity for each candidate to make a short speech to support their candidacy. Short, but all those short speeches can add up. When I arrived I was given a bundle of pre-printed ballot papers with the candidate names on for the contested positions and a little bit of me died when I was asked to check and make sure I had all eleven ballot papers. I did the mental arithmetic: worst case eleven competitions, at least two candidates, two minutes each to speak = 44 minutes before you factor in the time for one candidate to leave the room and all the other admin, plus the time to cast votes, collect the ballots, and count them.

Everything went smoothly, it just necessarily took an age, but at least our volunteer tellers were significantly faster than those doing the General Election count in Crawley, which took about 7 hours.

On the plus side, it was a warm-ish, dry evening so I could ride the Honda to the meeting without needing all my waterproofs.

As a sequel to the AGM, tonight I was at the Town Hall for a special council meeting. The only business was to confer some honours on four ex-councillors. Purely ceremonial. No party politics, no motions, amendments, arguments, or other normal business. After that there was to be the unveiling of some commemorative stuff in the foyer.

It still took a couple of hours though. To make somebody an honorary freeman of the borough and alderman it means one councillor officially proposes them and another seconds them. The proposed and seconder are both normally from the same party and each make a speech after which the Mayor asks if any other councillor wishes to say anything at which point there will be a councillor from the other party who will give another little speech as a minimum but sometimes another member might want to chip in. After all that there is some paperwork to sign and a scroll and medal to present, photos to be taken, and the recipient will make a speech.

Bear in mind that all the speakers are councillors or ex-councillors and councillors are not known to be shy about speaking, and all that happened four times.

Again, it was good to see some familiar faces that I had not seen for ages and there was a great collegiate atmosphere, even between the two parties, Crawley being very much a two-party town these days. It was also good from my point of view to see the new council chamber in use and be dazzled by how well the space and the technology worked. In the new building you can actually hear everything, which was never the case in the old one. It is just that I am very out of practise at sitting in one place for two hours listening to people make speeches, no matter how friendly and well-intentioned they are.

By the time I finished on the council I was obviously very used to it, but it is an easy habit to get out of, and the chairs in the public gallery are not as comfortable as the ones the councillors get to sit on.

One of my ex-colleagues asked me if I missed it all. Part of me does, especially the planning committee, but another part of me really appreciates all the spare time I get these days. I now read between ten and twelve books a month instead of spending the same amount of time reading committee papers, background documents, briefing notes, minutes and all the other paperwork necessary to properly participate in the council. I have read a few terrible books, but even the worst is more exciting than a set of minutes from a scrutiny sub-committee!

I would be tempted back if I thought there was nobody else available, but from the look of the attendance at the party AGM there is no shortage of enthusiastic, talented, and much younger people so no danger of me being needed, so I can continue to spend weekends out on the bike riding to distant record fairs or seaside towns instead of being obliged to go to school fetes. I’m not saying that I couldn’t get back into that councillor mindset, but fortunately there seems to be no need to sign up again, unless I retire and find that I have too much time on my hands.