Until very recently, however, I had not intended to do so. I don't like slates, even one so diverse as to be able to accommodate Liz Davies and Andy Howell on the same ticket. They tend to submerge the bad with the good; and even the loosest associations of this nature carry hints of the sort of conformity and internal discipline that has been the curse of the communist and trotskyite left for so much of this century.

There are, moreover, at least three non-Grass Roots Alliance candidates who I would like to see on the NEC, and who, in normal times, might have been able to rely upon my vote. Diana Jeuda, I am sure, would live up to her election promise to "build an inclusive NEC, representing and respecting the broad spectrum of Labour thinking" -- which is more or less what I'm hoping for from the successful candidates. Mary Southcott, an indefatigable campaigner for proportional representation and a truly independent candidate in an election that favours the aligned, merits support on both of these grounds. And Michael Cashman, who has campaigned on gay rights and other issues since long before it became comfortable to do so, blends pragmatism and passion in a way that represents the best of the democratic socialist tradition.

But two of these three candidates are likely to be elected anyway, with or without my mark on the ballot paper. Diana Jeuda and Michael Cashman have the head start of familiarity -- Jeuda, who has more nominations than any other candidate, as a result of her 34 years active membership of the Labour Party, and Cashman because of his television fame. (Cashman really should stop complaining, incidentally, that his "22 years as an active Labour Party and trade union member are often eclipsed by three years on EastEnders". This is a bit like Billy Bragg bemoaning the fact that more people know him for his music than his membership of the Red Wedge organising committee in the 1980s.)

These two are also part of the so-called "Blairite loyalist" Members First slate, whose backing by the party hierarchy and ability to buy national newspaper advertising gives them a further advantage over their rivals. Since I want to ensure that at least one or two candidates manage to secure election to the NEC from outside the leadership-approved list, the only way to maximise the likelihood of it happening appears to be to set aside my reservations about individual candidates and vote for the Grass Roots Alliance slate in its entirety.

Several things have motivated me to do so over the past few weeks. The first is an innate sense of injustice over what amounts to a personal witchhunt against Liz Davies. Davies was dumped as a parliamentary candidate by the NEC for the most minor transgressions against internal party discipline during her time as an Islington councillor. It was a disgraceful episode at a time when the party was actively recruiting sitting Conservative MPs and supporters of other parties to the New Labour cause. And when Tom Sawyer, the party general secretary of all people, laid into Davies in the letters page of the Guardian, both his intemperance and his impropriety (to use Roy Hattersley's description of his intervention) persuaded me that at least one of my votes should go to counteract the campaign against her.

That alone would not have been enough to move me to vote for the Grass Roots Alliance in its entirety (although, in common with Roy Hattersley, I was always going to give one of my votes to Mark Seddon). But then came the US missile raids on Afghanistan and Sudan, and the rush to new anti-terrorist legislation following the Omagh bombing. The speed with which the government moved to back the US terror raids and the emotional stampede that brought in draconian new laws to combat non-governmental terrorism were alarming examples of how far the party leadership has strayed from traditional Labour concerns about foreign policy and civil liberties. For me, they provided compelling evidence of the need for some constructive internal dissent.

It is something of a mark of shame that with the exception of Mark Seddon, who speaks of "an internationalism aimed at alleviating poverty and environmental destruction", not one of the candidates for the NEC mentions either domestic liberties or foreign policy in their election statements. I would gauge, however, that we are more likely to get challenging questions raised on these issues by the likes of Seddon and Davies on the NEC than by candidates whose principal concerns seem to centre around their desire to prove their "loyalty" to the party leadership.

Of course, I am well aware that there are many issues on which I would disagree with members of the Grass Roots Alliance. I have voted for them nonetheless with the same sort of sense of security that used to underlie many party members' support for Dennis Skinner in the constituency section in the past. There are probably not many people in the party who would have voted for an entire NEC made up of Dennis Skinners, but he represents an important strain in the Labour coalition that ought to be represented at the highest level in the party. The same is true of the Grass Roots Alliance candidates this time around, which is why I have given them my votes.