34 Respect and the city Richard Hatcher discusses what sort of politics Respect needs to bring to local government and argues for participatory democracy, popular mobilisation and self-management. Manchester congestion charge?
olities takes place at
geographical
scales, from the global to the local. While the national level is dominant (and through it the global), the city, the town, is where much of its impact is felt most directly. It is the site of working class production, reproduction and consumption. It shapes people's lives in important ways, and they in turn try to influence and shape it, in the limited ways they can, to meet their needs. At the centre is the municipality, the council, as provider of public services, as employer, and site of local government.
The implication for Respect is that wherever it is trying to build branches it has to have a political project for the city as a whole. (I'm thinking of Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol etc. London is a more complex case because it is divided into boroughs; but the same principle applies.) In other words, it is about more than taking up national issues locally, and more than doing local politics at the level
ward or constituency, and it is more than taking up campaign around a hospital or an Academy-as and when they occur, though of course we should do all of these. It is recognising that all of them need to be integrated into a full spectrum systematic and long-term city-wide strategy.
This is not a debate about where we build Respect—i.e. the extent to which we focus on the few areas where we have a chance of getting elected in 2010 —it is a debate about the polities we build it on. Though the basic unit of building Respect might be ward or constituency branches, it has to be more than the sum of its parts at the city level.
There are implications for Respect's electoral work. Of course Respect has to root itself at ward and constituency levels, but this has to be combined with a political project at the level of the city. for three reasons.
First, when we stand in local elections, and when we get elected, we do not do so solely as representatives of and accountable to the voters in a particular ward or constituency. We stand for and are elected to the city council, which means we are involved in taking decisions, or taking positions on decisions, on citywide policies, and are therefore politically (if not electorally) accountable to the whole city.
Second, many of the issues facing people in the wards and constituencies we stand in cannot be resolved at that local level, they require a response at the city level.
Third, if Respect is to expand beyond its present geographical bases of support it has to demonstrate that it is responsive to the needs of all working people and oppressed groups, wherever they are. That means translating our national programme into specific policies at the city level which engage with the various concerns of social groups across the city. In part the programme will necessarily be defensiveagainst cuts. privatisation etc. But it also has to offer an inspiring vision of how the city could and should be our alternative to the capitalists vision of the entrepreneurial city as well as to the reality of recession. It has to develop concrete demands and policies (and not just at election times) about what should be done now by the city council on such burning issues as transport, crime, youth provision, housing. the environment, childeare, urban planning, etc., while of course arguing that only a socialist society can provide comprehensive solutions.
Take transport as an example: the proposal in Manchester for a congestion charge. This is an opportunity not just to argue for our position (whatever it is!) on congestion charges but to put it forward as one element in a radical vision which might include free public transport in the city and free home-to-work travel paid for by employers. (These are two demands which LCR councillors raise in France the former is actual policy in a number of cities.)
Our programme is not
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just about council services and the local tax system, it also includes the role of the council using whatever powers it has to aggressively assert social needs in relations with the private sector, for example urban regeneration or the creation of jobs. Doing politics differently However, having the right policies is only half the answer. The other half concerns how we think policy should be made. Are we saying 'just put us in the driving seat and we'll steer the vehicle in a better direction, or are we saying that we have
UNISON NHS PUBLIC NOT PRIVATE an entirely different conception of how local politics should be done, one where Respect councillors role is to work towards empowering citizens through promoting deliberative democracy, collective action and popular self-management?
The key principle of doing politics differently' is creating political spaces in each local area in which deliberative democracy can take place about policy issues. These political spaces can be outside the institutions of the local state and inside them, including opening up the council bodies to popular participation. (For example, why shouldn't Serutiny Committees be open to citizens, perhaps delegated by local bodies, to interrogate councillors and officials and put forward proposals for voting?) This is not an issue of political principle, it's a question of assessing opportunities and the balance of forces in specific situations.
This aspect of our politics is very undeveloped, but it is crucial at a time when there is profound public cynicism about all political parties and about local government 111. a whole. This is a problem which Labour itself recognises, in particular because of low turn-outs in local elections and widespread voter cynicism. It is the theme of a number of government policy documents, most recently the ludicrously mis-titled White Paper Communities in control: real people, real power (DCLG, July 2008), which 'aims to pass UNISON power into the hands of local communities, vibrant local democracy in every part of the country, and to give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of citizens'. All this is empty rhetoric and tokenism, but it is an issue to which we need to have alternative answers.
Academies are a case in point: there is no mention of them at all in the White Paper, but Sheffield City Council, Lib Dem controlled, has at least gone as far as announcing that there will be a ballot of parents on any Academy proposal. For Respect. this should only be a beginning. In each local school system we should advocate we might call an Education Forum. It would be open to all with an interest in education—parents, teachers, other school staff, school students, governors and citizens-though its decisions might be taken only by elected representatives of its constituents. Its purpose would be to discuss and take positions on key policy issues and develop an Education Plan for the local system of schools and colleges. In that context it would discuss and vet significant distinctive policies which a school or college decided it wanted to pursue, in order to decide if they posed problems for social equality and justice in terms of their impact on other schools, thus general interest. Deciding on budgets One well-known form of local popular participation is 'participatory budgeting' (PB). Originally radically democratie in Porto Alegre, it has now been co-opted in a de-radicalised form by Labour in its document Participatory Budgeting: A Draft National Strategy Giving More People a Say in Local Spending (DCLG March 2008) and in the White Paper Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power. Every council has to delegate some funding powers to local neighbourhoods. But radical PB is very different. Its defining feature is that it enables the construction of a interest out of particular local community interests through democracy. This is a practical demand here today. example from Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) in Paris, where tenants on a number of council housing estates held meetings on each estate to draw up priorities for the housing department to implement. They then elected a delegate for each 10 tenants present who met, looked at evidence, and worked out list of agreed priorities across the estates, which the housing department then drew up a budget for, got ratified by the
35 tenants, and implemented.
Of course, councils have significantly less power than they used to have, but that does not reduce the importance of a project for the cityin fact it highlights the urgent need for more power to be devolved to the city level, enabling it to represent local people rather than be the local branch office of the government in Whitehall.
The exact relationship of processes of deliberative democracy to the forms of local representative democracyin particular the city council is a matter for discussion, and the balance of forces. Of course there is the danger of succumbing to illusions in 'municipal socialism, or worse, being co-opted by the local state-but on those grounds we'd never stand as councillors at all. What is distinctive about Respect's stance should be that it sees popular mobilisation as the only secure basis for its electoral strategy, and working within local government institutions as one way -though only one-of strengthening popular activity as the basis for socialist politics.
What does all this mean for Respect today? It needs to do four things:
Recognise the need for a city-wide political project, including implications for the role of councillors and local elections. 2 Develop in each area a vision for the city, comprising critique of the capitalist city, defence of what is worth defending, and radical alternatives concretised in credible demands for today. 3 Couple that with a vision of doing polities differently, based on deliberative democracy, popular mobilisation and self-management, and again concretised in specific credible demands and alternatives for 4 Set itself the medium-term task of gearing itself up to work in this way by developing its own expertise and drawing on outside expertise, trying things out, and systematically sharing experiences and ideas
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SOCIALIST RESISTANCE www.socialistresistance.org Socialist Resistancewhat is it?
i ocialist Resistance is a magazin
produced by a group of people whi
are convinced that capitalism is a system that offers most of humanity a future of war, environmental catastrophe and poverty. We used to produce a monthly paper called Socialist Resistance but we shut it down so that its resources could be used to allow Respect Renewal to have a paper. We have now decided to launch a quarterly magazine We are Marxists because we can see that human society is divided into conflicting social classes. We take the side of the working class, the poor and the oppressed in Britain and internationally. Our political activity has the aim of putting society under the democratic political and economic control of working class people. They are the majoritv of the population. Political control in Britain today is in the hands of tiny numbers of politicians and business people who make the decisions that affect all our lives. They are much more concerned with profit than human need. We are revolutionary socialists because it is clear from history that social classes only give up power when they have been overthrown by a revolution. Some of us are in the International Socialist Group which is the section of the Fourth International in Britain but many of us are not. We are keen that our magazine is seen as a space in which aspectrum of Marxists, socialists and environmentalists from all sorts of backgrounds can collaborate both in the practical sphere and in working out the ideas needed to change the world New class struggle parties Supporters of Socialist Resistance argue that the Labour Party has become so right wing that, even though millions of workers still support it, the big job for socialists in Britain is to help create a new anti-capitalist party that supports workers' struggles, defends asylum i seekers women's rights and opposes imperialist wars. We are working hard to make sure that Respect Renewa is a success because we think that it is an important step along this road. Our supporters in Scotland are in the Scottish Socialist Party for exactly the same reasons. We are in favour of rebuilding democracy in the trade unions and the fighting strength of the labour movement. Socialist Resistance members are active in their workplaces and trade unions fighting to defend and extend workers'h jobs and conditions through mass action. We are also active in trying to building fighting democratic broad lefts within our unions. Socialist Resistance stands in opposition to racism and Islamophobia and to the oppression of women, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people and disabled people. We believe that the most effective way to fight these forms of discrimination is through the coming together of those who directly experience them. Ecosocialism Revolutionary socialists have always been in favour of the development of the economy, on a global and national basis, to meet the needs of humanity. But that doesn't mean we favour the production of an increasing number of commodities of any type whatsoever Much of what is produced under capitalism is socially useless, and either redundant or directly harmful. Some products - like cars - harm the environment directly: others are useless and just use up huge amounts of the planet's resources. Our critique of the so-called 'commodity spectacle does not mean we are against all further economic development, especially in the third world. Neither does it mean that decisive new inventions in the future should not be applied, and the level of technology should remain stagnant. New development and production can be planned and go ahead if it meets human needs and is not environmentally destructive. We are the only Marxist organization in Britain that calls itself ecosocialist We know that the ruling class will look for solutions to the environmental disaster that capitalism has created but they will try and make the poor, the working class and the developing world pay. They will also carry on destroying the environmentas a result of their need to make profits. It is the people who are young today who will have to live with the consequences of this capitalist created disaster We therefore want the working class to develop their own solutions. Young people will have a big part to play in this fight. Why we produce a magazine From our political practice we have learned that it is necessary for Marxists to produce their own distinctive publication. We write for and sell Respect's newspaper. But there will be occasions when we will disagree with some of Respect's tactics or policies. By producing our own magazine we are able to argue our positions more fully and clarify what we think. It also allows us to explore history and ideas in more depth than a newspaper does. Having our own magazine is also important for us because along with our books, leaflets and meetings it allows us to organise independently around things that we think are important. If you want to support a magazine that is socialist, revolutionary, ecologist, feminist and anti-imperialist-join us in trying to change the world.