Some thoughts:
1. The Jimmy Savile revelations, have raised serious questions about the BBC and the complicity of its management, and how Savile gamed the child care system to allow him to abuse in hospitals and children's homes with impunity. This in and of itself is as damaging to the establishment as it is appalling to everyone else. But, unfortunately, as awful as the Savile case is, there could be more. A great deal more.
2. Tom Watson's recent comments during Prime Minister's Questions, and yesterday's blog post point to the alleged involvement of powerful Conservative politicians in the notorious abuse case at the Bryn Estyn care home for children. As Friday's Newsnight indicated, the mid-90s inquiry into the abuse that took place between 1974 and 1990 left a lot to be desired.
3. The men associated with the above case have not been named by any mainstream media outlet. However, all it takes is a search engine and five minutes to find the alleged abusers at the centre of the accusations. As if there was any doubt, it shows once again that diffusion of information over the internet cannot by stymied by legal threats and high-powered lawyers. However, widespread naming of names in association with the terrible crimes committed at Bryn Estyn could make subsequent charges and trials more difficult. Like anyone else, the alleged abusers are innocent until proven otherwise.
4. The press response to this has the classic hallmarks of a feeding frenzy. At first the red tops outdid each other in reporting the depravity Savile's abuse may or may not have sunk to, then it moved to other celebrities. Gary Glitter and Freddie Starr have been interviewed in connection to alleged abuse and assaults that took place in the 70s. Dead celebs John Peel and Leonard Rossiter have been named in relation to separate cases. All of which has been covered with barely-concealed glee.
5. The reporting of the scandals are inseparable from the political economy of the press. Newspapers are, for a variety of reasons, in long-term decline. They are not only locked in competition with each other for a declining market, a number of titles are fighting a fierce circulation battle in cyberspace. The qualities - The Telegraph, The Indy, and The Graun - have capitalised on the blogging revolution and are competing by offering wider spectrums of opinion and commentary while retaining the fidelity of their brand.
6. Mail Online is a different kettle of fish. It has successfully forged the most successful news website in the world out of deeply reactionary politics, 'Hitler was my dad'-style stories, and celebrity reportage. There is no gutter the site won't lie in for an audience boost. We've seen previously how The Mail markets bigotry to drive traffic from the supportive and the outraged in equal measure. It has also hit new lows by sexualising a non-story about 14 year old celebrity sibling, Ellie Fanning. This is not the first time The Mail has reported on pubescent girls in this way, but each fall out means a nice spike in their audience figures. The greater the backlash, the more revenue the website reaps. The Mail therefore has a fundamental commercial interest in outraging public opinion, while hypocritically posing as its most strident voice of decency.
7. Papers need to sell. Websites need audiences. They are not prepared to incur the prohibitive costs associated with naming powerful alleged abusers, from the standpoint of likely civil action and prejudicing the possibility of criminal trials. But reporting on the crimes in a round about way allows them to have their salacious cake and eat it.
8. The effect of these reports of celebrity abuse has stunned a bewildered public. Savile was a much-loved star officially sanctioned and feted by the establishment at all levels. His actions put question marks over the judgement of BBC management, politicians and royalty. If there is full disclosure in the media about the Bryn Estyn case, a 'difficulty' could become a crisis of establishment legitimation, regardless of whether the allegations are accepted as true by a court or not.
9. The public response has been inchoate and atomised. It is very much at odds with a similar child sex abuse scandal that took place in Belgium in the mid-90s. Marc Dutroux was a paedophile and serial killer who kidnapped, abused and murdered several girls. When justice finally caught up with Dutroux it quickly became apparent that the authorities had several opportunities to stop him but thanks to incompetence, institutional inertia, and Dutroux's alleged establishment links his crimes went unchecked. This provoked a furious groundswell of action that coalesced into the White Movement, and culminated in a Brussels march of over 300,000. Its political impact was profound and transformed the way police and the courts treated child sex crimes. In contrast, the press here have assumed (usurped?) the people's voice. Mainstream politics has, collectively, agreed that reform of the legal system must take place. But because the abuse scandal is a media spectacle, it is at the same time something removed from everyday experience. The remaining monuments to Savile's persona have been removed, and those that remain have been attacked. But apart from individual actions like this, there has been no collective public response. It is being sold to us and we are invited to respond to it as an audience.
10. A spectre is haunting the establishment, the spectre of paedophilia. The money to be made will ensure it won't be exorcised any time soon.
In my 18 month or so-long sabbatical from regular posting, many writers who once shone brightly in the blogging firmament have faded away or pulled into the orbits of big collective blogs. Precious few 'independents' now shine in their place. Thing is because I've been hiding in the warm, cuddly cave Stoke Labour made available to me, I don't know a great deal about "the scene" as it currently stands.
When AVPS was a Y-list'er as opposed to its present Z-list status, a feature here did provide a new blog a small audience and Wikio/ebuzzing boost. Now? I suppose repeating the exercise will serve to reacquaint me with the terrain as currently constituted.
Therefore please find below a clutch of new blogs (i.e. founded in the last 18 months) that may warrant your attentions.
1. Black Triangle Campaign (Unaligned/Disability Rights) (Twitter)
2. Cllr Kyle Robinson (Labour) (Twitter)
3. Cllr Stephen Connelly's Blog (Labour)
4. Freelance Lefty (Ireland - Unaligned) (Twitter)
5. Pat's Handmaid (Unaligned/LGBT)
6. Richard Hall's Space (Unaligned) (Twitter)
7. Shifting Grounds (Labour) (Twitter)
8. Skwalker1964 (Labour) (Twitter)
9. Sráid Marx (Ireland - Unaligned)
10. Staffordshire Young Labour (Labour) (Twitter)
11. The Daily Dreadnaught (Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star)
12. The Tasneem Project (Unaligned/anarchist) (Twitter)
13. Think Left (Labour) (Twitter)
That's your lot for October/November 2012. If you know of new(ish) lefty/Labour/union/feminist/Trot/Green/Movementy/LGBT/anarchist/other blogs that might like a place in the shout out, drop me a line via email, the comments box, or Twitter. The new blog round-up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.
The city of Stoke-on-Trent. Just shy of a quarter of a million people live spread out along a quirky North-West/South-East axis. It is a city that was at the very centre of the industrial revolution. By cannon and bayonet, the British Empire lubricated world markets and flooded them with products from our industrial towns, not least Stoke-produced ceramics that reached the four corners of the globe. Up until the 1960s the city thrived. And then it stopped. Pottery jobs were exported to China and Indonesia. The pits were shut down after a bitter political struggle. And the massive steel mill closed its doors, seemingly unable to compete with cheaper product from elsewhere.
It is a story familiar to many Midland and Northern English cities. Communities that exploded around one or two key industries over the course of the first half of the 20th century imploded as it drew to a close, leaving behind an ugly legacy of derelict buildings, blighted land, sharp economic decline, and severe work-related health problems.
Because America has to be bigger in all things, the experience of nearly all the major urban centres of the US industrial north east has seen the repetition of similar patterns, but on a far larger scale. To put it the respective problems into perspective, in 1960 the populations of Stoke-on-Trent and Detroit were approximately 270,000 and 1.67 million. In 2011, it was 249,000 vs 705,000. The experience of Detroit and other rustbelt cities is not one of decline, but of collapse.
This being the case, are there lessons local government in Stoke and similar cities can take from how the rustbelt has attempted to address and regenerate their disintegrating urban centres?
This was the topic of a talk hosted by Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Tristram Hunt last Thursday. The keynote speakers were Len Gibb of EPIC, a Stoke-on-Trent housing association that operates a substantial number of properties in the Bentilee area of the city, and who had recently returned from a research trip around the rustbelt; and Alexandra Jones of the Centre for Cities think tank.
Opening his talk, it was clear Len had a critique of Stoke-on-Trent City Council's Mandate for Change regeneration programme in his sights. He suggested it is presented in a 'take it or leave it' fashion by the Council, of residents and businesses being compartmentalised into for or against camps, and with little room for compromise. This, he felt, was out of kilter with the city's needs and that a different approach was required.
Len provided some statistics to contextualise where Stoke is at. Between 1998 and 2008, the city lost 21,000 (mainly private sector) jobs: today there is enough work in the city to employ 77% of its working age population, but 65% of those jobs are actually filled by city residents. Many of these jobs are low waged - a point underlined by some 50% of private tenants reliant on Housing Benefit. The city also has higher than average rates of longterm health problems, thanks mainly to the nature of the jobs that once enabled Stoke to thrive. Lastly, to reiterate the 'broken' nature of the city, between 1997-2010 the city received some £2bn in public investment. While this improved public services, it did not alter the economic situation nor arrest the devaluation of housing. This was because the core economy was not altered - Stoke lost ground to overseas competition, collapsing demand for ceramics, technological change, and the overriding of its geographical advantages by the latter. And policy-wise, matters were not helped by welfare payments not linked to retraining, poor education, concentrations of poverty, declining quality of life, and broken politics down the town hall.
Many of these problems also exist across the water. In the rustbelt, populations are 59% of their peak totals, house price averages are £40k less than elsewhere, unemployment stands at 13%, 20% of homes stand empty and rented property constitutes 47% of all households. But in Detroit, where these problems are accentuated, there are signs a new approach to regeneration is working. Rather than trying to do everything, the mayor's office has opted to concentrate running services and preserving the still-glittering city centre while facilitating community-led projects to transform rundown neighbourhoods. There is no interlinked vision as such, allowing communities, philanthropists and other agencies to follow their own idea of what a good neighbourhood and good city would look like.
Len introduced us to a rustbelt regeneration success story: Pittsburgh. This was an example of successful multi-agency working where the city council worked in concert with the university and medical establishments to increase investment, provide incentives to attract new residents and jobs, and enable more community-led efforts. As a result unemployment is 7.2% (much lower than the rustbelt average), and so-called white flight hasn't happened to anywhere the same extent (though the population is still declining). They have worked with what they have and made the most of it.
Moving on to the lessons for Stoke, he would not prioritise the regeneration of Hanley (the city centre) as the Council are doing. A rebalancing of the economy away from the public sector is needed, a homegrown 'culture of agency' promoted, and a renewed emphasis on working with what we've got. He believes, for instance, that new build housing tends to undermine existing neighbourhoods. To begin he would promote internal expertise at the council rather than hiring in external consultants, place more emphasis on refurbishing existing council properties, and do more to open up the City Council's procurement process so the 6,000 local small businesses can benefit. He also favours more engagement with the two universities and the local NHS, and addressing the "dangerously low" levels of local political engagement by devolving power downwards. Like Detroit the council should facilitate communities to regenerate themselves instead of seeking to aggressively drive development with its retail and business quarter plans.
Alexandra's reply was less an engagement with Len's arguments and more a recapitulation of the basics. Cities live and fall according to five key, interlinking factors: economics, housing, transport, quality of life, and political, business, and community leadership. Concentrating on jobs and leadership, Alexandra presented some work Centre for Cities had done on economic diversification in British cities since 1901. Unsurprisingly, those built on one or two key industries have struggled in later years while those who began with more mixed economies have weathered structural change better. For example, Bradford initially eclipsed Leeds. But the former's over-dependence on textiles saw its fortunes decline while the latter thrived and, in many ways, became an exemplar of a successful post-industrial city. As far as Stoke was concerned, its 'eds and meds' sector pointed toward possible future successes, so a spiral of economic decline is by no means inevitable. She also noted a city's success is linked to the skills local people possess. In the same research, large numbers of highly skilled workers made a 20% economic performance difference. It also found that 80% of what Centre for Cities defined as 'poor cities' were in the bottom 20 for skills in 1901. And lastly, better skilled cities actually generate more unskilled jobs than those without.
On leadership, again this does not necessarily have to be a big vision fronted by the council. It can instead be a more diffuse sense of a direction of travel. Manchester is an example of this approach. The council in conjunction with partner agencies aggressively went after the "right sort" of employer that could bring high-skilled jobs to Manchester - an approach that has worked. Combined with some savvy marketing, its popular cultural significance, and economic makeover, it has now more or less wrested the second city status away from Birmingham.
Given the wide range of discussion and the various political stakes tied up in them, the large number of questions raised tended to focus on certain things. The first, inevitably, was the record and strategy pursued by the City Council. The criticisms focused on the retail and business plans, and the difficulties over Community Asset Transfer (rather than close community centres and halls, the City Council are inviting communities to run them themselves, on receipt of a suitable business plan). Criticisms centred on whether retail-led regeneration was appropriate now internet shopping has become big business, how a revamped city centre can thrive when transport links to it are pretty poor, and an apparent belief held by the Council that they do not trust the city's communities to run services.
On economics and geography, a Tory councillor from nearby Stone (who also owns a small, Longton-based pottery) bemoaned a conspiracy concocted by the Germans and Chinese to sell cars and ceramics at "below market rates" for the ills suffered by his company. Leaving aside his confusion between cost-price and market price, it would appear this conservative gentleman is not so keen on the free market when he's at the sharp end of it. His colleague went a step further, suggesting the potters' union CATU (now Unity) was responsible for keeping other industries out of Stoke. There was also some concern expressed about how Stoke can thrive when it is sandwiched between Manchester and Birmingham - both act as retail and employment pulls to the city's detriment. Another audience member pointed out that things are not as grim as that. In addition medicine and HE, the green economy across North Staffs employs approximately 4,000 people and provides business for 150 firms. Another point, which unfortunately went unmade, is the city's plan to become energy self-sufficient by 2030 through the exploitation of renewables, use of waste heat from existing factories, and the extraction of hot water from the mines underneath.
Another point concerned the responsibility the private sector has to the area (addressed previously here). If core businesses in Pittsburgh reinvest locally, why can't that be replicated here? Replying, Len said philanthropists donate approximately $50m/year for reinvestment by Detroit community groups and development agencies. He suggested there is a need for similar intermediary organisations here, as he can't see civic-minded rich people making donations to the City Council.
As you would expect, this post does violence to the many contributions made and, as is typical of public meetings of this sort, more questions were raised than answers. Personally speaking, I do think the critiques levelled at the City Council about its approach to regeneration tend to overlook how this is a corrective against strategic decisions not taken by previous administrations. But a comprehensive defence of Mandate for Change will have to wait for another time.
The debate though was very welcome and given the number of people who came, there is clearly an appetite for public talks/debates of this sort, and hopefully more forums can be organised in the future.
Photo source: NB Bendigedig
Oh dear. It looks like Cllr Matthew Ellis's pledge to deck Staffordshire Police out with iPads has gone down like a cup of cold sick in his home town of Lichfield. For those not in the know, the Tories occupy 26 of Lichfield's city council's 28 seats, and is home to the very blond Michael Fabricant MP. The area is as pretty much a Tory heartland as you can get in Staffs. So for the below to yield the following result in a core stronghold is a bit of a blow for the Conservative campaign.
Press release
For immediate use
What would you spend £1.1 million on – Police Officers or iPads ?
Local Staffordshire activists asked the people of Lichfield whether they would like to spend £1.1 million on iPads as Conservative candidate for Staffordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis has pledged, or on Police Officers as Labour’s Joy Garner would do. 49 out of 50 people voted to spend the money on Police Officers, not iPads.
Commenting on the decisive results of today’s poll, Labour's Joy Garner said,
"Today's result shows just how out of touch Matthew Ellis and the Conservatives are. Spending £1.1 million on iPads is not what the people of Staffordshire want. Like me they believe that we should spend the money on keeping bobbies on the beat.
“IPads are an expensive gimmick that Matthew Ellis's home town have rejected. If you want your hard-earned money spending on Police Officers not iPads vote Labour on November 15th."
Shoppers on Lichfield’s Market Street were polled this morning (30/10/12).
The people of Lichfield were asked to place a ball in one of two boxes. People had the choice of voting to spend £1.1 million on Police Officers, as Labour’s Joy Garner would do or voting to spend £1.1 million on iPads, as Conservative Matthew Ellis has pledged to do.
Matthew Ellis is Staffordshire County Councillor for Lichfield Rural East. This morning’s survey took place in Matthew’s home town.
ENDS
Many thanks to Joy Garner's press team for that one.
NB The photo above really is from Matthew's website.
Tonight saw 50 people turn out for a public meeting to discuss John Burnett's report, The New Geographies of Racism: Stoke-on-Trent. Though a year old, some of its arguments have been thrown into sharp relief after it was reported race and other hate-related crimes have recently increased across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. The meeting was therefore concerned with the roots of racism, its relationship to the far right, and what can be done to fight it. The meeting was called by the North Staffs Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (NorSCARF).
First to speak was Cllr Olwen Hamer who prefaced the discussion with the Labour-controlled City Council's efforts at tackling racism in the city. Since the BNP were routed from the Chamber last year, the local authority has undertaken a series of measures aiming to snuff out racism and promote more integration through sponsorship of community projects such as the 'Game On' initiative, and 'Democracy Week' for local schools that see students come into the Council to learn about politics and how it can make a difference. In addition to all this, the Council have embarked on an ambitious programme of economic regeneration to attract businesses and jobs, which, as a consequence, would cut at the persistent material roots of the far right in the city.
Our second speaker was John Burnett himself. To begin with, he felt it necessary to issue an apology of sorts. His aim was not to demonise or denigrate Stoke: its problems are by no means unique. As I'd read the report a while back, this was welcome. I felt the pudding was over-egged to the extent I didn't recognise my city, but I digress. What John had tried to do was convey a sense of how racism had changed. For example, while all of the mainstream press hailed the Steven Lawrence verdict and eventual prosecution of his killers as some kind of anti-racist national victory, simultaneously most of that media was stirring up prejudice against asylum seekers and Muslims. The main parties have also clambered on the bandwagon, with a dog whistle here, and a "sincere expression" of doubts about multiculturalism there. In Stoke, the BNP were able to feed off this noxious soup, which contributed toward local election success. But also, locally, it prepared the ground for the EDL's visit to Stoke and the attempt to blow up Shelton Mosque. John also noted how there are greater "opportunities" for racist attacks: like most cities, the night time economy of taxis, takeaways, late shops and service stations find disproportionate numbers of minority workers not only taking up these jobs, but often in conditions of personal isolation: small wonder taxi drivers bear the brunt of racism and violence. Lastly, he suggested the far right cannot be combated by ceding political ground to them and that the mainstream parties have to realise a political culture that allows racism can engender a racist popular culture.
Next to speak was Jason Hill in his capacity as President of North Staffs TUC and NorSCARF secretary. He spoke about how the group was formed in the 70s to combat local electoral interventions by the National Front. However, after the NF were put to flight NorSCARF recognised the persistence of racism and the need to root it out. Therefore, one of its key achievements of the time was a victorious campaign for the founding of the Community Relations Council, which later became the Racial Equality Council, until it closed its doors in 2009.
Winding forward to the turn of the century, the BNP's ditching of bovver boots and punch ups in favour of door knocking, leafleting and "community work" began paying dividends. Under the public face of Steve Batkin, the BNP came within a whisker of winning the 2003 Mayoral election, and later went on to win nine councillors over the course of subsequent campaigns. NorSCARF re-formed shortly before the mayoral campaigns got under way and worked tirelessly to undermine and whittle them down. While all their councillors have gone, the rise in racist incidents and hate crimes against LGBT and disabled people demonstrates that much still needs to be done. Jason therefore called on the Council to back the creation of a new Equality Council under the terms of its Mandate for Change programme.
Jude Haws of Challenge North Staffs spoke about her work with the hate crime reporting network. She began on how key events have changed the complexion of hate crime. Before the Stephen Lawrence case gained prominence, if anything it was seriously underreported. The publicity around the case changed that. But the September 11th attacks changed the face of racism. The number of incidents, increased, steeply so in the case of Muslims. These then peaked and plateaued over 2003-4, and then declined. In this context the recent hate crime increase is not large, historically speaking. Part of it could reflect rising frustrations finding a racist expression, but, Jude also noted, Challenge had been engaging in outreach work with what she describes as 'hard to reach' communities. Victims may have felt more encouraged to come forward and make complaints.
In conclusion, reflecting on the picture of Stoke portrayed in the report Jude reported the results of a survey Challenge undertook of 97 asylum seekers. Asked 'Why Stoke?' they replied the cheap prices and it being a good place to find work as reasons to recommend it, but most surprising of all, they regarded it as "small, quiet, and safe".
Bill Dixon of Keele's Criminology and Sociology Department made a three-fold contribution by way of replying directly to John's report. His first point was methodological: by his own admission, John drew on reports of publicised cases, which in turn tend to be violent and spectacular to meet the sensational expectations of media managers. As such, the public prism can distort how racism truly manifests itself. The second methods issue is how do you interpret statistics. For example, is an 11.4% increase in reports a good thing in the sense these are getting reported?
Bill's second point wanted to tackle the political explanation for racism John put forward. While accepting the dog-whistling of mainstream parties can contribute to far right success, it overlooks the strategy of the far right themselves. Griffin went out of his way to clean up the BNP's image and rebrand them as a constitutional, peaceful outfit. The fact it wasn't any of these didn't matter - the electoral turn worked, for a while. The second point was the attitude of voters themselves: many weren't turning to the BNP because of their racist rhetoric, rather they portrayed themselves as the anti-establishment outsiders. They were the nuclear option of protest voters and where it was pressed repeatedly, politics generally and the labour movement in particular were forced to respond. Finally, core support for the BNP could not be read off from social structures, but found certain core features of am activist's biography was the key factor in getting them on board.
Lastly, Bill reiterated the point about a different Stoke. To underline it, he raised the Cobridge Riots of 2001, which was (as per the Graun piece) passed through the media's race riot filter. In fact, he claims it was nothing of the sort. Black, Asian, and White youths all came out to face down a rumoured BNP/NF march that never materialised. The violence that did ensue was primarily one of young people vs the police rather than resembling a page out of The Turner Diaries. Similarly, Bill wondered whether in-your-face 'Don't vote Nazi'-style campaigns are particularly effective, especially when it came to splitting softer elements from the more hardcore fascists.
And with that came a number of points and contributions from the floor. Participants reported their own experiences of reporting racist incidents, the positive effects of the Love Music Hate Racism festival of three years ago, need for continued resistance, the internationalist heritage of Stoke exemplified by its role in the Lidice Shall Live campaign, and the dodgy electoral pact between the BNP and UKIP that, up until recently, carved Stoke and Newcastle-under-Lyme respectively into spheres of exclusive influence.
Of the points that stood out, Gavin Bailey observed that presentation of the facts is a good proportion of the story. For example, Norfolk has a greater number of racist incidents per head than Stoke, but we never hear about what an awful pit of bigotry it is. There is also the hard-to-avoid tendency of talking racism up when, as crimes go, it remains comparatively rare. The media and anti-fascist activist therefore have a difficult tight rope to walk: we have to be publicly intolerant of racism, but we must also talk about its rarity. Blowing it up can damage relations between different communities. Our starting point has to be protecting the existing position of trust.
Tony Walley paid tribute to the role played by Joy Garner in bringing local BNP fuehrer Michael Coleman to book over a number of inflammatory racist remarks made on his blog. Tony doubted the Tory PCC candidate for Staffordshire would stand up to the fascists in the same way Joy had done. He also observed that the BNP were able to make headway locally because the left and the labour movement had taken their eyes off the ball. His dad, who hasn't a racist bone in his body, was attracted to the 'old labour'-sounding elements of the BNP's platform. The recent success of the SNP in Scotland demonstrates the significant pull social democratic politics can have.
Joy spoke about the 'soft-soaping' approach Griffin promoted, and said that Coleman was particularly effective at the friendly-neighbourhood fascist routine. While she argued that if the BNP really cared for its voters it would work to ensure local public services are delivered and remain accountable, the councillor as a hard-working community representative is something everyone should emulate. Joy also expressed disappointment at The Sentinel's defence of Coleman on free speech grounds. Taken out of context, Coleman's comments could be taken as the ravings of a political lunatic. But these comments were made in the immediate aftermath of last year's summer riots - his opinions on "rioting darkies" and the like were obviously attempts to stir up and incite trouble.
I am not able to convey the full range of the evening's discussion, but to openly thrash out differences between anti-fascists made the debate extremely welcome and useful.
Photo credit: Socialist Worker
One of the many fringe events I attended at Labour Conference this year was 'Deeper Democracy: Can Parties Reconnect People and Politics?' Hosted by The Fabians, it presented some polling evidence from YouGov's Mr Public, Peter Kellner, on the anatomy of the 16m registered voters who don't vote. This is variously comprised of people who aren't interested, are seriously alienated from politics, or couldn't cast a vote because of long-term health issues or has just moved house. Approximately seven million people, however, had voted previously no longer bothered. 50% of this group didn't because of political reasons: disillusionment, identikit candidates, MPs expenses, and so it goes. One thing that turned this group of people off was the lack of straight talking, and faux passion or anger.
It was the memory of the latter point that immediately came to mind this evening when I cranked up Twitter and found these awaiting me:
"Shame on you & your vile writing!" Brilliant.
While I'm sorry to hear Cllr Ellis lost some irreplaceable memories because of a crime committed against him, here you have an almost text book example of someone evading a point and using outrage to cover a refusal to respond. Perhaps Cllr Ellis would like to compare the ratio of words expended in the previous post suggesting his affluent lifestyle might have something to do with his being out of touch, to those that give his platform and record a political going over. I'm sure readers are capable of making up their own minds concerning the personalist tone or otherwise of the piece.
That said, this twitterly episode demonstrates how thin-skinned he is. If a seldom-read blogger from the backstreets of Stoke-on-Trent can show him up, what happens when bigger media beasts than I get their claws into him over the inevitable iPad and privatisation cock ups? Hopefully we'll never get to find out and the people of Staffordshire elect Joy Garner on November 15th for her sensible policing plan.
The gentleman to the left is Councillor Matthew Ellis. He represents Lichfield Rural East on Staffordshire County Council, and was until recently the local authority's cabinet member for Adults' Wellbeing - the fluffy sort of human resources speak all councils use to describe social services and public health. Why then am I expending blogging time on an obscure Tory like Cllr Ellis? Because he is Labour's Conservative opponent in the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in Staffordshire.
I have already written a little about these elections and why readers should place their crosses next to Labour candidates. But it's only right we take a look at the platform Cllr Ellis is offering the good people of our county.
A PCC will be responsible for, among other things, the formulation of a county-wide crime plan and holding the police accountable in their delivery of it. It would therefore be preferable if successful candidates had a handle on the different types of policing different communities require, and have experienced how that policing plays out on the ground. Joy lives in and represents an inner city ward - she just has to walk out her door to see how policing makes an everyday difference to the people of Burslem. Matthew (who I'm told lives in a house, a very big house in the country), is, to a degree, insulated from this by his wealth and the area he lives in. Unlike Joy, most readers, and working class communities generally, crime, the fear of crime, and policing cannot impinge on his day-to-day life in the same way.
Unfortunately for Cllr Ellis, his cushioning from everyday life can lead to some ridiculous pronouncements. For example, at a local PCC hustings here in Stoke at the end of September, the man who would run the police informed the audience that Hanley (Stoke's city centre, for those not familiar with its peculiar geography) is, apparently, a "no-go zone". For someone who's been in and out of Hanley at all hours for the last 17 years and not experienced one iota of trouble, this came as news to me. The Bronx it ain't. If Ellis believes the fantasy that crime really is that appalling in the Potteries, it's a wonder he didn't attend the hustings in a stab vest.
Being out of touch is the only way you can explain the centrepiece of his policy platform. While Joy's big concerns are tackling anti-social behaviour, improving victim support, and opposing police cuts, the priority for Cllr Ellis is ... giving police officers iPads. According to "iPad" Ellis, spending £1.1m to equip the Staffordshire force with said gadget would free more police for the front line and yield significant savings. Oh really? How is the money for the outlay to be found when 20% budget cuts are coming down the line? How are the police expected to carry round these things out on patrol? How much will be spent on the necessary IT infrastructure, maintenance, replacements and upgrades? What happens when they become obsolete? And what impact could this have on the presentation of evidence in court?
It would seem the initial cost is to come from the perennial Tory favourite: "cutting red tape". No one objects to curbing unnecessary administration, but to find over a million quid from a budget already hammered by Tory cuts is going to be a tough call. But that's okay, because Ellis and his County Council colleagues have a novel way of driving down costs: wholesale outsourcing. In his capacity as Adults' Wellbeing supremo, Ellis earlier this year handed over the £137m social services department to an external Trust. In people terms, that's 1,000 social workers removed from public transparency and democratic accountability.
More worryingly, the next job lot of privatisation Ellis's colleagues are promoting has more than a whiff of sleaze about it. The Council is rushing to privatise £2bn worth of education services before next May's County Council elections. The council manager who designed the tendering process left his post only to pop up again at Carillion as their head of local government business development. Entirely by coincidence, the tax-dodging company is a preferred bidder for the contract.
With such a track record, how long will it be before a Commissioner Ellis cuts up bits of Staffordshire Police and serves the tastier morsels to some private provider?
The character of the Labour and Conservative campaigns could not be more stark. You have Joy's platform, which addresses the policing priorities of normal, everyday folk from across the county. And you have Matthew's campaign, which is big on IT gimmickry but quiet on the privatisation subtext. One is about policing. One is ultimately about the money that can be made from policing.
That's the choice before Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent voters on November 15th.
I've had enough. BBC Question Time yesterday evening was the last straw. In a debate about IDS's ludicrous suggestion that poor people should be limited to two children before losing their benefit, sadly, unfortunately, it appeared that for once the Tories were in step with public opinion. As a kite flying exercise, it went down quite well in the studio. Sure, there was shock among the Twitterly #BBCQT-watching audience, but it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone. I started reading newspapers in the late 80s (The Sun, The Star, and News of the World in case you were wondering). There has scarcely been a day since then when these rags did not print something decrying scroungers of one kind or another. Back in the day, single mums were vilified. Asylum Seekers, the unemployed, the disabled have each had their turns since - sometimes discretely, at others all simultaneously. In all likelihood, if IDS gets his way with child benefit and tax credits, single mums will be in the firing line again.
But it's gone on too long. I am sick and tired of having benefit bashing shoved down my throat whenever I look in a paper, turn on the telly, or venture onto most mainstream political websites. It's time it was taken on. Aggressively.
We know why the right wing press do this. Apart from providing lurid filler and opportunities to lecture the evil poor on morality, it is an integral part of the 30-year campaign to dismantle the welfare state. Systematically the powers-that-be have turned groups of workers and claimants against one another. As one bloke put it who came to see me the other day about his housing and council tax benefit, why should he have to face a 20% payment cut when he'd paid into the system for 25 years? He was, apparently, different to the young lads who hung round Longton shopping precinct sitting on benches with their phones and their fags. Neither had he anything in common with asylum seekers who come here and take benefits off hard working folk. Of course, he was quick to add he wasn't being racist.
Facts are stubborn things. But so is the accumulated weight of evidence-free prejudice. It doesn't matter that, right now, around 300,000 vacancies are being chased by approximately 2.6m people. It's not the labour market that's failing, it's the supposed 'cultures of worklessness' that's to blame. There's the spiralling housing benefit bill - it has nothing to do with the unregulated rents charged by private landlords, but people living above their means. Benefit fraud: the DWP put it at £1.3bn, or 0.7% of the total benefit spend, but papers and politicians alike assure us it's rife. They forget to mention that about £12bn in income-related benefits alone go unclaimed. There is literally a mounting pile of unclaimed cash that could make a real difference to the lives of our poorest people who, for whatever reason, choose not apply for it. If this does not prove how benefit averse we as a society are, I don't know what can.
Sadly, these arguments seldom wash. Not because they're wrong or people are too dumb, it's because the drip-drip fantasy of benefit-funded luxury chimes deeply with the everyday experience and outlook of working people. It's not that everyone has a ready example of a lead-swinging scrounger, it's the very idea that someone, somewhere is living off the backs of your labour without making a useful contribution themselves; that someone is is living a profligate, responsibility-free life while you work to make ends meet and watch every penny you spend. And it's the idea someone is getting away with it while you're being taken for a mug.
If you want to get a little bit Marxist about it, you might say this is a negative manifestation of working class consciousness. Working people are being appealed to on the basis of their common identity as labourers (be it by hand or by brain). As class-based appeals go, the success of benefit bashing has the reach and power Woolfie Smith could only dream of. But this consciousness is being manipulated against the interests of working people. A little bit taken off housing benefit here, an extra criteria for ESA there, all these add up to making life for those whose income is supplemented by benefits more precarious. Those who really get wealthy through the labour of others would much prefer to see benefits cut to the point where people are always better off in work, regardless of how low the pay, than taking the poor out of the poverty trap altogether by paying a decent wage.
That, in schematic form, is the nuts and bolts of it. But how to turn it around? There are two ways benefit bashing can be put on the back foot. The first is trying to change the terms of the popular conversation on benefits. For example, we are seeing the rebounding of public anger against cheats and scroungers back onto the heads of the establishment who encouraged it. Who could have foreseen the Tories desperately trying to appear tough on tax avoidance?
Whataboutery can only go so far. On the discourse of benefits themselves, we can begin to make inroads. Despite Tory and press nonsense on Housing Benefit (of which 90% of claimants are in work), there appears to be a growing realisation that this is a tax payer-funded subsidy for property speculation from which unregulated private landlords profit. Similarly for working and child tax credits, what are these if not subsidies that allow employers to get away with paying meagre wages? Their argument has to be matched by our argument. They demonise, condemn and blame those who claim benefits. We must demonise, condemn, and blame those parties, companies, and institutions that force people into claiming benefits as the only way to survive.
But, unfortunately, rhetoric is never enough. It is no accident the rise of benefit bashing coincided with the declining fortunes of the labour movement. Look back to the press of the post-war period. With arguably more generous and easy-to-access welfare provision, the benefit-funded underclass was not even a twinkle in the headline writer's eye. We can deploy as many incisive arguments as we like, we will ultimately not get anywhere unless the institutions and movements of working people - the labour movement - is rebuilt. The greatest practical step an individual can make in combating the unceasing attacks on the most vulnerable people in our society is signing up to their trade union, joining the cooperative movement, and, yes, filling out a Labour Party membership form.
Readers committed to a reenactment of the 1917 Russian Revolution might want to look away now, for this is a post that will have Trots and Stalinists recoiling in horror.
It is 113 years since a famous (or notorious, depending on how you look at things) book rolled off the presses of the German workers' movement. The author's name is still enough to bring a derisive snort forth from many a Leninist nostril. He is the original renegade, the high priest of ex-left degenerates everywhere: Eduard Bernstein.
Bernstein is castigated by many a would-be revolutionary for suggesting that the perspectives advanced by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party might need revising in the context of the Imperial Germany of 50 years later. Bernstein also argued that not only could a socialist society come about through peaceful means that avoids a revolution, but also (horror of horrors) that a revolution isn't a particularly desirable thing to happen either.
These are so much red rags to the ever-shrinking bolshevik bull, and why his latter day opponents still strive to inoculate the cadre against his ideas. Of course, Bernstein was not without problems and these will be examined in the course of the series, which will be a rereading of his heretical Evolutionary Socialism. And by way of a postscript, we may take a look at Rosa Luxemburg's famous (and canonical) reply, Reform or Revolution.
Long-term readers carried over from A Very Public Sociologist 1.0 will know this blog has laid many acres of text analysing and discussing the problems of socialist strategy today. Needless to say I don't think sitting back and letting history take its course is going to grind out socialism. I also think self-described revolutionary parties are down a historical cul de sac. Attempting to build a Labour Party mk II in opposition to Labour, and calling for general strikes at a time our unions are weak underlines the political dead end they're stuck in. But whatever floats your activist boat, I guess.
Despite bringing many socialists out in a rash, a reexamination of Bernstein's contributions can shine an interesting light on many of the problems facing us. Even if little of value can be gleaned from his writings, he might have said the end point is nothing, but the 'movement'; the process of discussing and evaluating the arguments, is everything.
The format will follow the extended discussions of Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, and Antonio Gramsci's Selections from the Prison Notebooks. All contributions will be collated below.
