Becoming a Political Animal #2
The Sustainable Communities Bill (download here to read in pdf) has attracted a lot of support from MPs and others in recent years as it has been submitted and resubmitted to Parliament. This year it looks like the Bill has the best chance yet of being adopted.
Recently I travelled to Westminster Central Hall ,a Methodist Church at the heart of London, close to the Houses of Parliament for the Localworks Rally in support of the bill, sponsored by Unlock Democracy.
Chaired by the editor of the Evening Standard, an impressive succession of speakers, (including Rt Hon David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Menzies Cambell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, as well as a government minister, the CEO of Help the Aged, the Chairwoman of the Women’s Institute and others) rose to voice their support for the bill, present their own reasons for supporting it. (For example, you can watch Ming Cambell’s speech here.)
The BBC report on the evening does a good job of summarizing what was said, and on the same page there are items on ‘The Death of the High Street?’, which illustrate some of the problems the bill seeks to address. The range of issues is in fact very wide indeed and impinges on a huge number of areas of public policy. Everyone realised the need for the bill to be workable, so it doesn’t go as far as others would like, for instance in tackling problems with planning laws, but what it does address seems to me to make a great amount of sense - it scatches where many many ordinary people are itching whether they realise it or not.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some analysis!
April 5th, 2007 at 12:50 am
I agree with you. The Bill is a god thing and is gaining support and looks like it will go through before the next election.
What concerns me the most is the North/South divide. (For example, it is easier for you to go to Westminster Village than it is for me) The whole process is geared on a bottom up process (one that is favored by liberationists) but is extremely difficult to put into practice when the decision making process is based in a culture and geography alien to the grass roots. Just ask the miners, the steel workers, factory workers and farmers (or the Methodist Church for that matter)
Great in principle (and worthy of support) but I doubt it will have the desired affect.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:48 am
I wonder if that was a Freudian slip to say the bill is a ‘god’ thing. I agree whichever way you meant it. Unless by ‘the Bill’ you meant the ITV police soap.
North/South divide? I agree there too, given of course that the rich just live where they want be it North or South. In part the bill is, as the government minister who spoke on the night said, “an opportunity to restore power to the grass roots and decision making by local people”. I doubt you would seek a peaceful neo-Marxist kind of revolution since it is clearly easy and common practice for one newly enfranchised group to begin disenfranchising and marginalising those previously holding the power and purse strings. The hardest question for government is, as Nick Hird sponsor of the Bill put it, “How serious are you about giving power away”. This emerged clearly in discussions during the meeting as a persistent root of the problem and one that dogs governements around the world and down the decades. ‘Government by the people, for the people’ becomes ‘Government by some people for those same people’ far too easily.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:57 am
‘The Bill’ has bowed out to consumerism! I preferred it in it’s pure form in the early 90’s with DI Burns! (My problem is that I can’t cope with change!!)
As for Local Works - another question which really needs to asked first (and it sounds like the politicians have answered with a hesitant YES!) is ‘Is it desirable for government by the people, for the people?’ I must confess to being skeptical. Not because it is a bad idea, just because I can’t see it working. As a lay worker I was involved in many community projects that were locally led by folk at the grassroots. Unfortunately, most struggled to deal with budgets, communication, technology and relationships etc. many of the things essential to local leadership.
When I was in South Africa I asked local church leaders how they managed to have faith in a government that was so obviously corrupt. They said to me ‘you must remember, before they started preparing multi million pound budgets - they were fighting for freedom with machine guns and had little access to education.’
And then the likes of Bonhoeffer who was very suspicious of the masses having too much power in the running of a community or country, after all it was the masses who voted in a Nazi government.
I still think the jury is out on this egalitarian utopia idea of democracy. For me it is about appropriate power sharing and giving local people the tools to manage themselves and others in society. It’s about people who do not understand the world of politics and government being able to participate and share in the decision making process, but in the end it will be managed by those who have the necessary tools and skills.
And as a friend kept telling me at Circuit Meeting’s ‘Democracy was never a biblical principle - it was always a remnant’.
I started playing around with some of this in a blog a while back
http://crosspurposes.voxtropolis.com/2006/09/17/10/
But here I was more interested in the running of the Methodist Church but I think the same principles apply. If you solve it - tell Conference office.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Good thread you pointed me to, I’ll be re-reading it - Not sure I can keep up with you and Ministir on that level of political discussion though. I’m learning, hence ‘Becoming… a political animal’. I thought Popper was something people used at parties.
I share some of the same concerns you do about democracy. Only yesterday I was in conversation with the pastor of an independent evangelical church bemoaning (me, that is) how problematic leading is when faced with 25 or so very different people on a church council and when not employed by the local church to do the leading. I likened it to blow football on a windy day, where the minister’s input is one amongst many often competing inputs.
Me? Can’t I be a despot, just once? Please???!!
April 11th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Interesting thread. Good to see you back Mandylion with some thought provoking stuff and, as always, your input is well thought out Chavlin.
A few points on democracy. There is a difference between egalitarian utopian idea of democracy and the liberal democracy that we live and work with. The former is an ideal for some (unworkable and possibly dangerous in my mind, not least because of human nature - power corrupts and all that); the latter is the reality.
Liberal democracy is not perfect by any means but in 6000 years of civilisation it is the best form of society we have come up with. You could argue that a benevolant dictatorship would be better but this, again, is an unrealistic ideal given human nature. Something better may materialise in the future but for the moment liberal democracy is the best we have. I won’t go into the reasons for this opinion now but will do if pushed.
As a slight aside, Popper in ‘The Open Society and it’s Enemies’ was actually against any utopian ideals and recognised - and vehemently criticised - them for what they were; unrealistic, unworkable, unscientific and dangerous, hence his destruction of Platoism and Marxism. He advocated a ‘piecemeal’ approach to social engineering rather than wholesale revolution.