Can Conservatives Win Again?

That's the question pundits are asking in the wake of Barack Obama's election win. Though there wasn't a great deal in it - 60m vs 57m, give or take a few hundred thousand here and there, it would appear everyone with an opinion is using this opportunity to write the obituary of American Conservatism. People are pointing to the Democrats winning the popular vote in five out of the last six contests, and the observation that the GOP and its increasingly deranged base are politically incapable of facing up to demographic change. Fold this in with several progressive outcomes to local referenda, can you really start speaking of a permanent and strengthening Democrat majority? Time will tell.

For Conservatives on this side of the water, there is some superficial consolation to be had. An election with a floundering incumbent, a faltering economy, and culminating in an outright victory have not been lost on those desperate for a sign, any sign, that oblivion does not await in 2015. But like the USA, there is something deeper going on.

Tory party membership since the war has looked like this:

(Source)

Vote share has followed a broadly similar pattern. Since polling a staggering 49.7% under Anthony Eden in 1955, the Tory vote has shrunk back to 36.1% in 2010 - still not enough to win outright, despite Labour getting its second worst-ever result off the back of a deeply unpopular government.

The results from the second order European elections since their inception don't make comfortable reading either. Tory shares have been 51% (1979), 38.8% (1984), 35% (1989), 28% (1994), 36% (1999), 36% (2004), and 27.7% (2009).

A government mid-Parliament tends not to pay too much attention to what the polls say, but the Conservative Party are consistently falling behind among the under-59s (especially the 18-24s), and the regions outside of 'the south' (excluding London). The most recent YouGov poll is pretty indicative of the general trend.

Matters are not helped by the emergence of an electorally credible alternative to the Conservatives' right. However, despite UKIP's rapid rise in under 20 years, its base - if it can be called that - is ageing, and has marginal purchase amongst younger voters. And the right seem set to fragment even further with expelled UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire teaming up with the execrable "celebrity" Katie Hopkins to form 'We Demand a Referendum', a carbon copy of the late James Goldsmith's dismal Referendum Party. With a bit of luck, that should cost the Tories and UKIP a handful of MEPs in 2014.

Like their American brethren, it's not so much the Conservative's appalling record that's doing them in; they are at odds with long-term demographic and cultural trends. The political pendulum may still be to the right on welfare, economic policy, public spending, and immigration; but it has swung decisively to the left when it comes to rights for and attitudes toward women, minority ethnicities, and LGBT people. This politico-cultural shift is taking place on a global scale and it would take a massive amount of violence to throw it into reverse.

For a whole host of reasons the Tories have struggled to move with the times. Dave's pre-election liberal Toryism tried, but quickly, unseemly, that was consigned to an unmarked grave shortly after the LibDems gave them the leg up. Now, the Tories have to swim against an appalling record of incompetence and spitefulness, and cope with decline, fragmentation, and an ageing and diminishing base. Is it reasonable to write off the Tories? Could Dave be the last Conservative Prime Minister ... ever?

Tories might be interested in the recent history of the Canadian Conservative Party. Its immediate predecessor spectacularly collapsed in the 1993 federal elections from 158 seats (an absolute majority) to just two - probably the greatest electoral catastrophe ever to befall a governing party. And yet, 13 years later, the Tories were returned to power as a minority government and then went on to win an outright majority in 2011. How?

Canada has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Its population of 33 million welcomed over a quarter of a million new arrivals in 2010. In addition, just under 20% of Canadian citizens are what we in Britain would class BME, 4% of the total comprising of aboriginal peoples. The white majority themselves are split between groups identifying themselves as English, Scottish, German, Canadian and, of course, Quebecois. In 2005 Canada legalised gay marriage, and enjoys the sorts of liberties and freedoms as your average European social democratic state. Not ideal turf for Tories.

Canadian Conservatives have been forced to adapt. Looking at their 2011 Manifesto, despite the disparate components that make up Canada it is very clearly a one nation document, albeit updated and modernised for the 21st century. It is framed around the traditional Tory nostrums of lower taxes, but this is explicitly linked to plans for jobs and growth. Unlike their counterparts here, deficit reduction is tied to economic strategy. Demonisation of immigrants is absent, green issues are highly visible, unions are not singled out for a battering, and there are commitments to religious freedom. It's all very liberal and managerial and does not wear its ideology on its sleeve. These are the fluffy modern Tories sincere Cameroons can but dream of.

But it is more than just a question of programme. The tradition of North American exceptionalism extends to its politics. Unlike Western Europe, Canada has retained a substantial Liberal Party. Historically it has dominated the political scene, only being occasionally interrupted by interludes of Conservative rule. However, it would seem history is now catching up with Canadian politics. Founded in 1961 the New Democratic Party was born out of the labour movement and has started to occupy the left, social democratic political space the Liberals formerly claimed as theirs. The 21st Century particularly has seen them break through. In 2011 the NDP won 30.6% of the vote (up 12.5%) and increased their number of seats to 103 (up from 37!). The Liberals were pushed into a distant third place and the separatist Bloc Quebecois practically wiped out in their heartlands.

The Conservatives themselves have benefited from earlier seismic shifts in politics, that saw the 'traditional' Tory party, the Progressive Conservatives, merge with the Western-regional Reform Party. But that was a tremor compared to the 'Big One' of historic left-leaning political realignment, moving Canadian politics from a liberal/conservative to a "normal" conservative/social democratic axis. This reflects the growing strength of the labour movement, the patterns of inward immigration, and a consolidation of a liberal and tolerant culture. The Conservatives are creatures of the moment: faced with adapting or dying, they consolidated their forces and chose to adapt.

British (and American) Conservatives clearly need a Canadian-style makeover. But it is extremely unlikely. Demographic trends are roughly comparable, but the constitution of the respective political fields are different. Canada's politics has seen fragmentation grow over into realignment. British politics in general is slowly fraying (the First Past the Post system has kept a lid on it - for now), but one of the two main parties is not about to be replaced by an upstart challenger. Furthermore, because of its myriad links to the labour movement, immigrant communities, and social movements, Labour are weathering it better. The Tories however are locked in to their narrower constituency - move too much in a liberal one nation direction and you lose your base to UKIP as you win over swing voters. Stick with a core strategy, and the undecided voters go elsewhere. Gobbling up their Coalition partners may present a way out. It has, after all, happened before. Or, Micawber-like, something else might eventually turn up.

Demography is not destiny, and British Conservatism does face seemingly insurmountable odds. But, historically speaking, as the most successful political party the world has ever seen, its resilience should not be underestimated. Never ones to put principle before power, there is always an outside chance it could make the necessary changes to win again, however unlikely that looks now. Therefore it requires constant, unceasing vigilance and work from Labour, the labour movement, and progressive people to keep it in the predicament it finds itself.

Galloway's 70s Porn Voice Over Campaign Ad

Ever wanted to hear George Galloway at his seductive best?



Believe it or not, these gentlemen are in the business of winning votes from the good people of Croydon North.

Trotsky on Lesser-Evilism

Trotters (apparently) once wrote:

The occupation of eastern Poland by the Red Army (in 1939-40) is to be sure it is a ‘lesser evil’ in comparison with the occupation of the same territory by Nazi troops, but this lesser evil was obtained because Hitler was assured of achieving a greater evil. If somebody sets, or helps set a house on fire, and afterward saves five out of ten of the occupants of the house in order to convert them into his own semi-slaves, that is to be sure a lesser evil than to have burnt the entire ten. But it is dubious that this fire-bug merits a medal for the rescue . . . ”

Okay, this doesn't really work for lefty fire-bugs who called for an Obama vote yesterday, but still. At least he didn't condemn lesser-evil'ers as petit bourgeois dilettantes or unprincipled combinationists.

Class and Political Values

In this interesting piece carried by the latest edition of Progress Magazine, YouGov supremo Peter Kellner writes “New polling for Progress shows that working-class attitudes are not what some in the Labour party imagine them to be” and subsequently goes on to argue that social class does not condition values, politics, and voting habits as it once did. Anyone with a passing knowledge of recent work on the sociology of class, or indeed the theoretical justification underpinning New Labourism and the Third Way are likely to have encountered similar arguments at some point. However, unfortunately for Peter and in spite of his intention, his argument underlines the continuing salience of class – but not in the way he or his left wing opponents might expect.

The class definition Peter employs is the widely-accepted National Readership Survey approach to grading. It runs like this:

Grade	Class	Occupation of Chief Income Earner
A	Upper Middle	Senior managerial, administrative, professional
B	Middle	Middle managerial, administrative, professional
C1	Lower Middle	Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial, administrative, professional
C2	Skilled Working	Skilled manual workers
D	Working	Semi- and unskilled manual workers
E	Lower	Casual/part-time workers, pensioners, benefit-dependent

See here for more information. It is also worth noting the NRS definition excludes the 'upper class', the wealthy minority who sit at the pinnacle of the class structure and are therefore outside the grading.

Please allow me an aside before we get to the meat of the matter.

I don't like this approach to defining class. It smacks too much of a tick box approach. It has the advantage of easy codification for use in tables, matrices, statistical packages, and market surveys. It has the tendency, as Peter shows below, to treat these analytical distinctions as really existing divisions in the class structure. As Marx was fond of saying, one should not mistake the things of logic with the logic of things.

I don’t particularly blame Peter for working with the ‘standard definition’. It’s not just pollsters who uncritically go by this definition. For the wonk milieu, mainstream politics, and the entire advertising/marketing industry, NRS is an article of faith. But to use the old language, I still believe it’s one’s relationship to the means of production that counts. If you work in an office as opposed to a factory or a shop floor, if your labour is by brain instead of by hand, chances are you are as working class as any production operative, care worker, train driver, or shop assistant (there is a good chance you - the reader - are working class too). It is undeniable the composition of the division of labour has transformed these last 30-odd years, but the content of those class relationships remain fundamentally unchanged.

With that out the way, let’s get to the rub. What Peter wants to investigate is the view that working class voters, by his definition, are the special repository of progressive politics and, by extension, test the left’s orthodox touchstone that the working class is the vehicle for socialist change. He observes:

We asked more than 15,000 people where they placed themselves on a scale from left to right. As the figures below show, middle-class voters are more likely to describe themselves as left-of-centre than working-class voters are. But they are also more likely to describe themselves as right-of-centre – the biggest difference between the classes is the number of ‘don’t knows’: one in three DE voters, but only one in eight AB voters. If we take the difference between left and right, then there is a one-point lead for the left among the middle classes, and a larger, eight-point, lead for the left among DE voters. So, in relative terms, there is a slightly greater overall tilt to the left among DE voters – but the larger truth is that social class plays only a marginal role in determining how leftwing or rightwing we are.

Okay. Going on, YouGov asked its sample about their attitudes on seven issues. There were big majorities for three progressive policy ends - workers on company boards, taking the railways back into public ownership, and for gay marriage. However, there were big anti-progressive majorities on three other issues: ending all immigration, stopping overseas aid, and no to higher taxes for funding public services. The seventh issue people were asked about - should unemployment benefit be reduced - saw a more even split.

Breaking the results down by NRS class, Peter notes that middle and working class voters hold similar views on four of the seven issues. On the other three, working class respondents are two-to-one in favour of ending all immigration, and scrapping overseas aid. The middle class, by contrast, appear more progressive: they split evenly on both questions. These "surprising" findings appear to be bucked by unemployment benefits - the middle class are 53-38% in favour of a reduction, as opposed to 45-40% against in the working class bracket. However, separating out the C2s finds them as favourable to benefit reduction as the middle class groupings. As Peter observes, the DEs are against, presumably because they would or are more likely to be directly affected. And as if to underline the point, the attitudes of the C2s "show scant signs of working class solidarity".

To his credit, Peter says this doesn't mean Labour should throw its principles overboard and adopt a thoroughly reactionary agenda, but it exposes the misplaced hopes the Labour left and others have in the socialist propensities of the working class. With the disassociation of politics from class, it therefore makes little sense to adopt the sorts of policies the left think can win back disengaged working class votes.

While I accept the argument that "it is worth understanding where people actually are", there are three problems with Peter's position.

1. In the comments, Dan Paskins observes "it is no great surprise that 'reactionary' policy proposals on issues of high public concern are a greater priority than 'progressive' policy proposals on issues of low public concern." While not quite asking leading questions for proof of an expected outcome, there are issues of framing here that Peter did not address.

2. YouGov finds the three progressive, left wing policies - workers on company boards, rail renationalisation, and gay marriage - score big majorities across all the class gradings. Rather than being of interest only to a shrinking industrial working class, does this not show left policies can have swing potential and win large numbers of people from all strata to a properly social democratic Labour manifesto?

3. Peter inadvertently shows the continued salience of class. While he links perceived material interests among the DEs to opposing cuts to unemployment benefit, he overlooks how these interests condition the non-progressive responses to immigration, overseas aid, and higher taxes to pay for public services on the part of the C2DEs. As we saw in the earlier discussion on working class benefit-bashing, right wing arguments against the welfare state make sense from the standpoint of everyday experiences of working people. The idea you have to work while others are living it up on benefits funded by the taxes you pay has a deep resonance, precisely because of their class location. This insight, this negative manifestation of, for want of a better phrase, working class "identity" goes some way to explain YouGov's findings. As anyone who regularly canvasses people will tell you, anti-immigration sentiment tends not to have a racist wellspring as much anymore - it is in the main fuelled by perceptions of benefit dependency, jumping the housing queue, taking jobs off locals, and undercutting wages. Likewise with overseas aid - why give poor people elsewhere money when we have things we urgently need at home, such as funds for hospitals or care for the elderly? And why should workers pay more from their increasingly-squeezed pay packets for public services that are being cut and they seldom use anyway?

Therefore, by YouGov's own admission, left wing policies can be popular and class does matter. The tough political task for socialists and Labour people is to argue and advocate alternatives to these reactionary politics that speak to working class life experience and perceptions with ones that do so even more convincingly.

USA Elections: How the World Would Vote

If only everyone but Americans had a vote, eh?

Nose Peg Time: Vote Obama

Who'd be an American? Well, right now, I think the rest of the world wouldn't mind if it meant voting in tomorrow's presidential elections. This isn't because the wall-to-wall coverage is almost enough to make you think Obama and Romney are courting our support, but because a world with a President Romney in it would be a more unstable, dangerous place. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm sure most readers would prefer the current status quo to Neocon sabre rattling, and favour ordinary Americans keeping what meagre benefits Obama has squeezed out of Congress than see the top 1% banking another round of generous tax cuts.

But what are Obama and Romney actually offering? Cutting through the scaremongering and hyperbole, are Democrat and Republican differing in degree, or in kind? To this end I've taken a look at three headings: the economy, the federal budget, and foreign policy.

Obama's plan for jobs is, unfortunately for him, quite anaemic and overly technocratic. While his record of job creation since 2010 is good (apparently 5.4m private sector jobs have been created), there is little to inspire here. So (deep breath); no tax breaks for exporters of jobs, lower taxes for the "middle class", the doubling of exports, the setting up of "innovation institutes", tax credits for clean energy research and employers of ex-forces personnel. The same is true of his further reflections on energy - he talks of reducing the dependency on foreign oil, investing more in renewables, and building a "clean energy economy" using gas and clean coal. However, Obama's team need to realise gas is a carbon-producing fossil fuel, and that carbon-neutral coal is a long way off.

Sad to say, Romney's pledges read much better. Straight away his jobs plan sets out plainly what it means: more take home pay, and a pledge to create 12 million jobs. Part of this is an ambitious plan to generate more electricity internally and achieve "energy independence" by 2020. This won't necessarily be green - like a good right wing climate change denialist, Romney is looking at scrapping regulations for coal extraction and other forms of exploratory prospecting. The plans for small businesses - a key sector of US economic dynamism - are the usual recipe of red tape cutting and union baiting. But, for an undecided voter without particular ideological proclivities, Romney's economic plan speaks the everyday language of "I will do x, and y will happen". It doesn't matter if it's undeliverable bunk - it offers a vision of a better tomorrow, and, despite the anti-union rubbish, it's one large numbers of Americans will find compelling, even if it is short on specifics.

So much for the economy, what about the budget? Using the most Delphic language possible, Obama has pledged to tax the rich more ("Make sure millionaires ... pay the same rate as under President Clinton"), pledge a raft of tax cuts for small businesses and use savings accrued from suspending the Iraq adventure into paying down the national debt. Featured opposite what the Republican pledges to do, this appears more credible and in tune with the electorate - at least as conveyed by the British media. Romney's plans are much woolier. He promises to slash Obamacare ("the federal takeover of health insurance"), Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and, of course, shrink the state. There is no answer or even attempt to address the $5tn tax cut Romney has lined up. And with good reason: it makes no fiscal sense even if popular welfare programmes are to be butchered.

Lastly we come to the one everyone else in the world is concerned about: foreign policy. Obama, as you might expect, plays up his successes, such as winding down Iraq and offing Osama Bin Laden. There's the complaints to the Chinese over rule-breaking, the tough sanctions regime on Iran, and an overall cuddly multilateral vibe to calm the nerves. And there's a few nice words about Israel too. Romney's vision on the other hand is straight out of the Project for a New American Century. There are hints of a return to Iraq, never-ending counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and likely military action against Iran. If that wasn't bad enough, he also plans to roll back the influence of social democracy and socialism in Latin America, meddle with the internal politics of Russia, aggressively confront North Korea and, of course, pour untold billions into the US military. Whereas Obama and the Democrats generally seem to realise that America is a declining power that can no longer afford a globally extended military at the expense of other things, Romney seems to think decline can be arrested by throwing money at the problem and amassing an even bigger pile of guns. Funny how some forms of profligate spending is a-okay.

In a famous 1964 election broadcast, against the backdrop of a nuclear inferno Lyndon B Johnson thundered "these are the stakes!" While atomic bombs are not about to fly, there is a tendency for politicians to keep their promises - which is enough to worry anyone reading Romney's foreign policy priorities. Like Dubya, Romney will be a sectional president rather than a national leader, minus the folksy charm of his idiot predecessor. With his ties to the most backward and ruthlessly right wing sections of American capital, and, of course, the lunatic fringe of Tea Party-types and conservative shock-jocks, there is no reason to believe America won't become a crueller, more unequal, and belligerent society if Romney wins.

Having learned the lessons of 2008, Obama knows all about the problems of expectations management - even though his message of hope then was really political vapourware. This goes some way to help explain his positioning as the steady-as-she-goes candidate. But in reality, despite his kill lists, despite the consolidation of the secret state, despite cosying up to Wall Street, and despite all the other stains on his record, another four years of Obama offer more progressive political opportunities for Americans and the rest of the world than the awful alternative.

For the tiny clutch of US readers who frequent this blog, I think most of the UK would agree if I said "put on your nose pegs, and vote Obama tomorrow."

Thoughts on the Media and Child Abuse

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.

New Blogs

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.

Regeneration: The Lessons from Over There

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

Lichfield Says No to iPad Ellis

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.