Progressive London Conference
Yesterday saw the Progressive London Conference at Congress House in London. All in all, I thought it was pretty good. There seemed to be very few nutty lefties there and I was pleased that there were a few people there I knew and recognised from my CLP, from blogging, from uni and around and about the city in general. Turnout was pretty good. I don’t know how many people the big hall at Congress House holds, but it was full for the plenary. Before I mention what I saw and heard, a big thanks to the various organisers and volunteers. It was, I think, a useful day.
I took away a few things from it all.
- Firstly, I was gratified that the nutty left wasn’t there but that there was a broad range, from government ministers through ordinary Labour party members, trades unionists, Greens, Lib Dems and that they were largely willing to come together for an occasion like this. I did see George Galloway floating around, though, but without any groupies.
- Secondly, there was an acceptance that, the rights and wrongs of high finance notwithstanding, London (and the UK) had been overly dependent upon them and that we would now have to find, ahem, alternative employment. A lot of people thought this could be to do with green innovation.
- Thirdly, a lot of people seem to understand that we have to work to maintain the vibrancy and toleration of our city.
- Fourthly, it wasn’t just the free market ideology that had been hit; progressives needed to re-evaluate their positions, and quickly, in this brave new world.
- Fifthly, there was a widespread feeling that we should work across London, not just focussing on the Mayoralty. That having been said, progressives would have to work hard to remove Johnson in 2012.
Below the fold are my notes and thoughts on the sessions I attended. I don’t know if anyone’s collating these, but it would make sense, if there are future events like this, for something like Liberal Conspiracy to have someone at each breakout session. Some of the other bloggers I saw there include the Tory Troll, Mayor Watch, Boris Watch, Peter Kenyon, Dave Hill, Sunny Hundal and Steve Cowan.
xD.
This is not going to be chronological; if anyone’s that interested, the schedule for the day is here. It’s probably a good sign that for each of the breakout sessions, there was more than one I wanted to attend.
First plenary
Second plenary
First breakout – Learning lessons from London Votes 2008
Second breakout – Transport
Third breakout – Blogging London
Ken ‘the once and future king mayor’ Livingstone gave the first talk. He mentioned a generational turning point. There had been a broad, social democratic consensus in the quarter-century following the Second World War. I think that point is debatable; the situation constrained state actions to a great degree, but the effect is perhaps the same. Following that, Friedman et al came to popularity (and a particular mention for mobility of capital being increased) but that era has now passed with the current financial crisis.
In a rather witty remark, Ken said that he was sad Reagan hadn’t seen the collapse of his dream before saying
I expect an apology from Thatcher imminently
The question, then, was as to the new structures that should be put in place. One that drew near-universal applause was that every person should pay tax on money in the country where they earn it and, similarly, corporations should pay taxes on profit in the country where they make them. This would have to be done through global and international agreement, effectively closing off tax havens.
It could not be denied, according to Ken, that the economies of London and the UK would be damaged because of the problems in the City. As a solution, he proposed that London should be at the forefront of the new technologies that we, as a species, need to deal with the serious environmental situation; on this, Ken painted a bleak picture, largely agreeing with the Tyndall centre.
Closing, he mentioned the need for greater support of London’s dynamic cultural centre and a need to recognise the importance of happiness – and so to put in place a progressive consensus for the future of the city.
Second up was the playwright, Bonnie Greer, who started by recalling two huge, generational shifts through which she had lived; the Sixties and now. In both instances, a part of the shift is technological. Then, it was the television, now it is the internet and mobile technology. In both instances, older people colonise the space made by young people who either very quickly adapt or grow up with these new technologies.
Greer went on to say that, soon, most humans will live in cities, which will have consequences for how we view race. Nevertheless, manufacturing will return but it will be high-tech. There will have to be greater cross-generational cooperation as the idea of a passive pensioner changes to that of an active senior who may have retired but still has two or three decades of living ahead of them.
Greer concluded by opining that political parties would more and more be vehicles for charismatic individuals unless they learned to communicate – properly – with Gen-Y, Gen-Z and the Millennial generation.
Next was Eric Hobsbawm.
If I understood Hobsbawm correctly, he argued that the ideologies of the ‘short twentieth century’ – socialism unbound and capitalism unbound – were both, now, bankrupt. The former failed at the end of the eighties while the latter’s thirty year dominance, although we don’t know how severe the current crisis will be, had ended with it. The future, in short, belongs to a mixed economy.
He added that even the left parties of Europe of rich Europe were attached to this free-market fundamentalism, describing Blair and, until recently, Brown as ‘Thatcher with trousers’.
Certainly, the central idea of parties like Labour had not been soviet socialism, but rather that the market would take care of growth and the government of distribution. That position had been undermined by globalisation. It therefore needed refitting, but instead swallowed free market ideology whole. Because of decisions then and the balance of the economy now, the recession will be harder for us.
The question, then, is whether we use old tools like nationalisation. The answer was ‘not necessarily’ as, in something I thought slightly contradicted his opening, Hobsbawm thought we didn’t know how to get out of the current crisis because our leaders are addicted to ‘free market schmaltz’, questioning whether we had really moved away from the idea that profit-making companies were always good; that a large gap between rich and poor was acceptable; that increasing GDP is the sine qua non of good governance.
In order to do this, it was necessary for people to understand that GDP is a means and not an end and that the end – or something closer to the end – would be jobs, house, schools and the like. A good quip: “Poor secondary schooling isn’t changed by the fact that UCL could field a football team composed solely of Nobel prize winners”.
He finished, in his gloomy manner, by saying that climate change would mean a big shift from private to public, bigger than that envisioned by the Government and sooner than we all think. “Time is not on our side”.
Harriet Harman had the unfortunate task of following on from Hobsbawm. I say unfortunate because he really seemed to hold the audience. Nevertheless, Harman did well, starting by identifying people’s presence at the conference as part of a new zeitgeist, related to the real apprehension people felt, particularly about jobs. Although we are in uncharted waters, the Labour deputy leader said that the government would not be like Thatcher about losing jobs.
Something I found particularly interesting was the to- and fro- about Obama. Harman said that not only was Obama not going to fail, but that he had already succeeded in changing both how the world sees the USA and how people see themselves. A large welcome should be organised for him. A later question challenged Harman on this, saying that Obama should be judged on action rather than rhetoric. Harman simply replied that we should support him in building a progressive future – which he was doing – and received strong support from the audience.
Responding to Hobsbawm, Harman said that all tools would be used, and gave a list of what the government was doing to ameliorate the crisis. Specifically, bringing forward capital infrastructure expenditure was mentioned, in contrast to the Tories who wanted to cut those back at the time of a recession.
Harman emphasised the need for coordination of international action and the multiplier effect of states working together and accepted Hobsbawm’s point that a strong economy was a means and not an end. Agreeing with Greer, Harman added that our new economic arrangements would have to be fairer and based on high tech industries; £20m bonuses would no longer be acceptable.
To that end, what Polly Toynbee described as ‘socialism in one clause‘ – the duty on public bodies to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Harman closed by saying that there were those who would exploit the current situation to build racial divisions. At the June 4 elections, it was imperative to work for a high turnout because there is a real chance of the BNP gaining an MEP. Labour would be building on the work of Jon Cruddas (who chaired the session) and Margaret Hodge; Martin Salter would be coordinating that with support from Frank Dobson.
I found it interesting that people listened to Harman really quite attentively. I’ve often seen people shout abuse at any New Labour minister, but the couple that did received very short shrift from the audience. That’s not to say that everyone necessarily agreed, but that they wanted to listen. I assume that Harriet Harman was invited in her capacity as deputy party leader, but it does seem she was acceptable to the assembled.
There was a lot of support from the audience for questions on the need to repeal anti-trades union legislation and in opposition to trades unions’ support for the third runway at Heathrow. Hobsbawm did not directly answer a question on which member of the government could lead the country out of its current crisis, but did say that long periods of effective isolation from normal, run-of-the-mill society at the top of politics did mean that senior politicians lose contact with the ordinary.
Harman liked the idea of resurrecting the ‘Claimants’ Commission’ from GLC days. This, apparently, brought together people who claimed benefits to work out responses to proposed changes in benefits arrangements. A sex worker wanted to ask Harman a question; unfortunately, the one turned into five and the questioner was shouted down, the chair having immediately previously asked people to keep their questions short. The response from Harman was, essentially, that although a small percentage of sex workers freely chose from amongst other options to sell sex, the allowance of that particular market would force a lot of people into it who did not have a choice.
A few closing remarks. Hobsbawm felt that Labour and the unions had sold the traditional idea of a class struggle down the river as they didn’t strike and didn’t demonstrate. Lots of BNP voters thought they were voting for a class struggle; we cannot say that any class struggle is good.
Bonnie Greer said that old left-right paradigms were not working and that the Brits ‘did themselves down too much’.
Ken said that a lot of the questions had been looking backward. The progressive movement was in a weaker position than Thatcher and Reagan had been at the end of the Seventies. They had had a project; ‘we’ need to recraft our traditional ideals.
The second plenary session was actually the final session of the day. It featured Jon Cruddas, Jenny Jones, Susan Kramer and Ken Livingstone. Chuka Umunna chaired the session.
Cruddas began by saying that, since Lehman Bros. had gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15th, 2008, the ‘progressive conservative’ mantra had been hit. In any case, it was something of an oxymoron. You could often tell why someone had joined a political party by looking at what it looked like when they joined; on that basis, one had to wonder how progressive Cameron and Osborne really were if they had joined Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives.
He identified ten key issues that progressives would have to look at.
1.Tax justice, including counter-recessionary initiatives.
2.Seeing banking as a utility rather than a commodity, to which end more micro- and social lending
3.Devolution, including allowing bond financing for local authorities
4.More housing
5.Sustainability and the environment
6.Confronting hate and division
7.Rebuilding public schools
8.Security
9.A peaceful world, including the scrapping of Trident
10.Progressive internationalism
He finished by saying “when I think of a progressive future for London, I think of Ken”
Jenny Jones started by saying that not only did we have to go green but that we had to do it together. She laid out three tests of false environmentalism:
1.Does it only ask one section of society to do something? It’s no good not doing anything and then using China as an excuse.
2.Does it create problems downstream? With reference to biofuels.
3.Does it claim to be the solution?
There is a need to have a big tent and Ken, for all his failings, did that as Mayor.
Susan Kramer began by rubbishing attempted connections between the Conservatives and Barack Obama on the basis of change by saying
“The fourteenth old Etonian in 10 Downing St. would not be as big a change as the first black man in the White House”.
The big risk for London and, indeed, the UK is that it hangs on a single industry – banking and finance. I was put in mind of a cash crop. Kramer said that she had been a banker and while bankers were smart, they were not superhuman and that their pleas, even now, that the government shouldn’t intervene in banks because governments are not good at running banks should merit the response that neither are bankers.
She closed by saying that the whole city needed to be retrofitted to be more energy efficient and that progressives couldn’t forget outer London as Ken did. This was, though, a time of opportunity.
Ken closed by saying that tribalism was a strong force in politics but that the economic and climatic challenges we face don’t allow us that luxury.
First breakout – lessons from the London elections
The first breakout session I attended was on the lessons of the London elections, with Steve Hart (Regional Secretary, Unite); Julia Clarke, (IPSOS MORI); Redmond O’Neill, (former GLA Director of Transport and Public Affairs) with Simon Fletcher (former Chief of Staff to Ken Livingstone) chairing.
According to the research done by IPSOS MORI, ethnicity mattered more than class on a ward-by-ward basis. Redmond (I think) countered this by saying that if Ken overfocussed on BME communities, one would expect him to do worse than Labour nationally but he didn’t. Question isn’t ‘why didn’t Ken win’ but ‘why did Ken so well’ and ‘how do we replicate the Ken effect’.
It had to be remembered that 2008 was a low point for Labour nationally and that running as Labour damaged Ken because Labour was so unpopular.
Ken didn’t receive as many of the higher-paid employees in outer London as he previously had. Although the positioning of Brian Paddick was disastrous for the LibDems, it did increase second preferences for Boris. The inner/outer London split was exacerbated by the hollowing out of CLPs in outer London.
It was accepted that no-one can win the mayoralty without second preferences. To do that, we need a progressive coalition of Green, Respect, Labour, LibDem and so on but the Lib Dems screwed this up.
The Evening Standard had an effect; other media trivialised things. It was noted that none of the ‘scandals’ uncovered by the Standard have resulted in charges. Scandals came out on Fridays so that the ES billboards stayed all weekend. Knife crime was an issue; how much of this was due to the media was unclear.
It was felt that there was a lack of information on Ken’s record.
It was said that ‘bloggers can set the agenda’ and that ‘we’ had suffered by progressives on the left being disorganised and the blogosphere being miles to the right.
Second breakout: Transport for a progressive London
With Val Shawcross AM, London Assembly Labour Transport Spokesperson; Christian Wolmar; Steve Hart, Regional Secretary, Unite; John Murphy, Unite; ASLEF speaker to be announced. Chair: Redmond O’Neill, Former GLA Director of Transport and Public Affairs
Val Shawcross started by saying that Boris’ manifesto was weak; he wrote well but thought badly. His first six months had been dealing with populist campaign promises but had no strategic thinking; for instance, replacing bendies on the 38 route would cost an extra £2m per year.
Although he’d promised to do more for outer London, Boris had found it difficult to express his actions for outer London; not much had been done, for instance, on orbital bus routes. Indeed, he’d stuck to many of Ken’s priorities while taking the easy way out on some things, such as cancelling the Cross River Tram, the C-charge western extension, the Croydon Tramlink extension to Crystal Palace, Parliament Square and Dagenham Dock. The replacements and improvements London will need were not coming on stream and there was no long-term thinking in an area that absolutely requires planning ten and twenty years ahead.
Worryingly, Johnson seemed to be abolishing the road users’ hierarchy (pedestrian – cyclist – motorist). Shawcross recommended reading the ‘Way to Go’ document (needless to say, I will be doing so).
She closed by saying that a capacity gap was coming; that we needed to look at polycentricity (in other words, having good radial transport links to local centres); and looking at walking and pedestrian issues.
Steve Hart from Unite started by mentioning his union’s response to Johnson’s ‘A way to go’ – ‘A long way to go’. Four million extra daily journeys would be required by 2025. However, Johnson’s ‘policies of nostalgic populism’ would be costing £400m over four years.
On that issue, a particular problem I hadn’t considered with the new Routemaster was that they would not have a conductor but would have an open back. People were prevented from crowding onto the platform on the old Routemaster – and from falling off – by the conductor. The possibility of using PCSOs has been mooted – but they’re more expensive than conductors.
In closing, he called Johnson ‘all hair and no trousers’.
Christian Wolmar was next. His first criticism was of Johnson for being ‘boring’ – and his second was of Labour for not doing enough to criticise Johnson on transport. It was the Labour party, he felt, who should organise a comprehensive inquiry into Johnson’s bus policy.
Wolmar agreed with a couple of Johnson’s decisisons, notably the third runway at Heathrow and the East London bridge. He also thought that RBKC were doing good job, particularly looking at Kensington High Street.
Moving back to Ken, Wolwar praised the C-charge but said that after a good start, Ken stalled. Nor had he got to grips with cycling or Oxford Street.
Next was John Murphy, a Unite member and a bus driver, who said that there was a real fear amongst bus drivers over pay and conditions following the changes made in 1984 and 1994.
Last was a Mr Weller – I didn’t catch his first name – a train driver and ASLEF member who reiterated the capacity issues London would be facing and a need to look at heavy rail, not just the Tube.
Third breakout: Blogging London
Martin Hoscik, editor MayorWatch website; Adam Bienkov, ToryTroll blog; Tom Barry, Boriswatch.co.uk. Chair: Prof Ivor Gaber
I won’t labour this one – I’m sure some of the others will cover it – but some of the interesting points that came out of it were the opinion from Adam ‘Tory Troll’ Bienkov that blogging would never be mainstream; that the readership of political blogs is people who are already politicos. There was a great story about tracking Boris on a barge from Tom ‘Boriswatch’ Barry. A few people felt that many comments and commenters were inane. I thought the most interesting part was, to be honest, the idea that the frailty of London blogging was because of the frailty of the London polity.
I really haven’t done this session justice, but, as I said, I’m sure others will cover it.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Dave,
Thanks for the write-up – very useful as I wasn’t able to get along on the day. Sounds like some useful discussions were had: it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Political Animal’s last blog post..A lighter shade of green?
January 27th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
[...] Jones, speaking at last weekend’s Progressive London conference (good write up from Dave Cole here), as saying I’m going to give you the gist of something I wrote for the current mayor, Boris [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Thanks, Animal. I think it was useful and I hope it continues; particularly, the cross-party spirit gave me encouragement.
xD.
Dave Cole’s last blog post..The year of the ox
January 27th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
It seemed from the conference that there are alternative narratives – moving from the “what worked” under Ken (living wage, congestion charge, etc) to the “what matters” (fairness, care & solidarity) which…well really matters lot in how we frame our responses to the recession to Londoners out there who are really feeling the bite.
But is it enough to bring together politicians from across the “progressive spectrum” to show our solidarity on issues like Heathrow or the living wage which portray that alternative narrative to the government? Is it enough to congratulate ourselves on getting such a massive turnout at the conference? People will be fairly interested in a range of issues but there’ll be one issues that really drives them – whether it’s Gaza or civil liberties – these wedge issues were all represented…but there was no mechanism for people to take these forward from the grassroots…
It slightly astonished me when Ken talked about all the networking to get this conference off the ground, but surely this should be the start of something not just the ultimate hangover cure from the elections?
At our Compass Youth “young london” workshop, the room was packed out – with people but mainly with ideas – mentoring scheme for young people to get into green jobs, youth mayor for London with a capacity building budget, making CRB checks portable, a virtual youth club and cooperative schools. To be honest, with an hour an half and with four exciting speakers that we were keen to listen to as well, as well as competing against other heavweight sessions at the same time, we were scared that either no-one would turn up or not many people would want to put forward, let alone work out together what campaigns we should take forward for young Londoners.
To be even more honest, the winning idea, making CRB checks portable to enable more people (young or old!) to take part in volunteering, isn’t something that we may have thought of on our NEC, but we committed to campaign on idea that won most votes and that’s what we’ll do. In fact, we’ll support people who want to take forward the other campaigns put forward.
Why? Because if you give people an inch, they’ll give you a mile…oh, and because we enabled people to give us their email addresses so we can get in touch with them in doing this. It’s pretty basic, but if you ain’t got their contact details, how are you going to build a progressive coalition?
January 27th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Hi Noel,
If you don’t mind, I’ll go point by point -
The answer, of course, is that it is not enough. However, the conference at the weekend wasn’t a love-in for lefties politicians. For one thing, the speakers weren’t just politicians, but experts, journalists and trades unionists. I’m not sure, either, that the ProLonCon was about expressing that solidarity, with the possible exception of the meeting on Gaza, even though those positions you mention received support from a lot of people.
From what I understand, turnout was something like two-and-one-half times what they were expecting. That’s good, but I don’t think it qualifies as ‘massive’ and I haven’t seen the unwarranted self-congratulation you suggest.
Or, in my case, transport. Political parties act as an information heuristic and not everyone’s an expert, and noone’s an expert on everything.
Which is the problem I have with your position. I don’t think people were there for particular, ‘wedge’ issues as they are not all wedge issues. Indeed, I don’t think people came just to attend this session or the other, but to see what was going on in general.
It is the start of something; that’s why low-cash but high-salience (no ads!) promotion, I’d say, was used. Given that we spent a lot of time talking about how to deal with things after the credit crunch, I don’t think you can fairly call this a ‘hangover cure from the elections’. There was, I think, only one psephological session.
All great ideas. CRB portability is something I’ve heard talked about before; what did you have in mind beyond the current provisions?
I think that’s great – really commendable. It also shows the value of people together in a forum like this. Ultimately, CY could lobby for a change in the law, help people use existing arrangements and so on, but I take it you’re not proposing to become a Komsomol.
Well, it depends on whether you see it as a gemeinschaft or a gesselschaft… but I guess the organisers have contact details for everyone.
Disclaimer – if this post makes no sense, it’s because the sleeping pill is kicking in.
xD.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
[...] idea that caught my eye most at the Progressive London conference was from Ken himself. Basically, it’s that every [...]
January 28th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
[...] The blogging session chaired by Professor Ivor Gaber has kicked off a great deal of post-conference comment. Mary Honeyball MEP was filled with “some dread” about the conference before she arrived but in the end decided it was a good day with imaginative workshops, including the blogging session. “It was a good hour and a half and very good indeed to meet other bloggers,” says Mary. “Given that I get concerned about the disembodied nature of the blogosphere, the workshop provided a welcome opportunity to meet people and discuss issues face to face.” Dave Cole (dot org), who like Mary also contributed to the discussion during the blogging session, says the day was “pretty good” and kindly offers big thanks to the various organisers and volunteers. Dave has provided a comprehensive account of the discussions he attended and his views on what was said here. [...]
January 28th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Fair points Dave. PS I’m congratulating the organisers for getting out the crowds, but we need to be more ambitious – admittedly not everyone came for the wedge issues I mentioned and I guess I exaggerate about the hangover cure from the elections – conferences are places for people to come together rather than go out and campaign.
On CRB portability, we’d like ideas on what this could mean in more detail and how we could take this forward – and yeah…we’re not proposing to become a komsomol.
those warm fuzzy german words, they remind me of sociology classes. i guess we’re only at the gemeinsam stage!