Red Pepper

One Million Climate Jobs: An interview with John Stewart

louise — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:47:45 +0000

Tom To introduce the report to someone who is unaware of what this stimulus would provide, what effectively is this report saying?

John We focus on climate jobs not green jobs as a whole. The report explains how and why we urgently need climate jobs that will directly reduce CO₂ emissions and help solve the environmental and economic crisis. If there is investment in public transport (buses and trains), walking and cycling; that will create jobs. It will create jobs in the building of infrastructure; it will create jobs in the running of the public transport services. We estimate that if this was done in a serious way, it will double the amount of people working in public transport, in other words add another 300,000 public transport jobs. Public transport is a really good example of how investment will bring real social and environmental benefits as well put a lot of people back to work.

This can be repeated in insulating homes, and investment in renewables like offshore wind and wave power. The government initiative needs to be there, particularly for the high level of investment that will be required for something like wave power.

Tom We hear that there is no alternative to cuts and the need for austerity. Your report, One Million Climate Jobs, helps to debunk some of these myths. Give us an introduction to the politics of austerity and the demands of your report for a fiscal stimulus to get the economy going again, but crucially, for a new kind of economy.

John We think that the current austerity programmes that the government is trying to put through are self defeating. There is another way forward which helps solve the economic crisis we are in, and the environmental crisis we are in. That is investment. Our report details with some very specific figures, the costings of a million jobs in climate friendly industries and the cutting of overall emissions for the UK by 80 per cent. This is a message of hope. If the current government claim to be the greenest government ever, (for which unfortunately there is not much competition) they have not been very strong. We need much more direct government action in order to create these one million climate jobs that will help both crises.

Tom Your report is original in comparing the initiative to the National Health Service (NHS). Could you explain the difference between having the climate jobs as public sector employees instead of going down the more traditional route of tax breaks and subsides for market led growth?

John I don’t think we would be saying there would be no room at all for subsidises and quantitative easing (QE), but we are not convinced that it in itself will work. We are not convinced because it is still relying very heavily on the private sector to come up with radical and significant change. The scale of the economic and climate crisis calls for government action.

Tom This report is very much a top down initiative. What would you say to critics who might suggest that instead of local authorities and national governments; encourage local communities to organise and lead the way?

John It certainly argues that governments need to take the initiative and lead the investment. But, what it is being careful not to say is that government needs to micro-manage. I think we saw during the last Labour government, there was a lot of micro management of the economy and I don’t think that works. There is a big difference between the government supplying the overall investment, but then trusting local authorities, local people to manage their own projects in as imaginative and creative way as possible, because what might be right for Cardiff in South Wales may be a different approach for a town like Bournemouth in the South Coast.

Tom How could we encourage local communities the need for, say wind farms, whom may resist the implementation of such wind farms or renewable energy initiatives in their neighbourhood if they are not the most attractive things?

John As we know there is strong local opposition to wind turbines. We have to work with the local community. I don’t think you can just railroad communities, forcing them to adopt them. This sort of approach is unacceptable and would be self defeating. Local authorities and national governments need to make the national, economic and environmental case for wind turbines, but when it comes to the sighting of wind turbines, it has to be done sensitively. While in principle they are a good thing; there are some genuine concerns amongst some local communities, particularly the noise, and we need to be very sensitive to that.

Tom How do we popularise these arguments and go on to establish lasting communication and co-operation between environmentalists and trade unionists?

John We communicate to the people, and in particular, people who are feeling in despair that they can’t get a job (particularly the younger generation). This is one of the reasons behind the Climate Jobs Caravan.

In a sense this is almost dramatising it. It can be street theatre. We will be going out to the main public squares, in towns and cities across the country with a van, with a message, with videos, with people, saying, actually there is another way! No need to be in despair; there is some hope.

But we are also hoping that campaigns and coalitions will emerge in the various towns and cities, and work together to put real concrete pressure on their local authorities to move in a direction of investing in climate jobs.

Tom Could you explain what is happening and how people can get involved with the Climate Jobs Caravan?

John We are covering over 25 towns and cities up and down the country in two parallel tours. It begins on the 12^th May and ends on the 25^th May. One is covering Scotland and the north of England, and one is covering the midlands, south of England and Wales. It depends on the town and city, as local people are heavily involved, as they should be, at the local events. The whole message will be is things can be different and don’t have to be as they are now.

One of the key things is the caravan has been jointly organised by environmental campaigners and trade unionists working together. We hope an alliance will come out of this to put joint pressure on local government and authorities.

We would be disappointed if the caravan was just a one off piece of street theatre. We want more than that. We want to have these lasting alliances working fairly effectively and practical ways together to influence local authorities, regional authorities and influence the climate opinion generally in people’s areas.

Tom Now to talk about the transition period that would need to take place to move towards a low carbon economy. How would we guarantee that those who lose high carbon jobs, would be moved to sustainable, secure jobs in the low carbon economy? How do we protect these people?

John This is where a government led initiative is critical. If too much of this is left to incentivising the private sector then we can’t get this sort of just transition. Government would be heavily involved in reskilling, retraining and educating the workers in the unsustainable industries; to ensure they are properly equipped to move into the more sustainable and climate friendly jobs. Now, that may happen with fiscal incentives, but the argument is that it will not guarantee them that switch.

Tom Imagine we have moved into a low carbon economy. How do we prevent retailers and/or consumers/local communities from simply using those energy efficiencies to produce and consume more energy as opposed to reduce our demand for finite resources?

John Once we are at this nirvana of having created a million climate jobs, how do we ensure that people don’t just use more energy? This is where fiscal measure have a role to play. We have got to look at the price of carbon. It has to be done fairly so poorer communities don’t lose out. We need a carbon tax, or some sort of equivalent fiscal measure, where the people who consume the most are paying the price of that consumption.

Tom There is growing research highlighting the dangers of emerging bubbles in carbon offsetting and cutting. Are there any calls for more rigorous regulation in finance that complement the transition to a low carbon economy?

John To forestall that happening, my own view, is that there needs to be much greater control and regulation of international finance.

The National Climate Service (NCS) is one initiative amongst many others. We are not isolating this as the world’s total answer to unemployment and climate change but it’s an answer amongst many others. To tackle the crises of our time, we will need several approaches.

There are many other great ideas put forward by the likes of the Green Party, which I think will sit very nicely alongside this initiative.

The task is to find a positive answer to the problems we face; and the creation of a million climate jobs is a great first step as part of that approach.

John Stewart is Chair of Campaign Against Climate Change, was a leading activist in the campaign to prevent the expansion of Third Runway at Heathrow and Chair of Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (HACAN). He is currently on the organising committee for the Climate Caravan.

http://www.campaigncc.org/

http://www.hacan.org.uk/

Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America: Riding the pink tide

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:45:09 +0000

The rise of new social movements and ‘pink tide’ governments across Latin America has been accompanied by a burgeoning range of texts exploring the phenomenon. The relationship between the state and social movements is commonly approached by counterposing the ‘bottom-up’ approach of grassroots social movements and the ‘top‑down’ orientation of populist leaders. In this scenario, hope for real change ultimately resides with autonomous social movements operating independently of parties, governments and states.
Defying the prevailing orthodoxy is this book, an insightful and invaluable collection of case studies, which dares to delve deeply into the multifaceted circumstances and challenges facing the Latin American left.
For example, Daniel Hellinger argues that the Venezuelan experience ‘challenges many preconceptions about the need for strict borders between the state and civil society’, given the presence of a state which, through its control over oil rents, remains central to the process of capital accumulation. He points to the success of government-promoted local community councils in democratising rent re-distribution and creating the embryos of a new state built from below.
A ‘dynamic tension’ exists within this relationship; and so does the risk that the relationship may transform into one based on ‘co-option’ or ‘confrontation’. While Argentina shows how a government can reassert social stability by co-opting and marginalising movements, the Brazilian example lays bare how a strategy of avoiding co-option by focusing on ‘exerting pressure from below’ has also faltered.
If a common pattern can be found, the book’s editors argue it is that ‘the parties of the left need the enthusiasm and renewing qualities of the mass social movements if they are to achieve state power . . . [similarly] the social movements cannot hope to achieve all or part of their ambitious projects without the mechanisms of the state apparatus that a left party in power can provide. Inevitably their relations will be filled with conflict, but that is the nature of politics.’

Media Reform rally (+ live stream), Thur 17th @ 6-8pm

Michael — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:42:11 +0000

Speakers include Hugh Grant, Tom Watson, Mary-Ellen Field, Jaqui Hames, Michelle Stanistreet (NUJ), Richard Peppiatt (ex Daily Star hack), Peter Bottomley MP plus a cross-section of celebrities, victims, campaigners and politicians to be announced shortly.

In this unprecedented public event, diverse speakers will gather together to voice their views about what a democratic and accountable media means. It will be well-timed to coincide with the peak of Leveson’s most controversial module on the relationship between the press and politicians as well as the imminent Communications green paper consultation. We believe it is critical at this time to define an agenda for change so that crucial opportunities for meaningful reform are not missed, and that both politicians and the media are subject to pressure from a broad base of public support.

Registrations are no longer being taken for the event, but there may be places available after 6pm on a first come first serve basis.

But the good news is that those who can’t make it in person can watch the live stream of the event by clicking here at 6pm.

Co-operatise the state?

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:36:54 +0000

In the free-for-all over the spoils of the public sector, Tory ministers are playing fast and loose with the concepts of co-operatives and mutuals. They talk blithely about ‘the John Lewis model’. One might smile at the fact that Tories have to raid progressive history, such is the crisis of legitimacy of big business. Rhetorically, one can simply apply the ‘private sector test’. Would ministers apply the right to form a co-op to workers in privatised services, as a recent Unison report proposed? Would the investment managers proclaiming ‘John Lewis style’ academies apply the John Lewis model to private companies?
Genuine co-operative alternatives are making headway. The pressure to marketise grows in parallel with the mounting evidence of failure – the Southern Cross care home operator heads a growing list, as patients, users and medical staff become more confident whistle-blowers – but few want to return to public management as we knew it. There is urgent interest in how to defend public services but managed in a more responsive way.
The co-operative movement, with its practical experience of democratic management, its labour movement traditions and its significant resources through the Co-operative Group (see page 30), is proving a distinctive source of support for alternatives to the marketisation of public services.
In education, a key development is the spread of co-operative trust schools, supported nationally by the Schools Co-operative Society (SCS) and funded through local authorities, which also provide what support services they can on diminishing budgets. There are now 200 co-op schools, with numbers growing rapidly.
Rather than be forced into an academy, schools are looking for alternatives that enable them to realise their public service values. ‘Especially important,’ explains the enthusiastic Mervyn Wilson, head of the Co-operative College, ‘is the way SCS has helped schools develop effective collaboration’ – in dealing with Ofsted inspections, for example, and sharing resources.
Trade unions are becoming warily supportive of the development. SCS is working closely with the unions, which stress the contrast with academies. ‘Academies are about marketisation, whereas co-operative schools maintain education as a public service, funding [it] on the basis of social need,’ says John Chowcat, a leading official in the Prospect union. (The Co-op does sponsor some academies in very specific circumstances, but this is not their main concern.)
What does this mean for local authorities that see the role of the state as both to deliver public services and also to enable the means of delivery to be more responsive to users and staff alike?
Enter the Co-operative Council Network. One of the network’s members is Newcastle Council. Labour councillor Nigel Todd welcomes its formation because it ‘brings the authentic socialist imagination back into the labour movement’. It does so with a stress on opening services to greater involvement from users and staff.
This is what inspires Unison branch secretary and Co-op party member Jonathan Sedgebeer from Telford Council, a new recruit to the network: ‘This is an opportunity to move beyond simply reacting to the Tory agenda [and] setting out our alternative strategy.’ He reflects the position of Unison nationally, which also sees the co-operative model as a basis for intervening in privatised services and helping staff create co-operatives that will improve services as well as wages and working conditions.
‘We are walking a fine line,’ admits Sedgebeer, fully aware that talk of co-ops, mutuals and social enterprises can ‘simply soften the path to privatisation’. Unions, the co-operative movement and councils are exploring ways of locking assets into trust arrangements that prevent private takeovers. They are looking at collaborative – rather than outsourcing – models around very specific services where co-ops or other transparent and accountable social enterprises can improve the service delivery.
‘You work out together what the council and the co-op does best from the point of view of meeting social needs.’ That’s a word of advice from Alison Page, who has six years’ experience of working with Lancaster Council through a recycling company and the charity Furniture Matters. According to the New Economics Foundation assessment of the social return on investment, the partnership has achieved a £5 return on every £1 of public money invested in terms of jobs created in the local economy, the benefits of recycling and savings on landfill.
The word ‘socialism’ in the English language had its origins in the co-operative movement of the 1820s. Its opposite was competitive individualism. In the context of state-promoted competition of wild west proportions, the co-operative movement is opening once again a contested space for developing what socialism means in practice.

It’s all at the co-op

admin — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:32:15 +0000

We’ve heard a lot lately from leading politicians about the need to promote a humane version of capitalism, one in which the mechanisms of the market are governed more by morality than greed. For parties of all colours, co-operatives are increasingly being espoused as potential agents of this transition, their expansion seen as a perfect way to moderate the excesses of the current system.
Their elevation within the political debate coincides neatly with the UN’s decision to make 2012 the International Year of the Co-operative, a move that seeks to raise public awareness of the contribution that these enterprises make to both society and the economy.
Among the UK political parties, it’s the Conservatives who have seemingly travelled the greatest distance. Under Cameron the Tories have publicly sought to overcome the image of their long-held suspicion towards this system of organisation. The promised co-operatives bill seeks to consolidate existing co‑operative legislation, and the coalition government aspires to having a million public sector workers owning their own co‑operative firms by 2015.
However, the government has taken several steps recently that suggest that its commitment towards co-operatives might not be as strong as it likes to claim. These include the decision to reject the remutualisation of Northern Rock in favour of its sale to Virgin Money, the awarding of a £90 million NHS contract to a private firm rather than the social enterprise Central Surrey Health, the cutting of funding to renewable energy co-operatives across the country and the shelving of plans to create more co‑operative Sure Start centres and housing trusts.
‘The whole thing is just another attempt by the Tories to make them seem more reasonable and hide what they are really doing. It’s window dressing,’ argues Martin Tiedemann, campaigns officer for the Co-operative Party (COP), which has had a formal tie to the Labour Party since the 1920s.
‘This is best revealed by their approach to the public sector,’ he says. ‘Rather then making bold use of the values, accountability structures and ownership models of the co-operative movement, they seem to be simply using the label “mutual” whenever they want to mask their wider programme of privatisation.’
Tiedemann maintains that the Labour Party is better positioned to champion the co-operative ideal. ‘The last Labour manifesto contained 24 policy commitments that had been put forward by the COP. And we feel that this commitment will continue under Ed Milliband. He’s a COP member [and has] given his public backing to the efforts by Labour councils in places such as Oldham, Rochdale and Lambeth to enable co-operatives to have a greater role in the provision of local services.’
As the political parties fight over who best embraces the co‑operative ideal, employees and consumers across the country are increasingly making up their own minds on the attractiveness of co-operatives. Whether measured by number, membership or contribution to the economy, co-ops have expanded in size and importance over the past three years.
‘While the rest of the economy has stagnated, co-ops have grown by 21 per cent,’ says Ed Mayo, secretary-general of Co-operatives UK. According to his organisation, there are now 5,450 co-op businesses in the UK with a total of 12.8‑million members, 236,000 employees and a combined £33.2 billion turnover.
Mayo says this increase is attributable to two main factors. ‘First, there is growing demand among consumers for fair businesses they can trust. And second, because co-operatives are answerable to their members rather than the demands of outside shareholders or the whims of the stock market, they appear to be more resilient in a crisis and can operate for the long term.’
There are many ways to organise a co‑operative. But what each has in common is the belief that members should have a say in how the business is run and the right to share in its profits. As the Calverts co-operative (see below) illustrates, co-ops are still able to create greater egalitarianism in the workplace while competing successfully against traditionally organised businesses.

A better business

Based in the heart of east London, Calverts, a print and design business, has been operating as a co-operative since its inception in 1977
‘Calverts arose out of an industrial dispute with IRAT services, the design and publishing wing of the Arts Lab,’ says co-op member Siôn Whellens. ‘A number of employees suddenly found themselves being made redundant. Believing that there was a market for their work, wanting to preserve jobs and desiring to work in a radically egalitarian way, seven of them decided to set up a common ownership, collective type of worker co-operative.’
The early success of the co-operative in creating decent jobs for the seven founders convinced them that the business model was sustainable and Calverts currently has 14 members. No equity investment has ever been sought. The business has preferred to reinvest surpluses and use asset finance and loans to purchase machinery, reasoning that this relatively expensive capital is a price worth paying for autonomy and equality. In keeping with its egalitarian origins, Calverts still has a flat management and pay structure. So everyone from the cleaner to the finance director earns the same hourly wage and each member has an equal voice in the way the business is run.
‘This makes it a really good place to work,’ argues Siôn. ‘We have better terms and conditions than most people in our industry. We also operate with a culture of openness, respect and equality, invest in member education and skills development, and enable members to take a high degree of personal responsibility within a context of collective self-management. Because of this, our staff retention is more than twice the industry average, which means that as a business we’ve acquired and held onto a great amount of creative and technical expertise.’
Conventional business wisdom would assert that both the model and the ethos that underpin Calverts – a common asset base, worker ownership and control – are doomed to failure. But although the business has faced challenging times, it has not just survived but prospered in a tough and rapidly changing industry that has seen many conventionally organised businesses go under. The co-op has managed to ride three recessions without a single employee losing their job through compulsory redundancy (although in the early 1990s there was a temporary increase in hours from 35 to 37.5 – the extra 2.5 hours being unpaid).
Calverts also achieved its success while trading ethically. The co-op has been involved with green innovation in design and print since its earliest days when it worked with the Paperback Co-op on the first recycled papers in the UK market. It has applied an ethical dimension to its supply chains too, looking to buy everything from a co-operative or fair trade source.
According to Siôn, the success of the business over the past three decades has been achieved without much help from government. ‘Co-ops haven’t been treated with informed and consistent seriousness by either Conservative or Labour administrations. For example, the state‑funded Business Link service was notoriously “co-op blind”. Also, co-operation is not much taught in business schools, even though half the world’s population depends on co-ops for their livelihood. Co-operative development expertise and education continue to be funded from the movement’s own resources, such as the Co‑operative Enterprise Hub.’
This is not something that Siôn believes will change much in the future. ‘Historically, there’s been little liking for worker ownership on the British left and trade union movement, which I can’t see changing. On the right, the Conservatives’ recent conversion is, as yet, shallow – there’s not much evidence they really “get” co-ops, preferring to see them as a variant of charities, when in fact they’re the opposite. So I think the success of the movement will continue to depend on the solidarity, vision and hard work of its individual members and businesses.’
www.calverts.coop
Illustration by Cressida Knapp.

Ghosts of Afghanistan: A realistic prospect for peace

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:50:30 +0000

Formerly the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief – and with over 30 years of reporting on Afghanistan with distinction – Jonathan Steele makes a comparative analysis of the US and Soviet occupations the backbone of this book.
Alternating reportage with a careful dismantling of ‘13 myths about Afghanistan’, he finds many similarities and at least one crucial difference. Both occupations were essentially interventions in a civil war, pitching a high-tech military against a poorly-armed insurgency with disastrous consequences for millions of ordinary Afghans.
However, while in the Soviet context ‘[a] new leader came to power in the Kremlin, abandoned hopes of victory and tried hard to achieve a negotiated settlement’ – efforts cynically blocked by the west – in the US Obama has escalated the war and refused to countenance serious peace talks.
Steele is clear that, ‘while preferable to staying in the country in a futile search for military victory … the option of withdrawing from Afghanistan without a negotiated settlement, as the Soviets did, is not the best one.’ Nonetheless (and this is one of the book’s major strengths) he is also clear that negotiations to end Afghanistan’s long‑running civil war, coupled with local ceasefires on and the adoption of a regional agreement on non-interference in Afghan affairs, remain a realistic prospect – provided that the US is prepared to jettison its plans for a long-term military presence and withdraw.
A recently-leaked Nato report, based on interrogations of thousands of captured Taliban fighters, concluded that: ‘While they [the Taliban] are weary of war, they see little hope of negotiated peace… [and] believe that continuing the fight and expanding Taliban governance are their only viable course of action.’
The Taliban’s recent announcement that it plans to open a political office in Qatar has provided the international peace movement with a brief window of opportunity to provide an alternative by forcing the US to the negotiating table.
For many years I have been directing activists interested in learning more about Afghanistan to Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls’ excellent but now dated Bleeding Afghanistan. From now on I shall be recommending this book.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years – Money, myth and morality

admin — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:35:23 +0000

The title of David Graeber’s epic new book sums up the extent of his ambition: to re-ignite grand historical theory, using anthropology, history, philosophy, politics and psychology to undermine the founding myths of capitalism.
Graeber was inspired to write the book after trying to explain why ‘third world debt’ should be cancelled. Why is the idea that ‘debts must always be repaid’ such a strong moral imperative that it seems perfectly acceptable that ‘the loss of 10,000 human lives is really justified in order to ensure that Citibank wouldn’t have to cut its losses on one irresponsible loan that wasn’t particularly important to its balance sheet anyway’?
Over the next 400 pages, Graeber answers this question by showing us the great span of history, and our attitudes towards power, honour, sex, cruelty and much besides, through the lens of debt and money.
Graeber begins by demolishing the ‘myth of barter’ – the idea that money was devised to replace this more cumbersome means of exchanging goods. He proposes something more radical – that ‘money’ is about a way of thinking that was absent from early society. Using anthropology he suggests that ancient human behaviour reflected a far wider range of emotions and rationales for giving and receiving objects. There was exchange but not based upon the idea that ‘one thing is roughly [equally] valuable to another thing’. Rather, something might be given on the basis, for instance, that someone else needed it, that the giver had too much, or that it was the giver’s duty towards their lower status ‘client’.
These ideas of early human morality were incredibly difficult to break down and then only by the most violent means. A first sign of this might have been the subjection of women: women being ‘given’ in marriage, virginity becoming a tradeable commodity. It finds its culmination in slavery, which brought concepts of debt, money and ‘quantification’ to large parts of the world.
Ripping people from their social context was at the core of this transformation and ‘violence, or the threat of violence, turns human relations into mathematics’ again and again through history.
The earliest form of money, for Graeber, was debt – for instance, running up tabs to buy ale that could be repaid at harvest time. But debt only works if there’s trust, hence within communities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, coinage was first devised at a time of expansion, violence and uncertainty around 800–500BC, driven by powerful ruling entities, for whom it provided a neat way of paying soldiers in times of war and then re-collecting coins through taxes.
Although the slave trade might be (mostly) confined to history, it has left a lasting legacy: ‘Our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal.’ A brilliantly elucidated example is the way the liberal philosophers of the enlightenment turned the notion of freedom – which to ancients meant to be anchored in a community, to be a citizen – into the idea that you can ‘do what you like with your property’. Indeed, ‘it treats rights themselves as a form of property’. To ancients, wage labour was slavery. To moderns, it becomes simply renting your property.
For most of history, according to Graber, most people have been debtors, and it is this that has fuelled most popular struggles. He argues that while people who are said to be inferior to others might not be pleased with the idea, notions of natural hierarchy have not caused armed revolts in the way that debt has. The slogan of revolutionaries through the ages has been to ‘cancel the debts and redistribute the land’.
Graeber believes we can understand opportunities for change by examining that shape of history. In the second half of the book, he takes us on a historical tour of the development of society, bringing remarkable insights into how and why capitalism took the form it did.
Graeber doesn’t tell us what solutions might look like, beyond the need to resurrect the idea of ‘jubilee’ – a period of debt cancellation dating back to before ancient Babylon. The jubilee was a time when those who had been enslaved to repay debts were freed, and land that had been sold was returned to its original owners. Graeber suggests, as my organisation has long argued, that such a process – while it will involve a lengthy struggle – will help towards an emotional and spiritual renewal, allowing us to question our relationships with each other and our planet.
Certainly Graeber’s book has shortcomings. At times it is difficult to see a pattern in the argument, until the author explains how to interpret his case studies. At others he pushes interpretation beyond credulity, and an anecdote from an anthropologist talking to a hunter-gatherer takes on enormous weight. But even those who leave the book disagreeing with his narrative will find it impossible not to be excited by the audacity of his ambition or struck by the insights he offers.

What if loyalty hadn’t drained Ken of his maverick energy?

louise — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:04:31 +0000

With Labour’s strong showing at the polls depriving the Blairites of the opportunity to machinate about taking back the leadership, the defeat of Ken Livingstone was seized upon with predictable alacrity as an occasion to snipe at the left. Not that all, ‘Labour’ activists waited until the votes had been counted to start the attack, of course. Lord Alan Sugar thanked the party which gave him his title and unelected position in the legislature by announcing he would refuse to support its candidate for the mayoralty. Prominent blogger Alex Hilton openly voted for independent candidate Siobhan Benita, whilst Dan Hodges went one better by joining his Torygraph paymasters in advocating a vote for Boris.
In this context it was no surprise to see right-wing hack (and self-styled scurge of the left) Luke Akehurst so quick off the mark in dancing on Ken Livingstone’s political grave. Livingstone’s enduring popularity with Labour supporters in London had long frustrated the likes of Akehurst, for whom Ken represented a stubbornly persistent strain of the Bennism otherwise purged or easily marginalised from New Labour: ‘This flying circus of 1980s vintage ultra-leftism was only kept in the air because its ringmaster, Ken, had a machine and a populist charisma and an administrative ability that no one else on the Hard Left had.’
Ironically, of course, Ken’s original election as Mayor was won in the teeth of a concerted attempt to subvert the selection process and bar Labour members from picking Ken as their preferred candidate. As an independent, Ken’s campaign had the force of a political insurgency, leaving the official party candidate and right wing parties in his wake. If returning to the Labour fold provided the financial and political security that comes with a permanent machine, it did not come without strings attached. In office, Ken’s populist left rhetoric did not sit comfortably with his active role as defender of the City’s role as a hub of global capitalism, or the conduct of the Met police in the Jean Charles de Menezes case. True, he out-polled Labour’s GLA vote share in his 2008 Mayoral bid, but the association with the Brown government can’t have helped.

No single factor can account for the defeat this time. Boris was a uniquely difficult opponent, having the ability both to mobilise the Tory core vote whilst also acting as an affable clown who appealed to a section of the electorate otherwise bored by humdrum politicians. Johnson was also supported by a highly effective negative campaigning machine martialled by Australian fixer Lynton Crosby, making Ken’s opaque tax affairs a key campaign issue and deflecting proper scrutiny of Boris’s own record and policy platform. In this the Tories were assisted by their influential friends in the media. The grip of the Evening Standard over London politics (particularly since its transition to a free-sheet thrust into the hand of hundreds of thousands every day) has been especially pernicious. The print media is very rarely a friend to Labour candidates, still less so when they stand on the left. But the free distribution of such an obviously partisan perspective becomes perilously close to a ‘donation in kind’ to the Conservatives. There is a strong argument that free-sheets should be bound by the same kind of political neutrality criteria that applies to the broadcast media.
But whatever the strength of his opponent, Ken’s narrow defeat was not inevitable. Even Akehurst has to admit the meticulously professional way in which Patrick Henegan and Simon Fletcher ran the campaign, and in putting lower fares and the need to tackle London’s housing crisis at the centre of the manifesto, Ken’s team locked onto genuine concerns for ordinary Londoners. But Labour failed to drive up turnout sufficiently in its inner-London heartlands. Labour’s ‘offer’ was solid but Ken’s candidacy did little to electrify the contest, in stark contrast with the way George Galloway was able to do in Bradford West.
Far from having a slicker, more ‘on-message’ and centrist politician fighting the contest (which is what many of Ken’s critics appear to prefer), in reality the downturn in Ken’s fortunes has accompanied the loss of his insurgent edge. Far from Ken being too tainted with a 1980s leftism, his electoral fortunes would surely have been boosted by a return to the oppositional tubthumping of his GLC days. If he stood in a looser relation to the party machine, he could have galvanised national opposition to cuts and austerity (including the slightly milder dose prescribed by Miliband and Balls), and defended direct action and other forms of resistance. He could have spoken out against the ongoing war in Afghanistan and of police harassment of black, Asian and white working class youth. By giving free reign to his maverick radicalism, Livingstone might have electrified popular opinion in London and beyond, and looked less like a tired shadow of his former self. Sadly, this isn’t what most of his critics have in mind.

Local Elections: The gift that wasn’t on the Tory wish list

louise — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:29:29 +0000

The right-wing press and the centrist commentariat had their responses to the local elections well prepared. Labour would of course make gains – this is mid-term for the government after all – but not really significant gains. In Scotland they would suffer at the hands of the SNP. Boris would win handsomely in London. The Tories would hold their own in the south of England. Ed Miliband’s leadership would be called in to question yet more strongly.

The central fact about the election results is that none of this happened. Against the predictions, and hopes of most commentators, many of whom have still not forgiven Ed for usurping his brother David’s presumed throne, Labour did everywhere perform better than expected.

In Scotland Labour and the SNP both made gains at the expense of the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, but the SNP did not make the expected headway against Labour, whose control of Glasgow remains strong. Boris did, of course, win the London mayoral contest, but by a slender margin of 3 per cent, and this despite the embarrassment of Livingstone’s tax arrangements and tactless remarks about both Jews and gays. Labour took 20 seats in Birmingham from the Coalition parties, and further south it won control of Plymouth, Exeter, Southampton and Reading, as well as some towns on the fringes of London.

In other words predictions of the impending death, or irreversible decline, of the Labour Party, which occur about every ten years or so, have once again been exposed as political wishful thinking. One obvious reason for this is the terrible damage the Lib Dems have inflicted on themselves by their ardent embrace of the Tories in the coalition government, and of the Tory programme of attacks on the NHS, the welfare state and the public sector as a whole.

In Scotland they, like the Tories, are back on the fringes of politics. In my own city of Sheffield it is hard to believe that they were the party in power just over two years ago. They now hold 23 seats out of a total of 84 whilst Labour have 59. There are two Green Councillors and no Conservatives.

Until the Coalition was formed, the Lib Dems attracted support from those disillusioned, for a variety of reasons, with the two major parties. Since 2010 the disillusioned have had to look elsewhere. Rising unemployment and related hardships have enhanced the xenophobic appeal of UKIP, which did almost as well as the Lib Dems in the seats it contested. More encouraging was the success of Respect in Bradford, where they successfully followed up on George Galloway’s stunning by-election victory.

Respect and the Greens show that there is room for radical alternatives to the mainstream parties, but the overall results show that Labour, and especially the two Eds, Miliband and Balls, have been right to attack the Tories economic policy. People are starting to listen to their critique.

So farewell then electors – we knew you once…

louise — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:38:12 +0000

This figure is absolutely appalling. It is even worse than the Hansard Society survey published a week ago showing just 48 per cent of people certain to vote in an election, down 10 per cent over the previous year, and interest in politics collapsing from 58 per cent to 42 per cent over the last year.

Why is this the case? Well, many people now see little point in voting as the parties ‘are all the same’ and ‘don’t listen to ordinary people’ anyway. They have a point. While most of us would prefer a Labour council to a Tory one, many people have long memories and see little to choose between Labour and the Tories, especially at the national level.

Elected mayors will be the solution…
Well, they won’t actually. Almost all the referenda in our major cities about whether to introduce an elected mayor failed – most by a significant margin. Only Bristol bucked the trend, with Doncaster voting to retain its mayoral system – glad to know the good people of Doncaster have a sense of humour….

Of course, it’s a pity Boris got back in and Ken failed in London. And it’s great that Jenny Jones performed well and came third. But again, unlike the local government pundits and the mainstream politicians, most people obviously do not think an all-powerful local mayor is the solution to their dissatisfaction with democracy. And they are right to think that. The same will be true of the new elected Police Commissioner elections this November.

What is really needed is for central government to devolve power massively down to local government and on to local citizens. Labour promised it but didn’t deliver. The Coalition promised it but the Big Society has failed – with the Hansard Society recording a collapse in volunteering over the last year from 29 per cent to 21 per cent.

There is no alternative…

Yes there is. And where it was offered, people often took it. Respect won five councillors in Bradford, following up the recent spectacular success of George Galloway in the by-election, the Greens won 8 more seats in England (but lost a few too) and 6 more in Scotland. And TUSC won two council seats (in Preston and Walsall) but lost Dave Nellist in Coventry. But these gains were very modest for the Left alternative candidates. In most places, there is still a mountain to climb before such candidates are seen as credible and electable.

The Nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland fared worse then expected. Jim Bollan was re-elected for the Scottish Socialist party in West Dunbartonshire.

At least the Far Right candidates did badly – the BNP lost in all the 136 seats they contested, and their vote in the London mayoral elections fell by around two thirds.

Davy Jones (davy@davyjonesconsultancy.co.uk)

http://davyjonesconsultancy.co.uk/blog/2012/04/government-toffs-toffs