Online taster | Autumn 2011 Š YOUNG FABIANS 2011
Anticipations YOUNG FABIANS
BEYOND THE HOODIE Nick Pearce calls for a fundamental rethink of youth policy in the wake of the riots
INTERVIEW YVETTE COOPER
Anticipations Editor James Green speaks to the Shadow Home Secretary about the riots and the future of the Met.
OPINION YOUNG FABIAN IDEAS
Young Fabian members share their ideas on a range of policy issues from drugs treatment to the hacking scandal.
FEATURE TIME FOR PLAN B
Rachel Reeves MP argues that austerity is dashing the hopes and aspirations of our young people.
| political writing by and for young people |
YOUNG FABIANS
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Join the Young Fabians today Visit youngfabians.org.uk
| from the editor |
Tomorrow’s world
Our response to the riots must focus on opportunity, not just criminality — JAMES GREEN —
mattthomasillustration.com
Do we have a feral youth? It’s a question that many have asked since riots erupted across the country over the summer. Images of young people destroying their own communities, presented a challenge to those of us who have long rejected the stereotype of the feral hooded youth. Yet, while no analysis can excuse such wanton violence, it would equally be wrong to reduce these events, as the Prime Minister has, to “criminality pure and simple.” Labour’s former Home Secretary Charles Clarke was right to rebut David Cameron’s over-simplified conclusions in an article for The Evening Standard. “Criminality”, he argued, “is neither ‘pure’ nor ‘simple’.” This is surely correct. As IPPR Director, Nick Pearce, outlines in this edition’s essay, “unless you believe that the riots were simply random acts of criminal violence, then some attempt must be made to explain why they happened and what can be done to prevent them happening again.” Of course we need a robust response and should not shy away from punishing those who have broken the law. However, it is also important, as Pearce points out, not to ignore the fact that most of the areas affected had high rates of youth unemployment and low levels of educational attainment. This is not an excuse for violence and it would be wrong to argue that the disorder occurred as
a direct result of policies such as the scrapping of EMA. Many of the rioters were not young at all; many more already had criminal convictions. However, it must also be true that only people with no aspirations for, or connection to, their communities are willing to set them alight. There are important lessons for Labour here. While New Labour’s focus on modernisation was vital for reforming our public services, the party had too little to say about community itself. This is now starting to be rectified and it is crucial that Labour continues to avoid pandering, as the government has, to those who talk of ‘moral decline’. The party must focus instead on practical ways to strengthen civil society from the bottom up. London Citizens community organiser, Emmanuel Gotoro, outlines a powerful example of how this can be achieved. The CitySafe Havens initiative, established following the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen in 2008, successfully brings together young people, police and shopkeepers to tackle local violence and antisocial behaviour. It centres upon the reporting of 100% of incidents and on the idea that strong relationships are the bedrock of community. The CitySafe campaign serves as a pertinent reminder that, far from being feral, many of our most active and civic-minded citizens are young people.
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That’s not to say that we should ignore the vital role that the police have to play in all this. Safety and security must always be the overriding priority for any government and Yvette Cooper is right to highlight in this edition’s interview that effective policing is crucial to maintaining this. Cooper offers a devastating critique of the coalition’s approach to law and order, pointing to the evident contradiction between spending well over £100 million on Police and Crime Commissions while at the same time cutting the policing budget by 20%. Strong communities need properly resourced police. Just ask the young people campaigning with London Citizens. We do not have a feral youth. Most young people are hard working, socially-conscious and responsible individuals – just like the rest of society. The lesson of the riots is not that our young are out of control, but rather that in some parts of the country, in areas of low aspiration, society has grown weak. In our effort to reweave the fabric of these communities we could do worse than look again at the opportunities available to our young people. Now is the time for a fundamental rethink of youth policy. James Green is Anticipations Editor and a Fabian Society Executive member
| starters |
Note from the Chair
The riots must spur more young people to participate in politics — ADRIAN PRANDLE —
This will be my final column as Young Fabian Chair as I stand down from the committee and put myself forward for the Fabian Society Executive elections. Time really has flown by. But before I reflect on leading the Young Fabians over the past year, it is worth considering an eventful summer and looking at where politics lies as we go into party conference season. In my last Anticipations column I suggested three things Ed Miliband needed to do to succeed: bring the party with him on its reform agenda, bring the public with him on policy, and find his feet as leader with increased confidence in his interventions. Whilst the former may or may not prove to be the flashpoint of Labour’s conference and the policy process feels like a very long, gradual game, Ed quickly rose to the latter challenge. The News International scandal definitely felt like a game changer in the Westminster village’s perception of what Ed was capable of. The problem of course is whether the public were watching this story of London’s media, political and celebrity elites. I suggest not. However, if commentators decide there is more to Ed Miliband, then the public will be watching what is, practically speaking, his first conference as leader of the Labour Party, with more interest than they might have. I wrote about the ‘squeezed youth’ and the plethora of pressures young people in Britain are facing earlier in the year so it is great to hand over the topic to other contributors in this edition. Following the shocking events of early August, it couldn’t be more topical.
Many different views on why the riots happened have been cast. I don’t think the cause can be reduced simply to coalition cuts. This is patronising to young people making a much bigger cry for help, crediting them with no sense of reason: why destroy things which money will not readily be provided to fix? Though criminality was a dominant feature of the riots, these were calculated risks, not irrational acts. I do think it is fair to say that this minority’s perception of their lives and the lack of help and support available to them contributed to their disaffection and disconnection with mainstream society. Clearly this pent-up frustration was acted upon in the most wrong way imaginable, but it would be a terrible error to judge that they are the only young people who harbour such frustrations. It is wrong therefore to conclude, as the Prime Minister has sweepingly, that British society has broken down; that children (and their parents and teachers) are to blame and must be told. Actually, responsible government should recognise that these events took place in relatively small geographical areas by a relatively small number of young people and should be looking at what it can do to transform these individuals’ sense of self-worth. Positive action as a response to the riots is tricky to locate. One of the least discussed, yet most obvious, conclusions to draw is the desperate need for young people to engage in the political process. Being cynical, whilst 18-24s are being out-voted by over-65s by as much as they were in 2010 (44% turnout compared with 76%),
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it is not that surprising that their difficulties are not the problems first solved by politicians. This isn’t about setting the generations against each other. Those on the Left of all ages should be fighting to improve the lives of young people and encouraging them to participate in politics. Government could make this easier by lowering the voting age. But young people have a responsibility too. Those who don’t see criminality as a solution to their problems need to get engaged and get voting; and then start working on their peers. Perhaps they should consider getting involved in the Young Fabians? Activism in the organisation is through the roof, proving we are both the thinkers and doers of the Labour movement. The executive has sought to capitalise on this talent and members have impressed me throughout the year. Working with and meeting new Young Fabians, and helping them develop their exciting ideas has been one of the constant pleasures of chairing this historic organisation. We too care about the voice of young people – which is one of the reasons we have made a conscious effort to encourage under 31s to also stand for election to the ‘main’ Fabian Society executive committee. There are lots of Young Fabians standing in order to help the wider society. You’ll receive ballot papers for both executive’s elections, please do vote in both. To find out how you can get more involved in running the Young Fabians email Adrian Prandle at aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk
| starters |
Economics Eye
The euro has driven the German economic miracle, but can it last? — ALLEN SIMPSON —
Here’s an interesting fact – throughout the financial crisis, while the rest of Europe saw overseas markets contract along with GDP, Germany was the only country which managed to post continued export growth. They have reaped the advantages of their support for innovation-rich small and medium sized businesses. But they have also benefited from a more recent macroeconomic advantage, one that offers an insight into why they have fought so hard to keep the Euro secure against seemingly impossible odds. If monetary union has pulled the rug out from any chance Greece had of remaining solvent, it has had precisely the opposite effect for the eurozone’s largest economy. German businesses are able to export at preferential exchange rates because the euro is valued below the hypothetical level of a reintroduced German Mark. A few issues ago I wrote about the global currency wars and China’s devaluation of the RMB to artificially enhance their economic strength. In effect, the euro achieves exactly the same result for the Germans. By allowing the Greeks, Italians, Spanish – in fact every other member – to drag down the value of their currency, they guarantee the continuation of their most significant economic advantage. But surely there comes a point where the fiscal impact of consistently bailing out less stable countries outweighs the benefits of this export boost? There is nothing new in sovereign defaults of course. Greece has a long and glorious history of failing to pay its credit card bill for most of the first half of the 20th Century. But the existence of the eurozone offers a new problem that actively prevents states from restabilising, and Germany cannot maintain subsidies on the current scale for ever. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have all been bailed out, the latter receiving €78 billion over three years from the EU, ECB and IMF. At the time of writing, Italy and Spain have not needed to be rescued. But they will, and at massive financial and political expense to the German government. In return, these countries have undertaken the most aggressive percentage reduction in state economic participation since the fall of communism. Economic restructuring is entirely necessary, even if in the short-term the result has been a measurable loss of growth and even deeper borrowing.
There is a deeper question mark over the implications of the crisis for the euro itself. The currency has proved itself to be simply incapable of withstanding serious shocks in its current form without enormous subsidy. The inherent contradictions in forcing Northern European monetary policy onto Southern European fiscal policy are unsustainable without sufficient growth to paper over the cracks. There are three obvious directions that Germany could take from this point, although none of them are particularly palatable. First, they could dissolve the eurozone and take the hit to their export markets and political influence in order to reduce their liabilities. Second, they could kick the southern nations out of the currency, achieving much the same effect. Or third, they could do what seems more likely and extend their subsidy even further, in effect taking a bet that the southern nations will develop and mature so this crisis will not be repeated. Given that Germany has already guaranteed around $230 billion of eurozone debt which they’d need to at least double to have any effect at all, it would be an expensive gamble. And here’s the rub. If for the sake of argument Germany could be sure that their partners would eventually mimic their own strength and fiscal stability, then the value of the euro to German policy makers – political power, a devalued currency and structural support for exports, all of which in the final analysis are based on inequalities – would simply fade away. Would it make any sense at all for Germany to pay such a high sum just to see their advantage disappear? The choice is stark. Return to the Mark now and damage their own strategic position, or risk hundreds of billions of dollars to retain that advantage that they can only hope to keep for years, rather than decades. For Germany’s monetary partners the problem is even more severe. Either leave the euro and cut themselves off from the German cash machine, or stay in, and sign any immediate chance of future growth or political influence away. Never has the UK’s decision to stay out of the euro looked so sensible. Allen Simpson is a Young Fabian member and speechwriter to the London Stock Exchange
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| cover story |
BEYOND THE HOODIE In the wake of the riots we must rethink our approach to youth policy — NICK PEARCE —
On 8th August my daughter was born in St.Thomas’s hospital, London. Usually the labour ward of a big South London hospital is a noisy place to be, and this day was no different. But as night started to fall, the sounds of new life coming into the world were drowned out by something altogether more frightening and disturbing. London was on fire, and the streets echoed to the wails of police sirens and fire engines. In the days and weeks that followed the riots in England, a great deal of soul searching took place as to why they happened and what caused them. For the most part, however, debate polarised quickly and predictably. On the Left, the riots were predominantly about poverty, unemployment and the deadening effects of consumerism on social morals. For right wing commentators and politicians, the causes were a familiar litany of family breakdown, fatherless children and the sickness of life on welfare. To his credit the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, refused to be drawn into simple explanations, acknowledging instead the complexity of the riots, and calling successfully for a commission of inquiry into their causes. Unless you believe that the riots were simply random acts of criminal violence, then some attempt must be made to explain why they happened and what can be done to prevent them happening again.
While the riots were not overtly political, the economic and social context lurks in the background. Most of the areas affected by the riots had high rates of youth unemployment and low levels of educational attainment. What shocked many people was the sense that many young people didn’t seem to care about trashing their own communities, revealing the extent to which they do not feel committed to those areas and their neighbours in them. This generation faces a future less certain than those in the past, and unsurprisingly
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research shows that young people who are not in employment, education or training are almost twice as likely as other young people to lack a sense of belonging in life. Thirteen years of investment in regeneration and education under Labour brought solid improvements in deprived areas, but the transformation was disappointing given the scale of resources. Labour failed to address an underlying sense of insecurity brought about by profound economic and social changes since the late 1970s, which have made it harder to move straight from school into work and meant young people are more dependent on their own agency and motivation to get on in life. It is certainly legitimate to argue, as many of the party’s leading figures have done, that Labour was too hands off with the market, and too hands on with the state. But if this is true, it is also clear that the place of community was simply a residual in Labour’s intellectual architecture. It was not theorised in its own terms (save perhaps by those heirs to the traditions of guild socialists who were interested in civic renewal or participatory democracy) or the object of policy attention in its own right. Community could be strengthened by investment in public services or economic regeneration, but little thought was given to
| cover story |
the dynamics of communities themselves: how people co-operate, forge social bonds and develop culture and identity. One consequence of this was that Labour had a tin ear when it came to questions of identity, belonging and claims to recognition. Most importantly, this left it ill equipped to understand cultural concerns about immigration and other profound changes in national identity. However, it also limited its understanding of rising intergenerational fears and anxieties. Much of the public concern about crime is rooted in a fear of young people; a widespread sense of unease that large numbers of adolescents have not been properly parented and are increasingly cut off from the norms of adult society. This is particularly acute in disadvantaged areas, where young people make up a disproportionate share of the local population but lack stable routes in the adult world of work
On 8th August my daughter was born. The labour ward of a London hospital is always noisy. But as night fell, the sounds of new life coming into the world were drowned out by something altogether more frightening. London was on fire, and the streets echoed to the wails of police sirens. and responsibility. In these areas, communities have been weakened over the last thirty or so years under the stress of unemployment and
Lost innocence. Why did young people destroy their communities? deindustrialisation, and traditional mechanisms of socialisation within the family and community have waned. In consequence, young people have more complex routes to navigate into adulthood, but with less structure and support from the surrounding community. They increasingly socialise themselves within peer groups which, at its extreme, expresses itself in gang cultures. Contact with the adult world authority is restricted to educational institutions and the criminal justice system. Lacking the soft skills needed to gain a foothold in low skill service labour markets, poor young men in particular suffer high unemployment. This is compounded for some ethnic minorities by discrimination from employers. Meanwhile, childhood has become increasingly commercialised. As countries get richer, childhood becomes an important site of commodification, as parents spend more of their disposable income on goods and services for their children. Childhood is now replete with brand identities, advertising campaigns and commercial marketing. Adolescence has become stretched at both ends as, on the one hand, the market economy has reached down further into childhood, creating new groups of tweenager consumers, whilst on the other, entry into stable patterns of adult work and family life takes longer. The issue is not consumerism per se, than how it interacts with these dynamics of childhood and adolescence. Nonetheless, it should have come as no surprise that it was consumer brands, not political slogans, which tripped off the lips of rioters caught on camera.
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A new generational compact
The initial response to the riots has been understandably punitive. In contrast to the riots of the 1980s, the lack of political leadership or collective efficacy in disaffected communities quickly allowed anger to descend into criminality. The messy and violent reality has made it difficult for the public to empathise and easy for politicians to dismiss wider implications. While a swift response from the authorities was right, the harsh reaction from the courts has undone much of the work which saw the youth prison population fall in recent years: the latest figures show riot offenders contributed to an eight per cent increase in the number of children in jail. Yet beyond the immediate question of what to do with perpetrators of the riots, politicians need to engage with the wider socio-economic and cultural challenges facing young people in disadvantaged communities. Many young people who do not have access to the factors that develop personal and social skills or to the organised structures that support young people into work are less likely to do well than their better socialised peers. This requires a fundamental rethink of youth policy to support the transition to adulthood and citizenship. Our education and training systems must be structured by the goal of securing a transition to skilled work or higher education for all young people. In contrast to continental Europe, the UK has high drop-out rates from education and training of 18 year olds, with relatively weak college education and apprenticeships for those not on the academic A-level track. Despite its best efforts, and the introduction of
| cover story |
David Cameron visits a local youth club. Has the government failed to invest in young people?
Educational Maintenance Allowances, Labour never succeeded in addressing these structural weaknesses in our education and training systems for 14-21 year olds. Over a third of 18 and 19-year-olds now enter higher education, a proportion that has risen dramatically since the early 1990s expansion of the university sector. However, there remains a core without qualifications, including a large cohort of young men. Despite relatively high graduate unemployment at the moment, the employment rate of those without qualifications is structurally much lower. The latest figures, covering the period of the riots, show the biggest rise in the number of young people not in employment, education or training since records began in 2000. The institutional framework supporting young people is weak, particularly in England, where there is little integration or cooperation between schools, FE colleges and employers. This means that disadvantaged young people fall through the gaps and lack support. It is also the reason why many vocational qualifications do not provide clear progression routes into work or further study. Targets to increase participation and qualification rates have often been achieved to the detriment of quality. The recent Wolf Review rightly argued that thousands of young people are wasting their time on courses that do not lead to jobs. What is needed is a comprehensive system that offers clear pathways for progression. Policymakers should focus on the content and quality assurance processes for apprenticeships and college-based vocational education. This will require new ways of working to foster
cooperation within sectors and in local areas. The English skills system stands in stark contrast to European countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where skills systems are governed by strong sectoral and local institutions and young people have two strong alternatives to academia: work-based apprenticeships and college-based learning, which both provide routes into the labour market. Youth unemployment in these countries stands at only half the level reported for the UK. We also need to restore a Job Guarantee for young people who have been unemployed for a year. They should be offered the guarantee of work at the National Minimum Wage but required to take up the opportunity, or face the loss of benefits. This would help to embed reciprocity in the welfare state, matching rights and obligations while supporting young people with little formal work experience into useful jobs. These transitional job placements could be provided by charities, the private sector or local government, and should allow time to look for work. Youth services have been hit hard by the public spending cuts, but there are strong arguments for maintaining the provision of structured youth activities in disadvantaged areas. While many better off families invest in the activities that develop the personal and social skills their children need to get on in the world of work, young people from disadvantaged families are far less likely to have access to constructive activities and more likely to spend their time hanging out or watching TV. The result is that they are vulnerable to failure, and more likely to
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take part in anti-social behaviour. Funding for extra-curricula activities provided by schools, youth clubs and the voluntary sector should be directed towards projects which provide structured youth activities and encourage longterm participation. Despite the fact that Labour oversaw a narrowing of racial inequalities in educational attainment, outcomes in the labour market remain comparatively weak for ethnic minorities, with unemployment particularly high among young black people. Under Labour funding went to deprived communities on the assumption that it would benefit ethnic minority communities, yet little has been done to tackle ethnic minority segregation and discrimination head on. Police reform would be a good place to start, given the role that racial profiling still plays in many officers’ engagement with communities. More widely, a new generational compact is needed which restores investment in young people and their future success. The coalition’s spending review protected a series of benefits, notably the Winter Fuel Allowance and concessionary bus fares, for older people whilst Educational Maintenance Allowances were cut and the Future Jobs Fund were abolished. Even within the context of deep cuts to public spending there is room to prioritise, and the events over the summer should be a trigger for the recognition that there is an intergenerational injustice in the coalition’s spending plans that needs to be radically and swiftly undone. Nick Pearce is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research
| endnotes |
My day job
All of us have the power to influence business practices for the better — JONATHAN BAILEY —
I was talking to an American academic last week as part of my work at Al Gore and David Blood’s Generation Investment Management. She told me that she had spent her whole career trying to understand how climate change will affect us and what we can do to prevent its worst effects. She was railing against the influence of climate change deniers over the political discourse in the United States. On a hunch I asked her if she had a private pension plan through her university, she said yes. I asked her if she knew how it was invested, she said she did not pay much attention to it but it probably tracked the US stock market. I pointed out that she almost certainly owned miniscule shares in oil companies like Exxon Mobil. She sighed and agreed. In the current economic climate decent pensions might seem like the trappings of the pre-cuts era but, as Young Fabians, we are going to have to face up to a future where we might not be able to rely on state or non-contributory employer pensions. That will mean putting more of our own earnings into private and contributory pensions. When we do we will face some choices about what our money is actually funding. While each of our miniscule shares in the world’s biggest companies may seem irrelevant, collectively they add up to quite a lot. In fact the Bank for International Settlements puts the total value of all of the publicly listed shares in the world at about $45 trillion while Reuters estimates that together the developed world pension funds have about $26 trillion of our money to invest. Unsurprisingly the vast majority of shares are owned by pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies. Now you have little influence over how an insurance fund invests, but pension and mutual funds are areas where you do have choice. First things first, there are good reasons to have somebody else investing for you, after all there are skyscrapers full of analysts working 18 hours a day to value companies based on every scrap of information they can find. Many of them struggle to outperform the market, but the data shows that when you and I try trading stocks online we usually do even worse. However, the middle men are a problem. First, they reduce transparency as, while an asset manager somewhere is buying oil company stocks with your money, the layers between them and you mean you are pretty unlikely to ever know about it. Second, that makes it hard for you to exercise your rights as an owner as most fund managers own a stock for less than a year and so do
not provide strong governance on your behalf. Now if you owned stock in a big oil company like Exxon Mobil you would have a vote on whether the CEO deserved his $29 million pay package last year, and could propose board directors who might think the company’s much trumpeted $600m investment in bio-fuels was insufficient given its net income of $30 billion last year. But imagine if we did come together and actually used the influence that we have through our pensions and investments to shape the way that companies behaved. A start would be for more of us to choose an asset manager who ‘screens out’ the worst companies. The Apartheid, Sudan and BAE Systems divestment campaigns all made good progress on an important but discrete set of issues. There are investment products that do this more broadly. You may have heard of the FTSE Group’s ‘FTSE4Good’ index for example. A more sophisticated approach would be to try and change the way the system works by finding asset managers who invest only in those companies that integrate sustainability into the way they are run. Sustainable businesses are those that create value and build competitive advantage for the long-term through careful stewardship of human and natural capital. That means paying a living wage and investing in the workforce to reduce staff turnover and increase skills. That means pricing in the damage that carbon emissions do to the climate and finding innovative low carbon business models that can outperform competitors. That means investing for the future rather than propping up the share price with stock buy-backs. It means building a board that sees the link between sustainability and financial results and which holds management to account. I believe that companies that do these things will outperform those that do not over the long-term. The academic and research evidence to support this is growing. For example a recent Harvard Business School study shows that companies with strong environmental, social and governance performance have lower cost access to capital and long term stock performance. So as you think about your pension don’t make the same mistake as that academic and allow your life’s earnings to undermine your life’s work. Jonathan Bailey is a Young Fabian member and works for Generation Investment Management. He writes in a personal capacity
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| endnotes |
STEPHEN TWIGG His inspirations, motivations and what Labour must do to win again
A former Fabian Society General Secretary, Stephen Twigg was born in Southgate to Communist parents on Christmas Day in 1966. He was active in politics from an early age and, following a stint as NUS President while a student at Oxford University, he was elected to Islington Council, becoming deputy leader in 1996. A year later he became the unofficial mascot of New Labour’s 1997 triumph when, at the age of thirty, he wiped out Michael Portillo’s 15,500 majority in Enfield Southgate. In 2005 he lost his seat but made his comeback to Parliament five years later after wining the nomination for the super safe constituency of Liverpool West Derby. Michael Portillo wrote to congratulate him.
What is your biggest achievement?
As Schools Minister leading the ‘London Challenge’ to improve secondary schools in London.
What is your biggest disappointment?
That so many of Labour’s progressive achievements in office are being undone by the Tories.
Who is your political hero? Nelson Mandela.
Who is your political villain?
Why Labour?
I joined at 15 because I shared Labour’s values – justice, equality and fairness.
Why not the Tories?
In a world where so much still needs to change I could never be a Conservative.
What do you most like about Labour?
At our best we’re campaigners for justice working with other progressives.
What do you most dislike about Labour?
Yigal Amir – the man whose assassination of Yitzhak Rabin killed the best hope yet of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
What is your favourite political moment?
Watching the queues of black South Africans at the polling stations in 1994.
What do you most like about British politics?
For all its faults we have democracy and free speech – rights which thousands have given their lives for across the Arab world this year.
What do you most dislike about British politics?
At our worst we’re inward-looking, convinced that we have all the answers.
Its adversarial culture in which differences are exaggerated and common ground denied.
What’s the best political advice you’ve received?
How can Labour win the next election?
Not to take myself too seriously.
If you weren’t a politician what would you be?
As a teenager I wanted to be a barrister. Now I wish I’d become a teacher.
What is your favourite political quote?
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” (Gandhi).
By reconnecting with our lost electors, both working class and middle class, and having credible answers on the issues that matter to people – living standards, the economy, crime.
How would you like to be remembered?
Whatever else I do I imagine I’ll be remembered as “that guy who defeated Michael Portillo.”
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YOUNG FABIANS
IN THE FULL EDITION All our latest activity delivered to you. Simple.
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INTERVIEW
FEATURES
YVETTE COOPER
TIME FOR PLAN B
by james green
by rachel reeves mp
The Shadow Home Secretary talks to the Young Fabians about the riots and the future of policing.
Shadow Treasury Chief Secretary Rachel Reeves argues that austerity is dashing the hopes of our young people.
FEATURES
OPINION
IDEAS FROM A SQUEEZED YOUTH
YOUNG FABIAN IDEAS
by various
by various
Young Fabian Policy Commission Group members pitch their ideas for Labour’s policy review.
Young Fabian members share their ideas on a wide range of policy issues from drugs treatment to the hacking scandal.
STARTERS
STARTERS
POLITICAL PULSE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
by josie cluer
by various
Young Fabian Josie Cluer analyses Labour’s response to phone hacking, the economic crisis and the riots.
Young Fabian members share their views on the spring edition of Anticipations, The Reluctant Superpower.
SOCIETY NEWS
ENDNOTES
YOUNG FABIANS
WHY I’M LABOUR
by various
by various
All the latest from the Young Fabians including recent activities, forthcoming events and plans for the year ahead.
Young Fabian members talk about the values and experiences that inspired them to join the Labour Party.
Join the Young Fabians at youngfabians.org.uk
and much more.... Deadline for completed ballot papers is October 22nd
For further information visit www.youngfabians.org.uk
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