So, I have been promising for a little while to write a post dealing with issues of tactics, strategy and achievement for radicals in electoral politics. This promise was largely catalysed by the reaction to
this post on poverty in Hackney, which some readers found frustrating for not going into detail as to what councillors/MPs/people should be doing to solve such problems.
Of course, this is a topic that I have been interested in for some time. I wrote this
article for Jim Jepps' publication, Caucus, on the role of Green councillors in community campaigning - and more recently, I published
my own short e-pamphlet on the role of Greens, and particularly Green elected representatives, in social change movements.
The topic is a massive one, not least because councillors and MPs can find themselves in such varying contexts when elected. For that reason, I thought it might be helpful to organise what I have to say into four groupings - thoughts for an opposition councillor, a councillor 'in power', an opposition MP and an MP with the strong support of the government.
A councillor as part of an opposition groupWell, this is the situation that I actually have first hand experience of. During my time as a councillor in Oxford, I was Deputy Leader of an opposition group for four years, albeit a group that held the 'balance of power' on a hung council.
It might seem that it is nearly impossible to do anything of use while in opposition on a local council. After all, central government has systematically gutted local government over the last few decades, and it is often thought difficult to do much of anything even while in power. What hope an opposition? As it turns out, quite a lot - if you treat politics as a wider matter than what can be achieved through committees and legislation in the council chamber.
Being an opposition councillor is not an experience entirely bereft of influence. Even without the balance of power it is occasionally possible to secure some funding here or there for a worthy cause, to hold off the worst excesses of power (see Councillor Michas Borris' recent work in trying to end aggressive policing on Milton Gardens Estate for just one of many examples of this), and to argue for a progressive and fair politics in the council chamber. An opposition councillor's biggest role, however, it seems to me, is to empower and bring together ordinary people. This is both a political and a tactical necessity. For any elected representative wanting radical social change, it is clear that the only force capable of truly delivering is the
engaged and sustained self-organisation of ordinary people. No councillor, or MP, or even PM, has the ability to change things that belongs to people when they organise together. From a tactical perspective, any genuine movement from an elected councillor towards enabling and empowering participation by ordinary people is also a wise move - people tend to respect and trust politicians who show, by their actions rather than their rhetoric, that they actually want people to be involved in the business of their own lives.
In the case of an opposition councillor, moves towards this sort of politics would include the vigorous defence of existing social/community spaces, support for democratic tenants/residents associations, advocacy of real power for neighbourhood forums/area committees, and genuine involvement in grassroots organisations of the neighbourhood. In my opinion, it also needs to include a committment to being recalled, should a large number of the electorate desire it.
A councillor as part of a ruling groupWell, a group of proactive councillors doing all of that could find themselves in charge of the council! And that is where the
fun really begins. Because yes, it's true, central government really does have the whip-hand over local government these days. So little of local government revenue is raised locally, and so little of local government spending is discretionary, that the business of power can rapidly become an exercise in who can more efficiently manage 'necessary' cuts.
There are three responses to this, it seems to me. One is to refuse. To get elected and, like Liverpool, set an illegal budget. The consequences of that, in the absence of a nationally connected struggle of hundreds of councils taking a similar policy at the same time, is that every councillor involved would be bankrupted and disbarred. A political point would have been made - but little concrete progress would have ensued. The second response is simply to go along with the framework as it exists, which allows for some shifting of resources and savings along the margins, but is not exactly the stuff from which radical change is made. This approach would probably achieve more tangible good than the first, but at the cost of disillusionment of ordinary people and co-option/disenchantment of decent councillors. Hardly an attractive option either.
For me, there is a 'third way' (yeah, I said it!). It is only possible with the active and enthusiastic support of a majority of the local people, and so flows naturally from the role played as an opposition councillor. Its best historical precent can be found in George Lansbury and the Poplar Rates rebellion - a strategy of choosing the most unpopular and regressive example of central government restriction possible, and directly challenging it. Not the entire relationship between central and local government, but something so fundamental that to win would be to tilt that entire relationship towards equality, and something so regressive that it is plainly obvious that the struggle is one for justice. Central government would doubtless react in draconian fashion - but if, as in Poplar, the mass of ordinary people trust their councillors, and (crucially)
understand the basis upon which they are fighting, victory is possible.
All of this is strong stuff, I'll admit. I do not know of a council anywhere in the country that is currently in a position to make it work - but I would argue that this is an argument for much more significant engagement with creating democratic space and political debate amongst ordinary people, rather than for a hopeless rapprochment with the status quo of constrained reformism within local government. If we are for radical social change,
and engagement with elected politics, there has to be a route map towards something other than acceptance of the 'reality of the situation'. The point is to change accepted reality, rather than bemoan it.
An MP as part of an opposition groupLets be honest, if I'm elected to Parliament, I am unlikely to be immediately joining a Green government. For that reason, it's important to ask what a lone MP can do for their constituency. Frankly, we're back to the same sort of story that we saw for an opposition councillor. There
are a number of things that a non-ruling party MP can do for their constituents in terms of casework and campaigning - but really, the main function of a backbencher would seem to be that of raising issues, catalysing debate and doing everything possible to enable ordinary people to take back power in their everyday lives. It is that empowerment function, reclaiming and protecting space for self-organisation, that is the most important contribution a single MP can make to the lives of their constituents. In terms of the original post on poverty that sparked these thoughts, it is also probably the single most effective thing that an MP not in government can do to allievate deprivation and inequality. People who are organised are more powerful, more hopeful, and have a better quality of life than those who have no access to a sense of community power and campaigning support. A radical MP should be using their 'authority' in any way possible to support the development of such initiatives.
An MP as part of the governmentEventually, with enough people organised and making a strong critique of the way that our economic and social systems are currently constituted, a Green government might be elected. A lot of people will doubtless read this and sigh, thinking "Matt, we don't have time to wait for something like that to happen!". My reply is simple - we don't have time to pretend that anything else will work. A few solar panels on roofs won't cut it. A little bit of tinkering here and there won't get it done. We need radical change, and that will simply not be possible unless the majority of people are convinced that it is needed. Similarly, it will be extremely difficult to keep state power off of the back of self-organising movements unless there is an electoral wing to the movement.
The way to do get there is to organise in the way that I have described above - painstakingly, starting small and allowing people to experience what can happen when cooperation and solidarity trump competition and greed. Not calling for a revolution that clearly doesn't have the support of even a significant minority of people in this country, but not settling for inadequate and coopted reforms either. Rather,
"supporting reforms that increase the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification" (hat tip to Solidarity and Maurice Brinton).
Well - that was rather longer than I had expected! A prize for anyone who read to the end. If you want to know what policies I would try to implement as an MP, rather than the strategy for doing so, please check out
the Green Party's policy pages. They go into far more detail than I ever could here!
P.S. No partial privatisation of the Royal Mail for now, AND temporary renationalisation of the East Coast mainline? Time to move forward and make both things permanent....
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Amusingly, runners were apparently promised a flat route, news to anyone who knows the socking great hill that runs between Greenwich and Woolwich. Like a sad memorial, loads of bus stops around here still have maps on warning people of a day of diversions because of the event.
