Soundings a journal of politics and culture |
When we first established Soundings, in the autumn of
1995, the idea was to
promote and open up debate both in and around the sphere of the formally
political, and beyond it. After the crushing years of Conservatism, there
was an
urgent need to imagine new possibilities. What was more, the time seemed
right.
Surely, a Labour government would be elected next time around, and, with
that,
the possibility for political debate would open up again. Well, a year
and a half
later a Labour (New Labour) government did indeed get elected. But one
of
the many disappointments which have followed in the wake of May 1997 has
been the difficulty of engaging effectively in political debate which
crosses the
boundaries between formal party structures on the one hand, and the more
general political debate beyond. What passes for debate within the party
itself
is nearly always, in that hugely controlled environment, cast as disagreement.
While many who would dearly like to contribute from outside those central
citadels find themselves ignored.
There has of course been debate beyond the political machine, and some
of it as been hugely effective. The consumer insurrection against genetic
modification in agriculture is one obvious example. And it is to be hoped
that the actions against the World Trade Organisation and its particular
understanding of globalisation, of which the demonstrations in Seattle
have
been the most prominent, will - in spite of the stream of vilification
hurled
at them by the press - eventually prove similarly difficult for the
establishment to ignore.
But, at last, there are now signs of disturbance within the more formal
political sphere itself. After the settling-in period of Welsh and Scottish
devolution, after the local elections, the London mayoral and assembly
elections,
and with the possibilities of mayoralties to come in other major cities,
it must
surely become more difficult to hold to a single line to which no challenge
can
be allowed.
Heaven knows, 'they' have tried to stop it - which must mean they are
aware
of the potential. It is often remarked that this government is caught
in a vice
between an almost pathological fear of letting go of centralised control,
on the
one hand, and an inherited commitment to devolution, on the other. And
we
have been watching for some time the complex ways in which these tensions
are beginning to play themselves out in Wales and Scotland. Livingstone,
in London, had to be ejected from the party. And here it is not just the
party
hierarchy which is offended. The old elitist class of metropolitan commentators,
who thought they knew, and could help control, the range of political
debate, is
thoroughly outraged. As Anthony Barnett argued at a recent Soundings
discussion meeting, both this coterie and Blair/Millbank are completely
taken
aback by the degree of popular energy which has been released. They are
outraged that this energy completely bypasses the pomposities of the former
and the attempts to control of the latter.
But the genie is out of the bottle. (Or let us hope it is; we must make
sure
it is.) Some of the biggest challenges to Margaret Thatcher's hegemony
came from geographically-based constituencies - the coalfields and the
big cities. Maybe the need to respond to - or at least to acknowledge
the existence
of - 'local' complexities and challenges will open up debate under New
Labour.
And if this turns into something with an appearance of 'oppositionism',
then
New Labour will only have itself to blame. If they reduce politics to
the
administration of the correct line then any debate, however constructively
intended, is going to be read as opposition. One challenge will be to
make
differences and divergences symbolise not only difference from New Labour,
but also the constructive proposition of viable alternatives.
There are all kinds of potential sources. There are the national devolutions.
There are the remarkable local successes of a variety of alternative radicalisms
in the May elections. Mark Perryman points some of them out in a contribution
to our website: the new gains by the Greens (three members in the Greater
London Assembly), the successes of the Scottish Socialist Party, the election
of
another (the third) Socialist Party councillor in Coventry.1 These are
small
things, and each grows from different roots and kinds of organising, but
their
gradual proliferation, and perhaps even their very variety, are encouraging.
And
then there is the question of the government of our major cities.
In terms of a potential widening of political debate, cities present a
different
proposition from the possibilities opened up in other spheres. The politics
of
the battle over local power in cities is already in London, and will be
in
other big cities, quite different from those over devolution in Wales
or Scotland.
In Wales and Scotland, the politics of devolution has both drawn upon
and
been bound around an inheritance of a sense (however tenuous in one case
and however complex in both) of national identity. But the political rationale
for the current policy towards cities is not seen primarily as a response
to a
clamour for the recognition of identity - in spite of the fact that many
of the big
cities of England still smart from the abolition of the Metropolitan Counties
and the GLC, In the case of devolution to the nations it was probably
realised
(surely it must have been) that the distinct political characters of Wales
and
Scotland, their difference from Millbank/Westminster, would to some degree
emerge. The centre would try to tame them (witness the shenanigans over
Rhodri Morgan) but some degree of differentiation was surely going to
be
inevitable.
In opting for mayors for cities the calculations seem to have been quite
different. If anything, it seems, the argument was that the big cities
of England
needed identities (a focus, something to pull them together), but that
focus,
once established, would be a more effective channel for New Labour politics.
It
is often reported that Blair would have liked the mayoral jobs to be held
by
people from business. What he seems to have envisaged in other words was
a
combination of effective advertising (in the new world market for cities)
and
efficient delivery of New Labour policies. What he did not want was politics.
Achieving this outcome was always going to be tricky.
The London mayoral contest had its own particular logic. As Anthony
Barnett points out on our website, Blair had an inherited and unavoidable
commitment to 'return democracy to London', and this presented him with
a
problem (another problem, for he had faced different articulations of
a similar
dilemma in Wales and Scotland): Blair was 'deeply suspicious of the London
Labour parties and believed that the recreation of the old structures
would
hand London, which is a Labour town, to party activists opposed to the
direction
of New Labour.'1 Hence the idea of a mayor - and hence, also, Ken Livingstone's
initial, and widely shared, lack of support for such a idea.
How wrong that analysis was - and its accompanying calculating manoeuvres
- has yet to be fully realised.
First: if Downing Street/Millbank could only clear their eyes of
the red mist of hatred which seems to cloud their vision every time the
'GLC period' is
mentioned, they would be forced to recognise the considerable differences
in
political character which emerged in the different radical Labour authorities
of
that period, not only between London and the other cities, but also between
Liverpool, Manchester, South Yorkshire … Each city had its own traditions,
priorities and political strengths. They did indeed have individual 'identities'.
This means that, in spite of New Labour's doing its best to circumscribe
the
powers of mayors, so that the post is now on occasion being written of
as
'symbolic', the symbolisms emanating from these cities will still be various;
and
in the right hands, as the GLC and Met Counties demonstrated, the disruptive
and constructive power of symbolic politics can be considerable.
Second: the social structure, the mix of cultures, the very way of being,
is different
in the big cities from elsewhere in the country. At national level Blair
is
mesmerised by the need to appeal to something called 'Middle England'.
But
for the most part this vaguely defined constituency is unimportant in
the big
cities. What is certain is that a politics built around Middle England
as its
centrepiece will not play to packed houses in the metropolis.
Third (and relatedly): whatever one thinks about the necessity to appeal
to
Middle England in national politics, there is potential for a greater
radicalism
in the cities. The vast amount of effort which has been invested in either
maligning the GLC or burying its memory altogether does not stem only
from a
(stated) desire to avoid division within the party: New Labour is utterly
opposed
to the politics the GLC represented. In fact, in some ways, they have
come to
accept (at least a sanitised version of) some of it as their own. For
the GLC was
'modern' long before New Labour was ever thought of. Re-reading now some
of
those documents - the London Industrial Strategy, publications on technology,
on fair trade, on food - the radical newness is still startling. And that
is part of
the point. The GLC cannot simply be written off as Old Labour. The reason
it
is so disliked by New Labour is that it represented an attempt at an alternative
- more open, more democratic, more enabling - form of modernisation. That
is
a far more serious challenge.
Fourth: the very character of cities makes them a challenge to democracy.
Cities,
even more than other places, bring together different cultures and traditions.
The intensity of city life, both spatially and temporally, is greater
than elsewhere.
The speed of change of often quicker.3 Policy has to concern itself with
process
and with the constant negotiation of difference.
For all these reasons, a democratised urban politics could be the testing
ground
for the articulation of a radical version of 'modernisation'.
D M
Notes
1. Mark Perryman, 'Not a new dawn but alright on the
night', Soundings Website www.l-w-
bks.demon.co.uk/soundingsdebates.html
2. Anthony Barnett, 'Letter from London', Soundings Website
www.l-w-bks.demon.co.uk/
soundingsdebates.html
3. See Ash Amin, Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift, Cities
for the Many not the Few, Policy
Press 2000. We hope in future issues of Soundings to pursue further this
question of the
nature of cities.
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