The Leeds Summat Gathering 2011 is a free, all-day event for people from all walks of life across Leeds and the North – to get connected, be inspired, and work out how we can change our communities, our city, and our world for a better future.

Building on the success of the first Summat in 2009, it will feature special guest speakers and performers, workshops, food, music, arts, film, conversation, and much much more. Speakers include Peter Tatchell, activists from Egypt and Greece, and Lord Maurice Glasman.

It’s on Saturday 26th November 2011, from 9am until late, at Leeds University Union and Notre Dame College LS2. Book your free place and/or get full info at www.summat.org.

Downloadable flyers at www.t4p.org.uk/summat2011-finalflyer. Or find them on Facebook.

Further details, including programme and costs, will be available nearer the time, but make a date in your diaries now. This is the May Day Bank Holiday weekend so be sure to plan ahead.

The weekend will also include the ILP AGM for members when the rules of the organisation will be discussed. For a copy of the existing rules please contact the ILP on info@independentlabour.org.uk or 07799 502937.

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

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The recent Compass conference exceeded my expectations. Not least because, following the general election, last year’s event felt rather flat and earlier versions of this year’s programme seemed a little uninspiring. Was the formerly successful formula getting a bit jaded?

In addition, had the democratic decision to extend Compass membership beyond the Labour Party, to attract Liberal Democrats and Greens in particular, led to serious divisions and a loss of momentum?

Certainly it had seen the departure of some leading lights in Compass Youth and attendance this year did seem lower. The Compass leadership depicts this split as reflecting the differences between pluralists in the Labour party and tribalists, something which does not entirely convince me. Nor is it clear whether Compass has yet attracted people from these other parties. Many who attend are not members of any party and my guess is that a lot of them are former, disillusioned Labour party members.

What breathed life into this year’s proceedings was the presence of the new campaigns and movements, such as 38 Degrees and UK Uncut, both of which are playing a dynamic role in resisting the politics of the Coalition. The opening panel was not the standard fare of politicians but instead included two speakers from UK Uncut, plus Kay Banyard from UK Feminista, and the human rights activist and academic, Professor Francesca Klug. Wise move.

For UK Uncut, Daniel Garvin outlined the activities, ideas and appeal of their campaigning. This included opposition to the scale of the coalition’s cuts; criticisms of the banks and widespread use of tax-avoiding offshore banking accounts; and blatant tax avoidance by Philip Green of Top Shop, Vodaphone, Walkers Crisps, Tescos, and Boots. In the process, the campaign has occupied hundreds of banks and shops to expose these actions at a time when the wider society faces huge cutbacks and growing job losses. In doing so, it has established a growing network of activists in a lively, democratic, inclusive and creative ways.

They explained that theirs was not a movement with a figurehead; nor were they politically aligned; and nor do they profess to have a grand political strategy. They were driven by what they see as Labour’s failure to oppose the cuts – “so we did it ourselves,” they said.

Ellie May O’Hagan, the second speaker, said that she has been a life-long Labour supporter, in spite of the Iraq war, but UK Uncut was exciting and new. Her experience of leading her first sit-in of a bank had given her a new-found confidence inspite of being hounded later by the Daily Mail.

She called on Ed Miliband to become a bit braver and a little bit more of a risk taker, so that in a few years time he can confidently answer the question, “Whose side were you on?”

The director of UK Feminista, Kay Barnard, argued that women’s rights must be part of the Good Society, the theme of the conference. She reminded us about the crucial role played by women in the recent Egyptian revolution. Yet now women are being excluded from the policy-making process, subjected to virginity testing if arrested and, in effect, being told that they have stayed too long at the party. So the struggle continues.

Feminism, she argued, is better for everybody, for women and men. While our society has made massive progress for women in terms of the law, indicators like equal pay or the presence of women in parliament, suggest the process is stalling. It is what lies beneath these indicators – the attitudes and prejudices – that have to be tackled. Added to this, women’s economic independence has been put in reverse by the coalition’s policies.

New forms of sexism have also emerged, she argued. We are currently seeing the massive commercialization of sexism by the international sex industry, as it seeks to ‘pornify’ society. The industry has co-opted and hijacked the language of feminism for its own ends, rebranding women’s exploitation as liberation. There is a fog of rhetoric about ‘choice’ based on the lie that gender equality already exists.

In reaction, we are seeing an incredible re-emergence of the feminist movement, she argued. At present, 70 activist groups are forming weekly, women and men learning together that it’s down to them to make a difference. At the first Feminista conference in 2004, it was a struggle to get people to attend. For the latest summer school, 200 people signed up on the first day of taking bookings.

Another challenge is to engage men in the movement: to change the culture of what it means to be a man – and that can’t be done if there are no men in the room. In the process, we will mess up sometimes but we have to do it. Feminism, she concluded, is nothing if not audacious.

A short video from Ed Miliband followed. Praising the work of Compass, he criticized the coalition government as hopeless and reckless. The next election, he said, was not just about winning, however. Labour must change as well, particularly ‘the way we do our politics’. New Labour lost touch with the public and with party members. The task of party reform is to make the party accountable to its members who must be accountable to – and work with – the wider society.

We need a party that is genuinely connected to its members and to the wider movement and the general public. Here there is much to learn from the way that London Citizens do politics, he argued.

He said that we also need to change the way that we make policy; drawing on ideas that come from lived experience and not think tanks. We need to become a living, breathing movement again. As the late Robin Cook wrote, the task for Labour is to reinvent and renew itself as a progressive force. To do that, we have to broaden our coalition. “I believe that there’s a progressive majority in Britain,” he concluded.

Back onstage, the human rights activist and academic, Francesca Klug, delivered a lively and well-received speech. She made a distinction between The Big Society (TBS) and The Good Society (TGS). TBS is about means, about devolving power and people taking responsibility, plus Big Cuts. It is part of the coalition’s anti-statist agenda, she argued.

TBS was a response to New Labour’s high-handed, micro-managed state which obscured many real advances that it introduced. In office, Labour trusted both the state and the market but ended up not trusting the people. Its record on human rights was awful.

On the other hand, TGS is about ends not micro-management. It is about the kind of world that we want to imagine and it does not detach ends from means. Unethical, unfair and undemocratic means cannot build a good society, she argued. We need a good society to lead a good life.

The final speaker in the opening session, Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, said that for a good society there has to be greater equality not just fairness and more choice. To flourish, society needs to have cultural richness and variety.

There has been a tradition on the left not to see that there are problems with the state. It too needs checks and balances in the good society.

Commenting on Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour, he said supported the importance of reciprocal and supportive relationships in acting for the common good. But he gets blue when he hears Blue Labour criticise the pursuit of justice, liberty and equality as being too abstract and distant from people’s lives. Solidarity, yes but we need ideas too. We need to turn those values into policies. In the process we need to manage the tensions between different values.

To build a good society, we need to be in government but such a government will need our help. There is something that we can all contribute through our organizations and campaigns, Feminista, UK Uncut and Compass.

He then turned to the condition of social democracy itself and he declared the left was facing a deep and abiding ‘existential crisis’. Across Europe, social democracy is struggling. There is also an enormous gap between politics and people that needs to be addressed. In the UK, the Greens are experiencing very slow development and a clique has taken over the Liberal Democrats in what has been a traumatic year.

Labour is now in a bad place. New Labour paved the way for the Tories. To become an effective opposition, the party has to have its version of the [South African] Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The Blairites and the Brownites each believe in their right to govern and these old divisions are harmful. There is also a new divide in the party about how politics is to be done, not between left and right, but between tribalism and pluralism.

He said: “Ed Miliband shares our instincts… He needs our help and we need him.” We have to force the pace of change in the party giving the leader our critical support. We can do business with him but he won’t be entirely ours and we won’t be entirely his.

Lawson acknowledged that it has been a hard year for Compass. First, his hopes  of building a progressive alliance following the general election were dashed. In addition, Compass changed its rules to allow members of other parties to join which he acknowledged was a “tough ask”, adding that it was “the right thing to do”. It was an “historic moment for Compass and the progressive left”. As a result, Compass Youth is no longer run by a Trotskyist sect. He was also delighted to have spoken to 250 people at the Social Liberal Forum recently.

“Our time is coming,” he claimed. “Global capitalism needs global rules. We are going to change the world because we have to.”

Morning seminars

There was a choice of 17 seminars to attend in the morning session. These included Compass and the New Economic Foundation’s ‘Good Banking: building a banking system that is safe and good’; the journal Progress on ‘Must Labour’s road to Number 10 run through middle England?’; the Liberal Conspiracy talking about ‘From Discussion to strategy: which debates does the Left have to win in the next five years?’; Labourlist’s ‘How can Labour engage with the ‘progressive left? And should they bother?’; and Left Foot Forward asking ‘What progressives need to know about the coalition’s disability reforms?’.

I attended the 38 Degrees seminar: ‘Is 38 Degrees helping to build the good society? Reflections, feedback and future campaigns’. This provided a friendly discussion about how the campaign emerged and is developing. As a result of its various online petitions, over 200 community events have been organised.

One of the speakers, David Babbs, made the point that when they took up the campaign to prevent the privatisation of forests they were seen as strategic geniuses. In fact, the organisers were given credit for what their members asked them to take up. Two-thirds of those signing 38 Degrees’ petitions have never written to their MP before.

Afternoon seminars

The afternoon offered another 17 seminars, ranging from how to tackle the tax dodgers, equality and social mobility, education, free speech, the green new deal, progressive health policy, and resisting porn culture.

There was a well-attended seminar entitled ‘Blue Labour’s economy’ organized by the journal, Soundings, and the New Political Economy Network (NPE). The Chair, Jonathan Rutherford, editor of Soundings, said the challenge is to develop alternatives for the Labour Party which go beyond both Keynesian and the state-managed economy.

From the NPE, Duncan Weldon provided a familiar but persuasive critique of new Labour’s response to globalisation pointing to it’s reliance on finance capital to sustain the boom while creaming off some of the surplus for the public sector. For five years before the crash, from 2003 and 2008, this policy led to a fall in real incomes outside London and the south east.

Productivity gains – mainly going to finance – outstripped wage increases. The Labour government stopped worrying about redeveloping Britain’s declining manufacturing base, ran a structural deficit, and believed in a boom that became a mirage. The claim that we had gone ‘beyond boom and bust’ was just hubris.

From the Society of Motor Manufacturers, Paul Everitt, argued for the importance of producing low carbon vehicles in the UK and said we should expect a series of announcements about innovations from the motor industry.

Frances O’Grady of the TUC welcomed Blue Labour’s focus on the need for core values of mutuality, co-operation and solidarity to be built into our political economy. We need to establish forums for working to win support for positive changes rooted in their experiences of work.

She noted how the private sector in care is devaluing relationships. Care workers in old people’s homes are allowed only 15 minutes to do what’s needed before moving to the next location. If they stay longer, they are not paid for what they do. This means that they have no time to relate to the people in the home. The workers have “no say, no voice, and no power”.

An active industrial strategy has to involve decent jobs and partnerships, a narrower gap in pay levels between those at the bottom and the top, and a wage-led growth strategy.

Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour, said that it was a “conversation-thing that’s going on”; it’s a theory of institutions and systems to facilitate genuine engagement with people’s energies. He criticised the “relentless humiliation” of working people who give their love, dedication and energy to their work and yet receive appalling treatment from their employers. There needs to be a balance of interests between workers, owners and the wider society, not the domination of one.

A useful summary of the Blue Labour economy comes from the columnist, Steve Richards, writing in the Independent recently. He says that Germany is to some extent the model for Blue Labour “with its collaborative industrial policies, focus on vocational education and regional banks more responsive to the needs of local business. Blue Labour is strongly in favour of policies that lead to a more vibrant private sector, but is scathing about the UK’s dependency on the performance of banks.”

This Question Time session had an impressive panel being asked too many questions and with too little time to answer them properly. Chuka Umunna MP, a regular speaker at Compass events and now shadow business minister, did not give an impressive performance.

A substantial section of the audience departed after this session – it had been a long day.

Final keynote address

Labour MP for Wigan, Lisa Nandy argued that politics needs a complete overhaul. Parliamentarians need to go beyond the Westminster bubble to see how life is being lived. She spoke of the impact of the cuts on people who are being denied wheelchairs, and said that she could fill a room with the letters she has from people who are experiencing this dire human tragedy. For Labour, this means listening and leading, no more triangulation but spelling out our alternative vision.

Liberal Democrat MP and deputy leader, Simon Hughes was heard in respectful silence as he defended the changes in higher education. He also pointed out that Labour and the Lib Dems shared a radical past and singled out Dr Alfred Salter, the ILP MP for Bermondsey, as his hero. Hughes called for fair taxation, and a redistribution of wealth and opportunities.

Finally, Jon Cruddas MP, in a sober if not sombre speech, called for the Labour Party to be both radical and purposeful in this time of “epochal change”. He reiterated Lawson’s opening comments to say that it has been a difficult year for both the Labour Party and Compass.

He applauded the decision to open Compass membership beyond Labour’s ranks and added his voice to those attacking tribalism within the party. He remarked that former Labour leaders, ILPer Keir Hardie, George Lansbury and Ramsay MacDonald, were coalitionists.

Significantly, and in contrast to Ed Miliband, he argued that there is no liberal progressive majority in England, nor is there any easy path to the good society. He acknowledged that people were anxious about a future in a world without borders; that we live in a disorientated culture. People are asking “Who are we?” and “Where do we belong?” and we must start a dialogue with them on these issues. They are feeling the pain of loss and their nostalgia is making them hostile to strangers.

And there it ended: a productive day with lots to reflect upon.

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The Compass conference was held in London on 25 June 2011. More in on Compass: www.compassonline.org.uk

Compass and the New Economics Foundation have established the Good Banking Forum which is supported by a broad range of organisations. This venture is well worth supporting: www.goodbanking.org.uk

“Because the proposed legislation covers a wide area, the issue of the massive cuts in legal aid is in danger of failing to get a full and fair hearing in the Commons,” writes the former MP. “There is a need for all of us to do whatever we can to block the measure.”

Read more.

Also see: Sound Off For Justice and Justice For All.

Harry talks about his political influences, the politics of Northern Ireland, Iraq, Libya, new Labour, the Robin Hood Tax, and much more besides.

Read the full interview here.

Read Harry Barnes’ own blog here.

But there’s no need to wait till Scarborough to start the debate. By posting it here, we hope ILP members, friends and others will have an opportunity to read it in advance and make initial observations and comments.

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The ILP: Our Politics

The ILP comes from a long tradition of organisations on the left of the political spectrum that have sought collective solutions to the inequalities and destructiveness caused by capitalism. We seek to continue that tradition today, to extend cooperative solutions to human problems by democratic means.

In seeking social justice and equality, a broader and deeper democracy, and more co-operative and mutually supportive ways of living, we set our sights high. We believe it is possible to improve the quality of life for many, not just the few; that a humane society is possible. But in aiming to create a good society, the left faces challenges as formidable today as at any time in its history. We recognise that we are embarking on a lengthy journey.

Ours is a damaged society where political disenchantment is tangible – and quite understandable. Both at home and globally, too many lives are governed and wasted by poverty, inequality and deprivation, or by fear and insecurity, or bigotry. While many are governed by the mindless pursuit of materialism, others turn to religious or nationalistic zealotry. None of this is simply due to fate. Instead it is the outcome of how our world is organised, a product, ultimately, of political choices.

We cannot embark on this journey too soon. Humanity is approaching a crossroads. The actions taken and the choices made in the coming years are likely to be of great significance not only to us but to future generations. To create a sustainable society will, of necessity, demand curbing and controlling those forces that propel us towards environmental catastrophe. It will be vital to overcome the powerlessness that many feel.

Broad, political and moral movements for change are key elements in this process. But we also need a progressive political party or parties to enact wide-ranging reforms, and progress will depend on alliances and sometimes tensions between these two. Incremental gains along the way can highlight both what is possible and how people can become part of a process of change.

The context

Writing about contemporary western society, the historian Tony Judt sums up his view this way: “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue of the pursuit of material self-interest; indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes what remains of our collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea of what they are worth…”

“Much of what seems ‘natural’ today,” he says, “dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.”

His comments are particularly applicable to Britain today. We face a Conservative-led coalition government which, in flagrant disregard for its election pledges, is hell bent on a brutal programme of public sector cuts. It combines this with promises to build the ‘big society’ and to ‘free’ people from the state. It doesn’t promise freedom from the market. Indeed, the government hopes the private sector will be able to mop up the large numbers made unemployed by the cuts. The poor, women in particular, public sector workers and students form the new front line in the coming conflicts over cuts.

But this programme of attacks on public, collective provision has not come out of the blue. Rather, it continues more than three decades in which the free market has been promoted over state intervention. After 1979, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher embarked on a programme of radical change, restructuring the post-war welfare state, diminishing the power of working people, and expanding free enterprise, in particular by loosening controls over banking and finance.

The new Labour project was the product of successive election defeats and the deep desire of many to get the Tories out of office, regardless of the political cost to traditional left politics. To win power in 1997, Labour largely accommodated itself to this neo-liberal framework. While committed to some redistribution of wealth, it relied on taxes from a deregulated and rampant financial service sector to fund the expansion of state expenditure. Labour often devalued the public sector even while it further centralised state power. It continued down the path of privatisation, creating markets within public services on an unprecedented scale. Yet, after promising ‘no return to boom or bust’, the Labour government used the state to bale out the banking and financial sectors when economic meltdown was imminent.

Despite the use of taxpayers’ money and despite the crisis, the Labour government, and the left more generally, failed to present a credible narrative for progressive change. Instead, new Labour paved the way for many of the Tory policies that are now unfolding – in the economy, in the NHS and in education. The result is a Tory-led government intent on the wholesale subordination of public provision to the market and private sector.

Capitalism, markets and democracy

This Tory programme reinforces the natural tendencies within capitalism. For ours is a capitalist society and the logic of capitalism is to turn everything into commodities to be bought and sold in the market. It is a system that violates our humanity and the environment; it devalues and debases human beings and social life. Unregulated, it destroys all in the pursuit of material gain, whether families or forests. While we recognise the historic advances in human development brought, to some, by capitalist development, in terms of life expectancy and material well-being, we also recognise that these come at a colossal price, paid in inequality, social upheaval, political oppression and environmental destruction.

More recently, we have seen the ruin that modern banking and finance leave in their wake, leaving others who can ill-afford it to pay a huge price for decades to come. This should not come as a surprise. By their very nature, market forces lead to excess, encouraging greed and selfishness at the expense of others, putting possessive individualism before collective endeavour. Capitalism corrodes and corrupts, eating away at our social fabric.

The basic character of capitalism cannot change. It is defined by the pursuit of profit at the expense of collective social needs. Its agents will always balk at ‘red tape’ and attempts to restrict their freedom of action. They will always complain of ruination when they do not get their way, as the employers did in the 19^th century when the long, working day was restricted. They will always threaten to up sticks and find places where their actions can go unchecked. They will always seek to exploit cheap labour across the globe, and to divide and rule, and use their vast resources to cut corners and bypass democracy.

Markets can be very creative but they have a destructive, dark side. Unchecked, markets are capable of doing great damage because, put simply, people are subordinated to the pursuit of profit.

Moreover, there is a fundamental conflict between unfettered markets and democratic society. Never has this been more obvious than in the wake of the financial crisis. Despite colossal bale-outs by democratic governments and the enormous human costs of the crisis, our political options are still subordinated to the interests of the bankers. As Doreen Massey wrote: “The judgement of ‘the markets’ hangs over everything, setting the parameters within which political debate can operate.”

Having said this, we do accept that markets in some shape or form are necessary to how a democratic society operates – the evidence of Communist societies in the 20th century suggests as much. But a more democratic society would subordinate markets to the collective, democratic interests of the country; in our society, it is democracy that is subordinated.

The conditions in which markets are allowed to operate should always be closely monitored and carefully regulated. In some social democratic systems – in Scandanavian countries and some other western European countries at various times – restrictions on markets have delivered real benefits such as reduced inequality, greater social provision and fairer distributions of wealth and opportunity. They show some of the direction in which we want to move, not a utopian end point. But these gains are always fragile and are easily undermined, especially at times of economic crisis. They require more active support and defence than top-down social democratic systems have typically encouraged.

Some areas of life should be removed from the influences of private profit entirely – health, education and public transport, for example. In part, this means defending the role of the state in regulating the market, redistributing resources, coordinating public services and ensuring the needs of all members of a community are met.

The Tories characterise the state as overbearing, all-powerful and interfering – and at times parts of the public sector have been too inflexible and unresponsive to people’s needs. But the state in a democratic society is the means by which we collectively provide for our needs, and those of each other, out of our common wealth. It is our protection against the free market.

Yet the Tories’ goal is to marketise the public sector and shrink the state. We need vigilance and a democratic culture to counter their destructive aims and the destructive tendencies of free markets. This will have to be undertaken at several levels – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. It will also involve more democratic, co-operative ways of organising business and production.

In fact, while markets exist, a struggle has to continue. The battle may ebb and flow in different directions. This is why it is vital movements and progressive parties counter market values with social values based on human relationships and a respect for the natural world.

Our recent history has seen us move in the wrong direction, creating in the words of Paul Mason, BBC economics editor, an “abrasive, selfish, unequal society”. Indeed, as the academic Edward Skidelsky wrote, “…economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of social life… Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as ‘service providers’ … school teachers are urged to ‘add value’ to their pupils’…” And as the centre-left group Compass pointed out, even childhood has become commodified. The current attacks on public provision will, according to academic John Gray, “leave people more exposed to the turbulence of world markets than they have been for generations. Inevitably they will seek protection.” We agree and believe it is time to change direction.

Political parties and Labour’s role

The ILP started life as a political party in 1893 as a reaction to harsh working conditions and the widespread poverty that unregulated capitalism brought to Britain. The perspective of the ILP has inevitably changed and developed as the world about us has changed and developed, but our essential humanitarian concerns have remained. We hold fast to the ethics and principles relating to care and compassion, fellowship and fraternity, mutuality and cooperation, social, political and economic equity, and democracy, which constitute the foundation of our politics.

We believe there is a need for a plurality of political movements, experiments in alternative ways of organising society, and for cooperative and democratic businesses. Indeed, it is to be hoped that protests against the current cuts will galvanise into a broad movement. But we also recognise that there is a continuing need for political parties.

Sooner or later any campaign or movement for change in society has to deal with the process of government, how collective decisions, whether national or local, are made and upheld. Actions by national governments have a vital and potentially crucial role in addressing many of the problems we face, whether nationally or, by acting collectively, internationally.

In Britain, that means we have to engage with the Labour Party. While many on the left wish to avoid the Labour Party, to denounce or live outside it, we think this is a cul-de-sac. Any attempt to progress radical change will have to go through a social democratic agency.

However, we have no illusions about the current political and organisational state of the party, about the corrosive effects of new Labour’s dominance over 16 years. Now is a time for the Labour Party to reflect upon its record in office, to see whether it can present a credible narrative for progressive change. It has a long distance to travel to win back public trust. There is much debate in and around the party, by the left and centre-left, which is showing clear signs of creative thinking about how the party and its politics might be transformed for the better.

We see ourselves as part of that process. We want to encourage Labour to reinvent itself as a more radical party, to democratise itself and to make party membership matter in ways that it has not done for decades. However, unlike many on the centre-left, we are sceptical of the notion that there is a ready-made progressive majority in the country waiting to be led. Unfortunately, we have further to go than that – the foundations of a progressive majority still have to be built.

The extent to which Labour’s politics can become imaginatively social democratic will therefore depend on the forces and movements that align with it, with the political space that they can create for Labour to become more radical and yet electable. It also means that Labour has to do its part – defending, supporting and encouraging those involved in campaigns up and down the country, and leading them too. The challenge this presents should not be underestimated, but it has to be faced.

The future left

It should be said that the left bears much of the responsibility for its failure to offer a credible politics for our times. True, it has faced a barrage of opposition from various vested interests, not least in the media. But it is also true that while it has fought many a good fight, it has not been at its best when offering pathways to a better society.

Many have abandoned any hope of a changed world and surrendered to the the politics of the present and the next election. Others promise a glorious dawn in some unimaginable future with no sense of how to get there. Between them, we need to find ways to be both practical and visionary at the same time.

Our political actions must also uphold the principles by which we stand. We believe that the character, actions and morality of political movements prefigure the change they will create. Social movements are a vital component of securing change but they have an obligation to act with morality, honesty and self-criticism.

The weakness of the left, and the dominance of market values today, means any progressive change in the short term will be hard won. But in lessening social inequalities, we may see a range of social improvements in society, in health, social solidarity, and general well-being. It will never be perfect, however. There will always be arguments and conflicts and, in a society based on democracy, that is absolutely necessary. The imposition of harmony from above is the road to dictatorship and not one we should ever contemplate. While people deserve respect, no-one and no organisation is above criticism.

Living democracy is a lively business; controlling capital is a constant process. One thing is certain, if we look at the world as it is then we can surely do better than this. We should certainly try to. And, along the way, perhaps we can rebuild the kind of movement which, as well as fighting for a better world, conveys the collective joy, humour and warmth which helped sustain earlier generations of socialists.

For more information and booking forms for the Weekend School contact: info@independentlabour.org.uk

The haunting leitmotif of Tory economics can be heard in current consultations on reforming the laws regarding unfair dismissal. It is being mooted that the time served in a post by a worker for which he or she can ‘qualify’ for protection against unfairly dismissal should be raised from the current one year to two years. Little needs to be said by way of justification, the notion coming via the tedious cliché that exhorts the efficient and competitive – two impressive and cold adjectives that have long been euphemisms for conservative ideology.

It is argued that the extension of the ‘qualifying period’ is needed because our employment tribunals are creaking under the weight of constant claims. According to the BBC it costs employers an average of £4000 to defend themselves. It might be thought that the business community, as one of Britain’s vulnerable minorities, would do well not to answer cases that are cheap shots at easy money by feckless former employees.

However, this would require a suspension of disbelief considering the obvious expense and trouble such a claim means to a person who is unlikely to be successful in the first place. Instead, one can’t help but wonder what figure might stand for those unfairly dismissed who have neither the means nor the know-how to seek restitution.

So that this economic deterrence theory is a little more convincing, the business secretary Vince Cable has recommended that each litigant should be charged a £500 deposit to have their case heard. Such a measure will not deter the unjust claimant, but will put off all but the most handsomely salaried workers. The infusion of personal financial means as a criteria will go a long way towards building a two-tier system of workers’ rights where the lowest paid and, therefore, most vulnerable, will be most at risk from their employer’s caprice.

It’s true there has been a striking increase in the number of cases over the last year, rising by 56 per cent compared to 2009. However, as the TUC pointed out, most of this is due to large groups of workers engaged in equal pay disputes. Far from suggesting a mass rinsing of business, the increase clearly correlates with the rapid glut of redundancies that came with the financial crisis and the spike in claims that inevitably followed.

The ominous economic news of late has sent the government rushing to scribble down a narrative of reform to fill the howling vacuum created by their cuts. But in the predictable plan for private sector growth they demonstrate the same Tory orthodoxy seen in the budget cuts: reduce public spending and make it easier for the private sector to reduce theirs. Both strategies are as similar in their application as they are in their forbidding result.

Now that the frost of long-term recession looks set to linger and be compacted by the public sector cuts, the government is hastily weaving a story of economic activism.

The proposed ‘opening out’ of Compass is of interest to others on the left partly because the organisation has been a significant force for good on the Labour left. The proposed shift to allow members of other parties to determine Compass priorities and policies cannot but weaken its impact. While the suggested reforms may increase membership, the overwhelming effect will be to dissipate Compass’s political focus and message.

Compass was formed as a centre left pressure group in the Labour Party to counter the neoliberalism of New Labour. Despite Ed Miliband’s election, that project remains incomplete and the Party, including the new leader, need to be pushed continually to be as radical as they can in the prevailing circumstances. This is a big task and Compass has a good record in this regard to date. To ‘open’ the organisation is to risk what has been achieved and, more importantly, what needs to be achieved within the Party in the future, such as restoring some kind of meaningful internal democracy.

The Compass management committee obviously recognises some of the dangers the changes present to its core message. However, it is not proposing to restrict membership to a specified range of parties, so the reforms would mean members of any party – Tories, SWP, Liberal members of the government – could vote on Compass policy. Compass suggests it will defend its core message by asking prospective members to sign up to a short statement of values:

‘Compass is committed to help build a Good Society; one in which there is far greater social, political and economic equality; where democracy is deepened at every level of the state, our workplaces and communities; where the sustainability of the planet is made an urgent priority and we recognise our interconnected fate across all nations; a society where the market is made to work as the servant of society.’

While by no means a bad set of objectives, which might put off some more right wing people, the statement is open to very broad interpretation. Compass acknowledge this and signal that a fuller statement may be formed in the future (although presumably that would be influenced by new, non-Labour members). However, this does point to a tension at the heart of the proposals: there’s a desire to be ‘open’ and ‘pluralistic’ while at the same time there’s a need to set limits on the political destinations such changes might take the organisation – openness only up to a point?

In addition, the process raises wider questions about the idea of political pluralism, which has become rather fashionable among some on the left in recent months including many Compassites. The ILP has written about some of these shortcomings before – after last year’s annual Compass jamboree, for instance, when the benefits of pluralism were trumpted by all and sundry .

What seems to have been missed is that pluralism implies differences, often quite sharp political differences; it doesn’t imply agreement. If these differences didn’t exist there would be no need for different parties and organisations. The proposals for ‘opening up’ rather assume that Compass can ‘encompass’ many of these differences without losing anything. This is not so – to be a big tent containing very different viewpoints means the political message must inevitably be generalised to a much greater degree than it is currently. From a centre left standpoint (already something of a compromise between different viewpoints) Compass would become even more ill-defined politically than it is already.

Finally, it is astonishing that, despite everything that has happened since the formation of the Tory-led coalition, the assumption that there is a non-problematic, ‘broad progressive alliance’ just waiting to be given form remains undented. It is a notion, worryingly, that Ed Miliband also seems uncritically attached to, judging by his recent speech to the Fabian Society. Should those Lib Dems currently enacting ruthless public expenditure cuts be welcomed within the new, open Compass? The notion of opening up really betrays an overly rosy vision of centre left politics in Britain, as if there really are no issues of substance that divide us.

By all means have a dialogue with radically-minded people from other traditions – the kind of dialogue Compass has done so much to foster and develop through its annual conferences and lectures – but let’s keep the focus on Labour, especially at this critical time.

To read cases for and against the changes go to the Compass website: www.compassonline.org.uk

If you agree that education should remain a protected public good sign our petition!

There is widespread anger over the government’s higher education reforms because they represent the final transformation of our education system from a public into a private good. What we are witnessing is just the latest and sharpest manifestation of the remorseless process of commercialisation of our lives that creates insecurity, anxiety and sheer exhaustion because it piles all the pressure of coping on us as individuals.

Since the 1980s universities and schools have been steadily marketised, and pupils and students commodified. This instrumentalism is such a narrow view of what it means to be human and to be educated. That is why campaigns like UK Uncut, which links corporate tax avoidance to the rebalancing of our depleted public finances, are critical both morally and practically.

Students don’t have to be told that we are all in it together. They know it. The students know that education maintenance allowance is critical for young people from low-income families who now attend FE colleges and that cleaners on their campuses should be paid a living wage. The political class may choose to forget, but we don’t, that it was the greed of the banks and the free market regime handed to them by our politicians that tipped the nation’s finances into crisis.

We start from the belief that education cannot just be a debt trap on a learn-to-earn treadmill that we never get off as the retirement age is extended. Education in our good society is a universal public good which all must explore to reach their fullest potential. It is about the protection and extension of a precious public realm where we know each other not as consumers and competitors but as citizens and co-operators. What is happening is wrong and we must say so in every legal and peaceful way we can – in parliament, in the media, in all sites of education and on the streets.

Sign the petition here.

A lecture by Professor Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level, in memory of Richard Brown (Dept of Sociology, Durham University 1966-1993).

Monday 8th November 2010, St John’s College (http://goo.gl/maps/wnDg) , South Bailey, Durham, 6:30pm – FREE

Drinks and nibbles will be provided.

The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, was published in hardback by Penguin in March 2009 and paperback in February 2010.