Labour and Business: Small is Beautiful

I discovered something rather troubling about myself this morning.

I did one of those quizzes that I remember from childhood and that now, rather than peopling the pages of Jackie magazine, can be found on-line. (If you don't remember Jackie magazine, ask your mum. Sigh.) This one was a political test to determine your politics. Having filled out the fifty or so questions, I received my highly scientific result.

‘You are a Trotskyist’ was emblazoned on the screen.

Hot on the heels of my last blog challenging the dismissive tone of some Blairite commentators about the left Labour think-tank GEER of which I am a part, I suppose I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised at the disclosure of my rabid radicalism. But even so. It was not quite what I anticipated: although I do work in Higher Ed with its culture of ‘perpetual revolution’ drawn directly, I imagine, from Trotsky himself. Still, I think I’m a bit on the moderate to wimpy side of the political spectrum.

So am I really a revolutionary? Take free enterprise and the marketplace. Would I really want state-run shops rather than private businesses?

Undoubtedly not. I don’t like the kind of uniformity that implies and I like to see variety in the High Street. But let’s not pretend the current system lends itself to variety. Far from it. Wall-to-wall Tescos and Sainsburys, and the uniformity of many a High Street suggest a dreadful lack of creativity in the marketplace.

I know what I like. I like small businesses and shops where workers feel part of something, not just there to draw a wage packet. I like small businesses that seem genuinely interested in their customers and where staff clearly enjoy what they do.

Take Truck Music Store in Oxford. Conveniently placed about 150 metres from my house, even a shopophobe like myself can drag their sorry ass there to dig out some cool new sounds (and that sentence shows exactly the demographic I occupy! No wonder ‘the joys of middle age’ is the hashtag I use most on Twitter…).

I visited Truck this afternoon in search of something chilled for that rare thing – a warm British summer afternoon. The staff were helpful, suggested interesting possibilities, played them, and I left one happy customer clutching a Caro Emerald CD. (I also left with the knowledge that you can bring ice-cream or coffee from the café over the road if you want to just sit, read the papers and listen to whatever they are playing. Sheer heaven. Oxfordites: use it now!)

When we think about business we tend to think multi-nationals and faceless corporations. But businesses like Truck are different, and it seems to me that as Labour develops its policies for cultivating business they are the model we should be exploring. We should explore the possibility of variable business rates that reflect the contribution a business makes to its local community. We should think about tax breaks for co-operative businesses. And in testing our policies we should look at what makes a local area vibrant and a good place to live.

Thinking about business through an emphasis on community. What would Trotsky think about that? Not sure I really need to know that, but at some point soon I would really like to know what Labour might think about it. 

Sentimental Socialism and the Lessons of History

Great excitement! My lovely friends Kate, Roger and Sojourner were at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally and brought me back a t-shirt I’d been craving. Red, with an image of the men condemned to transportation for organising a trade union, it bears the words: “solidarity works best together.”

Proudly showing my husband, he did that thing that spouses are good at: he burst my bubble by saying, “the trouble with you lefties is that you are sooooo sentimental.”

Hmmm.

Now, he may have a point.

I can get gooey-eyed over the history of the Labour movement. I think I cried when a programme about Harold Wilson was on recently. I definitely cried at the end of Michael Foot’s biography of Nye Bevan. And, running a close second to my wedding day, one of the happiest days of my life was seeing Tony Blair entering Downing Street after eighteen long years of Tory rule. (Hold on a sec, I need to find a hanky to dab a tear from my eye.)

I suspect I’m not alone in this, but how you read your political history is a moot point. It can provide a useful context for your thought and a framework for your ideas, or it can act as a shackle that constrains you as effectively as the leg irons that held the Tolpuddle Martyrs prisoner.

I had a nasty shock this morning.

I happened to catch the tail end of an exchange on Twitter between Luke Akehurst and someone called ‘Labour Paul’. Both were clearly horrified at the prospect of the publication of The Red Book by the left-wing think-tank GEER UK. Now, as it happens, I am one of the contributors to this, and was taken aback to see that simply from reading the chapter titles they had decided that this was going to be “the longest suicide note in history”: an illusion to Labour’s ill-fated 1983 manfesto. They were also slightly surprised that this new left-wing think-tank actually existed rather than being a fiction like “the People’s Popular Front of Judea.” My, how I laughed at that illusion to Oxbridge’s finest, Monty Python.

When I’d recovered my composure, I found I was irritated. How can you dismiss so quickly something that hasn’t even been published yet? Hot on the heels of irritation was what I like to think of as a more generous emotion: namely, that their reading of history is clearly rather different from mine.

For me, the possibilities of considering what socialism might look like for a new generation excites me. I think we are living through momentous times when we have a real opportunity to change this country for the better. In part that is because the structures that supported the old neo-liberal creed are being challenged: there’s something of consensus between Left and Right that we need to think again about the social nature of our humanity, that rampant individualism doesn’t work. Given that desire to reflect again on what we want society to be, why not think about socialism again? (After all, the secret is in the word – 'social-ism' – geddit?) 

For our critics, the context is different, and I suspect it comes from a different reading of our history. 

The New Labour Project arose out of the collective Labour trauma of eighteen years of futile opposition. But to stick with the solutions that New Labour developed in response to that time is to ignore the changing context. We are not living in the 1980s: even if I am currently listening to Heaven 17 rather more often than is good for me. The policies that we put to the electorate at the next election must reflect changing circumstances. One of my granddad’s gripes with the Labour party of the 70s and 80s was that it acted as though children were still being sent down the pits. For him, your beliefs had to be translated into policies that responded to the facts of the world around you: a pragmatic approach to practical politics.

The parallels with the world of 1980s politics are misplaced. Overplaying that aspect of our past means we might miss the opportunities that are being presented to us. Putting it rather dramatically (hey! I used to work in the theatre you know!), we are living through a period of cultural change similar to that which preceded the Labour government of 1945. Then, the horrors of war made returning soldiers and their families crave a fairer society and that desire led to the creation of the NHS and the welfare state. We may not be living through such a cataclysmic event, but we are living through a period when our financial system has been shown to be fatally flawed, when our political institutions seem detached from the people they should represent and serve, and when the power of the rightwing press is finally being challenged. And when people start looking for answers, we ought to be able to do something rather better than offer them rehashed ideas.

At least let’s explore different visions of what that future might look like. Let's not live in fear of our past and thereby miss the chance to create a genuinely better Britain. 

After Hackgate: Time for a Change

In the last week or so I have discovered a new rule of activism: do not try writing a blog when a massive news story is unfolding at break neck speed.

As ‘Hackgate’ spread its spell across the media, the whole idea of ‘breaking news’ was completely recast. One minute phone hacking was a rather minor story that enabled journalists to do what they like best: talk about themselves. I have a vague recollection of hearing Paul McMullan - the ultimate cartoon representation of a journalist who only needs a porkpie hat with a press pass stuck in it to complete the look - wittering on about how common phone hacking was at the News of the World.

Then the shocking extent of that cynical practice was realised, the News of the World closed, Andy Coulson’s being bailed, and Murdoch and Son are before a select committee.

Who would have thought Murdoch was once such a powerful and feared figure when you saw him being questioned by MPs? I couldn’t get the image of Steptoe and Son out of my head. I was also reminded of the moment when the Wizard of Oz is revealed to be a frail old man with a megaphone, not someone to be scared of. Senior police resign; Rebekah Brooks resigns; I guess if I were to check the internet right now something else equally astounding will have happened.    

I find the speed of all this difficult to cope with. I am a horse and cart kind of gal in the Age of the Porsche.But finally, after all the excitement of the last few days, I feel able to write something that might – just might – not be completely redundant by the time I post it.

It feels like we are living through a time when things really could become very different. I’m an optimist – hell, you have to be if you vote Labour and live in Oxfordshire. It feels like everything is suddenly up for grabs, and that if we want to, we really could create a very different world.   

Look what’s happened over the last three years. The financial crisis revealed the flaws in the banking sector and the futility of trusting the future to creative banking. The MPs expenses scandal revealed a fundamental lack of connection between people and the political class. And now the phone hacking scandal is raising questions not just about the media but also the police.

We have a choice.

We can desperately try to get things back to what we are familiar with. The financial sector can continue as before; we can continue to believe that houses are an investment rather than something to live in; we can continue to be disaffected with politics and refuse to get involved; we can continue to buy papers that peddle trash and celebrity lifestyles.

Or we can think more deeply about the kind of society we want to live in and – importantly – what we are willing to contribute to make this country a place we might want to live in. It’s easy to be disaffected about politics, to think that nothing can change, that there is something inevitable about our society and its structures. But if history teaches us anything it’s that it is always possible to live differently, that no system is inevitable, that everything comes down to the kind of society people are willing to make a reality.

We are living at a fascinating time in this country’s history, a time when we have an opportunity to create a better society where all are valued and seen as having something important to contribute. The real tragedy of the current upheaval will be if we fail to rise to the challenge and what it demands of us.

I seem to remember that a rather good-looking bloke who hung out with Marilyn Monroe coined a memorable phrase for what is required of us now: “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” It’s not just the powers that be that need to be held accountable: we need to discover our responsibilities for bringing about change too.

Being a Fit and Proper Person: Rupert Murdoch and Me

On Saturday the Labour Party decided I was a fit and proper person to stand for selection as a local Labour candidate. On Thursday, Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World. The two events are not connected, although in my rich fantasy world, the latter came about as a result of Rupert quaking at the idea that I might become a Labour councillor. (Well, a narcissistic lefty girl can dream, can’t she?)

In the Real World, there is, though, a connection of sorts that came out during my panel interview. I should say that this was a much less daunting experience than I had imagined it would be. I had pictured a scene that would not be out of place in the recent dramatisations of Red Riding. A steamy, sepia-toned, smoke-filled room where I would be grilled by party officials about minute points of Labour policy. At key intervals, an interrogator would whip out a picture of, say, Tony Blair, and ask me to say exactly what I thought of him. All hell would then break lose if I said the wrong thing.

In fact, the interview was conducted by three very kind and welcoming women who made me feel that I was not barking mad for wanting to do this, and that I was more than capable of representing the party. I now feel less scared about the next part of the process: the selection meetings in the local wards.

The media link arose at the end of the interview. Typically, I’d not thought about that old chestnut of any interview: that hideous moment when you are asked if you have any questions. Keen not to do my impression of Danny Alexander (or Fish-in-a-Bucket as we call him in our house), I grasped the first thought that came into my mind. ‘Could I have some media training please?’ The wry smiles that greeted this suggested that my interviewers thought I was, indeed, a narcissist. ‘So, she wants to be on telly!’ Honestly, this wasn’t my concern (though in case any Newsnight editors are reading this, my right side is definitely my best).

While I was thinking about how to communicate effectively with the press, what was really driving that question was how we might most effectively use all forms of media – old and new - in political campaigning.

With the demise of the News of the World I’ve become rather obsessed with this question. I thought it was amazing how quickly the Twitter campaign got going which shamed advertisers into pulling their ads. I’m sure that helped bring the issue to a head and it shows something of the power of the New Media. 

It also suggests that the Old Media networks are not so powerful in forming public opinion as we once assumed them to be. And how wonderful it was to see Ed Miliband – and today Ed Balls – leading the charge against the methods of News International. It was brave of Ed M to use PMQs to shift the argument from News of the World to News International more generally, and in his interview on Newsnight last night he really did look for the first time like a potential Prime Minister.   

I know I am ridiculously naïve for a woman of a certain age, but I really do wonder whether we are entering a new period where our political scene is being reinvigorated. Perhaps we are finally going to be able to have honest and serious discussions about the kind of country we want to live in, and politicians won't have to fear a media backlash or misrepresentation if they challenge vested interests.    

I guess we'll have to wait and see, but something changed this week and I can’t wait to see what happens next.