Anticipations - Winter 2010

Volume 14, Issue 2 | Winter 2010

Anticipations YOUNG FABIANS

RECLAIMING THE BIG SOCIETY Maurice Glasman argues that the time has come for Labour to rediscover its history as a grassroots movement

INTERVIEW STELLA CREASY

Labour’s new MP speaks to International Officer Marie Loewe about organising, party reform and female representation.

OPINION YOUNG FABIAN IDEAS

Young Fabian members share their ideas on a wide range of policy issues, from tuition fees to the future of defence.

FEATURE COOPERATIVE FUTURE Lambeth Council Leader Steve Reed discusses how cooperative ideas are transforming local public services.

| political writing by and for young people |

| contents |

COVER STORY

OPINION

T H E IN T E R VI E W

THE CASE AGAINST WILLETTS RECLAIMING THE BIG SOCIETY b y m a u r i ce g l a s m a n

Labour has a rich tradition of grassroots activism. Now is the time to rediscover it.

— 8

b y a a ro n p orter

It’s time David Willetts heeded his own advice about inter-generational justice.

— 11

STELLA CREASY

b y m a r i e - n oe l l e l oewe

One of Labour’s ‘new generation’ of MPs on how the party must change to win.

— 20

OPINION STARTERS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR by various

Young Fabian members share their views on the autumn edition of Anticipations, What’s the big idea?

— 5 STARTERS

POLITICAL PULSE b y j os i e c l u er

Being an opposition leader is tough. Here are ten challenges Ed must meet if Labour is to win the next election.

— 6 STARTERS

ECONOMICS EYE b y a l l e n s i m p so n

China has undervalued its currency to support local manufacturing. This offers benefits for the West.

— 7

IN DEFENCE OF DEFENCE b y ro b ert g r i g g s

The coalition’s cuts to the defence budget will put Britain at risk.

— 11 OPINION

UNITING THE KINGDOM b y j ose o ’ b r i e n

Britain’s internet sector is set to become a key driver of the UK economy.

— 12 OPINION

YES HE CAN b y m a r k j oh n so n

Despite disappointing midterm results, Obama can win a second term.

— 13 OPINION

LABOUR’S LEGACY

FEATURES

COOPERATION FOR THE NATION b y steve ree d

Lambeth Council are applying cooperative principles to local public services. There is much the coaltion could learn.

— 22 FEATURES

THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE b y g re g rose n

Despite what David Cameron may say, history shows that Labour not the Conservatives are the people’s party.

— 24 FEATURES

PEOPLE POWER, ORGANISED b y j a m es g ree n

On Citizens UK’s national training I saw how organising is transforming lives. The Labour Party should take note.

— 26

b y m i k e westwoo d

Labour has a strong record on rural affairs.

We must stop the coalition wrecking it.

— 15

Published by: The Fabian Society 11 Dartmouth Street London SW1H 9BN T: 0207 227 4900 F: 0207 976 7153 Printed by: Caric Press Ltd 525 Ringwood Road Ferndown, Dorset, BH22 9AQ

Anticipations, like all publications of the Fabian Society and the Young Fabians, represents not the collective view of the Society, but only the views of the individuals whose articles it comprises. The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving its publications as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement.

The editor would like to thank all contributors as well as all members of the Young Fabian Executive Committee. With special thanks to Effusion, Matt Thomas and Ben Philpott.

Images used in this publication are royalty-free or are Creative Commons licensed. Copyright remains the author’s own. Cover image: Paperchain people/ iStockphoto/ Thinkstock.

Illustrations by Matt Thomas mattthomasillustration.com.

© YOUNG FABIANS 2010 www.fabian-society.org.uk www.youngfabians.org.uk

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| from the editor |

Back to its roots

Labour must offer a new vision of the state rooted in the party’s history of grassroots activism — JAMES GREEN —

mattthomasillustration.com

One issue more than any other has dominated British politics since May. Cuts have been the order of the day, as the coalition has taken the axe to the public finances in its effort to bring down the deficit and shrink the state. In this tough political climate, Labour have played an important role in holding the coalition to account and opposing cuts, like those to housing benefit, that hit the poorest hardest. However, the party must be careful to avoid the temptation of riding the inevitable wave of public anger and opposing all cuts on matter of principle. The recently launched policy review provides a vital opportunity for Labour to develop a credible policy platform that is rooted in the political and economic reality of today.

That reality is a challenging one. Despite what the coalition may claim, the structural issues within the UK economy go far beyond financial services and alleged Labour profligacy.

In fact the UK’s long-term debt has far more to do with our ageing demographic profile than with bankers bonuses and complex derivatives.

Put simply, the taxes of those in work no longer cover the services and pensions of those who have retired. The problem is systemic and the only solution is a new conception of the state that reflects the complex realities of modern day Britain. Of course this must go beyond the

rhetoric of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. However, unless Labour understands its message – that the state needs to be reformed and that people want more power over the issues that affect their lives – the party will fail to offer the credible alternative that is so desperately needed.

This doesn’t require Labour to give up on its own political traditions. In this edition’s essay, newly ennobled Maurice Glasman makes a powerful case for Labour rediscovering its radical tradition of solidarity and cooperation.

As he rightly argues, Labour has a rich history of grassroots activism and it is this that the party must tap into if it is to offer a new vision of government that goes beyond investment and centralised control. At a time when the public feel disempowered by an overbearing market and an often unresponsive state, now is the time for Labour to once again become the party of civil society. To win the next election, it is vital that Labour does not cede this ground to the coalition.

There is a lot of great work already being done in this area. As new MP Stella Creasy discusses in this issue’s interview many Labour activists are applying the principles of grassroots activism to their own constituencies, supporting local people to take power and influence the decision making process. As a participant of Citizens UK’s national community organising

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training – I share my experiences in this edition – I have seen for myself how effective these methods can be.

However, organising is only a small part of this agenda. Steve Reed, leader of Lambeth Council, writes about the groundbreaking work he is leading on to make Lambeth the country’s first cooperative council. Big ideas are vital, but implementation is equally as important and Lambeth are showing how Labour’s cooperative and mutual tradition – of which Greg Rosen provides a fascinating overview – can be applied to the challenges of the modern world.

During the times of plenty, Labour’s instinct was to invest rather than to empower. Despite its shortcomings, this approach had a huge impact of which all on the Left should be proud.

However, in today’s economic climate and with the long-term challenge of an ageing population, a new approach is required. Now is the time for Labour to rediscover its history as a grassroots movement and place community empowerment at the heart of a radical new approach to government. Cooperation, mutualism and community organising; these are old ideas whose time has come.

James Green is Anticipations Editor and a Fabian Society Executive member

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Note from the Chair

It’s a tough time for the Left but the Young Fabians can rise to it — ADRIAN PRANDLE —

It’s a privilege to write this, my first Chair’s column. Having finished top of the all-member postal ballot for the third year in a row, I’ve been joking with people that it is Barack Obama paying me back for helping him win the US presidency (in 2008 I led an 80-strong Young Fabian-Labour Staff Network delegation to his campaign).

Times are tougher for Obama now. The midterms proved a bloodbath for the Democrats.

Whilst healthcare reform is a major achievement, underestimated in the UK, it is jobs and the economy that will make most Americans sit up and notice the effect their president is having.

Despite their recent electoral success, I’m not convinced the Republicans are a party coherent, united and determined enough to win the presidency. The frontrunners for the nomination are emerging but I retain confidence in Obama’s ability to defeat whoever is successful. He must be honest about the frustrations he has felt in the role and continue the narrative that he is the only chance to change the Washington logjam.

Time will tell whether the significance of who is in the White House has as profound an effect on UK politics as it did in 2000, or whether the coalition have enough trouble on their own without looking beyond Britain’s borders. There are certainly plenty of testing times ahead.

University funding has by no means disappeared, rival AV referendum campaigns are underway and the government has yet to face a big test on Europe. Ed Miliband’s job is to apply pressure on such issues. He has loose positions, or political strength, on each that can ride the correct

decision to take his time over policy, whilst he focuses on making the government look unfair, out-of-touch and ultimately more interested in the politics of coalition than helping people get by and succeed – creating a gap for Labour to step into ahead of the next election.

I’m of the view that Ed is right to tackle (much needed) internal reform early in his leadership of the Labour Party. It is a risky strategy of course as he needs to be confident in his own ability to stay relevant and continue building a relationship with the general public whilst orchestrating the party talking amongst itself. Happily, the answer to many of the organisational problems the party must seek to resolve is in working with the public, building connections at a local level to effect change community-by-community, and to bring people into a more open, welcoming political party.

So it is an uncertain time for Labour, but a great time for the Young Fabians as the society goes from strength-to-strength. The ‘Transforming our Party’ policy development group showed that our members have plenty to feed into the consultation on reforming Labour’s policy-making process. And we look forward to influencing the shadow cabinet’s policy review.

Young Fabian membership has risen 25% during 2010, an increasing number of members are participating, and there are more and more ways to get involved. Our membership has impressed me at every turn in 2010, and it is they that give us the strength, reputation and influence we have.

It has been great to see members of that

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Obama delegation get increasingly active.

Earlier this year Pamela Nash was elected as the Member of Parliament for Airdrie and Shotts, the Commons’ youngest MP. And some of you will know Sam Bacon, who perhaps epitomises the journey a Young Fabian can go on, from being a member, to attending some events, to organising Young Fabian activity himself in his local area, through to joining the executive committee in November’s co-options meeting.

Sam was one of five Young Fabians to be coopted onto the executive committee adding to an already great team. The co-options meeting, in which those elected to the committee can select five more executive officers, was the most competitive I’ve ever known. It also saw relatively new Young Fabian members succeed in getting onto the committee that voluntarily runs the Young Fabians. The strength of our organisation is not just in quantity but quality and I look forward to seeing more and more members actively contribute.

I’m leading a strong Young Fabian Executive and there will be many different ways you can get involved over the next year. If there’s something else you think we should be doing, please do get in touch – and if you want to organise it yourself, we’ll do all we can to help. I feel more than ever that we can make a difference to the future of centre-left thought.

To find out how you can get more involved in running the Young Fabians email Adrian Prandle at aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk

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Letters to the Editor

Young Fabian members have their say on the last Anticipations

Dear Editor, I found last edition’s economics column (Economics Eye) both informative and thought provoking. One area with which I would quibble, however, is the deference the article affords the sages of the credit rating agencies.

I do not believe that the loss of our AAA rating, whilst bad, would be as ‘catastrophic’ as the writer believes. The standard analysis is that, if a struggling UK does not cut spending enough, the credit rating agencies would downgrade the Treasury’s credit rating on the grounds that the Treasury would be unable to pay its bills.

Creditors would then demand higher rates of interest to lend to us, making our current debt stock more expensive to service and make future borrowing more costly. However, this analysis is economically and practically flawed – to say Britain will not pay its debt is silly.

The UK is not Argentina or Ireland. The majority of our debt is Sterling denominated (rather than foreign currency) and we control the supply of Sterling via the Royal Mint. If the UK’s creditors came knocking and asked for their pounds back, Gorgeous George (Osborne) could always oblige by printing more money and paying them with it. Printing money to service debt? Wasn’t that the sticky end of the Weimar Republic? Yes, but it looks rather like Alistair Darling’s quantitative easing programme. For good or for ill Britain will not go bust.

Daniel Bamford is Young Fabian Networks Officer

Dear Editor, I completely agree with Jessica Studdert (Support CLPs By Incentivising Good Community Organising) that more needs to be done to shift the balance of power into the hands of local CLPs. There is more to be done beyond this – the CLPs need to engage more effectively with the wider local community. Support outside the membership will be won if people can see that their contribution is listened to and recognised genuinely – they do not want to be preached at.

Returning feedback to the wider community demonstrates that the party is truly progressive, it is fluid and it listens more than it speaks. It is this that should characterise the movement in the years ahead rather than another New Labour to get stuck in the past.

Alex Adranghi is a Young Fabian member

Dear Editor, I read with great interest Ben Albiston’s article (Create an Education Constitution). However, it is not clear what the problem is that the proposed constitution is designed to solve. Is it that there is disparity between areas with high degrees of choice and those with virtually no choice? If so, the constitution will not help. It will not lead to greater choice in areas where there is currently no choice at all. If it is simply to “explain the value and means to attain different qualifications”, then by all means have a constitution. But those living in areas with high choice are probably pro-active anyway, and will find out for themselves without

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requiring a constitution.

It would seem that the constitution is meant to be an “explanation of what teachers and learners can expect from their respective experiences.” Is it to have legal force? If so, far from being a ‘simple solution’, it will be extremely difficult to get agreement, likely to result in a bland document. The last thing educators want is yet another set of rules.

Joani Reid is a Young Fabian member

Dear Editor, Congratulations to the new Young Fabian executive on your elections.

It is clear that the coalition’s cuts are an ideological attack on our welfare state. They are also an attack on young people. I marched with 50,000 other young people and students against fees and the signs and placards said it all. We thought we had it all, like our parents’ generation.

But with unemployment, a financial crisis and an erosion of free or affordable education we have gone from ‘Generation Y’ to ‘Generation Why?’.

I hope the new Compass Youth committee and Young Fabian Executive can find ways of working together to meet the challenges of our generation.

Cat Smith is Compass Youth Chair

Have your say on the articles in this Anticipations. Send your ‘Letter to the Editor’ to letters@youngfabians.org.uk

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Political Pulse

Ten challenges Ed Miliband must meet if Labour is to win in 2015 —JOSIE CLUER —

Ed Miliband has been leader of the opposition for seven months now. Here are the top ten challenges that our new Labour leader must meet if we are to be out of power for a parliamentary term rather than a political generation.

1. Using Labour’s values as our USP. In contrast to the Conservatives, who are pragmatic on principle, and the Lib Dems, who abandoned their values at the door to government, Ed must position the Labour Party as the only party based on principles. Our values – opportunity, fairness, aspiration – are those shared by the vast majority of people working in Britain. This won’t be easy as the Tories are trying to use our language because they know it is popular. So Ed must reclaim our language, and with it, the centre ground.

2. Constructing a credible economic alternative to the ConDem cuts.

Labour has long recognised that economic credibility is a necessary (though by no means sufficient) condition for electability. Ed is off to a strong start, and must continue to build a credible economic alternative to the ConDem cuts. He must avoid being seen as a deficit denier and focus on growing the kind of economy Britain needs for the future.

3. Telling a new story about how Labour would govern. People are increasingly interested in how governments make change happen, as well as what they do. To make change happen the last Labour government either legislated, implemented a top down target system or threw public spending at it. Political times have changed and Ed needs a better story about the mechanisms to bring about the policy changes he would implement.

4. Creating a hard headed, clear electoral strategy. “We lost, and we lost badly” Ed told us on becoming leader. Anyone who has looked at a colour coded map of UK constituencies will understand this. It should give us a strange optimism that Ed understands how far we are away from becoming electable, let alone elected. Ed must construct a hard headed electoral strategy which is based on a real understanding of why Labour lost in 2010.

5. Avoiding the Red Ed tag. Ed’s opponents are queueing up to remind everyone of the electoral maths that led to his election. Though the ‘Red Ed’ charge led by the Murdoch press is largely unfounded, he will always be at risk of being seen as in hoc to the unions. Ed must resist the temptation to lurch to the left to win easy points from the left of the party.

6. Reshaping Labour’s Relationship with the unions. Labour’s

relationship with the unions is uncomfortable and out of date. It must be reformed. This will be no mean feat, both because of Ed’s support from the unions during his leadership campaign, and in the future because it is likely that their position on the coalition’s cuts and their methods for protesting may be out of touch with the public mood. Ed should take the bull by the horns and examine the relationship between the unions and the party.

7. Demonstrating leadership. Much is made of the closeness of the leadership election and that many of Ed’s shadow cabinet did not vote for him. This doesn’t matter if Ed demonstrates the vision and strong leadership the opposition needs. With the dispensing of Nick Brown and appointing of Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, Ed has already shown ruthlessness and political ingenuity. He’ll need both in spades to keep the PLP in line and to be seen as a leader by the public as well as the party.

8. Transforming the party from a machine to a movement. The ‘big tent’ of the mid-nineties was crucial to winning Labour’s landslide. Back then the party was at the cutting edge of political campaigning. But in the last fifteen years people left the tent and the party has not been reformed. Ed needs to prioritise party reform now, so that in 2015 Labour can mobilise the support of thousands of activists and supporters to win the election.

9. Showing pride in our achievements and a humility about our mistakes. Ed believes that the past is a foreign country. But Labour’s record in government looms large in any conversation about its future. One of the mistakes that Labour made in government was to become trapped by its actions, believing that we must defend everything we did, even when we made mistakes. This was part of the reason we lost touch. Ed needs to walk a delicate line between being proud of our record and humble about our mistakes.

10. Avoiding gaffes. Whatever his political legacy, the picture of David Cameron cycling to work with his shoes being driven behind by his chauffeur will be contained in all the history books. David Milliband will be haunted by the banana, William Hague by the baseball cap. Ed needs to make sure the picture that comes to define him in the public eye is the right one.

Josie Cluer is a Young Fabian member and former special advisor to a Labour cabinet minister

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Economics Eye

The undervaluation of China’s currency has benefits for the West — ALLEN SIMPSON —

So, I’d planned to use this column to talk about the government and the opposition’s deficit reduction plans. Riveting stuff. But November’s G20 meeting in Seoul raised an issue which in macro terms is far more important for the future competitiveness of the West and for the stability of the still delicate global economy – exchange rate policies in the emerging economies.

We can never say often enough that the financial crisis was very largely a result of massive trade imbalances between the ‘new’ economies and the old European and US powers. Roughly speaking, we bought Chinese televisions and they lent our cash back to us by investing in the Western bond markets. A clever business model (or at least it was until the inevitable credit crunch).

Chinese policy makers have worked hard to maintain their position as a leading exporter through careful management of their currency – the Renmimbi (RMB). If you are an export dependent nation then you would do well to maintain a low value currency, which in turn makes your export prices more competitive.

For many years Chinese policy makers have done just that. As a result they have been accused of protectionism since the flipside of this policy is that it makes Western exports to China far more expensive. At the G20, President Obama lent his weight to these criticisms, saying that imbalances “helped to contribute to the crisis” and that he will “closely watch the appreciation of China’s currency.”

American economists have estimated that the RMB is undervalued by approximately 40%. Not that China is the only nation accused of managing their currency to support their manufacturing industries. Quantitative easing doesn’t just inject liquidity into the financial system, it also reduces the value of the Dollar, Sterling or Euro, depending on who has the printing presses out. So there is an element of hypocrisy in Western complaints about China’s activities. Nonetheless, even if everyone is at it, it is protectionist.

Just as much so as formal import barriers or tariffs. Ultimately if we want to recover from the crisis we need to start making things and selling them.

The easiest and emptiest comment to make about our own economy is that we need to rebuild our manufacturing industry. To the extent that

such a thing is possible at all, international protectionism and reduced export markets would give us almost no chance of working our way back to economic strength. Beggar thy neighbour policies of any kind are a long term guarantee of torpor and the sort of sluggishness which would make every ONS economic announcement feel like a conversation with a Counting Crows fan. And undervalued currencies do exacerbate trade imbalances of the sort that provided the context for the crisis.

So, what did the G20 decide? Not a great deal. An early draft of the statement from the finance ministers’ G20 pre-meeting contained a promise to, “move towards a more market-determined exchange rate system, and refrain from competitive undervaluation of our currencies.” By the end of the full leaders’ G20 the outcome was a rather vague set of ‘indicative guidelines’ which will have no real teeth.

The reality is that China are moving slowly towards a more market driven currency valuation. But they won’t be pushed, and with good reason.

Until they are able to replace the lost export strength through bigger internal markets, there is little incentive for them to bow to the West’s demands.

China’s leadership are quite exceptionally strategic in their approach.

They know that their economy needs liberalisation, and they know that they cannot become a genuine world leader while their business model relies on selling artificially low cost goods to the West. But I wonder whether the Western leaders have thought quite so closely about the impact of a less competitive China. In the years leading up to the crisis Asia and the Middle East exported around $3.3 trillion of surplus savings, while the US alone borrowed $3.9 trillion from overseas.

Despite the attempts to reduce public and private sector debt requirements, as things stand the need to fund huge deficits makes us utterly reliant on the continuing availability of low cost credit on the bond markets.

We would be wise to avoid forcing China to take away the punchbowl before we have addressed our own spending, or we might find that our national debts suddenly become a good deal more expensive to fund.

Allen Simpson is a Young Fabian member and speechwriter to the Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange

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| cover story |

RECLAIMING THE BIG SOCIETY It’s time for Labour to rediscover its history as a grassroots movement — MAURICE GLASMAN —

The Liberal Conservative coalition government, self-consciously progressive in orientation, while appropriating Labour’s language of mutual and co-operative practice, asks a fundamental question as to what distinctive gifts Labour could bring to this party. Beyond saying ‘its not fair’, what resources does Labour have to explain the financial crash and its electoral failure? Out of what materials can Labour fashion a compelling vision for the future?

Labour is a paradoxical tradition, far richer than its present form of economic utilitarianism and political liberalism. Labour is robustly national and international, conservative and reforming, Christian and secular, republican and monarchical, democratic and elitist, radical and traditional, and it is most transformative and effective when it defies the status quo in the name of ancient as well as modern values.

Labour values are not abstract universal values such as ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’. Distinctive Labour values are rooted in relationships, in practices that strengthen an ethical life. Practices like reciprocity, which gives substantive form to freedom and equality in an active relationship of give and take. Mutuality, where we share the benefits and burdens of association. And then if trust is established, solidarity, where we actively share our fate with other people.

These are the forms of the Labour movement, the mutual societies, the co-operatives and the unions. It was built on relationships of trust and mutual improvement that were forged between people through common action. They were transformative of the life and conditions of working people. The Labour tradition was rooted in a politics of the Common Good, a democratic movement that sought its rightful place in the life of the nation. The Labour tradition has never been straightforwardly progressive, and that is not a defect which we are on the verge of overcoming, but a tremendous strength that will offer the basis of renewal.

Meet the family

Labour was the child of a cross-class marriage between a decent working class Dad and an educated middle class Mum. The Dad in this schema were the trade unions, the co-operative movement, the building societies and mutuals which were built by the working class out of the materials available to hand. Their concern was to build the relationships and institutions necessary to confront market power and their language was exclusive and associational; brothers, comrades.

For the Mum, in this case the Fabian Society, Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation,

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the Anglican Church (which alone among the churches finds itself on this side of the family), the strong tradition of ruling class public service, the architects, scientists and writers, who were deeply connected to the development of the Labour Movement and who developed ambitious plans for government. Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s LSE was founded as a Labour think tank.

In philosophical terms we have an Aristotelian Dad and a Platonic Mum, a Common Good Dad and a progressive Mum, a traditional Dad and a radical Mum. For the Mum, the overwhelming concern, the categorical imperative was with the ‘poorest and most vulnerable in our society’ and the use of scientific method and techniques to alleviate their condition. For the Dad, they were a big warning of what would happen if you didn’t have friends, if you didn’t organise, if you didn’t build a movement with others to protect yourself from degradation, drunkenness and irresponsibility.

These were the people who didn’t pay their subs, didn’t turn up for meetings, crossed picket lines and got pissed on the money they earned.

The problem in the marriage was clear from the start. The Mum had all the advantages of class.

Resources, eloquence, confidence and science and none of the experience of hardship. There was a lack of reciprocity as the years went by and

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Labour moved towards government. The Mum was much better suited to the demands of the modern world, capable of understanding the big picture, developing technically complex policies, managing change. The role of trade unions meant that they only had the power to disrupt, as there was no democracy in corporate governance, no capacity to pursue a common good within the firm in which power was shared and therefore, no possibility of internal promotion and responsibility without crossing picket lines.

This shift in power in the relationship is clearly seen in Labour’s attitude to the governance of the firm and the economy. Nationalisation, and its direction by state appointed experts was but one form of the social ownership that was discussed by the Labour movement for three decades before 1945. For most of the time before that co-operative firms, worker and passenger owned railways, mutualised waterways and worker run mines were party policy.

This was all but abandoned by the time Attlee became Prime Minister. The Dad had no power at work and no power at home either, as the party became increasingly dominated by middle class policy technocrats. The marriage, you could say, became increasingly abusive, which is why it is now crucial to rebuild love and reciprocity between the parents. This will require a commitment to renewing cross class organisation within the party, of common action for the Common Good, throughout the movement.

The source of Labour’s continued vitality lies in learning to cherish neglected aspects of its tradition that place reciprocity, association and organisation as fundamental aspects of building a common life between antagonistic or previously disconnected forces. It is a radical tradition that is as committed to the preservation of meaning and status as it is to democratic egalitarian change and seeks to pursue both.

This gives tremendous resources and possibilities to the Labour tradition as it seeks to renew its sense of political relevance in political circumstances that threaten its purpose. This requires, and has always required, an organised resistance to the logic of finance capitalism and a strengthening of democratic institutions of selfgovernment.

Revising revisionism

The resources for renewal lie within the tradition itself, but this requires an understanding of participating in a lived tradition in which we identify with its defeats and victories, successes and failures as it has engaged with its adversaries through time. This directly relates to the rationality of the tradition itself. Revisionism is

a wonderful thing, but it becomes impoverished when it is understood as a constancy of ends, pursued through a variety of means. Eduard Bernstein, the founder of German revisionism in the early 20th century said that the movement was everything and the ends were nothing. Fifty years later, Anthony Crosland, for reasons I have never fully understood, but with enormous consequences for the Labour tradition here, argued that revisionism was the opposite, that the ends were everything and the movement was nothing.

With the domination of this kind of revisionism, equality of rights and outcome

Now is the time to build a politics of the Common Good by returning citizenship to all our cities. The economic and democratic regeneration of local economies requires a reciprocal partnership between capital, state and society. You could call it socialism in one county. became the end, and this was decisive in moving Labour from being a tradition concerned with the Common Good in this country, as part of the country’s history, to a progressive, left of centre, social democratic party. In the same way that Labour’s response to globalisation after 1992 was a move from specific vocational skills to general transferable skills, so philosophically, it moved to general transferable concepts, such as justice and fairness, which would apply in any country, society and terrain rather than develop the specific language from within the political

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traditions of our own country. It was a move from the Common Good to progressivism, from organisation to mobilisation, from democracy to rights, from self-management to scientific management.

A Good Society

Tradition in such a schema is an impediment to justice, understood in terms of equality of opportunity and treatment. Tradition becomes irrational, a defiance of necessary change that needs to be overcome, and in some cases broken, by modern management. Flexibility became a workforce virtue. The idea that tradition could be more reasonable than modernism is almost inconceivable on such a view.

Tradition is synonymous with conservatism, an inability to adjust to new circumstances and an acceptance of prejudice. If it is the case that inherited associations, institutions and practices are an impediment to efficiency and justice, alongside the assumption that transferable and not specific skills are the best way to intervene in the market logic of globalisation, then what results is the biggest paradox of all, which is that contemporary socialism has no effective category of the social.

I am alert to these things, but as far as I know, Social Democracy, in party, union, or think tank has no plans for extending democracy in the social life of the nation. Put another way, social democracy has become neither social nor democratic. This is the land that Labour has vacated and is now being filled by the Conservative’s ‘Big Society’. The Conservative tradition does have a conception of the social, Burke is an important thinker, but it was lost under Thatcherism and has been robustly reclaimed by Cameron.

In response, Labour needs to develop the idea of a Good Society as its rival, and such a society would be built on relationships built on reciprocity, mutuality and solidarity, all the way up and all the way down, in politics and within the economy.

Where does power lie? That was Aneurin Bevan’s question, and the answer was to democratise it. This should remain our orientation, not the fantasy of abolishing power, but of democratic self-government within the reformed institutions of the realm. In order for there to be a redistribution of power it is necessary to confront unjust concentrations of power and wealth.

The credibility of Labour as a radical tradition lies in this terrain. Now is the time to build a politics of the Common Good by returning citizenship to all our cities, reestablishing guildhalls and restoring institutions

Copyright Chris Jepson

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Community leaders at a Citizens UK rally.

Labour’s tradition of organising in action? of vocational self-regulation within them, including regional banks. The countryside too has no effective institutions of self-government and, with the democratisation and restoration of the country, hundreds could reconnect us to conservation and the needs of country people.

These are examples in which Labour can inhabit and renew ancient institutions and present a radical challenge to the concentrations of power and a general sense of powerlessness.

The economic and democratic regeneration of local economies requires a reciprocal partnership between capital, state and society. You could call it socialism in one county.

The Common Good

Labour is a radical tradition with claims to superiority to its rivals in terms of its reasonable assumptions, its conception of the person and its theory of history. Its axioms are: Capitalism is based on the maximisation of returns on investment which creates great pressure to commodify land and labour markets.

Human beings and nature, however, are not created as commodities and should not be treated as such.

Human beings, in contrast, are rational beings capable of trust and responsibility who need each other to lead a good life. People are meaning seeking beings who rely on an inheritance to make sense of their world, on liberty to pursue their own truth and on strong social institutions which promote public goods and virtue.

Democracy, the power of organised people to act together in the Common Good, is the

way to resist the power of money. In that sense, Labour holds to a theory of relational power as a counterweight to the power of money.

The building of relational power is called organising and this is a necessary aspect of the tradition.

As a theory of the Common Good, Labour holds to a balance of power within the constitution, and in all public institutions, including the economy.

While recognising the innovation, energy and prosperity that markets bring, there is also an awareness, absent in liberalism, of the concentrations of power, the disruption and the dispossession that are its accompaniment.

This requires not the abolition of capital nor the elimination of markets but their democratic entanglement in regional, civic and vocational relationships. This takes plural forms.

The first is a commitment to local, relational or mutual banking, that would entangle the short term imperatives of investment with the longer term needs of economic growth.

The second is a commitment to skilled labour, to real traditions of skill and knowledge that can mediate the pressures of homogenisation and preserve the capacity to transform the world in co-operation with others through work. A vocational economy would be one way of trying to grasp this.

The third is to rebalance power within the firm so that managers are held accountable, strategy is not based upon the interests of one group alone and the distribution of burdens is equitable.

The fourth is to support forms of mutual and co-operative ownership.

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The instability of capitalism is caused by the movement of capital from the real economy to speculative bubbles that are based upon the reproduction of money through money alone.

This incentivises the pursuit of ever higher rates of return. Local, vocational and political constraints on the sovereignty of capital to pursue its rate of return, is a defence against both concentrations of money power and speculative collapse, as well as giving purpose and interest to democratic association.

Socialism is a condition of sustainable capitalism in that universities, schools, libraries, vocational institutions, the rule of law and democracy all provide public goods that are necessary for its flourishing and growth. Against its own understanding, Labour asserts that capital needs partners too. Some reciprocity in the relationship with capital is required.

The tradition is strong, it offers a framework within which both previous mistakes can be rectified, and a claim to rational superiority to rivals plausibly asserted. The Labour tradition, alone in our country, resisted the domination of the poor by the rich, asserted the necessity of the liberties of expression, religion and association, and made strong claims for democratic authority to defy the status quo. It did this within a democratic politics of the Common Good. The argument of this essay is that it might be a good idea to do it again.

Maurice Glasman is the Director of the Faith and Citizenship Programme at London Metropolitan University. He was ennobled in the recent Honours List

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HIGHER EDUCATION

THE CASE AGAINST WILLETTS b y a a ro n p orter

In his book ‘The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future – And How They Can Give it Back’, David Willetts describes the rising importance of inter-generational justice as a prism for looking at injustices. The boomers, Willetts argues, “have done great things but now the bills are coming in; and it is the younger generation who will pay for them.”

Funnily enough, such inter-generational injustice is very well expressed through the ongoing debate surrounding higher education funding – a group of ‘baby boomer’ politicians who overwhelmingly benefited from an entirely state funded university education, supported by a generous system of grants, pushing for an ever greater proportion of the burden of contributions to be placed on the shoulders of this generation’s young people, as teaching funding is largely withdrawn.

Indeed, the proposals put forward by the Browne review, broadly supported by David Willetts, now in his role as Universities Minister, and the coalition government, could in this respect barely go further. Even if provision for a free market in fees is dropped in the eventual government proposal (no doubt presented as a Liberal Democrat ‘win’), the government do seem intent on bringing about an at least doubling of the tuition fee cap. With students this year graduating with an average debt of £24,700, it is clear that tomorrow’s graduates will be getting something of a raw deal – particularly when compared to Willetts and his contemporaries.

But whilst the increase in the level of student contributions is of concern, what is most disturbing about the Browne review proposals is the fact that the rise in fees is not designed to bring in additional funds to the sector, but rather is predicated upon, and justified through,

massive cuts in public funding of the sector – leaving the state effectively pulling out of higher education altogether, acting mainly as a conduit for student finance, rather than providing any teaching funding, with only subjects of particular importance getting funding. This is a profound ideological shift in the role of the entire higher education sector, and has been reaffirmed by David Willetts since, confirming to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee that under the proposals the teaching grant for band C and D subjects – arts, social sciences and humanities – would be all but wiped out. This, from a group of politicians who overwhelmingly studied arts, social sciences and humanities degrees.

Indeed, the ‘attack on the young’ by David Willetts and his baby boomer contemporaries on the coalition government front benches is not merely confined to higher education – further education will be suffering equally swingeing funding cuts, whilst at the same time vital means for student support are stricken away. The recent Comprehensive Spending Review, for example, put forward plans to abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance – payments ranging from £10 to £30 a week made to young people from poor backgrounds who remain in post-16 education.

These payments were introduced in order to encourage young people to keep studying rather than going off to work to contribute towards the additional costs entailed in post-16 education, and enable young people to prioritise their studies over the need to undertake significant amounts of part-time work. The removal of this allowance would make remaining in post-16 education a lot more difficult for many young people, with a 2008 NUS survey finding 65% of participants on the highest EMA rate of £30 stating that they would be unable to continue to study without EMA. And, again, we have a situation whereby the mistakes of the baby boomer politicians, bankers and financial regulators are hitting the young hard.

The question of inter-generational justice is not, of course, an all-encompassing trump card. It is now inevitable that the baby boomers will have to make decisions which will impact particularly adversely on my generation, and those to follow, and we cannot claim foul play at each occasion.

But it is important to recognise that both David Willetts and his colleague, Business Secretary colleague Vince Cable, came from normal backgrounds and went on to take high-powered jobs, largely facilitated by the education system they enjoyed. Education supported and enabled their success and the worry has to be that under the proposal they are now backing, there will be young people from normal backgrounds

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like theirs who no longer feel able to remain in further education or to apply to university. To yet again seek to make the next generation pick up the tab for others’ excesses is as unsustainable as it is unjust.

And David Willetts should know this better than most. As he wrote in his book, “a young person could be forgiven for believing that the way in which economic and social policy is now conducted is little less than a conspiracy by the middle-aged against the young.” The government’s approach to universities and students all but confirms it.

Aaron Porter is a Young Fabian member and President of the National Union of Students

STRATEGIC DEFENCE REVIEW

IN DEFENCE OF DEFENCE b y ro b ert g r i g g s

The hastily convened Strategic Defence and Security Review outlined cuts to the UK’s armed forces of a little under 8%. These cuts will leave Britain, in the words of Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute near, “the threshold of ‘minimal strategic significance.’” In other words, the UK is on the brink of military irrelevance. With no fat left to trim, any future cuts to the defence budget would see the UK relegated from the top-table of military powers, perhaps never to return.

But does this matter? With thousands of public sector jobs being lost and even universal benefits in the gun-sights, it might seem incongruous that the UK should spend billions of pounds on warships and fighter aircraft when the most apparent threats to our security are homegrown extremism and cyber-attack; hardly things aircraft carriers are much good for dealing with.

Would it not be better for the UK to give up its great power pretensions and spend hard-pressed taxpayers’ money elsewhere?

The answer is no. In assessing threats to the UK the defence review placed “an international military crisis between states, drawing in the UK and its allies, as well as other states and nonstate actors” alongside terrorism as the most immediate. 90% of the UK’s trade – our economic lifeblood – is carried by sea, yet cuts to the navy will leave us with only nineteen destroyers and frigates to patrol the world’s expansive oceans. It would be short-sighted and foolish for the UK to give up its ability to project military power overseas; the world remains too uncertain and unstable a place. History has taught us that we cannot sit on the sidelines and expect the world’s troubles to pass us by.

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The Labour Party must recognise this if it wants to remain credible as an electoral alternative to the coalition. It cannot, through ignorance or neglect, allow the Conservatives to once again become the natural party of defence.

With coalition cuts disproportionately affecting the poorest in our society, it will be tempting to some on the Left to follow the lead of those, like the new Shadow Housing Minister Diane Abbott, who advocate slashing the defence budget and scrapping Trident. With New Labour defunct and the party in ideological flux, it is not inconceivable that once the dust settles a Labour Party more hostile to defence spending might emerge. The disaster of Iraq and the stalemate in Afghanistan can only strengthen this possibility.

Such a movement should be resisted. The centre-left cannot seek to build a fairer and more just society without recognising that the foundation of any such society is security. The NHS, bequeathed to posterity by Attlee (the man who also decided Britain needed the atom bomb), would not have been possible had Hitler’s armies not been finally defeated just months earlier.

During the 1980s the Labour Party, stricken with internal wrangling about disarmament and nuclear weapons, was not trusted by an electorate still fearing the omnipotent Soviet Union. Fastforward to the 2010 election and we see Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats charged by security chiefs with equivocating on national security. The Labour Party cannot, as a government in waiting, be seen to abdicate its primary responsibility – defending the people.

On Trident, perhaps the most difficult question of them all, unilateral disarmament outside of a multilateral and comprehensive arms reduction process would leave the UK vulnerable to the painful maxim of history – that the moral high ground is little defence against a determined aggressor. For now, the UK needs to maintain its minimum deterrent.

But simply being strong on defence isn’t enough. The Labour Party needs to provide leadership and develop a long-term vision of Britain’s place in the world. Rather than more misguided interventionism, such a vision could see the UK build closer ties with its EU partners, forging a credible common security and defence policy whereby Europe is able to meet its unrealised peacekeeping and crisis management priorities, and shoulder the greater burden of its own defence.

Far from undermining NATO or the UK’s relationship with the United States, such moves would help assuage American fears that they alone will be forced to carry the burden of global security in the 21st century, a position which could ultimately see them withdraw into isolationism – to the detriment of us all.

In an uncertain world, and after all diplomacy has failed, the UK must as a last resort be able to project military power in defence of its friends and allies. We cannot rely on the benign intentions of others, or forget that our liberty was once hard-fought. The UK can play a positive role on the world stage, befitting of its people and history. But it will still needs ships, and aircraft, and boots, to do it.

Robert Griggs is a Young Fabian member

THE INTERNET

UNITING THE KINGDOM b y j ose o ’ b r i e n

Few, if any, people could have foreseen the impact of the internet when, in 1969, computers at the University of California, Los Angeles and Stanford connected for the first time, and created a platform that would evolve over forty years to become an ever-increasing presence in our lives.

Last month, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google UK set out to measure the internet’s impact and its implications on the British economy. It was found that, in 2009, nearly £100 billion, or 7.2% of GDP, was a direct result of the internet sector. At this rate of contribution, the internet sector is predicted to become more significant than financial services, now at 9% of GDP, within five years.

In times when the UK economy needs to be revitalised, when British higher education is cast further into doubt, and when economic austerity is the word du jour, the British government must provide a platform from which the internet sector can continue to grow in an effort to lead the economic recovery. Such a framework would consist of expansion of the reach of broadband around the country, innovation in business models to effectively capitalise on the role of the internet, and implementing incentives that lower transaction costs and facilitate the dispersion of information to the British people.

The task of measuring the effect of the internet on the UK economy is rather difficult, as it had never been evaluated as a separate economic sector. The approach taken by the study put forth the notion of ‘levels of influence’ as a metric to gauge the role of the internet; the easiest to measure being digital transactions (i.e. online purchases and online advertising). As a function of expenditure, the BCG report reveals that, “60% of the internet economy is driven by consumption with the remaining 40% driven by government spending and private investment in internet-related tech.” In 2010 alone, 33 million Britons have bought products or services online,

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spending around £50 million on these services and the number employed in the internet economy is estimated at 250,000 people in the UK. Further still, if the internet were a sector in itself, it would overtake health and social work (7%), construction (6%), education (5%), and utilities (2%), among others. And yet, measurements of engagement and enablement tell a very different story.

In terms of engagement (i.e. proportion of services and activities carried out online), the UK is not in the top ten of countries. In fact, it is ranked 12th in the world. According to the enablement figures – a measurement of internet penetration and speed – Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries are the only countries in the top ten in terms of engagement that also appear among the most connected nations. All of these are clearly taking advantage of their national internet infrastructure. In other words, while the UK is first in the world in terms of online spending, it falls short with regards to activities carried out on the web and internet penetration around the country.

What, then, can be concluded from the UK’s asymmetry on the web? Well, for one, as confirmed by the BCG report, the British internet infrastructure is not yet equipped to provide the sort of platform on which consumers, producers, government and private entities can connect and interact at an optimum level. Further still, the study revealed that there are significant regional differences across the UK that account for the country’s relatively low enablement score.

London, unsurprisingly, leads the way in internet connectivity whereas Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland fare poorly by comparison.

The British government should take action on this issue and work to ensure that the internet reaches sections of the population more equally. Policies that champion the expansion of broadband reach in the UK do not only benefit e-commerce, they can also have a positive effect on the way Britons exchange and use information in their daily lives. And unlike the dot-com era, as the BCG report found, the internet is now responsible for creating new streams of revenue rather than producing tremendous wealth for a few shareholders.

Hitwise, a company that regularly tracks internet use, reveals that out of the top twenty websites visited by Britons only five are British.

The implications of this statistic do not necessarily spell doom for the British entrepreneurial sector, it only demonstrates that it lags behind other technology hubs around the world. Starting an internet venture can be a daunting task; it requires a considerable amount of seed capital, means of generating revenue at subsequent stages, and the financing to expand once it is necessary.

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In the US, Silicon Valley is still considered among the most innovative technology centres – a place where venture capital firms and hightech companies are constantly intertwined in forging new business models; the very essence of economies of agglomeration.

As such, David Cameron has recently pledged to develop the East End of London into a global tech centre by, “bringing together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic park.” If high-tech is high on the Conservative agenda, then the front-benchers must bear in mind that creating an environment conducive to innovation has to be done organically; Silicon Valley was not forced into existence.

In times of welfare reform and austerity measures, the public and private sector must work in tandem to lead the economic recovery in the UK and beyond. Realising the full potential of the internet sector has to become a priority if British enterprises are to keep pace with their foreign counterparts. The old adage of Britain being a nation of shopkeepers is no longer meant just in the literal sense; virtual shops are now thriving in the UK. Yet the challenge still remains of ensuring that all regions have the internet access that they need. Only once this is in place, can we truly be a united kingdom.

Jose O’Brien is a Young Fabian member

AMERICAN POLITICS

YES HE CAN b y m a r k j oh n so n

With the dust settling on the midterms, commentators have been besides themselves to voice how devastating these results were for Obama and his administration. The loss of so many seats across Governor, Senatorial and House elections represents the worst result for an incumbent party in seventy years.

Yet, this result should come as no surprise.

Barring the unique circumstances that surrounded the 2002 elections, the rule of thumb is that the governing party will feel the full force of voter dissatisfaction. If you add to this the intrinsic demographic make up of the voters that do come out and a floundering economy, then no one should have been too shocked to peer over the political landscape on November 3rd and find a resurgent Republican Party.

The partisan nature of the American political system means that the last two years of a presidency will take a delicate balancing act. Some will argue that a shift to the left will ensure a distinct line between the parties, but

Can Obama recapture the support of the American electorate? this is not the space that Obama occupies in the political spectrum, and nor would it be advisable to give the right such a loaded gun when going for a second term. So with Obama firmly rooted in the centre ground, and the House controlled by the Right, what will this mean for progressive legislation over the next few years?

Foreign policy has always been the cornerstone of a presidency, whether you favour a realist paradigm of the world or one that seeks to strengthen multi-lateral co-operation. Even prior to the elections, American foreign policy was taking a surprisingly bi-partisan, even protectionist, view. You need to look no further than the agreement to allow for tariffs on imports and a new dose of quantitative easing to see where politicians are placing economic foreign policy. Moreover, despite impressive rhetoric, the work done in the Middle East and attempts to foster better relations with emerging economies has been done so with a degree of trepidation.

The process of quantitative easing is also the primary focus of the administration’s current economic policy, designed to kick start an economy that has struggled since Obama came to office, although it is hard to see what else they could do to get the money flowing again.

Domestically it has always been a difficult thing for a federal government, with the courts and special interest lobby groups having a major hand in shaping legislation. It also tends to dance around the political divide quite regularly. For every piece of legislation you have on comprehensive free health care, or as close to that as you can get, you will also have a system of free schooling that neither the Republicans nor Democrats would argue against.

In many ways Obama’s ability to secure a second term in office reverts back not to foreign policy or whether the Republicans try to mire

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the health care reform through long drawn out challenges in the House, but something more fundamental – the economy. With a strengthening economy, and with it a recovery in employment, Axelrod and co will have a narrative to run a campaign on. Without which the Republicans, and with it the Tea Party, will be able to pin the notion that big government fails to help most hard working Americans, this message could even take root with both Hispanics and students, two key demographics that the Democrats will need in 2012 if they are to win.

Realistically, despite the change in the House and the quagmire that is now the Senate, we are not likely to see a radical departure from what has come before. Things will be harder but, even before the elections, Obama had to appease both conservative Democrats and independents in order to set out on what has been an attempt to be one of the most progressive administrations in American political history.

What the next two years will be about is securing a second term. A new mandate, and the likelihood of a realigned political balance, will help Obama push further and faster than he had before. Infrastructure development and a successful foreign policy will mean little to most Americans unless they feel the pinch in their pocket start to loosen.

The Tea Party movement and the resurgent right are unlikely to do much more than stall on legislation and try to drag the Democrats through the mud in the committee procedures.

Again, if the economy begins to surge then even this narrative will find little in common with many Americans. If all else fails, ‘Team Clinton’ will be rubbing their hands at the thought of a third term in office.

Mark Johnson is a Young Fabian member

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FOREIGN POLICY

FOREIGN POLICY YEAR ZERO b y j a m es d e n se l ow a n d s a m h a r d y

It took less than a day for the taboo to be broken; in his first speech as Labour leader Ed Miliband stated that the invasion of Iraq was ‘wrong’.

For Yvette Cooper, the new Shadow Foreign Secretary, who voted consistently for the war, the challenge of redefining Labour’s foreign policy objectives post Iraq is massive.

The last time Labour undertook a foreign policy review of such magnitude, times were very different. Labour was looking forward to a period in office with relatively benign foreign policy challenges, leaving the party in a position where it could be ambitious in its policy formulation.

In opposition Labour was able to scrutinise the Major government without the baggage of its own recent record in office, proving effective in criticising the government over its inaction in Bosnia during the early nineties and exposing its numerous inconsistencies, not least the devastating fissures over Europe. It was from these foundations that Labour had the political space to build what became known as its ‘ethical foreign policy’ agenda. The question now is how Yvette Cooper can reenergise Labour’s foreign policy thinking and set out a clear narrative of the sort seen in 1997?

To do this effectively, Cooper must have a clear understanding of how New Labour’s original foreign policy was corrupted by the Iraq war. What exactly Robin Cook meant by ‘ethical foreign policy’ is still debatable, but arguably it was underpinned by several core social democratic values including a focus on multilateralism, a greater commitment to Europe, a growing concern with climate change and a commitment to human rights and democratic activism. More controversially, it was also a policy of liberal interventionism as defined by a set of five principles setting out the case for ‘just war’ based not on any territorial ambitions but on halting or preventing humanitarian disasters such as genocide or ethnic cleansing.

By enacting this liberal interventionism, first in Kosovo, then in Sierra Leone, New Labour was able to underline Britain’s continued role as an important player in its own right.

Simultaneously the party’s concerted efforts to promote and empower the EU burnished their credentials as multilateralists while also building the foundations to manage the political reality of the decline of Britain as a global power. What happened next however irrevocably changed this course.

New Labour under Tony Blair will of course always be associated with the fiasco of the Iraq

war that sowed massive division in both party and public. Critically, however, Iraq should not be used to discredit the principles of liberal interventionism because that is not the ideology upon which the case for war was built. What has been proven by the countless reviews, inquiries, autobiographies and leaks, is that the reason for going to war in Iraq had little to do with the principles of an ethical foreign policy that Robin Cook proposed. There is no better evidence to support this hypothesis than the words of Cook himself when he argued in his resignation speech that, “our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules.”

Iraq was the exception to the rule of New Labour’s foreign policy, not the bedrock of it.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a multilateral effort supported by the institutional pillars of NATO and the UN. Although Britain went to war without a UN mandate in Kosovo, the difference was that UN backing was blocked on strategic grounds by two permanent members, Russia and China. By contrast UN opposition to Iraq came from a large cross-section of states who questioned the legal and ethical legitimacy of the invasion.

The delusions of grandeur suffered by the Bush administration towards Iraq led to a very different coalition of the willing taking part in the invasion and subsequent occupation.

With no WMD found, as predicted by the UN inspectors, the case for war in the UK suddenly became retrospectively justified by reminders of the incredible evil personified by Saddam Hussein himself. This logic was quickly extended to suggest that anti-war sentiment was equivalent to support for Saddam’s authoritarian regime.

Iraq was not a case of liberal interventionism.

Although the war’s proponents attempted to use a veil of morality to judge the invasion in hindsight, the very fact that a body count of Iraqi civilians wasn’t kept belies its real priorities.

Iraq remains a live issue, although the situation is improved, it remains both fragile and prone to bloody bouts of violence. The ongoing Chilcot Inquiry may recall Blair to give further testimony and reignite focus on the issue.

However, with the election of Ed Miliband the Labour Party has the chance to finally reconcile the issue of Iraq and rebuild a principled base towards its foreign policy ideals. This is no easy task and Cooper and her team need to consider how they can make clear that an ethical foreign policy is not a luxury, but rather an essential part of defining Britain’s place in the world.

Iraq does not preclude Labour from doing this but the party will need to identify a set of priorities which can define its own agenda while also scrutinising a government which has so far

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Is liberal interventionism possible after Iraq? worked assiduously to keep controversy away from its foreign policy. There are already some pressing concerns for Labour to address. For starters, Labour should be seriously questioning the new government’s pragmatic ambiguity over security issues typified by the confused mandate of the new National Security Council agenda.

Secondly, while trade has always been central, its seeming omnipotence within all facets of the new government’s foreign policy should surely not go unscrutinised. Defending the balance between ethical, commercial, and security concerns in Britain’s foreign policy is ground Labour can and ought to claim. Related to this is the concern over the apparent blending of foreign, defence, and development policy – something Shadow Development Secretary Harriet Harman has already raised publicly.

In addition to immediate policy issues, there is also a level of introspection needed by Labour; what will the party’s line on Europe be post Lisbon and in the context of a coalition government with the potential to be ripped apart by the issue of Britain’s relationship with Brussels? And what about liberal interventionism? What should Labour do, for example, if the situation in Sudan once more deteriorates? How Labour positions itself in terms of debates over humanitarian intervention could be critical in shaping the party’s foreign policy post Iraq. The challenges are numerous but in Yvette Cooper Labour has a figure more than able to meet them.

Politics today may be all about the economy but Labour’s new foreign policy approach will be critical to its emergence as an effective opposition and as the potential next government.

James Denselow and Sam Hardy are Young Fabian members

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FREE SCHOOLS

LEARNING THE LESSONS b y c l a i re f re n ch

Swedish society has been an egalitarian model for equality-shy countries like Britain for decades.

The progressive tax system gives citizens access to high quality universal public services which have the sole purpose of giving everybody access to services they need. The generous welfare state and care systems have been put under the spotlight by social democrats in the western world.

But when it comes to quality education, perhaps our gaze should be limited when it comes to the Swedish system – which in 1992 was severely reformed to incorporate a neoliberal, free market approach to delivering state education.

For the first time, the state gave parents a choice in where their children were educated. Schools run by local government accepted children who lived within the catchment area, whilst free market schools allocated places on a ‘first-come, first-served’ system. This has proved to be a competitive field where, typically, pushy parents queue outside their chosen school for hours, sometimes even days to ensure their child gets a place.

Whilst in opposition, the Conservative Party built its ‘blue print’ education reform on the changes made in Sweden in the early nineties. Mona Sahlin, the leader of the Swedish Social Democrats until recently, warned that the Tories’ plans will fail in the same way that Swedish Conservatives did fifteen years ago.

Social Democrats remain adamant that free schools increase segregation between different social backgrounds. In May, Sahlin wrote in the Guardian that, “it is worrisome that the Tories want to copy our system by picking out the bad apples of the basket.”

The statistics speak for themselves. The number of poorly performing pupils has increased since the introduction of the free school model. In the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Swedish schools scored surprisingly lower than England in both Maths and Science for Grades Four to Eight. The achievements of school pupils in Britain outperform those of their Swedish counterparts.

Although the education budget was frozen in the comprehensive spending review, it has become clear that schools, parents and children will be hit by the upcoming austerity cuts. Money that Labour had set aside for an increase in free schools meals for more than a million school children has been taken away, plans made under the Building Schools for the Future programme were spectacularly cancelled and then restarted at

some of the schools most in need of repair.

Whilst the government appears to be making an effort to save money on the schools budget, the plans to open free market schools undermines their reasons for cancelling school building in areas of deprivation. Ed Balls, when Shadow Education Secretary, said that 700,000 children would be affected by the cuts.

Social democrats in the UK and Sweden must establish a narrative that attacks the government on the impact its proposals will have on poorer school pupils. The Liberal Democrat’s flagship £7 billion ‘pupil premium’ uses recycled money from cuts to fund itself. In September, Camden Council’s Schools Forum noted that, “the proposals for the pupil premium are unlikely to generate significant new funding for Camden schools and the pupil count changes will result in a reduced dedicated schools grant for Camden.”

Local government education departments up and down the country are on standby for redundancies and cuts. But is a tried and failed new schools policy what we need in this time of austerity?

Claire French is Young Fabian Web Officer

RURAL AFFAIRS

LABOUR’S LEGACY b y m i k e westwoo d

Politicians and the media tend to use ‘rural affairs’ as a byword for agricultural issues.

Although the relationship is symbiotic and agriculture does play a big part in the rural economy, it’s not always that straightforward.

Herefordshire is one such example of a part of the UK that faces the same societal problems as inner cities in its urban areas as well as requiring large amounts of government funding for farming, enterprise and transport.

Although the quality of life in the countryside is generally better than the cities, a recent report by the Commission for Rural Communities has shown that some rural counties are among the poorest in the country and actually rely more upon the public sector as a major employer than farming. Despite this, the countryside has also been identified as the part of the UK which is most resilient in times of economic downturn but many fear that the coalition’s cuts will stifle even the rural economy.

The Rural Manifesto, published in April 2010 by the Labour Party, identified the need to boost the rural economy, encouraging recovery by using the strategic tools already put in place such as the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) which have provided much financial support

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and advice for rural business. The manifesto also rather portentously warned that the abolition of the RDAs would spell huge problems for rural areas. Money formerly destined for the RDA coffers has now been redirected to Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). The coalition has assured us that the money from LEPs will aid rural communities in a better, more efficient way.

The reality may be somewhat different.

Philippa Roberts, herself a local businesswoman and chair of Herefordshire CLP says that the LEPs are harder for local businesses to use and do not provide anywhere near as many services as the RDAs. The LEP which serves Herefordshire is now also shared with Telford and Wrekin and Shropshire, forming a Marches LEP. It has thirty six points of access rather than the nine which the RDA formerly had, making money notoriously hard for local businesses to access.

Business leaders are involved, as are leaders of the three Conservative-majority councils in the Marches region, but the unions and the third sector don’t have any representation at all.

Furthermore, the emphasis in the Marches region is skewed overwhelmingly towards improving transport infrastructure. Given the track record of the local authorities, this will be money mostly spent on by-pass and traffic system development rather than providing badly needed bus services to outlying rural areas.

This is without even taking into account the proposed cuts of 20% to public transport.

Some villages in Herefordshire and Shropshire are composed almost entirely of social housing for low-income families. With research showing that people living in the countryside spend more on transport and drive longer distances than those in the cities, it’s clear that the provision of transport is one of the biggest issues for levelling the playing field. Iain Duncan Smith wants people to get on the bus and get to work. Easier said than done when you are a school-leaver with no job, no personal transport and the earliest bus of the day leaves at 9:30am, as is often the case in many villages. That is if they are lucky enough to have a bus service in the first place.

What is clear is that even the most isolated rural areas rely heavily on the state, not just as an employer but as a major force in the structuring of rural society and the economy – almost artificially in some cases. Hill farmers for instance are given subsidies by the government so that they can raise stock and grow crops on land that is not always profitable. In April 2010, Labour laid out plans to subsidise 7,500 loss-making rural post offices as they recognised their significance and importance in rural communities. The minimum wage has also been hugely significant in improving the lives of the less well-off in the

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countryside – in the past agricultural wages were notoriously low. Under Labour, spending on rural education increased. Consequently, the numbers of those gaining five or more A* to C grades has increased, year on year in counties such as Herefordshire. A combination of spending, social reform and support from government agencies and independent bodies has arguably made the countryside a better place to live.

Among the planned cuts, 2011 will see the abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities (RCR), an organisation that provides support and advice for rural communities. The organisation has published reports on transport, rural pay and housing and has been pivotal in providing research on an area of life that doesn’t receive as much attention as the more ‘glamorous’ urban issues. The RCR will be subsumed into DEFRA, which will itself be receiving cuts of 5.5%, including a £110million cut in its flood-defence budget. Friends of the Earth food campaigner Nic Beuret said, “a fair deal for farmers is left hanging with the merger of the Office for Fair Trading and the Competition Commission.”

The coalition are seemingly undoing a lot of the good work carried out by Labour yet the Conservatives manage to successfully portray themselves as the champions of rural communities, having carried the torch for bloodsports and other issues close to the heart of the rural voter. Perhaps the tacit spending on the limited broadband trials that the coalition have proposed will provide some help but it seems that the two parties which have been claiming to make life better and fairer for those living in the countryside will make an area for potential growth actually worse-off.

Mike Westwood is a Young Fabian member

HOW TO:

BE A SCHOOL GOVERNOR b y d a v i d ch a p l i n

If you follow education policy then you’ll know that the coalition government’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has called on our schools to return to a basic focus of educational outcomes; offering students and their parents noticeably stricter discipline, more school uniforms and an increase in traditional subjects, rather than recent ‘wild and wacky’ education theories. Whether you agree with this policy or not, it is going to happen, and in the Education White Paper schools have been given more freedom by the government to slim down provision to a basic curriculum which may well

Can school governors hold the government to account? end up being free from national standards and central government interference.

If you are interested in education policy and you are on the Left, you can sit around debating these new policies from the government, reading articles like this one and shaking your head at the concept of a free school. Or alternatively you can walk one hundred metres down the road and help decide how the government’s policies should be implemented at your local school by becoming a much-needed school governor.

School governors are the front-line of education policy, and if Labour is to truly reconnect with its communities then more young activists such as Young Fabians need to get involved.

I have been a school governor in Haringey for nearly four years in a school which is at the heart of the local community and is a reference point for a range of local issues, including a raging debate about admissions, entrance criteria and selecting by aptitude. There are important reasons why people naturally have strong views about these issues and parents can often be the most vocal against ideas to reform schools, so it’s increasingly important for there to be a plurality to the debate around the future of our community schools and this should involve young adults.

This is even more important at a time when there is so much change to education policy.

School governors play a crucial role in facing out to the local community and explaining the focus of the school to all the numerous stakeholder groups. Often governing bodies can focus too intently on one particular stakeholder group – such as parents – at the expense of others, and so it’s really important that young adults volunteer for governing bodies to bring a new perspective and ideas.

Lesson number one of being a governor is

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that all schools have politics of some kind, and if you are interested in the political debates around education then being involved in a governing body will give you literally endless opportunities to debate this. But more importantly, understanding how to navigate those difficult issues within your local community is great training if you are considering a career in community politics, especially by standing as a local councillor.

If Labour Party activists up and down the country are to do what David Miliband has succinctly described as “rejoining our local communities, before we ask people to rejoin Labour” then taking on the responsibilities that go with being a governor is a crucial part of any attempt to understand local concerns. Through meetings and conversations with parents and students I have a much better understanding of the views and interests of the residents in my little corner of Haringey. It’s a great litmus test of the popular mood, especially on issues such as academy schools and the pupil premium. Parents can often see through central government gimmicks and, as a governor, it’s important to know when to drop the official policy language and talk simply about Susan’s GCSE results.

There are difficult bits however. I’ve had to face over one hundred parents in the school hall to explain why their little ones are going to be set for certain subjects and simply had to take the angry responses on the chin. It’s not just parents who can make life difficult, the students can too, and sitting on exclusion panels is never a pleasant experience as governors often know that students kicked out of one school often struggle to find places and settle elsewhere. Helping staff to implement difficult changes, and challenging them when you think they’ve got it wrong can also be a fine line to tread. Ultimately governors are only there to engage in strategic decisions but by the nature of a school some of the most basic things can be the most controversial – school uniforms, entry criteria and targets for student success. My point is that there are difficult bits to being a governor, but they are worth it as they help you understand the school in the round.

One of the challenges that the media often throw at New Labour is that we are a generation of career politicians. The Labour Party leadership contest showed how vulnerable we are to that charge with four of the five candidates being former special advisers. Part of the way for a new generation of Young Fabians and other centre-left Labour activists to challenge that is to reengage with our communities – as governors, councillors and volunteers.

David Chaplin is a Fabian Society Executive member and former Young Fabian Chair

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THE YOUNG FABIANS

Our pamphlet launch, trip to Sweden and plans for the year ahead

THE VIEW AHEAD a n ew co m m i ttee b y a l e x b a k er

The autumn months are a haze of activity for those on the Young Fabian executive – conference, Young Fabian Executive elections and co-options, transition into the new executive year, AGM and annual dinner and then into the social minefield that is the run-up to Christmas.

In November we confirmed our new executive committee line-up – twelve elected members and five co-opted members. This followed one of the most competitive election and co-option selection processes we’ve seen in recent years.

Discussions have taken place within the new executive about our priorities for the year ahead, and we’ve consulted members too at our AGM. However, the discussion is an ongoing one and we would welcome any thoughts you may have about areas of focus for the Young Fabians in the year ahead.

The new executive is quite clear that the Young Fabians’ main focus this year should be on policy, although we’ve acknowledged that there is a desire to change the way we approach policy discussions.

In the past we have run successful policy development groups over the summer months, culminating in the publication of a pamphlet

summarising discussions in those groups.

This year we still intend to run flagship policy programmes, but to add a broad range of other policy events and publications throughout the year. We will also look at mixing up the policy themes we focus on – from broad overarching policy areas, to more specific micro-level policy

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY HOW DOES LABOUR RECONNECT? Young Fabian lunchtime seminar Fabian New Year Conference 15th January, 13:00 - 14:00

For further infomation visit our website at www.youngfabians.org.uk. discussions.

We’re also looking at ways of expanding the links we have with other policy institutions and young academics who have specific expertise in their field.

This makes sense when set against the broader political context – last year, the focus was on both the general election and subsequent

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leadership election. Without those distractions this year, and with a new leadership team in place in the Labour Party, now is the time for the Young Fabians to be at the forefront of new policy formation – particularly as we embody Ed Miliband’s ‘new generation’.

But policy won’t be our only focus. Last year we did more than ever before to push our activity out of London – webchats, podcast, vodcasts, the Bristol hustings, events in Manchester – but, in response to our members’ feedback, we’ll continue to look for ways to engage our membership outside of London and the South East. That’s why we have created the new role of Membership Involvement Officer – to look for ways at broadening and deepening our engagement with our members, wherever they live.

Our networks, which have been a successful addition to the Young Fabian stable of activity in the last year, will continue. In particular, we hope to refocus the work of the Candidates’ Network on the elections in Scotland and Wales and the local council elections taking place next year. Young Fabian Women will be launching a mentoring scheme in the new year too.

Aside from all of that, there will be the usual mix of Young Fabian socials – like the quiz nights and boat party – discussions, debates and hopefully even trips abroad.

Alex Baker is Young Fabian Secretary. To find out more about this year’s executive and its priorities visit www.youngfabians.org.uk

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REPORTING BACK p a m p h l et l a u n ch by adrian prandle

When Ed Miliband, in his first leader’s speech, told Labour Party Conference that a new generation had taken charge, ears pricked up. He spoke of a new generation “idealistic about our future” and “not bound by the fear or the ghosts of the past.” The Young Fabians epitomise this new generation. We bring not just a new generation of ideas, but also an optimism, an ambition and a determination about what government and society together can achieve.

The end of October saw the culmination of our four policy development groups with the publication of The New Generation, the Young Fabians’ 50th anniversary pamphlet. The groups met in the months following Labour’s election defeat to turn that idealism into ideas for rebuilding centre-left politics and policies.

A packed room in the House of Commons

The pamphlet presents new ideas for a new leader of the Labour Party - but also for the whole movement.

Change is needed.

The new generation is ready and able. heard a keynote speech from Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, just elected to the shadow cabinet by the Parliamentary Labour Party, at the launch of The New Generation. As other Young Fabians followed the debate via Twitter and an online webchat, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary described the pamphlet as “putting flesh on the bones” of Ed Miliband’s ‘new generation’.

“Don’t underestimate the scale of contribution thinkers, activists and participants can make to our collective future. We need the motivation, the inspiration and the insight of young people in particular. This pamphlet is just

the first step in a longer journey that culminates in being in a position to translate these ideas into practical changes in our communities and our country.”

Accepting that Labour itself was to blame for the public losing faith ahead of May’s election, Alexander insisted, “we must never be satisfied with being an effective opposition. We need to be a genuine alternative.” And to succeed, he told the audience of Young Fabians, Labour must build a movement not a machine, with leadership coming not just from the top.

The pamphlet came together in a unique context. With Labour out of power for the first time in most Young Fabian members’ political lifetimes, coalition government may well indicate ‘a new politics’, and, still in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, public services begin to feel the harsh impact of the new government’s extensive and ideological spending cuts.

Joining Douglas Alexander on the panel were three of the authors of The New Generation and chairs of the policy development groups (PDGs). Jessica Studdert set out her arguments for how to transform the Labour Party into a modern, effective, welcoming membership organisation and political force, both locally and nationally.

Answering Ed Miliband’s call to the generation that recognises that we belong to a global community to “challenge old thinking to build a new economy”, Adam Short discussed how his PDG had felt international development, energy and economic issues could and should be addressed holistically.

Looking domestically, Labour’s leader has also argued that the new generation “wants to change our economy so that it works better for working people and doesn’t just serve the needs of the few at the top.” And so Josie Cluer, chair of the Work and Families PDG, talked of the

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need to put our values front and centre; not least in being capable of articulating what good work looks like.

Paul Richards, former Fabian Chair, special adviser and author of Labour’s Revival offered a response which encouraged Young Fabians to challenge. Setting the pamphlet in a history of revisionism – whilst arguing that Labour’s crises almost always occurred when the party was not being revisionist enough – Richards called upon Young Fabians, whenever hearing a Labour politician speak, to say, “Ah yes, but …”

This idea of revisionism returns us to Ed Miliband’s freedom from the fear and ghosts of the past. As clear as Labour’s leader is to point out that ‘the new generation’ is not defined by age, Young Fabians are clear that young people on the centre left very much have something to offer.

Not least because of the effect politics in 2010 is having on them.

Many Young Fabians belong to a Labour Party that saps their enthusiasm as much as it utilises it. As coalition cuts take hold, our futures in work look uncertain and the support available to many young families reduces. And aspiration and equality – the fourth Young Fabian PDG – look set to be damaged by new government policy from early through to higher education.

Young people are experiencing this now and are motivated to find alternatives.

The pamphlet presents new ideas for a new leader of the Labour Party – but also for the whole movement. Change is needed and it is going to take enthusiastic people to participate in that change. The new generation is ready and able – and the Young Fabians are a key part of that new generation.

Adrian Prandle is Young Fabian Chair and editor of ‘The New Generation’. To read the pamphlet visit www.youngfabians.org.uk

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POSTCARD FROM tr i p to swe d e n by brian duggan

A few months ago the Young Fabians teamed up with Young Labour to send a delegation of members on a campaigning visit to Sweden for their local, regional and national elections.

Fifteen of us in total were generously hosted by the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the SSU, the youth wing of the party. We spent polling weekend in Stockholm Central district and were fully integrated into the party’s international and youth strategy for the final few days of the election campaign.

For members of the Young Fabians, spending time in Sweden was of keen interest. Not only because Sweden’s welfare model often serves as a benchmark for European social democrats, but also because Labour’s sister party was responding to a one term Conservative-Liberal coalition and was looking to bounce back to power.

The Social Democrats are in the midst of an inquest to establish the reasons for their defeat. There is much we can learn from their experiences.

At a briefing shortly after our arrival we were quickly made aware that Sweden’s Social Democrats are the most successful political party in the world, having governed Sweden for sixty-five of the last seventy-eight years. Their reputation for introducing and embedding some of the key settlements of a modern dynamic economy and a secure welfare state make the party well worth watching for Labour.

Following an overview of the political landscape as well as the tactics of the campaign we paid a brief visit to the place of the shooting and grave of Olaf Palme, the Social Democratic Prime Minister who was assassinated in Stockholm in

1986. We were then put quickly to work.

Our first experience of campaigning was a small shock to the ardent proponents of voter identification in the group. One of the key facets of campaigning in a country where retaining voter identification by a political party is illegal means campaigning operates completely differently to the voter ID campaigns we are all so well versed in. Rather than going door-to-door with clip boards gathering data, huge emphasis is placed on high visibility public campaigns which capture the public imagination.

Because the Swedish political parties have less incentive to go to the home of the voter, they have to capture the voters’ attention through well managed and costly advertising and publicity campaigns, made possible by state funding of political parties. This, combined with having all elections on the same day, makes the election both a public event and a national debate, reflected in a turnout of over 80%.

State funding of political parties meant all parties distributed huge quantities of literature, often of a very high quality and with very detailed textual information on specific policies. Many of us were impressed that most householders were given copies of the manifesto commitments of the Social Democrats, where by contrast, we are often guilty of supplying households with lowest common denominator material.

That said, the availability of state money combined with the lack of voter information, meant there was little by way of strategic targeting of households with information specifically relevant to those voters.

When we did hit the doors, unable to collect data, we were restricted to knocking on doors in areas where support is traditionally high, as opposed to targeting individual households who are or have been supportive. The same was true on polling day. Without voter ID, the ‘get out the

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vote’ operation consisted of turning out voters in areas where the Social Democrats had traditional support, as opposed to turning out supportive voters.

As the polls closed we were invited to join the Social Democrats for their results night reception where party leader, Mona Sahlin, thanked activists for their work in the campaign.

Early exit polls accurately predicted a difficult night for the Left. As the evening progressed it seemed apparent that the centre right bloc of the Centre Party, Liberals, Christian Democrats and the Moderates had edged ahead of the Left, Greens and Social Democrats to win a minority government on the evening itself.

The low point of the evening was the confirmation that the far right Swedish Democrats took twenty seats in the Riksdag, a particular low for the Left, but felt across the mainstream political spectrum.

For Mona Sahlin and the Social Democrats, it was the worst election result since 1911. Polling information seems to indicate that the Social Democrats were less trusted on the economy and that pitching in too firmly with the Greens and the former communists meant they left territory and voters in the middle of the political spectrum.

The Social Democrats, like many of Labour’s sister parties are in the midst of an inquest to establish the reasons for their defeat. For the future of the labour and social democrat traditions, there is much we can continue to learn from each other’s experiences. The challenges our parties and our voters face continue to be relevant to one another and we should continue to ensure we learn from our defeats and plan together for the future.

Brian Duggan is Young Fabian Policy Officer.

To find out more about our international work visit www.youngfabians.org.uk

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STELLA CREASY Labour’s new MP on organising, party reform and female representation — MARIE-NOELLE LOEWE —

It is already dark outside when I arrive at Portcullis House on a Monday afternoon in November, and the many lights in the main hall under the impressive glass ceiling creates an almost festive atmosphere. Typical for all parliamentary buildings it is freezing cold, so I am not surprised that Stella Creasy, newly elected MP for Walthamstow, orders a large cup of hot chocolate after meeting me at reception. While we wait for a group of children on a school trip to Parliament to pass by, Stella tells me that she used to be the Young Fabian Web Officer in 1996. “Don’t ask me how old that makes me!” she laughs.

We find a table, sit down and start talking about Labour’s policy review, which Ed Miliband had announced a few days earlier. Stella tells me about her idea of a Labour Party gap year, which she made the case for in a recent Fabian Society pamphlet. “I don’t think the review is about having a gap year though” she laughs, “It would be great if it was!”

I quickly find myself impressed by her very pragmatic and ambitious vision of how the party should use its time in opposition and her clear understanding and appreciation for the urgent need for renewal. “Our structures and the way we work have been set up by the founders of the Labour Party. But the world has changed, and so has our membership.”

We talk about her involvement with the Labour Party and she tells me that her CLP Secretary is her father and that she has been a member since she was fifteen. She talks about

the endless Executive Committee and General Committee meetings she has suffered and about her growing frustration with what she essentially considers a colossal waste of time.

“We face a lot of competition from other progressive organisations. Our membership is the strongest part of our movement and we have to be clear about why activists should give their time to the Labour Party rather than Greenpeace or Amnesty. Preserving our structures for the sake of tradition simply isn’t good enough. I grew up during Thatcher and Major and joined the Labour Party because I believed that a Labour

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government would do better than that. Members join because they are motivated, because they want to make things better. I just don’t think that appointing them to be the minutes secretary is really the best we can offer.”

I ask her about the biggest change she wants to see within the party in a year’s time, and she greets my questions by shaking her head slightly impatiently. “What needs to change is our culture, and I think we need to be willing to accept the idea that it will take time to change that. Otherwise in a year people will say, well, it’s been a year, and nothing has changed. I would hope that in a year there will have been opportunities to have many conversations about how we work, to exchange ideas about certain policy areas and our values as well as our structure. These conversations should be led by our members. Sometimes people from all sides of the party have acted as if it’s only about getting the leaflets out, and I have a lot of time and respect for those who have been willing to do the legwork for years and years. But most people join the Labour Party because they want to change the world, and if we lose sight of this goal, we lose sight of what the Labour Party is all about.”

To hit her point home she calls on all Labour members to reflect on their shared values. “Our movement should be about having a vibrant debate about issues but also about finding common ground, reasons why you are part of the movement in the first place. Often, the party is divided about single issues, but many of us joined the Labour Party because we believe in the same

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values, because we felt that social justice can be achieved. I think we need to create structures in the party that remind us of what we have in common rather than what divides us.”

Creating a space to find a common ground is also one of the main lessons Stella believes the Labour Party can learn from community organising. She was one of the most active MPs in David Miliband’s ‘Movement for Change’, and her face gains a determined expression as she speaks enthusiastically about her experiences with the campaign. “Community organising is particularly good at encouraging the leadership potential in a wide range of people. Sometimes this happens in the Labour Party. You can walk into a GC and walk out as branch secretary.

However, there are more important things to take on. I think we need to look fundamentally at the way we work together, how we can empower people.”

She tells me about the endless EC and GC meetings she has suffered since joining the party at fifteen and about her growing frustration with what she essentially considers a colossal waste of time.

She pauses for a moment and sips her hot chocolate before adding, “a Labour Government should be about empowering people, but we should have a more empowered and engaged party. Our membership today wants more autonomy, and they do want more power, and frankly, as a socialist, I believe in that. We need to fit the structures of our movement around our members. The idea that we have a one size fits all structure of how the party should operate just doesn’t work.”

We have been talking for about twenty minutes and a good number of people have walked past us since the beginning of our conversation. I notice many fresh faces among

them and ask Stella about the ‘new generation’.

Again she laughs when I refer to as her as a ‘young MP’.

“My background is in youth work”, she grins, “and those kids are pretty sure that I am not young. I don’t think that the ‘New Generation’ is about age. When I first joined Labour we were all doing everything to get rid of outside toilets at schools. The fact that we now have to defend rebuilding entire schools tells you what difference a Labour government has made and how much the debate has moved on. Fifteen years ago, environmental issues were very much a side line issue and now things like climate change have become incredibly important. Things have moved on and they have to if we are going to be a progressive modern movement. And this for me is what the term ‘New Generation’ stands for.”

I ask her if she feels that the new MPs have a special role to play in the party’s renewal, and although she refuses to be labelled, she very much uses the language of the ‘new politics’. “I don’t think that renewal should be a job for the man at the top. One of the great things about Ed is that he is willing to listen, and I think our role is not to stand at the top and say ‘actually, I would have done things differently’, it is to say ‘how can we help?’. I think there are a lot of us who come with a new perspective just because we are new to the job, but we have to play a role as representatives and as local party members, not as members of a group. That is not a collaborative process.”

Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow walks past and waves at us and I mention some of the other young, female Labour MPs who were elected in May, such as Heidi Alexander, Emma Reynolds and Rachel Reeves.

After six months in the job, does she feel like the culture in Parliament is still pretty patriarchal?

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“Absolutely”, she nods, “it has a very long way to go in encouraging greater female representation.

We don’t operate in a vacuum. I think a lot of us female MPs have a role to play in generating that conversation.”

I mention the idea of job share for MPs, and she nods. “I am going to support family friendly measures all the way. It’s not just about women though, a lot of young men have families too, and they miss them. We need to find ways to make Parliament more family friendly. This job is a full on process. I had 22,000 emails in the last six weeks. I can understand why a lot of MPs have quite severe health problems”, she laughs, “so we need to find ways of getting the best out of everyone. It can’t be a competition to see who kills themselves first in the process.”

I tell her about Young Fabian Women and she nods encouragingly. “One of the challenges for us is to have a more nuanced debate about why it matters for women to be involved in politics. Trying to overcome some of the cultural challenges requires us to talk about them in an environment where change can take place. I don’t have kids yet, but if we don’t act now, I will have to explain to my daughter’s generation why I did not speak up when I had the chance to do something about it.

“I know how frustrating it can be for women who are struggling to speak up for the first time, I know how frustrating it was for me. It is like the renewal point. That can’t be Ed’s job alone, we all have to stand up and do something about it.

It won’t change in a generation, but it is a very exciting time to be part of it and the Young Fabians have a very big role to play here.”

Marie-Noelle Loewe International Officer

is

Young

Fabian

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Cooperation for the nation

How a cooperative approach can transform Britain’s public services — STEVE REED —

Every week brings news of further damaging cuts as the Tory-Lib Dem coalition gets to work making the poorest in our society pay the cost of the global banking crisis. For the coalition, localism means little more than trying to localise the blame for their decision to make the cuts faster and deeper than is necessary or wise. The threat to our communities places a responsibility on Labour councils to try and strengthen our community’s resilience to withstand the damaging cuts. While we must campaign against unfair cuts, we must also show that we are able to turn our values into new ideas that offer the hope of a fairer future Cooperation is about people working together for the common good – benefiting individuals and the wider community they are part of. It is an idea and was part of the thinking that drove the early socialist pioneers in the 19th century, while the ideals of common ownership and mutuality have been part of the radical tradition in British politics for centuries.

Cooperation has been part of Labour’s history since the party’s birth and part of the radical and progressive tradition of British politics for centuries before that.

After the Second World War, the objective of common ownership and control became identified with state ownership in a way it hadn’t been before. That centralised model remains largely intact, but people today have higher aspirations, demand more choice and live in an infinitely more complex society. During the last Labour government, confidence in many public services fell despite significant investment and externally assessed improvements. We need to find new models of public service delivery if we are to protect their future and build public confidence in them.

The time has come to rethink the relationship between the citizen and the state so we can hand more power and control to communities and individuals. This is exciting because transferring power to the people is what progressive politics has always been about. Local government can no longer defend the status quo. We need to change and we can use cooperative and mutual traditions to explore alternatives that create more responsive services by empowering users and communities to meet their own needs and aspirations.

For the Conservatives, the ‘Big Society’ means a small state. They are using the language of cooperation and empowerment to divert attention away from a cuts agenda which is really about reducing public provision, while staking a claim to the political centre-ground. However, looking at their policies in health, education and other areas, the government appears to be driven more by the dogma of competition than by cooperation.

Instead of getting stuck in an outmoded argument about big versus small state, we need to find new ways to create an enabling state. We need policies that empower communities by giving them the resources, support and tools they need to take control.

There will always be a strong role for local government in making sure that everyone has a voice and the opportunity to participate, and that services are not taken over by narrow sectional interests that exclude other groups. The cooperative model is not a magic wand that will make cuts disappear, but it does offer a way to reduce the potential social fallout of significantly reduced public spending, while creating a new foundation on which to rebuild in the future.

Lambeth Council aims to become the country’s first truly cooperative council. We have just completed the biggest consultation in the borough’s history to discuss with local residents and experts how the new model will

The time has come to rethink the relationship between citizen and state so that we can hand more power and control to communities and individuals. This is exciting because people power is what progressive politics has always been about. work. The final report will be published in December and will identify services that will become pilots for cooperative working.

The series of pilots will be across a wide range of services to test the model in practice and start an incremental expansion of cooperative approaches to service delivery. This builds on models and examples we already have in place. For example, we have a peer mentoring programme on a tough estate with high levels of gang activity in Brixton which had dramatic success in preventing youth offending. The project delivered a startling 72% success rate at preventing reoffending by matching younger people who were starting to offend with ex-offenders a few years older who steered them away from offending and onto a range of positive activities

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instead. The project worked because it was delivered by young people who had greater understanding, reach and credibility with younger offenders from the same background.

We helped parents set up a foundation that oversaw the opening of the Elmgreen School in West Norwood as Britain’s first, and so far only, parent promoted secondary school. The new school is part of the local authority family but became one of the most popular schools in the borough before it had even opened because of the huge credibility the involvement of local parents brought.

Lambeth is home to the Coin Street housing cooperative on the South Bank, just behind the National Theatre. Cooperative housing offers a range of benefits, including more control for the people who live there, the opportunity for people on low or fixed incomes to meet their aspiration to own but without the risks of being sucked into sub-prime lending that can lead to repossession or, on a far wider scale, threaten the banking system.

Our Community Freshview programme brings together neighbours to clear up patches of derelict land that blight their community. Using tools provided by the council, they turn overgrown dumps into community gardens or play areas over which the community feels real ownership. A further benefit is the emergence of new community groups and community leaders who then move on to tackle other issues of concern to local people.

Community-led commissioning – where local communities analyse their own needs before procuring services to meet them – offers a new way forward for youth services and adult care. While the delivery model differs in each service area, there is a common approach that involves building a much closer partnership with the community.

While in each service area the delivery model differs, there is a common approach that brings them all together. That approach is about stronger cooperation between the council and the community that sees more power in the hands of citizens. We will learn as we go along and will set up pilots to answer some of the questions we have about our approach.

The work of the commission has helped us to understand what support the

Hard at work on a local play area.

Cooperative principles in action.

Community Freshview programme.

Local residents build a new play area. community needs to get more involved, what powers we need in reserve if things go wrong, how we prevent capture by one sector of the community to the exclusion of others, and how we maintain democratic accountability.

We have explored how cooperation offers better value for money and higher quality services, and we have discussed how we can unleash the creativity and innovation that lies hidden away in our community.

We are exploring the biggest move towards cooperative services ever seen in the country, and early polling indicates strong public support for what we are doing. Since our new model will work better if it encompasses the full range of public services in the borough, not just those currently provided by the council, we need the Conseravtive-Liberal Democrat coalition government to respond by agreeing a new ‘contract for place’, removing legal and other barriers to community-led commissioning, procurement, delivery and engagement.

The cooperative model will demand significant change from the council.

We will need staff capable of facilitating and enabling the community to articulate and then meet their own needs, more entrepreneurs and innovators with a different view of risk and fewer staff involved in direct service delivery or constant close monitoring. The role of councillors and council leaders will change too as they become the point of democratic accountability, ensuring that local need is met and all voices heard within a more complex network of provision.

Lambeth’s new approach is not about de-professionalising services; it’s about giving citizens and service users more control over the services they use and the professionals who deliver them. The real strength of the model is its potential to turn service users from passive recipients into active shapers of services. By redefining the settlement between the citizen and the state, I believe we can make services more responsive, relevant and efficient and, by doing so, protect their future.

Councillor Steve Reed is Labour councillor for Brixton Hill ward in Lambeth and leader of Lambeth Council

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The party of the people

History shows that Labour, not the Tories, are the people’s party — GREG ROSEN —

The irony of the current debate about the Tory vision of ‘people power’ by way of the ‘Big Society’ is that Labour’s historic epithet as the ‘people’s party’ is in danger of being forgotten.

Instead, many political journalists and commentators have swallowed Steve Hilton’s construction that Labour is the party of the state. In part that is Labour’s fault. During the election campaign some of Labour’s senior strategists sought to posit a ‘dividing line’ between Labour’s ‘enabling state’ and the ‘do-it-yourself state’ of the Conservatives.

In truth, while Labour has always been about enabling, it has not always been about the state. Its roots were in empowering, as Clause IV puts it, “the many not the few” – the people, not the state. The state was always envisaged by Labour as the servant of the people. The state itself was certainly not, when Labour was formed in 1900, ‘of the people’, for the limitations of Britain’s education system at that time meant that few working class children could secure a job or career as a public servant and state employee. Public service managers, to use a modern term, were more usually middle class products of the public schools.

Labour’s roots were in the mass of private sector workers who formed the big skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled trade unions of a century ago such as the engineers, the electricians, the boilermakers and gas fitters, the train drivers, bus drivers, dockers and miners. It was not in the public sector or public sector unions, who hardly then existed and when they grew during the twentieth century were to make up the main part of the TUC which was not affiliated to Labour. The state grew to provide Labour’s supporters with better services and to ensure that private sector monopolies and oligopolies did not exploit their position at the workers’ expense.

Appalled as they were by the Soviet Union’s Gulags, show trials, and mass murder, by the 1930s British politicians of all parties feared the Soviet Union’s apparent efficiency and effectiveness, underpinned by its five year plans. They wanted, economically, to imitate it. Thus, all parties embraced central planning and bureaucracy during the 1930s to 1950s – the Tories just as much as Labour.

Moreover, British colonial administrators, losing their traditional empire, saw in the management of the nationalised industries the potential for a new one. Before the Second World War the Conservatives had themselves created the Central Electricity Generating Board and set up similar corporations to run the BBC, the Tote, and Civil Aviation. When, during the war, the future Tory Cabinet Minister Oliver Lyttelton was asked

by Herbert Morrison what he would do with the coal industry, Lyttelton replied, “nationalise it.”

The late Lord Gilmour, a cabinet minister under both Heath and Thatcher, asserted that, “paradoxically, indeed, prudent nationalisation would in some ways have been a more appropriate policy for the

Conservatives than Labour; they certainly thought of it first... the centralised structures of the new nationalised industries... (copied by Herbert Morrison from the Conservatives’ Central Electricity Generating Board) produced managements that were no less remote from their workers than the previous regime.” Herbert Morrison ultimately realised the inadequacies of the 1940s and 1950s state – hence his speeches on ‘consolidation’. The Tories, during their time in power between 1951 and 1964, did nothing of significance to tackle the proverbial bureaucracy, red-tape or waste.

Indeed, when the UK economy failed to reverse its decline under the post-1951 Tory government, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and his Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd resorted to a more-corporatist-than-thou

Ironically for David Cameron, it was in fact the very hostility of Conservative governments over the years to the co-operative principle that spurred the Co-operative movement to found its own political party and form an alliance with Labour approach vis-à-vis Labour. It was the failure of Tory corporatism and statism that Harold Wilson decried in his New Britain speeches of 1963 and 1964.

Contrary to the picture David Cameron seeks to paint, the Tories were not historically a liberal or anti-state party. Before the rise of Labour the Tories were the protectionist and traditionalist opponents of the Liberals.

Moreover, contrary to the view of proponents of the Conservative’s ‘Big Society’ vision, the Tories were not in any sense a pro-co-operative party – the bedrock of Conservative support included the small private shopkeepers who hated and feared co-operative shops.

Ironically for David Cameron, it was in fact the very hostility of

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Conservative governments over the years to the co-operative principle that spurred the Co-operative movement to set aside its historic reluctance to engage in politics and found its own political party. Neville Chamberlain was the Conservative chancellor who slapped a tax on the ‘divvy’, despite the millions of signatures on a national co-operative petition. Led by Kettering MP Sam Perry, father of Wimbledon tennis star Fred (once an enthusiastic Co-op political activist) the Co-operative Party proved too small on its own to reverse Chamberlain’s anti-co-op ‘divvy-tax’.

By 1927 it had signed an electoral pact with the Labour Party, an alliance that continues to endure and currently sees twenty eight Co-operative Party MPs in Parliament, including a record number on the front bench and in the shadow cabinet. It was the Co-operative Party, not the Conservative Party, which first advocated the mutualisation of public services (the Cooperative Party persuaded the Labour Party to pledge the mutualisation of the life assurance industry in the party’s manifesto for the General Election in 1950).

At a local level the picture was similar. It was the Co-operative Party that during the 1960s pioneered ‘people power’ – democratically-controlled mutually-owned co-operative social housing schemes, and persuaded the Labour governments of the time to lend it support, against the prejudices of Whitehall officials. Influenced by council officers, Conservative as well as Labour councillors have often shown themselves reluctant to give up the idea that the public sector should be the provider of public services. The debate between them is frequently over the scale of local services – not how they should be provided.

For the past thirteen years, the Co-operative Party has discreetly permeated the Labour government. Tony Blair was not a member, but Gordon Brown was, as is Ed Miliband, a fact reflected in the inclusion of twenty four Co-operative Party policies in the Labour Party’s 2010 election manifesto.

When in late 2007 David Cameron insisted that the Conservative Party would “take the lead in applying the co-operative ideal to the challenges of the 21st century,” he could surely have chosen a better pledge than that a

The Cooperative Party youth wing march for action on climate change.

Ed Balls’ at Cooperative Party conference.

Cooperative schools were a Labour policy.

Conservative government would let people set up co-operative schools. As Ed Balls swiftly pointed out, the Labour government had done that already, on the initiative of the Co-operative Party. Moreover, once in government, Cameron’s actions have belied the rhetoric. One of the early actions of the coalition government has been to axe the funding made available to schools

by Labour that wanted to transform themselves into co-operative schools.

Likewise, the coalition have betrayed Vince Cable’s former support for remutualising Northern Rock, a pledge Labour adopted in its 2010 manifesto on the urging of the Co-operative Party.

The reality of Conservative governments over the past century, with some notable exceptions such as Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Big Bang’ modernisation of the City of London, has been to defend the power of the few at the expense of the many. The much-vaunted privatisations of the 1980s were little to do with people power and very few of the ‘Sids’ – ordinary voters who bought discounted British Gas shares – held onto them for the long-term. For most it was the opportunity to profit from a quick sale to one of the institutional investors. Right or wrong, it was nothing to do with any ‘Big Society’ in which consumers gained real ‘people power’ control over services formerly provided by the state.

The coalition’s actions are essentially Thatcherism with a Lib Dem face – the privatisation of public assets, this time with some employee share ownership thrown in. There is nothing about the consumer accountability that would make the Big Society’s rhetoric of ‘people power’ meaningful.

Labour’s 2010 manifesto promised, on the prompting of the Co-operative Party, to mutualise British Waterways, the quango that runs Britain’s canals.

The coalition instead plans to turn the quango into a charitable trust essentially a less accountable quango.

The opportunity is there for Labour to explain to voters that it is the real ‘people’s party’. It is up to Ed Miliband’s team to take it.

Greg Rosen is Chair of the Labour History Group, author of ‘Old Labour to New’ and the official history of the Co-operative Party. For more information about the Co-operative Party visit www.party.coop

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People power, organised

Community organising is changing lives. Labour should take note — JAMES GREEN —

It sounds like the plot of a Holywood film. Cleaners at an international bank decide that the time has come to challenge the injustice that sees them paid poverty wages to clean the offices of those who count their profits in the billions. They write to the bank’s chairman asking for a meeting but receive no response. They write again. Still nothing. So they take matters into their own hands. They buy shares in the company and, at the bank’s AGM, dramatically interrupt the meeting to ask the chairman whether, in view of the bank’s profits, he is prepared to pay them a fair wage. The shareholders sit in stunned silence while the chairman squirms. Within weeks their pay is increased and ten years later, a success at one bank starts a campaign that reaches into the boardrooms of many of the country’s most powerful companies. But this is no film script. It’s a true-life story and one that has its roots a long way away from the bright lights of Hollywood.

Citizens UK’s Living Wage campaign began in 2000 when a group of East End residents set out to discover the pressures on family and community life in their local area. They launched a ‘listening campaign’, speaking to thousands of local people about what they wanted to see change in their community. The same concern was raised repeatedly – that the demands of working life made it impossible for parents to spend the time they would like with their children and families. The reason? The minimum wage was simply not enough to live on and parents were often forced to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. So 1,000 local people, working through the largest community organising body in Britain, came together and voted to launch a campaign calling on employers to recognise their responsibility to end poverty pay. Still going strong, Citizens UK’s Living Wage campaign has put over £40 million into the pockets of the working poor.

It’s an incredible achievement for an organisation that began with little money and one organiser only twenty years ago. Since then Citizens UK has flourished and in recent years it has come to national prominence with politicians from across the political spectrum falling over themselves to be associated with its work. The Labour leadership campaign was dominated by the language of community organising with Ed Miliband choosing the living wage as his flagship policy, while David Miliband sought to train a new generation of community organisers through his ‘Movement for Change’.

The Tories are also getting in on the act. Boris Johnson has been one of Citizens UK’s most ardent supporters, endorsing not only the living wage but also, to the recriminations of many in his party, the Strangers into Citizens campaign which calls for the regularisation of long-term undocumented migrants. Citizens UK’s general election assembly was the largest event of the election period with over 2,500 community leaders in attendance. Gordon Brown’s impassioned speech was widely regarded as his strongest campaign moment, while David Cameron and Nick Clegg battled each other over who could claim community organising as their own.

Saul Alinsky, who founded modern community organising in the slums of Chicago in the 1930s, would have had little truck with these politicians’ claims. In his famous 1946 book Reveille for Radicals he argued that neither conservatives nor liberals, were suitable messengers of his new approach.

“Time need not be wasted on conservatives, since time itself will take care of them.” As for America’s liberals he argued, “a liberal is [a person] who puts his foot down firmly on thin air.” For him, tackling social issues called instead for radicals – people committed to fundamental social change and willing to participate in collective action to bring it about. He outlined his methods for achieving this in two seminal works, Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, which have since become the handbooks of community organising. In the opening paragraph of Rules for Radicals, Alinsky summed

That is what community organising is all about; power.

At its heart lies the insight that by building a broad alliance of institutions, civil society can wrestle power back from the market and state and effect real change on the ground. up his book’s purpose, “what follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

That is what community organising is all about; power. The power to shape your own life, transform your community and hold those in authority to account. At its heart lies the insight that by building a broad alliance of institutions, civil society can wrestle power back from the market and state and effect real change on the ground. That is no mean feat. In an increasingly atomised society in which the market and state reach into all aspects of our lives, civil society has become increasingly weak. Community organising

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Copyright Chris Jepson

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Citizens UK’s Living Wage campaign has put over £40 million into the pockets of the working poor. aims to redress that balance and put civic institutions firmly back in the driving seat. It does this by applying a number of tried and tested methods to organise communities on the issues they care about. So when cleaners at an international bank want to challenge a system that forces them to survive on poverty pay while their employers earn billions, they know how to act and, crucially, they have the broad support they need to be heard. Put simply, this is people power, organised.

The first time I saw community organising in action was in Ohio during the Young Fabian trip to the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama had been a community organiser in Chicago before running for the Senate, and he had applied the same techniques on a larger scale in his bid for the White House. I dipped my toe into the water of community organising a number of times following my return to Britain but it wasn’t until October this year that I really took the plunge, participating in Citizens UK’s national five day training. My motivations for signing up to the training were twofold. I wanted to lead on work to get UK Jewry involved in community organising for the first time, but I also wanted to see how the lessons of organising could be applied to Labour. As a former parliamentary candidate and current CLP secretary, I had seen first hand how alienating and disempowering Labour Party politics could be. I hoped that, with organising techniques at my disposal, I could help transform the party from the bottom up.

There were thirty five of us on the training and in many ways it could not have been a more diverse group. We had people of all ages, backgrounds and faiths, from atheist political activists to charismatic Christian pastors.

There were Muslims, Jews and Christians. Some had been involved in community organising for years, while others were taking their first tentative steps into that world. Over the five days we covered a huge amount of ground. We learnt about the gritty realities of organising and the tried and tested techniques used by organisers to move from the ‘world as it is’ to the ‘world as it should be’. We heard about the vital importance of the one-to-one and understanding self-interest, how to analyse institutional power and strengthen our own churches, synagogues and mosques and why a ‘habit of action’ is crucial to driving through real change. We were told countless stories from the front line, listened to personal experiences of community life and shared our own plans for the future.

Yet however important the theory may have been, it paled in comparison to seeing organising in practice. On the third day we were invited to an accountability assembly, my first time at a Citizens UK ‘action’. Coordinated by The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO), the candidates for Tower Hamlets’ first elected mayor were pressed by TELCO members on a number of issues, from affordable housing and safer streets to fair pay and opportunities for young people. Everything ran like clockwork and I was impressed most of all by the dignity and respect with which the meeting was conducted. It was a far cry from the yah-boo politics that so often characterises British political life. And unlike many of the hustings I had participated in as a parliamentary candidate, the meeting was not about pitting politician against politician. Rather, it was about the issues themselves and the opportunity for communities to hold their representatives to account.

The most moving moment for me came when a local cleaner addressed the meeting and described the day-to-day challenges of supporting a family on the minimum wage. We had learnt about the importance of testimony during the training, but nothing could have prepared me for how powerful it would be in practice. I quickly realised that this was about far more than influencing the decision making process. It was about ordinary people standing tall and demanding fairness in their communities. The contrast between that speech and the bitter infighting and recriminations that had come to define the mayoral race couldn’t have been starker. I left with a strong sense that this was politics as it should be; power in the hands of the people and democracy in action.

Here lies the lesson for Labour. Community organising isn’t simply a way of influencing politics, it is politics – power wielded to effect change on the ground. It shows what can be achieved when ordinary people are supported to take action in their local communities. This should inspire Labour to rediscover its tradition of grassroots activism and live out the true meaning of Nye Bevan’s maxim that, “the purpose of getting power is to give it away.”

James Green is Anticipations Editor and a Fabian Society Executive member

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| endnotes |

Why I’m Labour

Family experiences and a concern for others drive our passion for Labour — NICK MAXWELL & VINCENZO RAMPULLA—

I was raised by a single mum on welfare. That didn’t make me Labour. My mum was caught in a welfare trap and I could easily interpret my free place at grammar school as the real root of my ‘social mobility’. My upbringing is important because I was raised with a concern for others and an optimism about my ability to change the world for the better. I care about social justice and I want to see equal treatment and opportunity for everyone. But why Labour?

I’m Labour because I’ve seen how government works and I believe that political parties do matter. Labour’s members, history and values are founded on a concern for the most vulnerable in society. Politics is a messy game and people lose their way all the time, but when your anchor is in the right place, leaders are more likely to do the right thing when the going gets tough. Because of everything it stands for and the people who are involved, I believe Labour is the best chance we have for a fair and just society.

When you look at the Labour movement, there are literally armies of passionate people dedicating themselves to the welfare of others. From the unions, to campaign groups, to community groups, to the Fabians – the Labour movement is full of people who care about making a difference in the world around them. It’s inspiring. These people know it isn’t easy to solve the problems, but it is our responsibility to try.

Governments can fail, be in no doubt. Government failed my mum.

The point is, not to stop trying to better understand our world and its problems. We must not stop hoping and pushing for a better world.

Markets fail too. The way we’re doing things right now is failing. In the UK a child’s chances of wealth and good health are too often spelled out by the postcode of their birth. Across the world, we face the challenges of persistent poverty, deprivation, discrimination and the degradation of our environment. We need Labour.

It’s not good enough to ‘stay the course’, in the true spirit of conservatism.

I want to see a fairer, more equal Britain, more prosperous communities, a more sustainable way of living. I believe people can change the world they live in. I believe Labour is our best hope of achieving that change.

I wasn’t born into a political family. We regularly talked about what was going on in the world, more often complaining about the things that obviously needed changing. But politics was too often seen as synonymous with politicians and, like most people, we had a healthy scepticism of them – justified by the continual stream of sleaze that hung around the profession during the 1980s and early 1990s. ‘Politics’ seemed to be more about getting votes than changing things.

My parents were more concerned about what they could do to create a better life for their children. For them talk was cheap and only action counted. The values they taught me to hold precious were justice, compassion, solidarity and a common duty to help those in need. Much of that came from their faith and the strong supporting church community we grew up in. They also made sure we never settled for the status quo.

Despite my parents’ scepticism of politics, I was eager to use my first vote in 2001. Looking back I guess it was more instinct than anything that made me vote Labour. The achievements that Labour were beginning to make in government spoke to the priorities and values I already had.

I would have become more political whilst at university but found student politics closed and unappealing. Instead I got involved in student rent negotiations and organising trips for disadvantaged east end children to experience how aspiring to a university education could change their lives.

That eagerness to be part of a movement focussed on making life better for people spurred me on to join Labour after university. What I have experienced since makes me sad that it took me so long to find politics.

Many of the achievements of Labour in government – the minimum wage, improvements in the NHS, Sure Start, the Human Rights and Equality Acts – continually make me proud of my political home. Yet some of what Labour has done makes me conscious of the need for us, as members, to take responsibility to ensure we do not make the same mistakes again. But that is the great thing about the Labour Party and why I consider myself Labour through and through – it is only by the strength of our common endeavour have we ever achieved anything worth achieving.

Nick Maxwell is Young Fabian Fundraising Officer

Vincenzo Rampulla is Young Fabian Officer without Portfolio

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| endnotes |

My day job

The work at CERN is transforming our understanding of the universe — JAMES DEVINE —

Last month I started a new job. By almost all measures, it’s rather unusual.

It involves a massive high voltage electrical network, but this isn’t the National Grid; over 27km of underground tunnel system, but it’s not the London Underground; international co-operation on a huge scale, though this isn’t (quite!) the United Nations. I’m lucky enough to work on a small part of what is arguably the most technically advanced machine ever created by the human race. I work at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider.

CERN is an international collaboration in the field of particle physics which was founded by a number of European nations in 1954. The UK was one of the twelve founder members and continues to benefit from access to the unique research facilities which CERN offers. On a typical day here there may be up to ten thousand people on site (which spans the French-Swiss border near Geneva), the majority of whom are research physicists. They are the ‘users’ of the huge underground machines. The remainder of those on site are permanent staff responsible for running CERN (everything from catering contracts to particle accelerator design and engineering) number only about two thousand, which makes for a demanding working environment. The collaboration exists to provide facilities which are far beyond the scale and scope of what individual members could achieve on their own. At CERN active research takes place in fundamental physics across the board, rather than the specific quest for the next ‘new’ particle such as the Higgs Boson.

Although of course everyone here is hoping that the discovery of the Higgs will be made possible by the Large Hadron Collider.

As an electrical engineer, my work involves the provision of power supplies for the particle accelerators and physics experiments. At the moment I’m working on some new supplies for the safety system which protects the particle beams circulating within the Large Hadron Collider and the new experimental ground control room for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is scheduled to be attached to the International Space Station next year and will be searching for dark matter and anti-matter in space.

The languages that I’ve heard spoken so far since my arrival include English, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese. The electrical team I work in is predominantly French speaking. Most of my colleagues have a good degree of fluency in two languages, with a few being fully tri- or even quad-

lingual! The majority of my meetings take place in French and when projects come to the implementation stage most of the workers actually doing the construction and installation work are also French speakers. I studied French at A-level and throughout university, though at the moment working in a foreign language every day is proving to be a real (and enjoyable) challenge.

Of course, it isn’t just about the job. I’ve had to move countries to come here, which like all major changes in life brings both advantages and inconveniences. The best thing about being here so far is definitely the food. The range of wines and cheeses available in local shops is superb. The countryside here is breathtaking; I can see snow covered mountains from my office window. The biggest downside is that I’ve left my friends and family behind in the UK. Fortunately flights from Geneva to London are frequent and not too expensive, so I can at least visit regularly.

It’s probably a fair question to ask how I ended up in my current position, so here’s a little explanation. I first visited CERN back in 1999, as part of an international school trip I persuaded my parents to send me on (thanks mum and dad!). During that first visit I was inspired by the possibilities of the groundbreaking physics research and the incredible machines being constructed here. After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering, I was able to obtain a CERN ‘Summer Student’ internship in 2005. During my internship I worked directly on a tiny (just ten square centimetres across) part of the particle detection system for one of the gigantic physics experiment called LHCb, which is part of the Large Hadron Collider complex. I highly recommend applying for the CERN programme to anyone currently studying a Physics, Engineering or Computing related course at the moment.

After finishing my internship, I spent five years working in the UK construction sector, designing buildings. At the same time I was making progress towards obtaining my registration as a Chartered Engineer, which can only be gained through a period of working as an engineer. Demonstrating good progress towards registration was an integral part of the application for my current position at CERN. I was able to achieve Chartered Engineer status just before taking up my new role here.

James Devine is a Young Fabian member

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| endnotes |

ALISTAIR DARLING The former Chancellor on his inspirations, motivations and what Labour must do to win again

We need to set out a credible economic plan and therefore a political strategy to see the country through this and, importantly, it’s for us to show how it is essential that everyone benefits from recovery not just some.

Why did you join the Labour Party?

I joined the Labour Party in 1977. At that time the Labour government was having a difficult time on just about every front. However, I realised that if I wanted to see change I could best do that by joining a political party that best reflected my views. I wanted to see a fairer world where people could make the best of their talents and abilities and where no-one was held back because of no fault of their own. Of course there were things wrong with that government but rather than sitting round the television and complain about it, I thought it better to become involved. Despite the misery of ‘the branch meeting’ I stuck with it and here I am.

Who is your political hero?

What are you most proud of?

I am most proud of what our government has done over the last thirteen years. Not all of it worked out the way it should have done and of course we made mistakes along the way. However, it is a big mistake for people to trash what we did. We reduced the number of children and pensioners living in poverty. We introduced huge constitutional change with reform of the House of Lords and devolution of power and we introduced civil partnerships. Society is I think more tolerant than it was. Above all we made getting full employment a key economic objective. Although the last three years were far from easy, we avoided this country sinking from recession into depression. We stopped the banking system from collapse. We came within hours of bank doors closing and cash machines being switched off.

The economy is still growing purely as a result of the action we took.

What is your top policy priority?

The top priority now must be to get through the recession and restore growth. Not just here but in Europe too where problems continue to mount.

Inevitably a new government will enjoy a honeymoon and will get away with blaming the last government for just about everything under the sun.

My political heroes come from a number of sources.

Some outside politics. One is Beveridge who showed how, as a society, we can ensure that we provide for everyone, especially in times of difficulty. The other of course was John Maynard Keynes. After years when he was slightly out of fashion, particularly when the monetarists held sway, his reputation has been fully restored. He showed that governments can make a difference. His writing on the folly of reparations policy after the First World War through to how to deal with the Depression of the 1930s needs re-reading today. There are lessons to be learned from those experiences. Political inspiration comes too from an underrated Prime Minister over the last century, Clement Attlee.

That Labour government achieved a great deal in a very short time. Much of it survives today.

What must Labour do to win the next election?

To win the next election we have got to be in tune with the centre ground.

Elections are won over a five year period. We can’t and shouldn’t attempt to write a manifesto now for in five year’s time. However, we do need an intelligent and credible approach to what’s going on now as we build up policies on which we will fight the next election. But we also need to reflect on how it was that we lost nearly one hundred seats earlier this year.

Intelligent opposition is sometimes difficult and it’s very tempting to be against everything. That won’t work though. Today’s electorate is far more sophisticated. We don’t need a manifesto for 2015 now but we do need to ask what a modern government should do in a rapidly changing world. It’s not just building a recovery but dealing with a world where the centre of economic gravity is moving to the East. And every day we need to set out a credible position on the issues that matter.

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THE CHANGE WE NEED:

HOW DOES LABOUR RECONNECT? Young Fabian Lunchtime Seminar Fabian Society New Year Conference 15th January, 13:00 - 14:00

For more information visit www.youngfabians.org.uk Deadline for completed ballot papers is October 22nd

For further information visit www.youngfabians.org.uk