“After the local election results we can perhaps see some glimmer of encouragement for Ed Miliband’s Labour Party,” he added.

Connolly was speaking just two days before Francoise Hollande clinched victory for the Socialists in the French presidential elections, a result, which “might just give us an idea of how much room for manoeuvre there is to construct an alternative response to the crisis”, he suggested.

It was to explore “the crisis”, its origins, ongoing nature and damaging effects, and to search for ways to respond, that had drawn people to the Yorkshire coast for two days of deliberation, called ‘Crisis, Markets and Protest’.

Survey

Will Brown kicked off proceedings with what Connolly described as “a tour de force”, a “comprehensive survey of the political scene and the circumstances that have led to it”.

Brown outlined how the crisis which has engulfed the world since 2008 has “left many people reeling on both left and right”.

“No-one has come out of the crisis looking sure-footed, nor as if they can confidently ride out the storms around us,” he said. “In every important area of politics, the world has been either in flux or in crisis, either in revolution or locked in contradictions without easy solutions.”

He described how national politics “in almost every corner of the world” has been altered in the last 18 months, how accepted tenets of economic policy and management have been brought into question, and how the balance of power in international politics has been tilted and transformed, the logic of international relations changed.

Brown focused specifically on the Euro crisis as exemplifying the complexities of the political and economic problems faced across the world, and the limits of austerity as a coherent response. “Indeed, perhaps, nowhere better reveals the depths of pre-crisis liberal hubris and post-crisis political sclerosis than the European Union,” he said.

“Although it has rightly been condemned as inept, the response of the EU to the growing crisis in Greece and other Eurozone economies has been hampered by genuinely difficult political problems,” he added.

As for the left, until now, it “has had few convincing arguments”, said Brown. “Critiques of austerity only really gain traction when alternatives become clearer – protests and saying ‘No’, however justified, are only the first step towards a more strategic view of political change.

“Europe is pinned between the logics of financial crisis and democratic popular opposition to austerity. In such a political impasse, real, lasting social harm is being inflicted on living standards and life-chances of the young, and on public services and collective provision.”

And the left searches for solutions, the danger of right wing extremism grows, as demonstrated by the success of Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale in the first round of the French elections. For now, the left can expect “only modest change”, said Brown. While the pressures on left leaders are real, capitulation would do lasting damage to social democracy around the world.

“Do we have a hope of finding a way through?” asked Eric Preston in the following discussion. For former MP Harry Barnes, the need, as always, was to play “a double game of working to save what we have while pushing for greater transformation”.

“We should remember the money made by the wealthy over the recent period is enough to pay off our debts,” he added. “There is mileage here that has to be used.”

Many also found encouragement in the visible signs of resistance, from the Occupy movement, to UK Uncut, to young people prepared to challenge the system. “People are trying to find ways forward,” as Barry Winter put it.

Others saw the apparent dislocation of these groups from the mainstream political process as a worrying sign, and a number bemoaned Labour’s “lack of a comprehensive rethink”.

Marketisation

In the second session Tony Parsons, Unison’s regional organiser for Leeds and the Labour Link coordinator for West Yorkshire, assessed the ongoing marketisation of public services under the Coalition government, focusing in particular on the NHS, education and local government.

“The Con Dems have austerity at the heart of their programme,” he said. “Their neo-liberalism goes hand-in-hand with privatisation.”

Looking at the health service, he argued that the recent Health and Social Care Act will open the NHS to the rigours of the market. He pointed out that the private patient income cap had been raised to 49 per cent, to generate income that can go back into the NHS, argue the Tories.

“But this creeping privatisation started under New Labour,” said Parsons. “And the income has not gone back in to help doctors, nurses and the NHS. It’s gone into private pockets.”

Private sector “qualified providers” will cherry pick profitable parts of the NHS, such as knee and hip operations, which will then be denied to NHS patients, while more services will be outsourced. What this means for communities, he said, is longer waiting times, and more people encouraged to pay for operations if they can afford to.

“It is not only a fundamental betrayal of NHS principles, but a con,” he said. “The people who can afford to will be forced to pay twice, and the people who can’t will lose out on care.

“The result is that the value of our taxes is depleting. It’s not just that our services are going, it’s that we are being ripped off for what we are already paying.”

In education, he argued that the government are sewing the seeds of social division through their relentless push for more academies and free schools, while staff face an erosion of their terms and conditions.

“This is leading to a two-tier provision of education and health care driven by the excuse of austerity. It amounts to a mass erosion of people’s social taxes. People should be saying, ‘What do we get?’ We should be getting more.”

In local government, said Parsons, Eric Pickles is getting the chance to fulfill the vision he first had when leading Bradford Council in the late 1980s, a vision of slimmed down local authorities, services “externalized” to the private sector, and councils shrunk to a solicitor and an accountant.

“Much of what used to be publically provided has already gone,” he said. “The Localism Bill is just the next stage.

“They talk about this as the ‘big society’ but it’s a big con. They sell it as a way of giving power to local people, co-ops and the third sector, but it lets the private sector in by the back door.

“You need serious resources to run public services and local communities can’t do that. The Tories’ third sector agenda pushes down costs onto the service users and workers, and in the end they aren’t any cheaper than when we pay for them out of the public purse.

“As a movement we need to raise issues,” he concluded. “We need to ask what people are paying and what services they are receiving for those taxes.

“Capitalism can get out of this crisis through austerity, if everybody takes it, but we’ll have a much lower standard of living. We have to put pressure on for an alternative. If not we face a disaster.”

Opposition

The search for that alternative began in session three, or at least people examined the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition movements that have sprung up so far, and looked at what role the Labour movement and the ILP can play.

Much of the discussion focused on the pros and cons of social media and new technology to protest movements, a discussion highlighted by the arguments of the BBC’s Paul Mason and his book, Why it’s kicking off everywhere, and Malcolm Gladwell’s response to it in the New Yorker.

While Mason argues that the lack of hierarchy, or a coherent ideology, among new protest movements, plus their “free hit” of unmediated knowledge through peer-to-peer social media, makes it possible for them to imagine the end of capitalism, Gladwell suggests such networks are inadequate and superficial, that they rarely lead to “high-risk political activism” and ultimately lack the discipline to think through and enact strategies for systemic change.

The following discussion ranged over the merits and drawbacks of each argument but coalesced on a discussion of how the ILP should relate to protests. For one delegate, the three areas of coalition reform around the NHS, education and local government were priorities while others thought we should highlight changes to the world of work.

Another echoed Parsons in urging the organisation to push the message about public services. “The public purse has been stolen,” he said. “It’s literally been given away.”

The weekend ended with an open and enthusiastic discussion of how to celebrate the ILP’s 120th anniversary next year, how to most suitably remember the obstacles faced by our founders and pioneers in the 1890s, and recommit ourselves to their struggle.

Among the many proposals and suggestions, something became clear – it wasn’t just the recent local elections that gave this group a “glimmer of encouragement”, but our sense of the past as inspiration and, for all the depth of the crisis, a sense of the future as hope.

–

Read an updated version of Will Brown’s talk, ‘The crisis, Europe and the left’, here.
Why it’s kicking off everywhere: The new global revolutions, by Paul Mason, is published by Verso, priced £12.99.
‘Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted‘ by Malcolm Gladwell, was published in the New Yorker.

Many thanks to Mike Wadsworth for photography.

The acts include Les Jones and Friends of the Beech, The Madonnnas, and the Bourbon Street Preachers. 8pm till late. £5  or £3 concessions.

Further details from Hilary: 0161 224 1747

The International Brigades Memorial Trust is “keeping alive the memory and spirit of the men and women who volunteered to defnd democracy in Spain from 1936 to 1939.

More information: www.international-brigades.org.uk

Eighty-six years ago, Britain was in the grip of its first and only general strike – which ran from 4-13 May 1926.

It started with coal miners, who were fighting a long-running dispute over the introduction of longer working hours and a pay cut. Transport workers, dockers, printers and others joined the action in solidarity.

As a 20-year-old member of the Independent Labour party, Hetty Bower from Hackney in East London, supported the strikers. She is now 106 years old, but remembers it vividly.

Click here for an interview with Hatty on the BBC website.

Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and capitulations in recent years. But a review of the events of the past 18 months, and longer, show a world still in the midst of deep, intractable economic and political problems.

Indeed, it is a period that has left many people reeling on both left and right. No-one has come out of the crisis looking sure-footed, nor as if they can confidently ride out the storms around us. In every important area of politics the world has been either in flux or in crisis, either in revolution or locked in contradictions without easy solutions.

New ground is being broken in national political circumstances in almost every corner of the world, while fundamental and basic challenges have emerged to established approaches to economic policy, regulation and governance. It is also apparent that we are living through historic and potentially very perilous changes in the contours of international politics.

Each of these changes are the outcomes of longer-running processes, dominated by phases of political and economic liberalisation and integration, of resistance and reaction to those, and the consequent upheavals they have set in train.

So far, faced with these developments, the political right, at least in those areas where it has got its act together (and that is not everywhere by any means), has responded by renewing market fundamentalism. Though both transformative and extremely damaging, this looks unlikely on current forecasts to resolve problems of growth, to say nothing of some of the deep-seated social and environmental problems we face.

The left, so far, has not articulated a clear response to the crisis. Hollande’s victory in France is the first sign of an electorally-successful response. For the left across Europe, a great deal rides on how his presidency pans out. Until now, it has been the right and not the left that has taken to heart Rham Emanuel’s quip that we should ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’.

In this review article, I will briefly flesh out the three areas of political change mentioned above – national change; economic challenges; and international politics. I will then set these within something of a longer time-span and examine them as the outcomes of longer processes of change. Finally, I’ll touch on the Euro crisis, which is not only of critical importance in and of itself, but exemplifies some of the many of the difficulties faced by us all, including the left.

Crisis and change in national politics

In almost every corner of the world we have seen accepted and relatively stable political systems thrown into question, either as a direct result of the financial crisis and its aftermath or as a consequence of the complex interaction between this crisis, the period of liberalisation and growth that preceded it, and longer-running social and cultural changes within different countries.

A partial and incomplete tour might include the following, though you will have your own additions to make to this list.

Perhaps most dramatically, we’ve seen the demise of two long-standing authoritarian regimes in the Middle East under the impact of sustained popular protest; the removal by armed force (national and international) of the 40-year rule of Libya’s Colonal Gaddafi; and a sustained insurrection against Syria’s President Assad. Add to those the removal of Yemen’s President Saleh and protests in Bahrain, Jordan and Iran, and the picture is of seismic change in the region, even if some of the wilder hopes for democratic change made in 2011 now look badly overstated.

Although much under-reported in the west, as the ‘Arab Spring’ unfolded in 2011, there were also anti-regime protests in a dozen African countries south of the Sahara, challenging incumbent, ageing rulers.

In Europe, a succession of more peripheral countries – Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain – came under sustained economic pressure while Italy and, potentially, at least, France, were no great distance from economic crisis. Indeed, since the onset of the Euro crisis we’ve witnessed the removal of governments or heads of government in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Slovenia and Finland.

The main country doing things differently is Belgium (who said it was boring?). Having had more than 18 months with no government, it finally resolved its long-standing political stalemate in December last year. The BBC news website noted dryly that ‘it is thought the crisis in the Eurozone prompted the politicians to act’!

As we know, mass protest has confronted governments in Greece and Spain, where youth unemployment is estimated at 50%, while in Ireland mass migration has resumed since its economic bubble burst, 1% of the population leaving in 2011 alone. Italy’s economic woes saw the end – for now – of the long-running Berlusconi governmental farce. In Germany, the Chancellorship has often seemed paralysed between the competing pressures of European stability and domestic politics, even while economic growth has been maintained. And in France we wait to see what the centre-left’s return to power presages: crisis and accommodation to the European orthodoxy; or the start of a wider rethink among Europe’s elite.

Even in the United States, where growth had returned thanks to Central Bank actions, currency devaluation and Federal stimulus, we find a country politically paralysed by deep divisions between conservatives and liberals. It is a country barely coming to terms with the meltdown of the neoliberal economic model championed over the previous three decades, where there have been persistent attempts by the Republicans, under the influence of an increasingly extreme right wing, to derail Obama’s already inadequate stimulus and reform package. What had been a deep cultural divide at the heart of American politics has hardened into an economic stand-off and, at its most extreme, division over the legitimacy of federal government itself.

In China, the world’s other leading economy, the Communist Party faces a growing political challenge as it approaches its 10-yearly change of leadership, as its sole remaining claim to popular legitimacy – that it will deliver growth and rising living standards – has come into question. The first signs of slow-down in growth, mounting inequality and deep problems of political corruption, plus growing political divisions, all suggest the regime has a lot to contend with.

And in the UK, we have an ideologically-driven attack on long-standing core institutions of collective social provision, from the NHS, to education, to welfare; an economy pitched into a renewed recession; and a revitalised nationalist challenge to the continuation of the UK as a unitary state.

To have political crises on this scale in one or two countries would be noteworthy; to have them across the leading economies of the world at the same time is remarkable.

Economic change and challenge

To the fore in most of these political crises – or at least in the more developed economies of the world – is a crisis of economic policy and economic management. In most developed western economies we saw a two-fold response to the financial meltdown.

First, an initial state-centred and quasi-Keynesian response bailed out banks deemed ‘too big to fail’ and stimulated the economy to stave off a full-blown depression. However, largely as a result of the government deficits thus created, in most economies (the USA was a partial exception) these measures were replaced by a commitment to austerity that has seen governments across Europe adopt severe public sector cuts and privatisation.

Under the tyranny of the financial markets, few sitting politicians dare to question the need to cut budget deficits. Yet, by acting in the same manner all at once, Europe and, increasingly we can fear, America, are fulfilling a classic fallacy of composition: for each individual country, deficit cuts seem rational, even unavoidable, yet for all countries to do this at once risks eliminating any prospect for growth, recovery, and ultimately any prospect of deficit reduction, ostensibly the purpose of the cuts in the first place.

The financial markets too, are increasingly schizophrenic – they demand belt-tightening from everyone, then, as output falls and debt remains high, panic because there is no prospect of economic growth.

Writing in New Left Review, the German academic Wolfgang Streeck argued that this policy cul-de-sac is the result of decades in which governments sought to buy off dissent by increasing debt.

For Streeck, there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of western countries between democracy and capitalism. On the one hand, we have democratic pressures from the population pushing in some vague, general way towards social justice – at least in the form of demanding jobs, growth, and rising living standards. On the other, there is the logic of capitalism which, though it delivers growth, faces periodic episodes of crisis and adjustment. The capitalist response to economic problems is to drive down living standards and state provision, bringing it into direct conflict with democratic pressures.

In the post-Second World War era, says Streeck, ‘no democratic government dared to impose on its society another economic crisis of the dimension of the Great Depression of the 1930s, as punishment for the excesses of a deregulated financial sector’.

For a time they didn’t have to and combinations of economic growth, inflation, government debt and private debt all played a role in massaging this underlying conflict in liberal democracies.

According to this analysis, the immediate responses of governments to the financial crisis resulted in a mushrooming of public debt, followed by an imposition of austerity measures across the developed world and a severe decline in living standards. The political sustainability of this strategy remains in question, however, and suggests, according to Streeck, that ‘the political manageability of democratic capitalism [as a whole] has sharply declined’. If true, the long-term consequences are of the utmost importance.

As a result, a whole series of renewed conflicts have emerged. These include conflicts between governments and financial markets, as the former try to assure the latter of their fiscal rectitude in order for the latter to keep lending to governments to pay for the debts incurred in saving the banks; and they include conflicts between populations and governments over the adoption and implementation of austerity packages, not least in Greece and Spain.

On a wider stage, political tensions between countries worsen as they each face domestic political upheaval and find themselves locked in a cul-de-sac of economic orthodoxy.

Systemic change in international politics

The Financial Times columnist, Gideon Rachman, has argued that contemporary economic turbulence and political upheaval mean that the world is moving from an era of liberal optimism to an era of anxiety. He says:

‘…the economic crisis that struck the world in 2008 has changed the logic of international relations. It is no longer obvious that globalisation benefits all the world’s major powers. It is no longer clear that the United States faces no serious international rivals. And it is increasingly apparent that the world is facing an array of truly global problems – such as climate change and nuclear proliferation – that are causing rivalry and division between nations. After a long period of cooperation, competition and rivalry are returning to the international system. A win-win world is giving way to a zero-sum world.’

In his book, Zero-Sum World, Rachman argues that we have lived through three phases of domestic and international politics since the 1970s.

The first he terms ‘an age of transformation’ which ran roughly from 1978 to 1991. That is from the onset of liberalisation, through Deng’s ‘four modernisations’ China in 1978, to the rise of the new right with Thatcher and Reagan in the west, through to the end of the Cold War and the proclamation of a new world order after the Gulf War in 1991.

Within this period we not only saw programmes of liberalisation in the developed world, not least in finance, but also an increasingly rapid opening up of the communist bloc, and the first major moves towards economic liberalisation in India. Alongside these oft-quoted changes, Rachman also notes the rapid political liberalisation of Latin America, with 16 countries moving towards some form of liberal democracy within a decade.

The final demise of the Soviet Union left the world at the start of the 1990s in what has been termed its ‘unipolar moment’ with the USA as the leading economy enjoying unquestioned military dominance. This ushered in what Rachman calls an ‘age of optimism’ which ran from the early 1990s to the financial crisis of 2008. In this period there was more overt and widespread neoliberal dominance of policy, even if, under the third way of Clinton and Blair, this was tempered by greater attention to social problems than under Thatcher and Reagan.

The achievements were not negligible: growth in India and China meant some 200 million Chinese people were lifted out of poverty and the proportion of India’s population living in absolute poverty declined from 60% to 40%. Britain had its longest ever period of uninterrupted growth which allowed space for some important investment in public services. And yet, we also saw the corporate world increasing its reach deep into the heart of western states, while, as we know, the age of optimism in general was built on false foundations.

The origins of the financial crisis lay in changes that were put in place both by the centre-right in the age of transformation, and by the centre-left and right in the age of optimism.

Now, says Rachman, a new ‘age of anxiety’ is upon us as the economic crisis dovetails with a series of quite profound changes in the global balance of power. The rise of China and India are the most dramatic of these, but there are also a series of more regional, authoritarian challengers to western liberal dominance, from Russia and Iran to Venezuela. Even established democracies such as India, Brazil and South Africa are proving less reliable allies than they once were to western liberal states.

As a result, we have, according to Rachman, a coming together of regional and global problems at a time when the room for international cooperation has been squeezed. In the age of optimism, prolonged economic growth provided a permissive context for international cooperation. A plethora of new agreements of regional and international scope were formed as part of a burgeoning architecture for international economic governance, albeit of a distinctly neoliberal hue.

‘This was an era when there was plenty of everything to go around,’ Rachman claims, ‘plenty of economic growth, plenty of oil, plenty of scope to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.’

Now, much of that is in question. It is not hard to see why. With a growing economy, all countries can expect a larger slice of the cake and worry less about what others are getting. In a stagnant or very slow growing world economy, the size of the cake is fixed and the potential for conflict grows. Gains for one state often mean losses for another, the very definition of a zero-sum conflict.

The Eurozone

Although many areas of international politics are now perilously poised, some of the difficulties I have covered are exemplified by the Euro crisis. Indeed, perhaps, nowhere better reveals the depths of pre-crisis liberal hubris and post-crisis political sclerosis than the European Union.

Prior to the crisis, and in the wake of the launch of the Euro, some commentators claimed Europe represented an exemplar of modern international cooperation and liberalisation. As Rachman noted, Europe was transformed in the post-war years from a place that people fled from to a largely peaceful continent which a steady stream of new countries, and people, wanted to join. The EU as a whole became the largest economy in the world, the biggest market for Chinese exports and the biggest destination for US overseas investment. As with so many other areas, the crisis has cruelly exposed the weaknesses which lay behind these optimistic views.

Central to the Euro crisis is the struggle over what to do about government deficit and debt. In countries that have their own currency, these problems are resolved by spending less and earning more. The former occurs through government expenditure cuts, austerity, lower wages; the latter through improved competitiveness (which partly comes through wage cuts and efficiency gains), and through currency devaluation.

In the Eurozone, currency devaluation is not possible, and the alternative route – transfers of money from richer Eurozone countries to poorer ones – has been largely ruled out by Germany. This leaves Europe with a single policy response: austerity alone.

Indeed, as early as 2009, several countries – France, Spain, Greece, Ireland – were ordered by the EU to reduce their deficits by cutting public expenditure. All of these countries, partly for reasons to do with the crisis, and partly for longer-standing reasons, were breaking Eurozone rules on government deficit and debt levels.

EU scrutiny of government figures led to revelations about Greece’s national accounts which had hidden huge irregularities dating from Greece’s accession to the Euro. The first in a long-running succession of negotiations resulted in a bail-out package in 2010, funded by the EU and the International Monetary Fund, followed not long after by similar packages for Ireland and Portugal.

All of these attempts to shore up the Euro were based on austerity, meaning that dealing with debt problems was being laid at the door of the populations of these countries through reduced wages, lost jobs, less welfare and cut services.

By mid-2011 concern had spread to Spain and Italy where the European Central Bank intervened to help reduce the cost of government borrowing and later to supply cheap money to banks who were struggling to cover bad loans or raise finance on the money markets.

As noted, in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy, dealing with the crisis, reassuring financial markets and pledging commitments to the IMF, EU and the ECB entailed the removal from office of elected leaders. Two of their replacements – Papademos in Greece and Mario Monti in Italy – joined Mario Dragi, head of the ECB as a triumvirate of former Goldman Sachs employees at the very top of European politics.

But the politics of the crisis has extended well beyond turmoil in the countries concerned. Although it has rightly been condemned as inept, the response of the EU to the growing crisis in Greece and other Eurozone economies has been hampered by genuinely difficult political problems.

The key problem for economies not in crisis – Germany in particular – is that they want to leave the responsibility for dealing with deficits to the countries concerned, and their populations, yet know that if those countries fail to act in the desired way, and default or exit from the Euro, it will have severe effects on their own economies causing falling exports and rising interest rates and unemployment.

Caught in this dilemma, the EU has lurched from crisis talks to crisis talks, with outsiders – the IMF’s Christine Lagard, the UK and even the US and Chinese governments – urging Europe to get its act together. At each stage EU leaders have pledged to be tough on recipients of bail-outs, at each turn knowing that commitments to austerity mean real sustained political conflict in the countries concerned, and at each stage knowing that default would have dramatic consequences on the whole world economy.

The consequences of all this affect the Eurozone as a whole: at its summit in December, 25 EU members agreed to a fiscal pact that, if implemented, will legally entrench austerity at the heart of the EU.

The on-going struggle over the deficits has seen repeated mass protests in Spain and Greece, in particular. In Greece’s case, European leaders eventually accepted that some of the debt reduction would have to come from the lenders – the banks – recognising the power of popular opposition to austerity. The BBC’s Paul Mason even claimed that ‘By hitting the streets, Greek people were able to force Europe to impose losses on the bankers’.

Nevertheless, the package of measures eventually agreed was draconian in its impact, ensuring that the population would bear the long-term brunt of changes. Advances by the left in the Greek election have put even this painfully-negotiated response in doubt. As one investment analyst put it in The Guardian on 8 May: ‘The irresistible force of German austerity has clashed with the immovable object of Greek popular resistance’.

Some sense of the visceral anger of the young unemployed in Spain is gained from this anecdote from the Open University academic, Georgina Blakeley. The Indignados movement has mobilised millions of Spaniards against austerity and in condemnation of a corrupt, unaccountable, remote political system. Showing typical arrogance and condescension, many in the political elite and media dismissed the protesters as having no relevance and no alternative proposals to put forward. Excluded from political influence and denied a voice up to that point, the retort from the protestors was telling: ‘Those who have never asked us anything, now ask us for proposals!’.

This is emblematic of a much wider sense of deep anger that exists in Europe and elsewhere. People who have had no role in creating the crisis are being asked to pay for the mistakes of others in lost livelihoods, jobs and welfare. Those excluded from circles of power are only allowed a voice if they can offer solutions to problems created by others. And entire populations – particularly in Greece – are condemned by outsiders in the most xenophobic terms for the faults of their corrupt leaders, a corruption in which those very outsiders, bankers, politicians and media, were themselves complicit.

Crisis and the left

The crisis in the Eurozone, and elsewhere, shows little sign of easy resolution. But elections in France, Greece and Italy on 7 May have moved the debate into a new phase. Up until this point, the political right had been entirely dominant, calling the shots and at each turn reverting to its default position of austerity, whipping up fear that anything else will spook the markets. So far this strategy has shown no clear way out of crisis as growth stalls and the markets remain jittery.

Until now the left has had few convincing arguments. Notwithstanding the indignation of Spanish protestors, critiques of austerity only really gain traction when alternatives become clearer – protests and saying ‘No’, however justified, are only the first step towards a more strategic view of political change.

Europe is pinned between the logics of financial crisis and democratic popular opposition to austerity. In such a political impasse, real, lasting social harm is being inflicted on living standards and life-chances of the young, and on public services and collective provision.

Without an alternative from the left, the danger from right wing extremism grows. The first round of the French elections was another reminder that bad economic conditions have rarely gifted the left an advantage in any straightforward way. Indeed, alongside gains for the left in France and Greece were gains for the right – a fifth of the electorate in France and Greece voted for extreme right wing parties.

Given the depths of the economic problems, and the intransigent position of Germany, the room for manoeuvre is extremely limited. The prospects for any emergent Greek government are most constrained. Unless the wider European consensus shifts, it is hard to see Greece remaining in the Euro.

For Hollande, a realistic assessment is that only modest change can be expected from ‘Monsieur Normal’ in the short term. Indeed, small successes may be the best hope, building a basis from which a more widespread shift in European policy can be argued for and, in the German elections of 2013, campaigned for.

By contrast, crisis and collapse in France, as happened under Mitterrand in 1983, will do huge damage to social democratic prospects elsewhere in Europe. The stakes are high indeed.

–

This is an edited version of a talk given at the ILP’s Weekend School, ‘Crisis, Markets and Protest’, in Scarborough on 5-6 May 2012.

Gideon Rachman’s Zero-Sum World is published by  Atlantic Books, priced £20.

Wolfgang Streeck’s article in New Left Review is available here.

The Nelson ILP Clarion House is the sole survivor of the early socialist Clarion movement that existed to propagate views for a fairer, more humane society, and it will be marking its centenary by celebrating its survival as a monument to a once thriving part of the Labour movement.

Over time, hundreds of Clarion Houses around the country have closed or become private buildings. In 2011 the last remnants of the Clarion at Chevin End above Menston was legally wound up.

But a dedicated group have kept the Nelson Clarion on Jinny Lane, Newchurch-in-Pendle open and serving refreshments every Sunday to passing ramblers and cyclists who meet with local socialists and relax in a setting that still openly supports socialist views.

There are many costs involved in keeping this unique ‘monument to a movement’ in good repair, but it is too important a part of our Labour history to lose.

The centenary activities will start on Saturday 11th August with a walk at 10.30am from the former Nelson Socialist Institute in Vernon Street (National Grid Reference SD861 373, approximate postcode BB9 9DE) to Clarion House. The walk, led by Sue Nike, the chair of the Land Society, will follow the path most ‘Nelsoners’ would have taken, via Carr Road, Carr Hall Road and Noggarth Top. The exact route will depend on the weather and prevailing ground conditions.

If you can’t make the start of the walk or you want a shorter walk, you can meet up with Sue along the way – at the car park adjacent to Victoria Park, or the cafe at ‘Noggarth Top’ (the view and bacon butties will make your wait worthwhile). Come properly equipped for the walk.

Former MP Ann Cryer will be present in the afternoon and will probably have a few words to say. Ann is the daughter of an ILP activist and the granddaughter of a leading suffragette. She was the Member of Parliament for Keighley from 1997 until 2010.

Organisers intend to stage a shorter walk too to visit the cottage at Thorneyholme Square which was the first Nelson Clarion House, known to be in use from 1899. They’ll also visit Nabs House, (the second Nelson Clarion House) in use from 1893 until the present Clarion House was opened.

On Sunday 12th August veteran cyclists, riding bikes from 1912, or thereabouts, will set off from Oakhill College in Whalley at 10.00am aiming to arrive at ILP Clarion House about noon. Hopefully, they’ll be joined there by members of Clarion Cycling Club groups, as well as other cyclists.

Others can arrive at Clarion House under their own steam, or by the local bus – try a web search for ‘Pendle Witch Hopper’.

If coming by car, note that parking facilities are limited and will be quickly occupied during open weekend, although there are car parking facilities for £1 (including toilets and cafe) close by at Barley (NGR SD825 404, approximate postcode BB12 9JX). There’ll be an escorted stroll from the car park at Barley to Clarion House at 10.30am on Sunday 12th.

Passengers with mobility issues should be set them down close to Clarion House, before cars are parked at Barley. There are a number of approximately one-mile routes which avoid roads.

There are also a few spaces by the river near the ‘Happy Valley’ crossroads (NGR SD836 399). It is half a mile to Clarion House from there.

There are also a couple of places on Jinney Lane, west of Clarion house towards Newchurch-in-Pendle, and east in the Roughlee direction. Please avoid blocking drives, farm gates and causing a problem to our neighbours and other road users.

A CD with further information about the early days of Nelson ILP and the Clarion House can be purchased from Clarion House and a limited number of Clarion House Centenary Badges will be on sale.

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More information from the Clarion website: www.clarionhouse.org.uk

Click here to download a centenary poster.

Clarion House will feature on BBC’s Countryfile on Sunday 15 April 2012.

Time: 1.30 pm
Date: May Day, Monday 7^th May
Venue: North East Derbyshire District Council, Saltergate, Chesterfield
Chair: Ken Curran : Chair of Sheffield Co-operative Party
Speakers: Paul Salveson, secretary of Hannah Mitchell Foundation and author of Socialism With A North Accent
Barry Winter, chair of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation and author of The ILP: Past & Present

At the start of the meeting Rosie Smith and Geoffrey Mitchell (Hannah’s grandson) will explain the significance of Hannah Mitchell.

You can read more about Hannah Mitchell and the Foundation here.

Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a hearing.

In the UK, the coalition is using the recession to fast-forward radical changes to work and the public sector, including health and education. The crisis is being used as an opportunity to marketise society still further, extending the very processes that led us into recession.

We are also witnessing changes in the public mood: at times hostile to those deemed to be welfare scroungers; at times angry at the greed and insensitivity of bankers when there is growing hardship and unemployment.

New forms of politics and protest are, quite effectively, highlighting many of these injustices. They are pointing the finger at those whose privileges, prosperity and power still prevail despite mounting inequality nationally and globally. They are raising questions of justice, morality and accountability that need to be heard if the crisis is not to be resolved by punishing the poor.

How do we play our part in this process? What can we contribute to a coherent left alternative? Can we make ‘Our Politics’ play a constructive part in these turbulent times?

We invite you to explore these questions at the ILP’s weekend school in Scarborough on Saturday 5th to Sunday 6th May.

The programme for weekend is as follows:

Saturday 5th May
2.30pm – Chair’s welcome
Session 1 – The Crisis so Far: Introduction and general discussion
Session 2 – Forward March of Marketisation Accelerated

Sunday 6th May
10.00am – Some time to continue Session 2
Session 3 –  Protests and Opposition
Session 4 – 120th Anniversary of the ILP 1893-2013
1.00pm – Close

The following is some suggested background reading:

• an interview with Ursula Huws on capitalist crisis and opportunity
• an article by Melissa Benn, author of School Wars
• an article by Malcolm Gladwell on protest and new technology

The ‘round table discussion’ will take place at the Esplanade Hotel.
Accommodation for Saturday 5th May costs £25 for members and Friends, and £30 for non-members. Any additional nights are £44.

Email info@independentlabour.org.uk for a booking form.

The Esplanade Hotel
Belmont Road
Scarborough
YO11 2AA
Tel. 01723 360382
Email: enquiries@theesplanade.co.uk

View Map

We are doing this, first, because the last edition was published in our centenary year, 1993, which makes it rather dated, and secondly, because there is a growing interest in our history among political activists, Labour politicians and academics. So this seems like a good time to proceed.

To help with the process, we are publishing the whole of the original pamphlet on the website and we hope readers will take the opportunity to respond and comment on the material.

This is the last of six sections and deals with the ILP in the 1980s, the Thatcher years and conflicts within the Labour Party. The instalments are supplemented by a series of ‘side stories’, boxed out material from the original pamphlet which highlight some important aspects of the ILP’s journey. All extracts are available from our History page.

It is then over to anyone who wishes to respond to do so. This will help us to enrich what we hope will be a moving account of how different generations of people have sought to build a better society.

Of course, if you wish to purchase the printed version of the pamphlet, complete with images and historical photographs, you can do so from our publications page – we still have a few copies left.

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The ILP: Past & Present

The Thatcher years

Under James Callaghan, the Labour government came to a humiliating end in 1979. Its defeat followed a fierce battle with public service workers in the 1978/79 ‘winter of discontent’. The Labour government, which had won office five years earlier promising a partnership with the unions, came to grief trying to impose a stringent pay deal on some of the county’s most poorly-paid trade unionists.

Under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, the Tories campaigned to defeat the organised working class, to curb the unions and to give vent to free markets forces in an effort to stimulate economic growth.

The Thatcher regime is often seen as marking a clear break with post-war consensus politics based on full employment, Keynesian economic management and expanding welfare provision. But this masks the way in which the previous Labour government had begun the process. It was a Labour government which laid the basis for this swing to the right, not least by singling out the unions as the major cause of the country’s economic ills.

Indeed, the Labour opposition found that whenever they tried to criticise the Thatcher government’s policies, Tory ministers easily rebutted them. The Tories simply recited Labour’s own record in office.

What Labour had done under pressure – cuts in the health service, social services and in local government, monetarism, selling public assets – the Tories undertook with vigour and a new ideological zeal. for there reasons, the ILP argued that past Labour governments had in effect acted as the political midwives to ‘Thatcherism’.

Internal Strife

Labour’s election defeat led to a period of bitter in-fighting. The Labour right tried to shift much of the blame for the result onto the actions of public sector unions in the winter of discontent. This conveniently overlooked how for three years trade union leaders delivered wage restraint. Only when they could no longer resist the pressure from hard-pressed union members did this change. The right also ignored the Labour government’s own record and the damage that it had done.

In return, the left concentrated its fire upon the undemocratic nature of the party and lack of accountability of MPs and party leaders. A momentum for reform developed within the party and in this heady and sometimes exciting atmosphere, many on the left expected far too much from these reforms. They saw them as providing a short-cut to transforming the party.

They seemed to believe that if mandatory selection and leadership elections were introduced, right-wing MPs would be replace wholesale by left-wingers. In other words, they acted as if the left were poised for a genuine victory and that this would win support in the working class and in the wider society. Perhaps this optimism derived from the greater flexibility of the block vote. A small group of key trade union leaders were for a time more open to persuasion from the left. This outlook was reinforced when leader right-wingers broke away to set the Social Democratic Party. The social democrats also seemed to believe that now that the block vote was not so easily at their disposal the game was up for the Labour right.

At the same time, many left wingers began to favour the block vote because it appeared to be working in their interests. The ILP regarded this not only as lacking in principle but politically short-sighted. For the ILP, no fundamental political change could take place in the party if it rested on the block vote’s paper battalions. Political transformation would take decades. It had to be based on a real, large-scale grass roots movement and not a thin layer of activists.

The ILP’s political differences with an increasingly confident Bennite left coalition, organised for a time in the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, came to a head in response to the right-wing counter attack. The Bennite left pinned its hopes for changing the party upon constituency delegates who they saw as more radical than the wider membership and therefore more likely to remove offending right-wing MPs.

Once the Labour right knew that they could no longer resist mandatory selection of MPs by constituency delegates, they argued that it should be on the basis of one party member, one vote. They hoped that the less radical members would outvote the ‘activists’. Correctly seeing this as a cynical device to blunt the left’s progress, the Bennites countered by insisting that such decisions should be in the hands of constituency delegates.

The ILP stood almost alone on the left at this time in arguing that it was very wrong to oppose the principle of one member, one vote. To do so, it argued was to abandon the moral high ground. Moreover, before any real change could be contemplated individual party members had to be won. If the left could not convince the party membership of its views then it could no hope to win wider public support.

For these reasons, the ILP proposed that one member, one vote should be embraced as a principle. All party members who had attended at least three branch meeting in the preceding 12 months should be eligible to vote. Such a reform would also help to encourage a more informed, participatory membership.

But this was not the ILP’s only difference with the Bennite current. Sadly, in their enthusiasm to wrest control of the party from the right, many of that left ignored the fact that what was going on in the party did not really reflect developments in the wider labour movement, still less among the working class which was becoming increasingly disturbed by those inner-party conflicts (as the election results were to show).

Attempts by the ILP to warn the left of its increasing isolation, and of the need to adopt a less confrontational approach on party reform, were angrily dismissed by them as a sign of political weakness. To suggest that for socialists the block vote was something of a problem, rather than the way forward, was treated as heresy.

In these inner-party battles, the Bennite left appeared to carry all before it, securing mandatory selection and, at the special Wembley conference in 1981, an electoral college with the highest proportion of votes going to the trade unions. But for the ILP, these apparent victories contained the seeds of the subsequent undoing of the Bennite movement. It allowed space for a right-wing counter attack and for the introduction of one member, one vote by postal ballot.

In resisting one member, one vote the Bennites lost a great deal of credibility and allowed the Labour right to reclaim some lost ground. Tony Benn’s bid for the deputy leadership in 1981 was narrowly defeated but it became increasingly clear the block votes cast for him did not reflect the views of the union membership – quite the contrary. The ILP considered that the Bennite ft had built its house on shifting sands, that it had no mass support and that as a result it would begin to crumble under the impact of external events.

Eric Preston argued in the ILP publication, Labour in Crises, that the ILP does not want its “politics to be dependent on the manipulation of the block vote. We are not out to secure 51 per cent of the votes of imaginary people in an effort to introduce an individual into any position of authority. We cannot achieve what we are about by some transient change which reflects noting very much elsewhere in the movement.

“If we are to achieve socialism, it will be the result of a long and complex struggle to root socialist ideas and practices among a large and growing party membership. And when that had been achieved, we must anticipate an equally long and hard struggle to win majority support for socialist measures among the wider labour movement and the working class.

“The process is neither as chronological nor as mechanistic as this outline suggests. But the salient point is that the building starts within the Labour Party and necessitates some coherent, reasonably disciplined and avowed socialist political organisation or organisations, determined to work democratically for the long term goal of a Labour Party and a Labour Party leadership committed to socialist polices.”

Neil Kinnock’s Leadership

It was the shock of the 1983 general election defeat, when Labour’s total vote slumped dramatically, which led to a major split in the Bennite left. The ’soft’ left regrouped round the newly-elected party leader, Neil Kinnock. Confident of their own strength and influence, they saw themselves as being well-placed to ensure that he remained on the left.

In contrast, the ‘hard’ left, now led by the recently-formed Campaign Group of MPs, identifies Neil Kinnock as the enemy who had to be exposed. They saw their purpose as rallying the opposition to the new leadership, warning party members that he did not represent their political outlook and that he would betray them. In their world, what stands between the Labour Party and a socialist Labour government, is a leadership that refuses to embrace radical left policies and take them to the people.

The ILP suggested a quite different approach to both. It saw the election of Neil Kinnock as a sign of the serious crises gripping the party; that labour’s long-term failure to politicise its support in society now meant it was in a trap of its own making.

In the circumstances, should Labour leaders try to move the party to the left in a society hostile to left ideas, when it would be defeated. On the other hand, if in trying to win electoral support Labour moved to the right, this would reinforce public hostility to radical ideas and undermine the party’s long term prospects.

For these reasons, the ILP did not share the optimism of those soft lefts who thought they could keep Neil Kinnock on a radical course. It was far more likely that those who tried to do so would become prisoners of the constraints that were acting upon him. Events would influence them far more than they would influence events.

Nor did the ILP believe that the party leader was unrepresentative of the party membership. Instead it stressed that Neil Kinnock reflected the feelings and aspirations of the broad membership far more than the left did. Therefore appeals to party members to change the leadership would be self-defeating. They would only isolate the left from the wider membership who desperately wanted a Labour victory. This would only strengthen the party leadership’s grip. For that reason, the ILP did not support the Benn-Heffer leadership challenge in 1987 when the hard left suffered a massive defeat.

Under Neil Kinnock’s leadership, policies which were seen as being electorally unpopular were dumped. The party leader strained every nerve to ensure that nothing that might disturb the voters would remain and, assisted by the block vote, he fought a tough fight to impose his political authority on the party.

The ILP and the Left

During the Kinnock years, the ILP continued to develop in ways that were quite distinctive from much of the Labour left. This did not come from any partisan desire to be different simply for the sake of it. Rather, it was because it found very few who shared its political perspectives on the Labour Party and social change. As a result, the ILP’s campaigns, politics and style often set it apart, although, wherever possible, it tried to establish a dialogue with others.

On Northern Ireland, on the register of party groups and Militant, on resisting cuts in local government, on black sections, on defence and nuclear disarmament for example, it often differed radically from both the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ left approaches.

The ILP also threw its energies into supporting the miners strike of 1984/5. It campaigned vigorously against the Tories youth training scheme and for a labour movement boycott. It was one of the first groups to organise the opposition to the poll tax: seeking to unite those willing to undertake civil disobedience with those unwilling to risk illegality.

In the process, the ILP began to attract a new generation of members firmly committed to socialism but who recognised that socialists operate in a hostile conservative culture. Socialists who support the Labour Party but who are critical of the way that Labour leaderships having failed to challenge social conservatism have thereby reinforced it. Socialists who identify with what is sometimes called the ‘third road’ socialism which combines parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means to social change.

The ILP has sought to appeal to those who recognise the need for political coherence as well as concern for the human condition and who believe that that morality is an essential ingredient of socialist politics, including class politics.

For them, the demise of what passed for socialism in Eastern Europe, the crisis of the labour movement in Britain, are not taken as signs that socialism is a lost cause but that it needs to be renewed on more solid foundations from the base upwards. A new kind of socialist politics needs to be created.

Of course, that is easier said than done. The crucial question then is how is it to be done. For the ILP, there are no simple blueprints. No political group has all the answers but we can begin to outline what a renewed socialist movement might look like.

1993 and Beyond

As ILP members began to approach their centenary year, they felt that it was necessary to do more than commemorate the event. It was also felt to be vital to assess the scale of the task now facing socialists in the coming decades. This meant acknowledging the sad truth that many aspects of socialism are in crisis (even though the term ‘crisis’ is much overused).

The crisis has many origins. But much can be attributed to historic failure of the labour movement to politically educate its support among the working class. People have been starved of any understanding of the nature of capitalism and fed instead on the ideological outpourings of the right-wing forces in our society. People are wary of anything that smacks of politics and afraid of anything that is defined as extremist.

In other words, the gulf between socialists and the working class is a wide one. The question is how to bridge it: how to take socialist politics to people; how to make it relevant and relate to their concerns and activities; how to win respect and trust, if not outright agreement; how to win friends and allies among people who will not, for whatever reason, wish to join; how to make a moral appeal.

None of this assumes a high level of class consciousness. Indeed, it assumes the opposite. But it does recognise that a huge potential exists.

For these reasons, the ILP is to relaunch itself in 1993 to contribute towards that process. This means that it is taking up a challenge similar to that faced by the socialist pioneers. In a sense, this means we are starting all over again. But in doing so, we can draw upon a century of experience.

Of course, none of this is enough. We also need to understand the world if we are to change it. Part of that understanding, however, can draw strength and encouragement from the ILP and more particularly from the many thousands of women and men who in spite of the odds, not only saw the need to change the world but did something positive about it.

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Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
ILP History 3: Labour’s Rise and Disaffiliation
- Strongholds of the ILP
ILP History 4: War and After
- Internationalism: The ILP in War and Peace
ILP History 5: Labour in the 70s
- Issues of the Day

“There is much in the British socialist tradition that has been forgotten or ignored, and which runs counter to state centralism, in particular a stress on grass-roots solutions, co-operation and an emphasis on local culture. Applied imaginatively, these traditions open up the possibility of creating a popular democratic culture which reflects different but complementary regional and national identities.”

Paul Salveson’s aim in his new book, Socialism with a Northern Accent, is to uncover some of the lost radical traditions which he believes are largely specific to northern England, or ‘the North of England’, as he would have it. In doing so he strives to make the case for a renewal of popular socialism based on devolution and a reconnection with the tradition’s local and regional roots.

Starting almost 200 years ago at the Peterloo Massacre, Salveson traces the development of what he calls “the heroic age of northern socialism”, sketching local events and leading characters who played important roles in movements such as Chartism, radical Liberalism, co-operatives, Clarion clubs, ramblers, municipal reformers and the Independent Labour Party across northern England.

At the core of his book is a call for a return to the “decentralist and democratic values” of the early ILP, and its emphasis on “ethics, community and culture”, aspects of socialism which slipped from view and influence through the 20th century as centralism became dominant and the top-down, “Webb model” of social democracy was embedded in the Labour movement.

The answer, he asserts in the book’s final section, is not just to rebuild a radical regional identity in the north, but to create a directly elected regional government.

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Socialism with a Northern Accent: Radical traditions for modern times, by Paul Salveson, is published by Lawrence & Wishart, price £14.99.

A full review of the book will follow.

More on Paul Salveson and the Hannah Mitchell Foundation.

More on the history of the ILP.

Stears began by explaining that he is seeking a meeting point between theory and practice in contemporary centre-left politics.

Following the fall of Gordon Brown, the Labour Party began to rethink its politics, and he organised a series of seminars at Oxford University involving professional politicians, activists and academics.

The discussions became more public than he had imagined, particularly those around Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour. The whole thing became a media phenomenon, he said, and in the process the broader discourse was besmirched.

In this talk he sought to revisit some of the ideas raised in the earlier conversations before they became popularised or bastardised, depending on how you see it. The discussions raised some penetrating questions for contemporary, social democratic thought, and he is now seeking to focus those ideas on the recent Occupy movement.

As the participants at the Oxford seminars saw it, the problem with third-way social democracy was its attempt to combine free market economics with residual egalitarian distribution: it was where Fabianism meets Hayek. The Fabian side remained committed to egalitarian politics through the agency of the state; it recognised market failures and the inegalitarian outcomes from market forces. Together with tax credits, the aim was to make public services more equal but it became increasingly centralised and monitored heavily in the process.

New Labour’s third way, therefore, combined state centralism and free market economics. This bundle of ideas became British social democracy.

Stears argues that this combination was missing a dimension: experience, namely, how individuals and communities experience change. Something was missing from their politics, the explicitly experiential, or what Jon Cruddas calls the ‘romantic part’, the emotional and spiritual dimensions.

Relational politics

Stears drew on the work of the influential late 20th century philosopher, Martin Buber, who argued that there are two forms of human relationships: ‘I-It relationships’, and ‘I-You’ (or ‘I-Thou’) relationships in which people relate to each other as fellow human beings. In line with Polanyi, Buber argues that capitalism constantly pushes us into objectifying human relationships, treating other people as objects, and interacting as commodities not as colleagues or comrades. I-It relationships are means to an end, not ends in themselves.

Both modern capitalism and the modern state move in that direction, but Buber argues that this is not enough for human life. We need less controlling relationships, but both markets and states find that difficult. Human interaction is unpredictable and involves contingency but it can be richly rewarding. The I-It relationships of states and markets sap our emotional lives.

In Gordon Brown’s politics the relational and experiential dimension was absent; there was no solidarity or warmth, actions which generate risk. Yet, without these, the human spirit is destroyed.

Yet traditional socialist texts recognise the importance of fellowship. The sociologist, Emile Durkheim, for example, warns of the dangers of the state, which finds unpredictability difficult to cope with and attacks contingency, which is the stuff of life.

In The Acquisitive Society, Richard Tawney, like Durkheim, attacks market rationalism for generating a transactional mindset. Richard Titmuss wrote that the blood donor scheme worked best when it was based on voluntary consent: it generated a virtuous circle. Neither coercion by the state, nor monetary incentives through the market produced better outcomes.

Under New Labour, higher education was subjected to both state and market pressures. There was a constant state monitoring from above, while pressure from below came from students seeking customer satisfaction. In the process, New Labour forgot about the importance of the experience of higher education.

Place, time, organisation and power

It was when those involved in the Oxford discussions were considering how to restore the relational to politics that their deliberations went public. The ideas were reduced to a supposed longing to return to the cuddly 1950s, a nostalgic vision of the post-war past. But that is not how you build politically, not from some imaginary Britain.

So what are the preconditions for a politics of relationality? There are four components to this form of politics, according to Stears: place, time, organisation, and power.

Stears argued that it is easier for people to relate to politics through a particular place, whether that’s a street, a community or a university. Detached cosmopolitanism has little appeal for most people. In the politics of place there is room for nostalgia. Labour itself began within particular communities, and was associated with locality, local pride, and local trade union banners.

The social democratic Labour Party forgot about the importance of place, the need for distinctive local experience. Yet even multinationals with their branding strategies, identifying their products with particular places, recognise its significance.

The politics of time is also vital, he said. In late capitalism, many people are time-poor. Even in the workplace, there is much less socialising than in earlier periods. People sit all day in front of their computer screen and even eat alone at their desks.

Many people are forced to do two jobs to make a basic living which takes them away from family and friends. Hence the importance of the living wage campaign which has been successful, not because of the wage increases, as such, but because it frees up people to do other things. People don’t want to work all the time. Time is a precondition for effective social relationships. Family life and community is enhanced by living wage policies.

The politics of organisation is the most controversial of the four categories. Durkheim said that humans construct institutions that outlive us, that we develop long-term loyalties to organisations that are important.

Recent geographical research in Baltimore indicates that independent organisations have collapsed. Sports clubs, church groups, trade unions and so on, have ebbed away, leaving individuals increasingly isolated. The lack of organisations makes it much harder for people to interact, hence the growing importance of, and attention to, community organising in the US.

There is a pressing need to create effective organisations to re-stitch society together through social interaction. This particularly applies to working class life in the States.

Empowerment is also central to establishing effective political relations. People are able to relate when it is in their self interest; it provides them with the incentive to combine. As de Toqueville argued, this is about devolving decision making, not taking it away from people. Some kind of devolution of power is essential.

The politics of protest

Clearly public policy directly relates to these four dimensions. But how do these dimensions, which stress the importance of continuity, relate to the politics of protest?

Tradition may be the glue that holds people together. The philosopher, Alistair McIntyre, has argued that people need traditional communities so that they can relate to each other. But this approach has a deeply conservative bent, so more radical political forms are needed.

The Occupy movement has been a remarkable development. The problem with many cities in the UK is where to occupy. Occupy City of London was most effective because it set up camp where it could highlight the immense corporate power of banking and finance.

The actions of the camp captured imaginations and were about the politics of time as well as space – it involved people spending time together, camping and talking, not just being on a demonstration for a couple of hours.

When it comes to organisation and power, the Occupy movement was more problematic. Enamoured with spontaneity, the people involved have been unable to establish longer-term organisational forms.

In addition, while the movement raised important issues it did not identify precise demands that could be met immediately. To stay together politically you need to build effective relationships, make advances, and win more concrete power.

The four preconditions of relationality can be used to assess both local and national forms of struggle. It is not about pursuing one dimension of politics but of uncovering all relational possibilities.

Stears concluded that politics has to respond positively towards communities and their traditions – in contrast to the top-down politics of Fabianism and the Blair and Brown governments which were hyper-rationalist and which pathologised traditions. New Labour’s excessive monitoring and social control was not the way to secure consent.

Tradition is integral to people’s views of the good life. We have to start where people are. Political institutions will have to combine strong disagreements and supportive relationships.

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Marc Stears, is Professor of Political Theory at Oxford University. He was speaking at Leeds Centre for Democratisation Studies, University of Leeds, on 8 March 2012.

He contributed to the ebook, The Labour Party Tradition and the Politics of Paradox which is available from Soundings and has written a pamphlet on Everyday Politics for the IPPR.

On political developments in the US, see Jeffrey Stout (2010), Blessed are the Organised: Grass Roots Democracy in America.

Click here to read the ILP’s interview with Maurice Glasman.