The local state, local politics and local democracy
Richard Hatcher, Birmingham Left Unity
The local level is particularly important because it’s where many of the government’s policies, and in particular the savage cuts in public services, impact directly on people’s lives. And of course many of those cuts are relayed from government to local communities and families by local councils, so opposition to council austerity policies, a radical alternative vision at the local level and local community campaigning have to be a key strand of Left Unity politics, a dimension of all our Policy Commissions, and of course central to the local election campaigns in 2014.
But every cut by a local council raises another question: how are council policies made, and by who? So as well as challenging and putting forward an alternative to the cuts and other council policies themselves, we also have to challenge and put forward an alternative to how policy is made: in short, where power lies in local government. Turnout in local elections is notoriously low, and the reason is that people don’t believe that it has any influence on council policies. People want a say in the conditions that shape their daily lives, and they are denied it by the bureaucratic anti-democratic structures and procedures of local government.
So the question of local democracy should be one of the key themes of Left Unity.
This is not because we have illusions in what can be achieved in terms of transforming Labour councils into bastions of ‘municipal socialism’. It is because local politics poses the question of class power in a very immediate and tangible way in people’s lives, and the experience of collectively challenging it in the context of the local community can be a laboratory for the formation of new collective class identities. It is also particularly relevant to women, because many community issues particularly affect women; and also to minority ethnic groups who can utilise their community strength to campaign for change.
A politics of ‘localism’ can of course serve very different class interests. Not just in the form of the Tories’ ‘Big Society’ but as a theme of New Labour – David Miliband’s ‘double devolution’ in 2006 and Hazel Blears’ 2008 White Paper’Communities in Control’, which turned out to mean public participation in managerialist agendas disguised in democratic language. Today Labour councils, some under the banner of ‘Co-operative Councils’, are pursuing a policy of devolution of some operational decisions to constituencies, wards, neighbourhood bodies and community trusts, while retaining the key strategic decisions at the top, largely immune from popular involvement. It is a strategy for communities to prioritise and manage their own cuts in services and substitute for public provision – ‘austerity localism’.
Left Unity’s alternative: real Participatory Democracy
The principle we should start from is this: At the local level people have the right to participate in the decisions which affect their lives – where there is power there must be effective public participation. At root is the relationship between forms of participative democracy and those of representative democracy. The exact nature of the structures and processes to make this possible should themselves be the outcome of collective public deliberation – and there are many examples internationally to draw on. But we can briefly outline five radical reforms which can be campaigned for now to open up local government to popular participation.
1. Democratised Ward Committees
2. Public participation in District/Constituency Committees
3. Strategic city-wide service committees with public participation
4. Public participation in Scrutiny Committees
5. Needs-based Community Budgeting
1. Democratised Ward Committees
Ward Committees may vary somewhat in how they operate in different local authorities but I suspect there is a common pattern: they function to maintain the existing dominance of councillor interests over community interests by controlling the agendas and the meeting procedures. They exemplify a bureaucratic model of local government which is about managing the local community, not empowering it. This model serves the interests of many councillors, and council officers, who have no interest in local participatory democracy. Their procedures are not designed to enable local citizens to take initiatives in policy-making, let alone to empower local communities – which is why in general Ward Committees have such a low attendance: people feel, rightly, that they are not places where they have much influence, let alone power.
Local Left Unity groups need to be arguing for the internal procedures of Ward Committee meetings to be redesigned to encourage the maximum of public discussion, including opening up the agendas and reducing the dominance of councillors. For example, in the Birmingham context where I live there are three simple steps which would increase community voice and participation:
* Each Ward Committee should be headed by a Board consisting of the
councillors and an equal number of local citizens elected by a Ward Committee meeting. They, not just the councillors, should set the agenda of meetings.
* The Ward Committee meetings should be chaired by one of the elected citizens, not by a councillor.
* There should be clear procedures to enable local citizens to put items on the Ward Committee agendas, circulate papers, and introduce items at meetings. The Board members should actively encourage and support citizens to do so.
2. Public participation in Constituency/District Committees
Another element in councils’ devolution strategies is to devolve certain service delivery responsibilities, and budgets, to constituency committees which only comprise councillors, with no public participation and no right of Ward Committees to put items on the agenda.
Left Unity demands might include:
* District Committees should include elected non-councillor representatives of Ward Committees with speaking and voting rights.
* Ward Committees need to be able to put proposals onto the agendas of DCs and speak to their proposals.
* District Committees should meet at times and places convenient for local public participation.
* There should be regular District-level open policy-making forums or conferences.
3. Strategic city-wide service committees with public participation
The Cabinet system was introduced into local government by Blair in 1997 in order to centralise power and enable faster decision-making. The result has been a profound democratic deficit as power is monopolised by a Cabinet comprising a small minority of leading councillors. The previous Committee system (which is still legal and which some councils still use) had one major advantage, crucial from the point of view of participatory democracy: council committees could co-opt lay members onto the committee and sub-committees. This was common practice among especially the more radical Labour councils in the 1970s and 80s, where the co-opted members were often elected by various groups as their representatives, with voice but without vote. It was an important factor in the effectiveness of these councils in tackling issues of gender and ethnic equality.
Left Unity should be campaigning now for councils to set up service committees with public participation on this model. They could be set up now, even with the Cabinet system still in place. There is nothing to stop a council from setting up advisory committees with councillors on it and with invitations to districts and wards, and relevant interest groups, to elect representatives onto it, not with the aim of participating in council austerity policies but of bringing to bear popular pressure against them and for radical alternatives.
4. Public participation in Scrutiny Committees
Scrutiny Committees also need to be opened up to public participation, in a number of ways, for example:
* Procedures to enable relevant bodies, including Ward committees, to put items on Scrutiny agendas and speak to them.
* Setting up working sub-committees on specific issues with public participants.
5. Needs-based Community Budgeting
Many councils have adopted or are adopting Community Budgeting or Participatory Budgeting policies (a policy the Coalition government also endorses). Essentially they mean the council hands over a sum of money for a local community body – perhaps a Ward Committee – to decide how to spend. It is part of the ‘austerity localism’ devolution strategy. (It shouldn’t be confused with the original radical policy of Participatory Budgeting pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by a left-wing council.)
Left Unity should argue for a very different concept of Needs-based Community Budgeting with a different starting point: not the needs of the local council to cut public spending but the needs of local communities and the local authority area as a whole for the services they are entitled to. The process of creating a Needs-based Community Budget Plan is not one of people and communities deciding what services to cut and what to try and save, but one of deciding what is needed and is worth fighting for as a community.
10 comments
10 responses to “The local state, local politics and local democracy”
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I’m not suggesting for a moment that all your proposals for greater local democracy aren’t entirely valid Richard. However I think there is a danger of not seeing the overall Austerity Era political “wood” for the highly detailed Council procedural “trees” here. The grim reality we, as a radical Left Party (soon hopefully) will have to face up to in the local government context specifically, is that thanks to a complete dependence on support funding from Central Government to run local Council services, no matter how well and democratically local budgets are drawn up, the local Council “resource cupboard” is nowadays bare, relative to funding required to maintain services.
This means that ANY local Council, whether run by Labour Lefts, Greens, or Left Unity, simply CANNOT achieve a “balanced budget” whilst safeguarding local services and Council jobs and conditions.
I’m not suggesting that your article is denying this. But the core issue is “what happens AFTER a (theoretical)future Left Unity dominated Council has put in place all your recommended democratic reforms and the community has finally constructed a Needs Based Budget?” Simple answer, The money to fund it simply aint there. So an uncompromising Left Unity led Council would inevitably quickly enter into head to head conflict with Central Government. Such a head to head conflict – potentially sabotaging the Coalition’s (or New Labour’s) entire “make local government make the Cuts and reap the blame” strategy – could result in a 70’s Clay Cross or 1980’s Liverpool Council type isolation and defeat for the Council starting the Cuts fightback. The only way forward (rather than backwards to Green Party Brighton style collaboration with Austerity) would be to radically broaden the arena of struggle, onto the streets and into the workplaces, well beyond the Council area involved.
There is going to be no “cunning plan” (better democratic decision-making, better prioritising of rationed funding to key services, etc, etc) route to confronting the Austerity Offensive , either at local government, or national, levels. We need to accept now that any future Left Unity led Council would quickly find itself in a political battleground, with very high stakes. We will need to recruit determined , militant, people to be our Left Unity candidates for Councillor positions who understand and accept that massive responsibility.
Absolutely bang on again, JP. Well said.
This looks like a model based on the principle of subsidiarity so has the right intentions. What is lacking though is any proposal regarding finance and powers to raise money. This is a different issue than managing a budget. Unless financial powers are embedded into the model it remains effectively controlled from above by whatever level of authority holds the financial powers….the community organisations can only mansge a budget handed down to them.
Where could they raise finance? Possibly local tax raising powers, if not then access to a national finance system that supports community empowerment….hey presto we are back again to my recurring theme of a democratically controlled and accountabld finance system, including a National Industry and Infrastructure Bank ( with a “Community Empowerment ” Division) and my proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund built from collectivisation of all the country’s occupational pension schemes ( see my post on the Economy Commission board and the attachment which can be dowloaded).
John P describes a very compelling scenario and he is right in his assessment of the challenge it presents to a party of principle. No principled party, whether it be LU or the Greens,or anyone else, should be remaining in post just for the sake of “being in power” (which would actually be a complete delusion. An LU dominated local council would have to resign en mass in the event that they were unable to implement their program, on which they were elected, if cutbacks denied them the resources to fulfil that electorally mandated program.
Power to raise finance at the local level is critical to building community empowerment, participatory democracy and a peoples’ economy. Democratising the financial system is an important part of an overall LU policy program. A well thought out and then explained policy for the transformation of finance would find popular support amongst the electorate and should be a central plank in any electoral strategy. It could well be the making of LU as a force to be reckoned with.
Of course it is true that the fundamental issue confronting every council today and for the foreseeable future is huge budget cuts from central government resulting in loss of services and jobs. The extent to which they could be compensated by new powers to raise funding locally, as Jim Osborne suggests, remains to be seen but they are still likely to be largely dependent on government funding. So what defines any council as ‘left’ is whether it fights the austerity offensive by mobilising active popular opposition rather than acquiescing in it, however complainingly. There is no disagreement about this.
The question is, in this scenario, what is the importance of not just fighting the council cuts but at the same time fighting for the democratisation of how councils operate? John says ‘the core issue is “what happens AFTER a (theoretical) future Left Unity dominated Council has put in place all your recommended democratic reforms and the community has finally constructed a Needs Based Budget?”’. This formulation disconnects the fight for democratisation from the fight against austerity. Of course the core of any effective strategy to fight austerity is mass popular mobilisations of the unions and local communities. My argument is that the struggle against local cuts programmes is greatly strengthened when people are also challenging the structures and processes of bureaucratic top-down power which the council relies on to impose the cuts. One of the main attractions of Left Unity should be that it doesn’t just stand for different policies – the same vehicle with a different driver – it stands for a different way of doing politics, one in which people have as much power as possible to shape the conditions of their lives, not to have them shaped by those at the top, however radical their policies.
In my view this would be a policy stance with wide popular support, and it is both a vision for the future (which is vital) but equally something that can be campaigned for concretely today. The theme of local democratic renewal is being voiced by Labour politicians nationally – see most recently One Nation: Power, Hope, Community, published a few days ago (free download at http://www.labour.org.uk/uploads/0b5cf5cb-7eb3-2854-c942-13f5c5533ea4.pdf). It is also the theme of Labour councils’ local devolution policies. This is largely empty rhetoric cloaking a strategy of making communities responsible for their own cuts, but it opens up a political space which Left Unity should vigorously occupy, demanding real community power. I would also argue that even in this hostile climate small local victories are not impossible under popular pressure, and these would be politically significant in inspiring further popular mobilisation.
Lots of good sense here. Good to see the website talking about real stuff more.
when it comes to the local democracy the left is united that it shouldnt pay for the governments austerity programme and maybe should have new financial arangements to protect it from governements who have cuts programes. it is after all not local democracy if you dont control your finances and cant therefore make plans for your area.
however at that point the left splits on this issue and both are capable of being dishonest. one, left should refuse to make cuts. the people who advocate this never say what it is. ie the refusal to run local services because the government wont give you enought money. they will not explain to voters that if they get elected they cannot stop the cuts maybe the electorate understands this and thats why people dont vote for tusc i dont know. 2, there is the try and use council tax to protect services as much as possible and concentrate on protecting the most vulnerable. again thats got a lot of problems to most obvious that it normally leads to the co-option of the councilors that do it into the governments agenda even if they opposed it orginally. conclusion, my view is there is no right or wrong thing to do we just need a, people to be honest about there choices and b,the left to concentrate on campaigning for the changes at national level that we all agree up on rather than condemning each other over these horrible choices.
I do not know if this is practical, but what if the scenario were real and we implemented a levy or tax on large local business to help fund some shortfalls? Or a bedroom tax on the richer properties?
I’m afraid a local council has no legal powers to levy any additional taxes, Paul. Local government nowadays is extraordinarily constrained by central government edicts on raising money , either for revenue or capital spend purposes. On Capital spending, until the Thatcher era local councils had significant freedom to borrow very long term from the Money Market(at VERY low interest rates – so safe is local government as a borrower), for long term capital projects like council housing. Returning this freedom to local Councils could in itself provide a massive boost to solving the housing shortage – and create huge numbers of jobs . The rents would go a long way to servicing the repayments on this long term borrowing. Not going to happen under the coalition or New Labour though.
Unfortunately, imagining all sorts of novel new local democratic structures and funding sources is all very well, but any likely future Left Unity led council will be operating under the existing financial conditions enforced by the neoliberal Coalition or New Labourites. So nice as alternative funding structures would be, we have to base our tactical assessments on an absolute certainty that a radical Left Council determined to oppose the Austerity Cuts WILL end up in direct confrontation with central government and their capitalist puppet masters. So we will need to ideologically prepare and select our potential LU councillors on that understanding, ie, for their uncompromising determination to pursue the No Cuts principle , even if at the end it does indeed result in the direct takeover of the Council’s functions by central government appointees. Only though uncompromising confrontation can the tempo and political depth of the wider struggle be built to a level which worries the capitalist class and their political placemen enough to force them to back off with their Austerity Offensive
John
Thank you for answering that for me. It just seems to me that people like my self really do not understand the extent of the problem before us. Honest answers gives me clarity.