Red Pepper » Michael Calderbank

Resisting fascism is not a crime

jenny — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 15:57:46 +0000

Last Saturday anti-fascist activists lobbied the Greek Embassy in London, ahead of tomorrow’s trial of Savas Michael-Matsas and Constantinos Moutzouris on trumped-up charges brought by a Greek judicial system keen to placate the fascist Golden Dawn.

Savas is a Jewish scholar internationally renowned in the field of philosophy, Marxism and literature, as well as General Secretary of the Greek EEK (Revolutionary Workers Party). He is charged with ‘defamation’ and ‘incitement to violence and discord’ for uttering the slogan ‘smash fascism’, as well as ‘disturbing the civil peace’ for mobilising for an anti-fascist demonstration, following a vile anti-semitic campaign from supporters of Golden Dawn.

His fellow accused, the former rector of the National Technical University in Athens, is charged with allowing the independent news portal Indymedia to be run from the university campus!

These charges are a result of a legal complaint against all the parties of the left – including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the left alliance SYRIZA, the anticapitalist alliance ANTARSYA and also the EEK – as well as immigrant associations and independent activists – made by Golden Dawn back in 2009 following the left’s active response to their attacks on immigrant communities.

The complaint was then resurrected by the right-wing Samaras government in 2012 and the police began interrogations of those named in the complaint. In June 2013, of the 80 people accused, just two were selected.

Resisting fascism is not a crime. Solidarity with the Greek anti-fascists!

After Woolwich – Stand together against the politics of hate

admin — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:45:06 +0000

The brutal killing of a young man yesterday afternoon in Woolwich, South London, was made all the more shocking by the apparent lucidity of one of the attackers, who was filmed launching into a ‘justification’ of the act whilst still brandishing a meat cleaver and covered in the blood of his victim.

Nothing whatsoever can excuse this murderous act. But the immediate attempts to appropriate the incident – whether as evidence of the ‘evil’ hatred of Muslims in general towards the West, as yet more evidence of how we should be grateful to our ‘heroes’ for their sacrifice in fending off this existential threat, or as part of a concerted terrorist plot requiring an immediate security clampdown – are both unwarranted and dangerous.

Thankfully, this kind of brutal episode is rarely seen on British streets (although acts of apparently random extreme violence are less uncommon than we might imagine). But for British troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, violence and suffering has been an unavoidable part of their lives, whether as victims of insurgent attacks, or as perpetrators of brutality towards the people whose countries they have been sent to occupy by military force.

The involvement of British troops in the torture and death of Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa, or in the mass slaughter in Fallujah, or the systematic brutality dished out to the people of Afghanistan over the course of an occupation now in its 12th year, demonstrates that the hands of our political classes are no less besmirched with blood than the Woolwich killers. This obviously criminal act cannot be a green light for Britain to intensify its criminal foreign policy any further. It’s time to break from this cycle of violence, end the occupation of Afghanistan, and bring the troops home.

Needless to say, this is hardly the lesson the far-right Islamophobes of the English Defence League want us to draw. They immediately latched on to the incident by attempting to stoke hatred and fear of all Muslims, despite the obvious revulsion with which Muslims up and down the country greeted news of the attack. To suggest that the killers were representative of all Muslims is akin to suggesting that racist Norweigan mass-murderer Anders Breivik is typical of all Christians or all white people. Palpable nonsense, but the kind of dangerous rhetoric that has already led to reported attacks on mosques.

We need to reject extreme reactionary politics, whether Islamist or Islamophobe, isolate the fanatics whatever their ethnic backgrounds, bring criminals to justice, and defy those who – like the Woolwich killers – would see us further ratchet up the violence, fear and hatred.

Furthering the fightback

admin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:00:10 +0000

The (non-)affordability of housing has been at the centre of the financial crisis and the regime of austerity it has provoked. The immediate trigger, let’s not forget, was the banks’ exposure to sub-prime lending in the US, where large mortgages were lent to indebted low-income families who were never in a position to repay. In turn, the politics of austerity has meant that across Europe too, people are now struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
In the UK, with the ‘bedroom tax’ and other benefit cuts beginning to bite, thousands of families will find that their homes have become ‘unaffordable’ as a direct result of government policy. This is especially worrying at a time of high unemployment and poverty pay. Unless they relocate into a cheaper area – often miles from workplaces and family or friends – or accept a move to a smaller, often over-crowded home, increasing numbers will fall further behind on their rents, and face court fines or even eviction.
The situation has certain parallels with the anti-poll tax struggle, which saw thousands of families chased through the courts for non-payment of bills. At that time, local campaign groups were able to provide practical advice, legal representation and direct solidarity action at community level to prevent bailiffs entering properties. Through the national anti-poll tax federation, community groups were linked up into a national structure, which enabled people to share experience and expertise on how best to defend each other. It also helped to join up local groups of community activists to further the political fightback and advance a campaign strategy that ultimately helped to overturn Thatcher’s hated policy.
Mirroring the development of US Occupy – where activists from the big set-piece demonstrations have become engaged in a wave of direct actions against repossessions – we are beginning to see local anti-cuts groups and housing campaigns across Britain discussing the need for concrete solidarity action, as Izzy Koksal’s roundup highlights. Pressure is also being brought to bear on councillors, now faced with direct choices over whether to send in bailiffs to evict families who have fallen behind on the rent as a result of the policy. Local initiatives are aiming to provide sources of low-cost lending to worried people as an alternative to the super-exploitative payday loans companies. There are signs that practical solidarity is beginning to transform an initial response of anger and fear into a willingness to stand and fight.
At the same time, it remains uncertain whether this emerging movement will be able to coalesce into a vehicle capable of offering a viable alternative to the current mainstream political discourse. With UKIP’s recent breakthrough in the polls offering a populist right-wing repository for opposition, it is easy to see why calls for a new party of the left, such as that made recently by the veteran film director Ken Loach, can sound attractive. Of course, bringing such an alternative any closer to realisation is more difficult.
Similarly, in planning for its potentially important ‘People’s Assembly’ later this year, the Coalition of Resistance should be careful to avoid a Field of Dreams model of organising (‘build it and they will come’). Even the most inspiring speeches can get us only so far. What is needed is attention to how the existing campaigns on the ground can be reinforced to maximise the involvement of all political, union and community groups serious about taking practical steps to defend families under attack.
The success of Syriza in Greece, another key development influencing recent thinking on the left, holds lessons here. Syriza developed as a coalition with the very specific priority of giving practical support to the movements emerging in the streets, local communities and workplaces. This meant that it did not appear as an external force forever pushing its own line but as a positive, enabling influence in the various struggles. Only now, nearly 10 years on, is it beginning to slowly, carefully develop the structures of a party.
Of course there is no single template for success, and it remains to be seen whether Syriza will be able to make good on the enormous burden of expectation and responsibility placed on its shoulders. Nevertheless, its methods have helped to build the organisational capacity of the anti-austerity movement in Greece in new and important ways from which we can learn.
The question of what new formation is possible or necessary must always begin from the daily experience and needs of working class communities. It is possible that, in bringing together community organisers, tenants’ groups, legal experts and trade unionists, we might begin to consolidate a national anti‑evictions network, enabling experiences and practical tips to be shared. Such unity in action might in time begin to find electoral expression too.

We can’t wish a new left party into existence

admin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:52:38 +0000

In a week when Labour chose not to oppose the coercion of the unemployed into unpaid work for profitable companies, it’s only to be expected that activists start to give serious thought to the need for an alternative.

But at the same time there is a gulf between wanting to see it and being able to realise that ambition. Ken Loach himself has been here before, as a previous advocate of both the Socialist Alliance and Respect, both of which failed to live up to their potential. It is important to understand the lessons of these experiences, and what problems any such attempt faces today.

For one thing, the field isn’t entirely clear. We already have the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), even if its performance so far gives little reason for encouragement.

And while the Green Party might have greater appeal to liberal middle class professionals than to working class communities, they will nevertheless compete to an extent with any new left party unless an accommodation can be reached. The situation in Scotland and Wales is further complicated by the role of the nationalists.

And as we approach the general election, the key priority of voters angry at the coalition will be its defeat and removal, which given our first past the post electoral system is likely see people voting Labour, even if they have to hold their noses to do so.

This is not a counsel of despair, but to recognise that building the foundations for a viable anti-austerity politics will take time. The success of Syriza in Greece, another key development influencing recent thinking on the left, holds lessons here. It emerged precisely as a coalition rather than a party, with the very specific priority of giving practical support to movements which were emerging in the streets, community and workplaces. Only now, nearly 10 years on, is it beginning to slowly, carefully develop the structures of a party.

Ken Loach is right about the crisis of representation, but it won’t be put right overnight. In the meantime, we have to coalesce in practical forms of resisting austerity. In time, this might yet find the kind of electoral expression that thousands want to see.

Scouse: a class accent

admin — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:00:35 +0000

Michael Calderbank How far has your own experience of being judged on the way you speak – as a ‘born-and-bred scouser’ – made this question of language so central to your concerns?
Tony Crowley If you grow up in Liverpool you can’t help but have a sense that you speak (and are largely spoken to) in a form of language which is different from others. You get that understanding in all sorts of different ways, not least through the fact that Liverpool speech has figured very commonly in major modes of British popular culture since the 1960s.
In fact, one of the points of the book is to show that the idea of ‘scouse’, as currently understood, coincides with the inception and development of popular culture in Britain from the 1950s on (no one used the term ‘scouse’ to refer to the language of Liverpool before 1950). But there is also the fact that if you come from Liverpool and move away, particularly if you move away through education – in my case to Oxford University – you are soon made to feel that your language carries with it all sorts of connotations in terms of class, regionality and masculinity in particular. Oxford was full of people who very generously – sometimes in coded ways, sometimes not – made it clear that you didn’t quite belong there, that you could literally be placed outside very easily, and that you were marked by your sub-standard language.
That was a familiar and tediously repetitive process and one which I only really began to understand properly after reading aspects of Raymond Williams’ work. Anyway, one thing led to another and I did a PhD on ‘Standard English’ – the history of the term and concept – which began to unravel and challenge some of the nonsense associated with that complex and misleading phrase. And that became the first of a number of books in which I’ve tried, in general terms, to understand the question of language in history and history in language – or, I suppose, to use shorthand, the politics of language.
But, yes, the work is rooted in my own experience as a ‘scouser’ (a category which I historicise and question), though I think being on the sharp end of linguistic prejudice is hardly the prerogative of people from Liverpool alone.
Michael It’s interesting the way that scouse picks up such a particular status as signifying working class – as opposed to just signifying place.
Tony Yes, it always signified class and place, and more often than not class. That’s not surprising in one sense. Liverpool is an overwhelmingly working-class town with deep roots in particular types of working class traditions forged in the heyday of the port as a site of casual labour. It was associated with major actions of British trade unionism in the 1960s, although the image of Liverpool as a militant town is far from the truth. An urban socialist town is about right, I think, though even that is relatively recent in the making.
Liverpool has been a solidly Labour city only since relatively recently. You have to remember that the working class vote was split along sectarian lines for a long time. Protestants voted for the Conservative and Unionist Party, while Liverpool had an Irish Nationalist MP at one stage.
The city became culturally popular for all sorts of reasons in the 1960s and 1970s – for some obvious reasons, of course, though there was a lot going on culturally beside The Beatles, Z-Cars, The Liver Birds and all, lots of national comics, singers and of course a very important literary and artistic scene, particularly towards the end of the 1960s. So it varies historically from being a fashionable and trendy accent, to the despised form of the truculent, dishonest, rude scouser of the Thatcherite imagining. In some ways all of these are just mirror images of each other. For lippy scouser, read imaginative and creative user of language; for rude and truculent, read witty and irreverent etc. The reality is a bit more complex.
Michael You challenge the dominant assumption that the emergence of scouse as distinct from the rest of Lancs language is a direct result of post-famine Irish immigration, and suggest that the distinction seems to have developed prior to this. As you say, the standard account doesn’t really explain why scouse is so different, say, from Manchester speech. And places like Bristol have similar histories re slavery, immigration etc but nothing like as distinct an accent as scouse appears to be from other speech in its locality. Why might this be?
Tony We don’t really know. I argue that there was a distinctive form of language in Liverpool which appeared towards the end of the 18th century, and that this was built upon, changed and developed by successive waves and patterns of immigration to the city in the mid to late 19th century and beyond. And the language of the place was always open – to local Lancashire and Cheshire practices, to be sure; to Welsh, Scottish and Irish influences too; to the effects of large numbers of people from the rest of Britain and then, of course, from elsewhere in the world, especially America. It’s important to remember that Liverpool was the gateway of empire for a long time and that it drew people in all the time.
Illustration: Edd Baldry
But as to why scouse became so clearly identified with Liverpool – almost to the extent that the boundaries of the dialect and the city were perceived to be almost identical – well, that we don’t know, though my own suspicion is that it was tied up with a developing sense of Liverpool as a place apart from the mid-20th century. One interesting point in this regard is that some oral historians of the Liverpool working class argue that Liverpool speech didn’t sound scouse until late in the 20th century – a fact which is confirmed if you listen to recordings even of the mid-1950s.
Michael Now that you’re based in the US, how would say that distance from Britain and the assumptions we inherit about speech and language has given you a different perspective? You say at one stage someone praised your accent when reading Shakespeare and it made you reflect on how there is nothing ‘natural’ about how we evaluate certain forms of speech and sound.
Tony I do think that there’s more of a sensitivity to forms of cultural and linguistic history in Britain than there is, say, in the US, although this is often exaggerated. There are these socially significant linguistic distinctions here too. There’s a lot of work on Pittsburghese, for example, which shows remarkable affinities with the development of scouse.
But the distance from Britain has made one thing very clear. That is that the cultural weight attached to linguistic features and forms of difference is produced in and by a given social history. Not only is linguistic prejudice one of the few remaining acceptable social prejudices (there is plenty of prejudice around, but a lot of it is no longer socially acceptable), it is alive, well and doing its work of cultural and social placement very well, thanks very much. It always amuses me when people talk about broadcasting, or popular culture, or globalisation, or whatever, levelling or homogenising linguistic difference. It seems to me that misses precisely the work that cultural differentiation does.
Michael Becoming aware of the history and uses to which constructions of cultural/linguistic difference have been put in a society that privileges certain forms of identity over others is presumably a key step towards contesting these valuations. Is there a sense that there is a politics of culture that is still to be fleshed out and developed, which somehow got lost or marginalised in the development of ‘cultural studies’?
Tony Oh yes, for sure, and I think the issue here is particularly pressing within education. At the heart of any educational system is the language we learn, and I think the whole question of the way so-called non-standard forms are evaluated (which is to say often caricatured, devalued, rejected) remains highly significant. In my PhD, which Raymond Williams examined, I tried to show how what was supposedly a term of linguistic description was in fact a highly weighted term of social discrimination and cultural evaluation. So Scouse is in a sense a continuation of a project I started a long time ago, trying to unpack the ways in which our language is categorised, described and evaluated.
On the other hand, it’s also critical of the way in which ‘identity’ has often been used to repress issues which I happen to think of as much more important in the end. That’s to say, I’m more interested not so much in who we are, but in how we might live once we change the fundamentals of our economic and social system in open and democratic ways. In that sense, Scouse is no more than a clearing exercise, an attempt to say, okay, let’s look at how this powerful mode of representation was constructed and what some of its effects are, but I always try to explain why what was happening was taking place at particular times, whose interests were being served and why.
So it’s a limited project with the aim of gaining just ‘that extra edge of consciousness’ (Williams’ term in the introduction to Keywords, I think) that might help people to get a start on the process of cognitive mapping – where they are and why, in historical rather than simply personal terms. A politics of culture? Well, maybe, but I doubt if that will come from cultural studies in the academy. That’s a field which has not only lost its way, in my opinion; it’s been thoroughly tamed and domesticated.
What political/cultural work is Scouse doing? In the end, I suppose that’s for others to judge. But I’ll say this. At the launch of the book at the Museum of Liverpool in October, there were 120 people who turned up (they closed the doors on latecomers). I gave my talk, and then I was engaged in some of the best, most difficult and most rewarding discussion of my academic career – and I doubt if more than a few of the people were academics. It was the same at other launch events. There’s a passion for history, for debate and exchange, for contestation – as long as people can be engaged, can connect, can make the links. If Scouse facilitates any of that, I’ll be happy with it.

Labour and the cuts: beyond the ‘dented shield’

admin — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:55:37 +0000

The revelation that local councils would face an average cut of 28 per cent in central government funding by 2014/15 was shocking enough. It was especially so since the burden of increasing social care needs means that, according to the Local Government Association (LGA), the funds available for spending on other key services such as repairing roads or running libraries and leisure centres would effectively fall by 90 per cent in cash terms.
But averaging out the impact of the cuts ignores the dramatic political imbalance in exactly how communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles’ plans are being implemented. The Guardian reported that ‘councils in northern, urban and London boroughs with high rates of deprivation predominantly run by Labour have seen their budgets cut by almost 10 times the amount lost by Tory-administered authorities in rural southern England’. And whereas the average loss per head resulting from the cuts stands at £61 nationally, in the 50 worst affected areas (42 of which are run by Labour, and where one in three children is in poverty) the loss stands at a massive £160 per head.
This isn’t even the end of it. George Osborne’s autumn statement revealed that the cuts will now have to continue until 2018, such has been the failure of the chancellor’s economic strategy. Not surprisingly, the dawning realisation of what this means for some of the most hard-pressed families in the country has brought howls of outrage. The leaders of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield city councils wrote a stark letter to Pickles warning that the cuts were creating ‘dire economic consequences’ and could lead to ‘the break-up of civil society’ with increasing ‘tension’ and ‘social unrest’. A similar view was expressed by Sir Albert Bore, the leader of Britain’s single largest authority, Birmingham, who said the cuts would mean ‘the end of local government as we know it’.
Contrary to government claims, such reactions can’t be put down to Labour exaggerating the problem for political gain. The independent Audit Commission found that ‘councils in most deprived areas were worst affected’ in the two years of spending cuts witnessed so far. The LGA’s Conservative chairman, Sir Merrick Cockell, has described the cuts as ‘unsustainable’ and accepted that it’s ‘unrealistic’ to pretend they won’t hit services, while Kent’s Tory leader, Paul Carter, says his county ‘can’t cope’ with further cuts and ‘is running on empty’.
Labour’s approach
But the situation facing Labour councillors is especially acute, since not only are the funding cuts political, but the burden of current and projected needs in working class communities are enormously greater. People elected Labour councillors not merely to administer plans determined by central government but to represent their interests at the local level. Howls of outrage about the cuts from these councillors are one thing but voters are increasingly beginning to ask what they are planning to do to protect the hard-pressed people they represent. Is there an alternative vision for local government in the areas with high levels of economic deprivation, and if so, what practical steps can the Labour Party take where it is in power locally?
Labour’s approach thus far has been to identify central government as responsible for the painful choices facing Labour councils, but to accept that these savage cumulative cuts are effectively a fact of political life, at least this side of a general election. The priority, therefore, has been to protect levels of spending on essential social care, on which the most vulnerable depend, and then identify the ‘least worst’ options for reducing other costs. This inevitably means a reduced level of ‘non-essential’ services once all scope for ‘efficiency savings’ has been exhausted.
The responsibility of power, we are told, means taking ‘tough choices’ to avoid still worse consequences. However, such an approach – described by Neil Kinnock in 1980s as the ‘dented shield’ – assumes that, for now at least, Labour councillors have no choice but to become the instruments through which Pickles will deliver cuts to deprived communities. Blairite ‘modernisers’ such as Lambeth’s Steve Reed, who have successfully pushed the ‘co-operative council’ agenda (see page 13), openly admit that this new policy model recognises the need to ‘deliver better with less’. They have used the language of mutualisation to pursue the fragmentation of service provision in order to create the basis for competitive markets with social enterprise and voluntary/third sector involvement in the initial stages.
While the language of empowerment, community and decentralisation has provided an ostensibly attractive agenda – with historic echoes of the genuinely grassroots co-operative tradition – the underlying logic promotes the aim of remodelling local government to allow for a much diminished role in the direct delivery of services. Those expecting a Labour government to restore local government structures and finances to the status quo ante are likely to be disappointed. As with so much else, Labour may oppose the scale and pace of the cuts today, but will not make promises to reverse those cuts the Tories have already implemented or set in train.
Hapless accomplices
Of course, many councillors want to demonstrate that they are more than hapless accomplices of Eric Pickles’ cash‑grab from local services. They have been seeking ways of implementing any progressive measures still possible given the ‘inevitability’ of working within financial parameters determined by Whitehall. So, for example, a dozen or so Labour authorities have committed themselves to becoming living wage employers, by stipulating minimum pay standards in the course of procurement from contractors. Islington has been commended for its creation of a ‘Fairness Commission’, bringing together academics and social policy experts with councillors in open public deliberation to take evidence on inequality in the borough and make practical recommendations for directing what limited resources are available to tackle the problem. Critics have dismissed such measures as ‘window-dressing’.
A number of Labour councils have also been actively exploring co-operative initiatives around renewable energy. In Preston the local authority has suggested that erecting wind turbines on council-owned land would put £1.5 million a year into the council coffers. Worthwhile though it may be, however, the anticipated revenue does not avoid the immediate budget crisis, which has seen the council decide in principle to demolish the city’s architecturally significant and well-used bus station because it says it cannot afford to maintain it.
The stock response to the argument that Labour councils could refuse point-blank to deliver the coalition cuts is that any alternative, deficit-based ‘needs budget’ would lead directly to Eric Pickles assuming direct control over local budgets and implementing cuts with no thought for those most in need. It is true that no course of locally-determined resistance can ultimately succeed without direct confrontation with central government based on a mobilisation of local communities nationwide. But were Labour to spearhead a national campaign of militant resistance involving local communities in determining their collective needs, the secretary of state wouldn’t find it easy to suspend the entire apparatus of local democracy. And unlike during the epic rate-setting disputes of the 1980s, individual councillors no longer face personal financial ruin, since – although they can be debarred from office – the power to surcharge expelled councillors no longer exists in law.
Of course, the Labour left is significantly weaker today. Even those advocating a militant ‘no cuts’ stance recognise that it would require a strategy for building confidence and extending community support. But there can be no excuse for councillors failing to exhaust every option in their power to delay and contest the implementation of cuts – in the first instance by drawing on reserves and making full use of prudential borrowing powers – to buy time in which the forces of resistance in the community can be consolidated. Bold and determined resistance could inspire levels of popular support that could transform calculations of what is politically possible.
The full scale of the cumulative devastation to be wreaked at local level is only now beginning to hit home, despite the fact that, according to figures from the GMB union, there are already 236,900 fewer people employed by councils in England and Wales than in 2010. And the public resistance thus far has not shifted Labour councillors from passing cuts budgets.
Anti-cuts councillors
There have been some limited local exceptions, such as the two Southampton Labour councillors who refused to vote with the ruling Labour group to close a leisure centre they had explicitly promised to save at elections a few months earlier. Following their decision to form a rival group on the council, Labour Councillors Against the Cuts, they have been formally expelled from the party. Councillor Don Thomas, one of the two rebels, told Red Pepper, ‘We have had hundreds of well wishers, over 300 emails locally and across Britain, plus loads of telephone messages and many letters of support. Our relationship with the unions is very good and there’s now a tense but working relationship with the Labour group. We are going through the budget proposals with the city’s chief financial officer with a view to developing alternatives.’
A similar story lies behind the emergence of a small group of anti-cuts councillors in Broxtowe, near Nottingham. Here, this hung council is run by a joint Lab-Lib ruling group. Councillor Greg Marshall explains how, at the 2011 borough elections, he was one of two councillors who successfully sought selection, and was subsequently elected, on a clear anti-cuts basis: ‘The first real test was the budget in February 2012. Three councillors opposed the budget, which among other measures increased council house rents by approximately 8.5 per cent.’ Since then, ‘there has been some support from other Labour councillors who say they have sympathised with the position some of us are taking. This has over time seen a change in positions on issues around council house rents and social care, and hopefully these changes will be reflected as we develop budgets for 2013/14.’
Although such instances of resistance are relatively isolated and fragmented, the Labour Representation Committee is attempting to build a strategic network of anti-cuts Labour councillors.
Grassroots resistance has failed to grab any national headlines thus far. But things may be beginning to change. The decision of Newcastle Labour leader Nick Forbes to announce the total axing of the city’s arts and cultural funding, for example, has brought together a coalition of incensed workers, community activists and high-profile arts figures. Birmingham, meanwhile, is facing the complete destruction of its youth services, with more than 1,000 job losses and further areas of council provision threatened with being ‘decommissioned’ in the future.
The stakes are also about to be raised significantly. Labour councils are going to have to make specific choices as people are thrown into extreme financial hardship due to the latest benefit ‘reforms’. The circumstances might be the result of central government policy, but will they employ bailiffs to evict families who have fallen behind on their rents due to the new benefit cap? Will they prosecute people who fall into arrears due to the removal of council tax benefit?
Anti-cuts councillors could be more imaginative about forms of practical resistance. For example, they could consider technical measures beyond options presented by council officers – such as drawing up a charter of immediate defensive measures to which Labour councils could sign up, in dialogue with tenants and residents associations, unions, community activists, charities, faith groups and others with experience of working with real social needs. This might consist of working with the unions to ensure that services are kept in-house, not privatised; protecting council tenants through a moratorium on all evictions; developing long-term debt repayment schemes for council tax bills or social housing rents; implementing licensing standards, including de facto local rent controls on privately-rented accommodation; and so on.
Town Halls under Labour control could be transformed into local centres of community resistance, turning themselves into smaller-scale versions of the type of resistance the Greater London Council presented to Thatcher in the 1980s. Unless Labour can actively demonstrate that it is on the side of working people in actions and not just words, then its councillors will be treated with the same contempt as representatives of the other mainstream parties. And local government might never recover.

Radicals at the table – Natalie Bennett interview

admin — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:00:11 +0000

Michael How are you finding the job, now you’re a few weeks into it?
Natalie Oh, it’s very exciting, very busy. One of the things I’ll enjoy is going round the country. Pretty much everywhere I go there’s this real feeling of a democratic deficit, people saying, ‘They’ve come up with this enormously grand scheme to redevelop the area, but no one spoke to us until they just dumped it in our lap, then thought “we have to consult” and asked, “would you like a tree over there or over here instead, or this yellow or that green?”‘
Andrew With two days to respond . . .
Natalie That’s right, exactly. There’s so many things that are bringing democracy into disrepute at the moment, but that’s one thing that really struck me. The word consultation is just becoming a joke.
Michael We’re now seeing the experience of Britain’s first Green-led council in Brighton and Hove, albeit without a majority, so to what extent can the Greens make different choices in power compared to the main parties? Can the Greens offer an anti-cuts alternative at local level?
Natalie Brighton actually is a really good example, because what they did was to come up with a plan that would have ameliorated lots of the cuts with a 3.5 per cent council tax rise. We said, ‘No, we can’t have these cuts, we’ll need to claim more in council tax’, but because we’re in a minority on the council, we couldn’t put that through ourselves as we didn’t have the power to do that, and sadly Labour voted with the Tories. So actually it was Labour and the Tories who made the cuts happen that we were trying to stop as a minority administration. Had we been able to make that council tax rise we would have been able to save lots of things.
Michael Well, your critics on that, including some members of the Green Party, would say there is an alternative. You could have refused point-blank to implement the cuts and set a needs budget, ultimately even pulled out of leading the council to campaign on a very clear anti-cuts basis.
Natalie What you would have done there is to hand over to a Tory council. You have to make a decision in terms of: are you able to ameliorate things? I was only reading this morning about the things the Green council is trying to do in terms of creatively finding ways to raise money – renewable energy projects and the like. We are not just doing things how others would do them. We might not be able to do all the things we’d like, but until we get a Green government in Westminster we have to work within the framework we have. And what I hear on the ground, not just from Green Party people, is that people in Brighton are finding we are making a positive difference.
Michael People will give their verdict on the council in 2015, and given that cuts to central government grants are going to mean things are only going to get more difficult, are you worried that Caroline Lucas, the first Green MP in Britain, is up for re-election at the same time?
Natalie It’s a big challenge, but I think Brighton Greens are making a good fist of it. From what I can see, because we are being very open and very honest and very democratic and saying to people ‘These are what the choices are, help us make the best choices’, people will acknowledge that and respect that.
Michael How closely is the national leadership of the party involved in the local issues of places like Brighton?
Natalie We’re here as a support mechanism any time they want it, but we believe in localism and local parties are sovereign. We don’t tell them what to do, they make their own decisions.
Andrew In terms of coming after Caroline Lucas as leader, who is a very high profile figure, do you think you’ll be able to generate the same kind of awareness, and to what extent do you plan any change of direction?
Natalie It’s not a change of direction. What I will have is the practical possibility of doing more travelling round the country, a lot more than Caroline has chance to do given the role of an MP is so tied to Westminster a lot of the time. And it’s really not a replacement or an exchange, it’s an addition – there’s two faces now instead of one, almost as though we’ve just doubled our number of MPs.
Andrew How far would you say the coalition has lived up to its claim to be the ‘greenest government ever’?
Natalie [Coughs and splutters] You can put that down as ‘Natalie has a little laugh!’ It’s demonstrated that it totally doesn’t get that we are in the middle of a huge environmental crisis, and we desperately need to act fast. They’re both failing to take the whole problem seriously, and also utterly failing at a level of basic competence.
The feed-in tariff is the obvious example of this, where they just made a total balls-up of it. They’re not providing any certainty for the industry to go forward and invest in things, do all of the things we could have in terms of green jobs in onshore or offshore wind, or where you had the insulation industry saying the number of jobs was going to plunge. And that’s a tragedy, because that’s both good jobs lost, and people left in cold homes, elderly people in ill-health who might die this winter, which are problems that Scandinavian countries with worse weather than us don’t have. Government isn’t doing anything right – it doesn’t take the environment seriously and it’s not competent.
Michael Playing devil’s advocate now, how would you respond to the argument that in times of economic hardship and austerity, concern for the environment has to take a backseat to restoring competitiveness?
Natalie The fact is that we have to act. The effect of food price rises is one example where we’re seeing an economic impact of climate change. It’s not an either/or situation. If we invest in renewable energy, insulation, public transport, what we’re doing is creating jobs, reducing people’s fuel bills, reducing fuel poverty. So doing things to deal with their environment can help us tackle our overall economic problems. The whole cuts agenda ignores that we need to invest in our houses, our infrastructure, all of which are economically positive.
Andrew On the climate, to put it starkly, after Copenhagen and Durban, it looks like the momentum on a binding international limit on emissions has gone; opinion polls show that people seem less concerned on climate change than they were previously; and then with the growth of India, China, and now even Germany building coal-fired power stations – how does climate change get put back on the agenda? Or, perhaps alternatively, should the Green Party not put climate so high on the agenda and focus instead more on economic issues along with the apparent mood of the voters?
Natalie As I said these aren’t either/or. Often we will talk about the Arctic sea-ice and say that greater action is needed. Or we can say that to reduce air pollution we need fewer vehicles on the roads. Now, that is fitting with the climate change agenda but it needn’t necessarily always be front and centre. There are many ways of coming at these things and they are all interrelated. That’s what can be difficult about promoting a Green message – all these things are tied up together.
You can go [instead] for the fact we have the longest working hours in Europe. [People] are exhausted, they fall into Tesco Metro on the way home and buy a ready meal, with loads of packaging attached to it; they get home exhausted and don’t take their children out for a walk to get some exercise. So the long-hours culture fits with people feeling they have to use supermarkets, which then push out the local shops, so people find themselves driving more, which means that children get less exercise because the roads are too full of traffic to walk safely . . .
All of these things fit together, and to cure them we need a new kind of society. And the kind of society we need to build to avoid climate change is also a better society to live in, offering a better quality of life.
Andrew I think the kind of economic system you’re talking about there is one with steady or low rates of growth, because you can have a less carbon-intensive lifestyle but if the economy is growing at 3 per cent per year it’s going to be incredibly difficult to bring down the overall emissions level barring some kind of miracle.
Natalie Yes, I’m not a believer in some miracle solution.
Andrew Okay, but making a transition to a zero-growth economy is a hard argument to make, at a time when all the other parties are competing to put forward policies that will drive forward growth, and the media wants to know where growth is going to come from.
Natalie Well, I think most of the other parties are adjusting to the fact we’re heading into a low-growth world, no matter what its environmental and economic framework. We’ve hit economic and environmental limits all around the world. But we’ve argued that GDP is a very poor measure on all kinds of levels, so then basing all your arguments around the very question of growth in GDP makes no intellectual sense.
What I’d rather do is ask what is it that we need in our society and how do need to change the distribution of income and wealth in order to achieve those things? We have to keep reminding ourselves of these things as people have very short historical memories: historically, we now have enormously high levels of inequality in our societies. It’s a question of reshaping the debate, since GDP is a nonsense measure. It’s better to focus on what you’re doing and what you’re achieving, like ‘are you shortening people’s working hours?’, ‘are you improving the distribution of wealth across society?’ These are the things that matter, not focusing on one figure.
Andrew I’d be interested to know if you have an industrial policy, if you have specific policies that would lead to more localisation and more socially useful manufacturing?
Natalie Very much so. In terms of the big picture, what we have to do environmentally is to shorten our supply chains, and stop having huge freighters shipping thousands of tonnes of stuff from China that we could make here. So I’d like to see the boots on my feet made here, the t-shirt made down the road, the jacket made in a little tailor’s shop on the corner, all that kind of thing. We need to relocalise and bring manufacturing back to Britain, and we also need to address the issue of skills, as we’ve almost lost the skills needed for that.
In terms of the framework you need to create, the price of goods that is charged in the shops doesn’t include a huge number of externalised costs, like the environmental damage of getting them here, the fact they are made by some poor woman in a Sri Lankan factory working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. So what the Green Party wants to do is get to a system where all of those costs are re-included in the price of those goods, so you then re-balance.
Some of this is going to happen anyway. I was reading this report about production going back to the US from China, because Chinese wages are going to be going up all the time, as there is pressure for standards to rise, plus the costs of air freight and sea freight is rising all the time. So we’re at the turning point of the whole globalisation super-tanker and it’s starting to turn around anyway. We have to make it turn around much faster to reduce carbon emissions, create jobs here and reshape our economy.
The other important thing is food production. It’s not that long ago that all our major towns and cities were surrounded by a ring of market gardens and orchards, and there were local dairies too. So we need to get back to that in order to secure our local food supply. Only 23 per cent of our fruit and veg comes from the UK, although we have good land, good weather conditions, it’s all perfectly doable. I can’t see we’ll be wanting to ship over beans from Kenya and peas from Peru for much longer anyway. But we’ll need to set up the infrastructure to help that to happen.
Michael How far do you think the green vision, the big picture you’re talking about, is compatible with the vision of a more responsible capitalism, perhaps even compatible with the ‘one nation’ politics Ed Milliband is talking about?
Natalie I think it’s very different, because we’re rejecting neoliberalism and globalisation; we’re rejecting an economic system dominated by multinational companies. Whereas the banking sector has been a large part of Britain’s economy, we’re advocating a localised economy built around cooperatives and small local businesses, not giant multinationals, banking that is based around credit unions and small local banks, and making an economy where, as with the Bristol pound, you see money circulating within local economies. I don’t think that is what Ed Milliband is imagining.
Michael If you got one or more MPs at the next election, could you imagine supporting, formally or informally, a Lib-Lab coalition?
Natalie We have learnt from the experience of previous Greens in this situation, and we’d be extremely unlikely to join a formal coalition. But certainly a confidence and supply type agreement is the kind of thing which gives us the ability to ensure we keep the Tories out but allows us to vote on individual issues according to our beliefs.
Michael Well, people will look at the experiences of the Greens in Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, people might look at you and think when you get in power you’ll conform to a very narrow, mainstream pro-austerity model. You’re in oppositional mode now, but how do we know the Green Party won’t let people down in a similar way to the Lib Dems?
Natalie Those are very different circumstances. We occupy a very different political space to many other Green parties. There are lots of things we have in common with them, but we are very much the radicals at the table at any meeting of European Greens. We have a very democratic structure. Conferences decide national Green Party policies, and our members would never have voted for the kind of deal the Irish Greens took.
Michael Which of your policies do you particularly want to prioritise in getting across to the voters?
Natalie It’s seems obvious but things like the minimum wage being a living wage. If you work 40 hours a week you should have enough to live on. And it is obscene that people have to work two or three jobs and find roundabout ways to get to work because they can’t afford the tube, living in incredibly overcrowded housing.
We are never going to compete on low wages. That is not what we’re competing on. In terms of manufacturing we want to produce things for local markets and for broader markets where we have some kind of specialist skill or competitive advantage.
In terms of the broader issue, if the street cleaner out on the road is on the national minimum wage, they can’t afford to go into the café and buy a cup of tea. If they are paid decently, more money circulates in the economy.

One Nation, or, Ed Miliband’s Utopia

Michael — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:20:15 +0000

Ed Miliband’s unashamed borrowing of the concept of “One Nation” from the Conservative tradition takes us back to the Clinton/Blair model of triangulation: positioning your party on territory more generally associated with your main rival in order to shrink the latter’s support back down to its core vote. Strategically, it’s very much an attempt to repeat what New Labour achieved in 1997 – positioning itself as a party in step with the mood of the whole nation and picking up votes way beyond its traditional base.

This gambit assumes that even many people who have traditionally voted Tory are becoming alienated from the ideologically-driven market dogma of Cameron’s party, feel ripped off, and worry that important national institutions from the NHS to the police are being undermined. Labour is to be the moderate voice of the British people, the coalition parties are a combination of extremism, dishonesty and incompetence.

Now this picture is accurate enough to give Labour enough leeway to make some welcome announcements, such as “ending the free-market experiment” in the NHS (which New Labour itself began), putting up top rate tax, and taking action to curb casino banking. But not only did Miliband distance himself from the “Red Ed” moniker, but he failed to make a single mention of trade unions; directly admitted that a Labour government would not reverse many of the Tory cuts,;and would mean “tough” choices for the people who work in the public services, and the millions who use them. A “One Nation” approach means continuing to deliver cuts and austerity but with less immediate pain and manifest unfairness.

The speech is already being lauded by party loyalists and the liberal media. But when the dust settles, how many teachers, nurses, or council workers will thrill to the prospect of a Labour government offering a pay freeze and “tough settlements” for as far as we can see? Will the emollient language of “one nation” make-up for the failure to reverse Tory cuts and represent the interests of ordinary people?

Significantly, there was no mention of “class” in the speech. “One Nation” Toryism was never about abolishing class society, or putting real power into the hands of working people. Rather, it was about the government acting to ameliorate social division and reconciling the interests of capitalism with a unifying thematic of “the national interest”. This conservative British narrative may yet get swept aside by the tide of political events as struggles against austerity across Europe continue to intensify. The interests of labour (ie. working people and their families) and capitalism can’t be aligned as easily in reality as in the rhetoric of a Conference speech. Ironically, for all the acceptance of austerity, Ed’s vision of “One Nation” is far more utopian than anything Marxists have ever stood for.

Shedcasting in Surbiton

admin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 10:00:40 +0000

Mark Coles in his garden. Photo: Anna Musial
Surbiton, epitome of the Surrey commuter belt and setting for twee 1970s sitcom The Good Life. Days after the jubilee, the neighbours are clearly in no rush to take down the red, white and blue bunting. It’s the kind of place where you imagine the newsagents take care to stock enough copies of the Daily Mail.
On the face of it there is nothing remarkable about this particular garden. Its trampoline and slide indicate the presence of a young family, and the beds of broad beans and leafy vegetables suggest modest horticultural ambitions. The shed is an ordinary garden shed, used among other things to store tools and kids’ toys. Only the posters of Johnny Cash and Jimi Hendrix suggest that anything more rock ’n’ roll might emanate from within its walls. In fact, it’s the ‘studio’ from which radio broadcaster and DJ Mark Coles produces his internet radio show The Shed.
You might have heard Coles’ dulcet northern tones before. Having spent 13 years as a news reporter for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (for which he still contributes music features, including recent interviews with Wilko Johnson and Peter Hook), he’s thankful for the opportunity to live life at a more sedate pace. It must have come as a shock for someone used to recording light news features for Radio Sussex to be dropped into Mogadishu with US forces as a greenhorn war reporter.
‘It was when I narrowly avoided getting shot in Somalia that I first thought “I’m not altogether sure this is for me”,’ he laughs. ‘You’d be really put through your paces these days. But back then we were pretty much left to wander around with a microphone. It was madness really.’
A passion for Peel
Coles traces back his love of radio, like so many young Brits of his generation, to the experience of listening to John Peel’s legendary show on Radio 1. ‘I was sad as a young teenager and would write out the running order of the show and give each track a mark out of five,’ he confesses. His own mature broadcasting style exhibits a similarly lugubrious character and personal warmth to that of Peel, along with a genuine and unpretentious passion for the music.
I’m clearly not the first to notice the similarity: ‘My colleagues say that when I’m broadcasting from the shed “we can hear it in your voice, you’re so relaxed, your voice has dropped down a couple of tones.’’’ Coles himself wasn’t really aware of it until his then producer warned him before he was due to interview Peel’s widow, Sheila. ‘I listened back to the recording and thought, oh God, I did, I sounded just like him!’
But while Coles clearly owes a debt to Peel, perhaps particularly so in the domestic anecdotes, which recall Peel’s Radio 4 show Home Truths, he is not consciously mimicking him. ‘It is just that in listening to Peel I suppose I learnt unconsciously how you could broadcast naturally, in your own voice, telling stories, saying what you really thought.’
Peel also indirectly helped Coles to one of his biggest breaks as a music broadcaster, when he described the then unknown US rock act The White Stripes as ‘possibly the best live act I’ve seen since punk rock’. Coles figured they must be worth speaking to. With the NME advertising their first UK gigs in 2001, he pushed their lead vocalist Jack White for an interview. The resulting exchange was broadcast on the Today programme the day before they departed back to the US. That evening, on which a last secret gig had been arranged, the media were literally banging on the door to be allowed in.
‘It just exploded,’ Coles recalls. ‘Jack was asking me after the gig, “Man, what have you done?”’ Although Coles modestly rejects the claim to be ‘the man who broke The White Stripes on this side of the Atlantic’, Jack White clearly recalls how important his contribution was. A few weeks ago he recorded an interview that was broadcast in full exclusively on The Shed to promote his new album Blunderbuss.
World of Music
Coles’ interest in music from around the world was stimulated by his stint as host of the BBC World Service show World of Music when the former presenter, the legendary Charlie Gillett, died. ‘It was a wonderful show, I loved it,’ Coles says, ‘and I stepped in to stop them from just axing it from the schedule straight away, which management tended to do once they had lost their iconic presenters – it was the same with John Peel’s show on World Service.’
After just over a year with Coles at the helm, World of Music was finally dropped, but the decision was certainly not driven by audience demand. ‘It was incredible the amount of emails we had trying to keep the show on air,’ Coles says. ‘People were begging, even offering to pay to keep it going.’ But to no avail. The cuts to the funding that the World Service received from the Foreign Office were no doubt at least partly to blame, but it still seems shortsighted to lose a platform that allowed 142 million listeners worldwide to listen to music from all around the globe.
Despite an obvious and infectious enthusiasm for a wide range of musical styles, Coles has little time for the label ‘world music’. ‘It doesn’t really mean anything, and it can be quite excluding. Take Spoek Mathambo, a South African artist from the house scene over there, but drawing on electro, indie rock, samples, all sorts. I first heard of him when someone sent me a YouTube link of a cover he did of [Manchester post-punk outfit] Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control”. I mean, you see “South African house cover of Joy Division” and you’re going to open it, aren’t you! Well, his album deserves to be massive, it’s wonderful, it’ll be in my top five for the year. But you’ll be hard pushed to find it in a record shop. If you do, it’ll probably be in the “world music” section. His [Mathambo’s] career could suffer for it.’
So, too, Coles bemoans the culture of the ‘purist’ expert in other musical cultures, the kind of anthropological interest (for example, in different kora-playing techniques) that is at root a form of neocolonial classification. By contrast, Coles values a more immediate response to the music, something he valued in Charlie Gillett.
That said, Coles suggests that playing music from so many different places has expanded his horizons and got him thinking about what’s going on in the world. ‘If you listen to the Tunisian rapper El Général’s song “Rais Lebled” you can hear the anger and vitriol against the regime even without understanding the lyrics,’ he says.
Gesture of defiance
Social revolution is unlikely to break out in Surbiton anytime soon, but the retreat to the shed has been a gesture of defiance, in a very English sort of way. ‘After World of Music was axed I was just getting exhausted, burnt out, and I wanted to spend a couple of years with the children before they’d be at school,’ Coles says. Although he was offered other presenting work on the World Service, and still does some on a semi-regular basis, he was ready for a break. ‘Why struggle through all the traffic to work in the daily grind of a broadcasting studio on someone else’s terms, when you can go down the bottom of your garden with a battery-laptop and mic and present the programme from there?’ The BBC’s loss was the internet’s gain.
I was expecting at least a small mixing desk and some sound-proofing. But no. The sound of the trains that periodically run behind the shed are muffled by a duvet. That’s about as technical as it gets. ‘It takes me about a day and a half to produce each show,’ Coles says. ‘But most of that is just on getting permissions for all the tracks I play. Apart from that, I do a bit of tinkering to get it the right length and put fade‑outs on the tracks, and upload it to the web. But it really isn’t complicated. Internet radio is back to the old DIY ethic of punk basically. Anyone can do it. You don’t need loads of equipment. It’s like a level playing field.’
The availability of music on demand via the internet means that people with regular web access can listen to pretty much whatever they like – any style, any era. It’s all very different to listening habits before the internet.
‘It used to be that you’d have to take a real chance on a band you hadn’t heard before, or else you’d be trying to borrow things from lending libraries and tape them at home,’ says Coles. ‘But today’s bands are saying things like “we really like the sound of the drummer” on some obscure 1958 recordings. Take a band like Alabama Shakes. They’re all about 23. But listen to their stuff and you can hear they’re drawing on Staxx, Atlantic soul, country, blues and all these different influences but giving it their own twist.’
But not everything about the way the internet makes music available meets Coles’ approval. ‘Take Last.fm. Total nonsense! It tells me all this stuff I’m supposed to like. Well I don’t! And I don’t care for these automatically generated “radio” stations either. Ultimately what I do is use new technologies to do something quite traditional. I still value a DJ talking passionately about what they’ve discovered, telling little stories, relating to the listener in a warm, personal way.’
And so, in a garden shed in what he refers to as the ‘Ditton delta’, Mark Coles does just that. And people are starting to take notice. Already picked up by World Radio Switzerland, a station in Australia and some in the US, Coles is hoping that his show can be syndicated around the world to the sorts of radio stations that previously broadcast World of Music. He’s realistic enough to know that there’s little money in radio these days, and that internet broadcasting alone won’t feed his children. But while The Shed’s audience might not match the numbers he got on the World Service, it’s clear that he loves what he’s doing. And if you listen, you might love it too.
Listen to The Shed: website, Mixcloud, Facebook.

Northern soul: Socialism with a Northern Accent

admin — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:00:47 +0000

It seems fitting that a book that ends with the challenges facing contemporary Bradford – home of the Independent Labour Party since 1893 – should have been published just weeks before Ed Miliband’s Labour Party faced a humiliating by-election defeat by a candidate who claimed to speak up for the traditional values that the party has now abandoned. Here was evidence for all to see that the national and local leadership could lose touch with precisely the sort of northern community that Labour is accustomed to consider its natural territory.
Paul Salveson’s book examines a distinctive northern working class sensibility characterised by a strong ethical core, grounded in co-operation and solidarity at a local level, and pragmatically concerned with improving our common lot. Labour histories in Britain all too often displace the importance of what Raymond Williams termed ‘structures of feeling’ in favour of organisational narratives that frequently privilege the official accounts of leaders and spokespeople in the metropolitan centre ahead of the lived experience of communities in the regions. In standard accounts of the emergence of the Labour Party, for instance, the role of the Fabians in particular is exaggerated, as their presence outside London was limited.
Salveson’s account offers a useful corrective to such a perspective. But it still runs the risk of implying that the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which provided a home to this more inchoate libertarian, ethical socialist view of the world, was no more than a valuable staging‑post towards the emergence of a Labour Party for which winning representation in Westminster was the primary aim and which duly incorporated the spirit of its predecessor, even though the latter would be ultimately lose ground to a top-down centralising vision of social democracy.
Consider the diversity of the traditions from which ‘northern socialism’ emerges: trade unions and labour guilds, radical liberals and pacifists, co-operatives, mutual aid/friendly societies, the women’s movement, democratic reform movements (from the Chartists to the Suffragettes), the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF), religious non-conformism, humanism, and the whole romantic reaction against the ugly realities of the industrial revolution.
Does the Labour party really have a monopoly as the sole and inevitable inheritor of these influences? Haven’t other traditions drawn as heavily from these influences, if to somewhat different ends? You’d be hard pushed to get as much from the foreword and blurb (by the Lords Prescott and Glasman respectively), who still exhibit a proprietorial attitude to this ‘Labour territory’.
To his credit, Salveson is more pluralist in his approach, and recognises that feminists, environmentalists, anti-war activists and community organisations also continue to draw upon this distinctive sensibility.
So, too, he is careful to avoid a romantic, backward-looking nostalgia for a bygone world, and he is not out to celebrate the flat-cap and whippet culture of stereotype. Rather, tradition can be a resource in negotiating the challenges we face in a modern, diverse Britain in the 21st century. It is a potential source of strength, not something, as it was for Tony Blair, to be cast off in a relentless push for modernisation.
Indeed, many of the principal characteristics of the northern socialist tradition Salveson describes will surely be central to any modern-day emancipatory politics. Hence, for instance, there is an emphasis on practical, solidaristic, community-based politics and alternatives, on the critical importance of an actively engaged civil society and workforce empowered through forms of mutual ownership (the co-operative movement) and industrial democracy. So too there is a concentration on values embedded in common institutions prefiguring a richer cultural life – local newspapers, consumer co-ops and romantic poetry.
There is a clear emphasis on the value of the environment and public space as common entitlements, as typified by the mass trespass of hikers demanding rights of access. And, just as importantly, concern for the politics of place and locality doesn’t imply parochialism. Rather, we see the emergence of a rooted internationalism – whereby egalitarian values saw northern workers famously enduring hardship when workers refused to handle cotton from the slave-owning south in the US civil war.
In short, this tradition still has rather a lot to offer people in towns like Bradford across the north (and beyond) today, far more than the rootlessness of post-Blair Labour.
But while such an agenda would surely find ehoes in the South Wales valleys or north of Hadrian’s Wall, it remains a world away from a governing philosophy with its roots in the English home counties. Westminster continues to take away decisions on investment, planning and infrastructure from the regional level, to the benefit of London and the south east and detriment of everywhere else.
The second half of the book makes a timely and eloquent case for a devolved assembly based in the north, giving communities real power of local decision making along the lines of devolution in Wales and Scotland. The time for such an agenda might be with us sooner than we currently think.