Many thanks, James, but I'm not sure that the people to whom such programmes and progressive verbal niceties are addressed would understand a word you are saying; it all sounds still like a sociologist's velvet glove on a steel technocratic hand, disguised top-down stuff. Once one has lost the confidence of the people and have demonstrably preached to them about one's virtues, qualities and purpose for past decades and the relevance of one's past and current ideas with such apaulling results for the people and local communities themselves, it can only be earned back if, firstly, one admits one was wrong. Only then can one fundamentally rebuild oneself around a more humble, attentive, listening, political persona. It takes a generation or more to achieve. Labour's and the Tories' past sins need to be atoned, no pardon in view I'm afraid.
This is fantastic to see and I really hope it is a sustainable direction of travel. Over the last few years I’ve seen a big shift in funding, unfortunately, moving in a direction counter to this. A desire to only fund sure things and to move away from relatively small funding to only working at a system level where control sits with the traditional actors.
The level of risk aversion seems to have increased dramatically and I think has been a response to the “we need impact now” call to action. It is short sighted and it will take a state with at least a little confidence to lead in using funding as you’ve described
Interesting article, but one point you've mentioned but not expanded on is that Pride in Place will mainly fund capital projects. In my experience that sits squarely against the kind of locally driven community building work that you're talking about. Improving facilities can help, but reasonably long term & secure funding for running costs - things like youth workers, lunch clubs, stay & play sessions etc has to be part of the mix.
Much as I enjoy the Freedman substack this is not the place for this debate. To reiterate Stuart - this is not the forum. It all sounds positive but would be better on Tick tock - perhaps it is anyway?.
Interesting but, like many liberal ideas, it kinda misses the point. It implies we will trust people to build a youth club or design a set of swings but not much more. If we really want a transformative approach to democracy what about transforming economic relations - real employment rights, real control over investment decisions of private companies, real ownership of public corporations. Real democracy lime allowing those who work in a school to elect the headteacher, or workers to elect managers. Or don’t we want that much transformation?
What makes you think the utterly incompetent dead hand of the UK state should have any role in "real control over investment decisions of private companies".
The state cannot even fix potholes let alone have any role in private investment decisions.
I didn’t mention the state, I said people. The article was about removing the dead hand of bureaucracy from blocking local people’s control over their lives. I simply suggested that model could be extended to include areas of real control over people’s employment and the economy
Oh, I didn’t say it wasn’t communism. But that’s a term that means a multitude of different things depending on one’s prejudices. To answer your question directly - by transferring private ownership of the means of production to labour. The great error of the Labour government in 1945 (which was the result of compromise between the left in the party and Bevin/Morrison) was to develop a system of nationalisation which simply replaced those in charge (private ownership became public bureaucracy) rather than any genuine economic democracy.
How do you propose to deal with the people (who you would call the bourgeoisie) who don’t share your opinions on social and economic policy, and the expropriation of their private assets? Where would you put the gulags? Or would you just shoot them as Kulaks?
After all the piles of dead bodies, the poverty and deprivation would you one of those claiming ‘but we never tried “real” socialism’ where of course there is less shooting
Meir North makes up a large part of my school’s catchment in Stoke on Trent (I am a teacher) so I will be sharing this with our Community Pioneer who runs a community project group with some of our students. I am sure they and their families stand to benefit from Pride in Place.
The roll-out of superfast broadband is an interesting example maybe. Most rural areas depended on the highly technocratic Broadband Delivery UK initiative which funnelled money to bureaucratic organisations, mainly within local authorities who spent that money with a single supplier BT Openreach whose interest was to protect their own broadband technology. The incentives in the scheme drove the availability of Superfast up to about 95% of properties but left out the harder to reach, mostly rural, areas - i.e. those needing the very technologies that BT didn’t have at that time. This created the conditions for community led, alternative network developers such as Broadband for the Rural North to emerge. Owned by locals, the route planning and financing done by locals, often with no skills just the local knowledge of land and neighbours, the installation of fibre optics across fields, valleys and moorland - hand digging themselves, learning how to find and contract with the local man and his digger, all done by the community. Ten years later the community pride and friendships made persist.
Many thanks, James, but I'm not sure that the people to whom such programmes and progressive verbal niceties are addressed would understand a word you are saying; it all sounds still like a sociologist's velvet glove on a steel technocratic hand, disguised top-down stuff. Once one has lost the confidence of the people and have demonstrably preached to them about one's virtues, qualities and purpose for past decades and the relevance of one's past and current ideas with such apaulling results for the people and local communities themselves, it can only be earned back if, firstly, one admits one was wrong. Only then can one fundamentally rebuild oneself around a more humble, attentive, listening, political persona. It takes a generation or more to achieve. Labour's and the Tories' past sins need to be atoned, no pardon in view I'm afraid.
This is fantastic to see and I really hope it is a sustainable direction of travel. Over the last few years I’ve seen a big shift in funding, unfortunately, moving in a direction counter to this. A desire to only fund sure things and to move away from relatively small funding to only working at a system level where control sits with the traditional actors.
The level of risk aversion seems to have increased dramatically and I think has been a response to the “we need impact now” call to action. It is short sighted and it will take a state with at least a little confidence to lead in using funding as you’ve described
“One such shift we’re seeing in Labour at the moment is a revival of the party’s communitarian instincts”
What?
Sorry
- cancels elections
- cancels trail by jury
- plans digital ID for access to basic services
- what appears to be police and public sector appeasement of Islamists and the creation of ‘no go’ policing areas
- widespread surveillance and rollout of facial recognition
- voluntary euthanasia slipped through parliament as a private members bill
- adoption of economic policies that will explicitly increase unemployment (employer NI raise)
- removal of winter fuel allowance then partial u-turn
I’m struggling with in what sense any of this can be regarded as communitarian
Interesting article, but one point you've mentioned but not expanded on is that Pride in Place will mainly fund capital projects. In my experience that sits squarely against the kind of locally driven community building work that you're talking about. Improving facilities can help, but reasonably long term & secure funding for running costs - things like youth workers, lunch clubs, stay & play sessions etc has to be part of the mix.
Much as I enjoy the Freedman substack this is not the place for this debate. To reiterate Stuart - this is not the forum. It all sounds positive but would be better on Tick tock - perhaps it is anyway?.
Interesting but, like many liberal ideas, it kinda misses the point. It implies we will trust people to build a youth club or design a set of swings but not much more. If we really want a transformative approach to democracy what about transforming economic relations - real employment rights, real control over investment decisions of private companies, real ownership of public corporations. Real democracy lime allowing those who work in a school to elect the headteacher, or workers to elect managers. Or don’t we want that much transformation?
To me that sounds like communism.
What makes you think the utterly incompetent dead hand of the UK state should have any role in "real control over investment decisions of private companies".
The state cannot even fix potholes let alone have any role in private investment decisions.
That is the road to abject poverty
I didn’t mention the state, I said people. The article was about removing the dead hand of bureaucracy from blocking local people’s control over their lives. I simply suggested that model could be extended to include areas of real control over people’s employment and the economy
How could ‘people’ take control over the investment decisions of private companies?
How can ‘people’ take real ownership (whatever that means?) of public corporations ?
To me that sounds like communism or maybe I’ve misunderstood and you’re proposing anarchy?
Oh, I didn’t say it wasn’t communism. But that’s a term that means a multitude of different things depending on one’s prejudices. To answer your question directly - by transferring private ownership of the means of production to labour. The great error of the Labour government in 1945 (which was the result of compromise between the left in the party and Bevin/Morrison) was to develop a system of nationalisation which simply replaced those in charge (private ownership became public bureaucracy) rather than any genuine economic democracy.
Ah yes that is communism.
How do you propose to deal with the people (who you would call the bourgeoisie) who don’t share your opinions on social and economic policy, and the expropriation of their private assets? Where would you put the gulags? Or would you just shoot them as Kulaks?
After all the piles of dead bodies, the poverty and deprivation would you one of those claiming ‘but we never tried “real” socialism’ where of course there is less shooting
Meir North makes up a large part of my school’s catchment in Stoke on Trent (I am a teacher) so I will be sharing this with our Community Pioneer who runs a community project group with some of our students. I am sure they and their families stand to benefit from Pride in Place.
The roll-out of superfast broadband is an interesting example maybe. Most rural areas depended on the highly technocratic Broadband Delivery UK initiative which funnelled money to bureaucratic organisations, mainly within local authorities who spent that money with a single supplier BT Openreach whose interest was to protect their own broadband technology. The incentives in the scheme drove the availability of Superfast up to about 95% of properties but left out the harder to reach, mostly rural, areas - i.e. those needing the very technologies that BT didn’t have at that time. This created the conditions for community led, alternative network developers such as Broadband for the Rural North to emerge. Owned by locals, the route planning and financing done by locals, often with no skills just the local knowledge of land and neighbours, the installation of fibre optics across fields, valleys and moorland - hand digging themselves, learning how to find and contract with the local man and his digger, all done by the community. Ten years later the community pride and friendships made persist.