However, there are other serious things we can learn from today’s figures. Firstly, the unemployment rise disproportionately hit women, who made up 21,000 of the rise, putting female unemployment at the highest level since 1988. The cuts have long been identified as disproportionally hitting women, who make up the majority of the public sector workforce and are hit by benefits changes such as cutting child benefit, and these figures are a further example of the fundamental unfairness of the government’s economic strategy.

We can also see that youth unemployment has hit 20.2%, well over double the national rate. But at the same time the government cuts away opportunities for young people by scrapping EMA, increasing tuition fees, cutting funding to advisory services like Connexions and closing youth centres. We saw the state of some of today’s youth in the riots last week, and it is undoubtedly the case that some of the root causes of the riots were down the socio-economic situation of the rioters; living in a heavily consumerist society without the means to succeed in it, pushing them to crime and looting. For the first time in recent history, the opportunities of children are lower than those of their parents.

A third thing we can learn from today’s figures is that the unemployment is disproportionately concentrated in the poorest areas of the country. The highest unemployment rate by region is in the north-east, at 10%, while the lowest is in the south-east, at 5.8%. In the regions it stayed at 7.7% in Scotland, up to 8.4% in Wales and up to 7.3% in Northern Ireland. These are simultaneously the areas which are receiving the highest budget cuts to their councils (as high as 8.9%), which both contributes to the unemployment and cuts away services to those who at the same time have lost their jobs. Hence, those who are carrying the largest burden of the cuts and our poor economic recovery are those least able to do so; the least well-off in society who did nothing to cause the crisis which got us here.

A final thing these figures show is that part-time employment is at 1.26 million, the highest figure since records began in 1922. While the provision of party-time jobs is good insofar as it allows people who would otherwise not be working to work at least some of the time, part-time jobs do not adequately provide enough for a family or even an individual to live above the poverty line. This is especially true with 5% inflation and the fact that the sectors which offer most part-time employment, such as supermarkets, restaurants and other high-street shops, mostly do not pay a Living Wage.

All of this shows that it is in fact time for Plan B. Dave Prentis of Unison is correct to blame these figures on the disastrous economic policies of the government and the TUC has for months now been calling for a Plan B, a plan which emphasises growth and protecting those most vulnerable in society, rather than leaving them with the highest burden to protect the Tory donors in the City. Those in the Labour movement must fight against the Coalition’s cuts agenda until they change course or, even better, we kick this government out.

They must not be successful.

At the time of writing, Labour MP Frank Fields is working with Tory MP Nadine Dorries[1]  to push through harmless-looking but poisonous changes to the Health and Social Care Bill –changes designed to impede women’s access to abortion. Then proposal itself sounds innocuous, calling for “independent counselling” for women seeking abortion. But women already receive impartial, non-directional advice. What the amendments actually seek to do, based on an absurd perception of dangerous vested interests, is not only to remove the obligation of abortion providers to give advice to potential patients, but to ban them from doing so.

Field and Dorries have observed that many current providers of abortion advice, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, are linked to abortion providers (the BPAS, a registered charity, is indeed “Britains largest single abortion provider”, according to the its own website[2]), and have come to the conclusion that, on account of this connection, the advice they give cannot possibly be impartial. Field and Dorries argue that organisations like the BPAS have too great a vested economic interest in the decisions of the women whom they advise –they see abortion providers as businesses seeking to increase revenue by performing as many abortions as possible, and view any connected advice services as the marketing arm of that business. Diane Abbott has rightly condemned their position as “fundamentally anti-right-to-choose rhetoric which depicts clinics that perform abortions as baby-killing production lines that are only in it for the money”[3].

There are, in fact, many ways in which abortion providers themselves are among the best-qualified organisations to provide advice to women considering ending their pregnancy. Experienced providers are well placed to talk women through all of the options available to them. They have the medical knowledge to be able to answer questions about what happens during the procedure, what the risks are, and what after-care should be like. Moreover, there are already checks in place to ensure that consultations are impartial and high-quality; the BPAS is registered with –and regularly inspected by – the Department of Health. But Field and Dorries would still outlaw their advice.

As the supporters of their amendments know, the organisations poised to take over this vital service are not impartial. Pregnancy advice services with no links to abortion providers usually remain independent from them precisely because they are opposed in principle to abortion. They give scientifically inaccurate information to women to dissuade them from having an abortion. They use harrowing case studies to dissuade women from having an abortion. They refuse to give out the names of abortion providers, so that even if they have failed to persuade a woman that abortion is wrong, she will not know where to go next. Many of these organisations already advertise themselves as independent, impartial, non-directional. They clearly are not.

If Field and Dorries’s efforts are fruitful, counselling advice for vulnerable women will not be high-quality, non-directional or even consistent. Women will fall prey to a post-code lottery, and have to hope that their GP can refer them to a local counselling service which is unconnected to an abortion provider but still able to adequately explain all of their options, inform them of the risks and realities of abortion procedures, and, if necessary, refer them to a clinic. Many investigations over the last decade have revealed that most “independent” abortion counselling clinics do not do this[4]. To deny pregnant women any or all of the information relating to their options is to impede their exercise of their right to access abortion, a right which has been enshrined in law for almost forty-five years.

More importantly, to do so is also to release great potential to delay access to a time-sensitive procedure and to cause unnecessary and unforgivable distress. The proposed changes are a threat to the physical and mental well-being of women seeking abortion. They may be motivated by an anti-choice agenda, but the issue they have raised is more than a pro- or anti-choice issue; it is a welfare issue. Abortion rights are, rightly or (as I believe) wrongly, an issue of conscience for our party. But protecting the welfare of vulnerable people is not. The changes proposed by Field and Dorries may pass into the Bill without debate. They may be debated at Report Stage of the Health and Social Care Bill on 6-7th September. In either case, they should not be allowed to sneak into law without a fuss.

Please urge your local MP to oppose this attack on women’s rights and welfare.

(See the  Abortion Rights’ website at http://www.abortionrights.org.uk  for a template letter. The site will even find your MP’s contact details for you. )

It is foolish to attack politicians for going on holiday; they deserve a break for the work that they do (not that anyone in any other job does not deserve a break) and they probably do a better job for being well rested. What does seem rather worthy of criticism is the fact that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London were all on holiday at the same time. Theresa May and Nick Clegg returned rather swiftly and should be commended for cutting short their breaks as soon as it became clear that this was escalating out of control. Our Prime Minister, however, has not shone in this crisis. Firstly, the Parliament recall for purposes of having a day long debate stinks of reactionary populism and will serve little purpose – what we need immediately is robust policing to bring these riots to an end, and the longer term issues of socioeconomic deprivation and disaffection will require years of carefully planned policy and investment – a day spent condemning the riots in Parliament will not serve as a solution for the years of low opportunities and employment the areas have faced. Secondly, the return was too late – it was clear after the second night that leadership was needed, yet he did not choose to return until the devastating fires of Monday night made his return unavoidable. He took no questions after his short media address on Wednesday and spent Tuesday in Italy returning to a café for a photo opportunity with a waitress he previously hadn’t tipped. Thumb twiddling? You decide.

Mehdi Hasan, editor of the New Statesman, tweeted something along the lines of ‘Blair said we needed to be tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime. Today we need to focus on the former’. I couldn’t agree more. The left must not allow itself to be painted as unwilling to tackle crime when it happens; its members do not help their cause when they provide justifications and excuses for these dreadful scenes. It is true that deprivation, a lack of opportunities and jobs and poor parenting no doubt played a role in allowing people to think that this sort of behaviour is at all acceptable. To deny this is folly. To allow it to be used as an excuse is dangerous. Those in the party should also be wary of blaming (the admittedly awful) Tory cuts to these areas. The effects of these are only just being felt; the younger rioters have spent the majority of their lives growing up under a Labour government and though the areas improved whilst we were in power, we could have and should have done better. Our party is as much to blame for the current lack of opportunity in the area as the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Let us focus immediately on the criminals themselves – then when this is over, use it as evidence for the need to tackle deprivation in inner cities.

Facebook, Twitter and the workplace are awash with demands for hanging, ‘shooting on sight’, vigilantism and other actions typical of a despot regime’s response to calm protests. Calm protests these are not, but in difficult times we must espouse the values we fight to defend: freedom, robust but not excessively violent defence of fair laws and responsibility.  A calm, proportionate and measured response is what we need. Use of water cannons, tear gas and arms runs the risk of harming innocent people (water cannons have both gauged out innocent people’s eyes and killed others in the past) and set a nasty precedent . Improper policing of the student protests in response to the tuition fee tripling and police brutality in the case of the death of Gary Tomlinson are a serious concern and the seeming lack of accountability in many cases like these must be sorted. Allowing the police licence to use unnecessary and excessively violent measures to deal with these horrid events would be a very unwise idea. Though it seems things may quieten down tonight as a result of hugely increased police numbers, a firm, simple and potentially less violent response would be a curfew, with those breaking it facing arrest. Evidently, if this were necessary, it should be employed for only as long as it was clearly needed.

Lastly, let us turn to those committing these despicable acts of violence themselves. Let me be perfectly clear: these riots are not a political movement; they are inexcusable and unjustifiable acts of wanton criminality. Justifications from those involved have so far included ‘getting the rich business owners’. Local, small business owners who have provided the community with jobs will find it difficult to recover from having their stock stolen – and many of those who have had their shops burned down will go bust. Whilst it’s unlikely your local Tesco being burnt out will bring down the supermarket giant, it’s also been providing jobs to an area where there are many complaints about the lack of jobs available. Cuts have been excessive and unfair in the areas these riots have taken place. The cost to the local authorities of repairing the damage done to public areas and buildings, combined with the cost of the compensation the police must provide to business and homeowners affected will only compound the problem.

Frustration is not felt towards those who have organised the mobilisation of communities and individuals through social networks to clean up the riots. That’s the good society we know, and the good society we should encourage.

In a recent poll women were twice as likely as men to say they don’t know who cares more about public services, Labour or the Tories. After record investment in schools, hospitals and early-years support women are still unsure that Labour is on their side, so the urgent questions must be: how can Labour convince women that we are still fighting for equality; and what exactly should we be prioritising in terms of furthering the cause?

Firstly, Labour needs to differentiate better between different needs. Women in Britain do not all speak with the same voice, have the same aspirations and use the same services. The difference in the well-being and life-chances of women and girls from different social backgrounds is striking. In addition to this, ‘Intersectionality’, or multiple discrimination, hits a huge number of women across the country; a shocking example of this is that 40% of ethnic minority women live in poverty, twice the proportion of white women. This isn’t to say that women’s characters are determined by their socioeconomic background, but certainly emphasises the fact that Labour needs to develop a greater understanding of the range of challenges faced by women in society.

While we should not underestimate the importance of fighting for policies which benefit women in the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum, for example by continuing and improving Sure Start, the tax credits system, and the rights of part-time and agency workers, Labour should prioritise the welfare of those most in need and battle for the representation of women at the top.

If you put together all the women who have ever sat as MPs since 1918, they would still be a minority in the House of Commons (today they make up less than 20%). Also consider the fact that 96% of directors of the UK’s top 100 companies are men, and we can see that there is simply not a powerful female presence in those spheres which make the decisions that affect us all on a day-to-day basis. Labour should continue its drive towards a more inclusive and gender-equal Westminster: not only by helping women get elected, but also by ensuring that those women, once elected, want to stay in Westminster, and are able to do their job effectively. Labour MPs should be actively working to redefine, in a gender neutral way, what it is to be a good leader, an effective speaker and powerful personality; setting the standard so that women are taken more seriously in their workplaces and communities. Reforming the practices of Westminster and Whitehall so that women are on a more equal footing with men will only enhance the quality of our democracy and our society.

Last, but by no means least, Labour needs to ensure that the Corston Report is not forgotten – the recommendations laid out need to be acted on ensure that the most vulnerable in society are protected. As it stands, the criminal justice system is set up for men and is consequently failing women. In January 2009, there were 4,199 women held in custody and around 77,000 men. Most women are in prison for theft or handling stolen goods- not for serious or violent offences- and nearly two thirds of women were sentenced to custody for less than 6 months.

Home Office research has found that 66% of women in prison have dependent children under 18 and that just 5% of these children remain in their own home once their mother has been sentenced. Women are, on average, less likely to re-offend if community based methods are employed, yet the government seem reluctant to act on the evidence put in front of it. Employing the recommendations in the report would go some way to lifting marginalized women and their families out of the trap of social exclusion; Labour should treat this as a priority and work harder to support those at the bottom.

Labour has worked consistently hard for women over the past decade and we should be proud to actively promote its record in the run-up to the general election. Yet to ensure that women still vote Labour, the party needs to have a vision for what it will do in the future to reduce gender inequality and improve the lives of women across Britain in the next decade.

Only by embracing Keynes’ teachings (the teachings that have been scorned and rejected by the right and New Labour for the 20 years preceding the crisis), was this disaster avoided. Nationalising banks, quantitative easing, slashing interest rates, and a hefty fiscal stimulus dragged us back from the brink. And at almost every turn, the British right, led by the Conservative Party, opposed these vital measures. Had the Tories been in power, we would now be facing a full-scale depression. Progressive politics and economics had been vindicated – the left was right all along!

How, then, do we find ourselves in such dire straits? How is Labour facing a ‘generation in opposition’? How have the Tories succeeded in convincing people that our now massive public debt is a result of a bloated public sector, and not a reckless financial one? Unarguably, Gordon Brown shouldn’t have deregulated, and he was foolish to think he’d broken the business cycle – but these are all things that the left were saying! The Tories were envious of Blair/Browns’ pro-market approach. They looked on at the New Labour-City of London alliance in jealousy and admiration, not disapproval. Things would have been then same, if not worse, under a Tory government.

We can point to Iraq, an ugly and uncharismatic leader, an abused expenses system, and 12 years in power as excuses for when we lose the election. Or we can do something about it now, and prevent the train-wreck that will be a Conservative Government. The left needs to get out there and let the public know that the last thing we now need are drastic cuts in public spending. Gordon Brown is right to say that GDP growth is the best way to reduce public debt, and Conservative policies would only hinder this. The Government should be dedicated to keeping people in work and improving our public services, not scaling them back.

These are things that the public would agree with, if only we managed to get that message across. What we need is a clearer message, emphasized and reiterated over and over again. The labour leadership needs to get a grip of itself, of the arguments, of the media, and start the fightback.

The financial crisis should have lead to a renaissance of the left. However, Labour were too slow and too embarrassed to pick up on this. We didn’t seize the initiative, so the right did. Guido Fawkes and other right wing bloggers are setting the pace for grassroots politics, and the media seem to be captivated by them and their nasty message. But it’s not too late; the facts are on our side. If we write, organize, and campaign, we can, and will, turn the tide. We have to show that the choice facing Britain is one between Labour growth or Conservative cuts. If we can get our message across then we can win the election and ensure a better future for both the British Left and for Britain.

A further chapter was added to the narrative this month, when E-ON, the energy company who manages Kingsnorth power station, revealed they had shelved plans to make it the first “clean carbon” power station in the UK. The controversial plans would have involved building an entirely new power station on the site, which would use experimental technology to try and increase the efficiency in the process of generating energy from coal.

But while climate activists celebrated this decision as a blow to the future of coal-fired power stations, it raised questions of how Britain’s energy future will look. Scientists in support of such “carbon capture and storage” technology argue it is a way-station on the road to low-carbon energy production, but admit that the technology needs significant investment if it is to be viable: even the Carbon Capture and Storage Association describe the “significant technical and financial risk” which carbon capture schemes entail.

So where does the government stand on the issue of adapting the energy industry? The Labour party has promised a “step change” in energy supply, based on an “£100 billion blueprint for renewable energy”, but the specific details of this plan are hard to come by. The Labour government has so far showed an extreme lack of vision for Britain’s energy future, perhaps due, in part, to the fact that the government has seen 15 Energy Ministers in the past 12 years.

This lack of direction is all the more dangerous for the fact that many British power stations, including four of the ten nuclear reactors currently in use, will go out of action in the next few years. Already, the UK relies heavily on imported gas, yet we lack appropriate storage facilities to maintain reserves: Britain can only store 15 days’ supply of gas in comparison to France’s 99 days and Germany’s 122 days.

In the face of all these challenges to energy supply, the Conservative Party has produced a 38-page downloadable policy booklet laying out plans for a “decentralised energy revolution”. The policy, based on the widespread introduction of feed-in tariffs, would allow individuals to generate their own energy and sell excess back to the national grid. Although David Cameron’s commitment to use the “power of profit” as an incentive for improved energy security may be seen by some as the same market-led approach which led “Beyond Petroleum” BP’s to invest nearly £1.5 billion into extracting oil from Canadian tar sands this year – a process which generates four times more carbon dioxide than traditional drilling – the Labour government’s reluctance to initiate such incentivisation has only disempowered home owners from becoming part of the energy solution.

This is supported by Ofgem’s recent prediction that domestic energy prices will rise by 14-60% in the next 10 years; strikingly, the “Green stimulus” scenario, where the government would invest in renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage to support economic recovery and the transition to greener energy, would lead to the lowest rise in energy cost (14%), in contrast to the “Dash for energy” scenario, where concerns about the security of our energy supply could push prices up some 60%.

A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change (an independent advisory body created under the 2008 Climate Change Act) comes to the similar conclusion regarding greater investment in new energy resources. Specifically, the CCC recommends the government build 8,000 new wind turbines, four new coal power stations using carbon capture technology, and three new nuclear power plants, which together would cut emissions from the energy industry by 50% by 2020.

The strong commitments of this government to cut national carbon emissions suggest that we are at a turning point for British energy. Despite concerns over burdensome national debt, investment in the energy sector would be a significant positive legacy of the Labour government, and would help set Britain on the path to sustainability and self-sufficiency. With around 35% of the UK’s carbon emissions coming from the energy sector, the time for hesitation has passed. If we believe in the power of our society to adapt to environmental change, we must demand that our politicians take on this message of significant, immediate emissions cuts, and lead the initiative in the transition to low-carbon energy.

10 OULC volunteers

4 nights

8 tents

3x 6 hour shifts

4 broken cider machines

1 day of being impressed with the port-a-loos

5 torrential downpours

4 days of cold showers

3 packets of wet wipes

1 karaoke night

6 free drinks & meals

1 night of unlimited alcohol

£1,200 raised for OULC

Ben Lyons’ dancing: Priceless

Photo: sheepback.cabin

Deep recession. 2.5 million of the UK’s workforce unemployed. A collapse in share prices of over 50%. Forced closure of leading national banks. Sound familiar? What about all of this followed by an historic Labour Party victory? Given the current media coverage, this might not be how you expect the story to end. But in 1929 the country entrusted economic recovery to the party who promised the most radical shake-up of the national economy; the party who was the boldest and shouted the loudest. It was a national leap of faith. Labour had only formed a government on one previous occasion – even then it had been for just a single year. Labour’s appeal to the electorate was not based on their previous record in government – a tactic pursued by Alistair Darling who was already writing the epitaph on Labour’s 12 years of government at their conference in Brighton: “when the history of the past few years comes to be written, this government and this party will be proud”. Neither did they play the game of “they stole our policies”, a popular pastime doing the rounds at Westminster today. Labour castigated, rather than mirrored, the policies of embourgeoisement pursued with vigour by the Tories during the inter-war years. The party chastised the “Tories tax on the poor” and promised an overhaul of the railways and coal industry as well as a progressive programme of national insurance reform. They bravely set the dividing lines between themselves and the Conservatives and it struck a chord with the electorate.

This does not mean that Labour should pledge itself to a programme of (re)nationalisation or indeed the formation of a ‘Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth’ as the party promised in 1929. Yet much can be learned from the visionaries of the late 1920s who fought tooth and nail to secure only the second Labour government in British political history. If you had suggested to a voter in 1929 that Labour and the Tories were essentially the same party they’d have shown as much faith in your political opinions as Germans did in the Weimar Republic. Now the saying “they’re all the same” typifies the apathetic mood of the country. Voters find it very difficult to imagine how a Conservative government might differ from a Labour one – they just have a hunch that its time to find out. Both parties will have to make spending cuts, both present them as “tough choices”. Both parties plan to cut incapacity benefits and the next Chancellor, of whatever hue, is likely to raise VAT to 20%. And, to the probable dismay of Daniel Hannon, spending on the NHS will be ring-fenced and protected. Where are the dividing lines?

The problem is that they exist – Labour just expends too much energy claiming that the Tories have stolen their policies. Frustratingly this claim is not unjustified. Labour initiated reform of incapacity benefits in 2007; the Tories new independent schools – Michael Gove’s cure-all of the education system – sit not a million miles to the Right of Labour’s independent academies; and George Osborne admitted at the Conservative conference that he would retain, temporarily at least, the new 50p tax on top earners. Labour must stop being so reticent in areas where a bold policy initiative might give them the upper hand at the next election. There were positive signs at the Brighton conference. Labour no longer appeared so comfortable fraternising with the ‘filthy rich’ as they once did. Brown admitted that whilst the party once “gloried in a neo-liberal economic policy when it gave us the boom…we now believe you have to intervene”. This is a definite change in tack by the party and one which, if pursued, could redefine economic and financial policy. Darling has expressed his opposition to a cap on bankers bonuses but his plans to link those bonuses to long-term performance and to ensure banks have new minimum financial reserves should be posited as evidence of Labour’s new enthused efforts to crack down on the financial system. Presenting a sea-change in Labour policy would not only represent a popular appeal to voters; it might also shun the accepted, misconstrued Tory argument that Labour got us into this mess but the Tories can get us out of it. It was notable that David Cameron made virtually no mention of bankers or their bonuses at his party conference speech – it was Brown’s record as Chancellor which came under-fire.

This is a problem of presentation as much as substance: Labour should go to greater lengths to espouse its reformist agenda rather than relying on the mantra that the Tories are the party of cuts. Other proposals too need to be pursued. Electoral reform should be given serious consideration. First-past-the-post does entrench a two-party system and a move to reform this inequality might be seen as a brave step by the party to democratise British government – a welcome tonic after a summer of duck-houses and second-home renovations paid for by expenses. The fact that the Conservatives are anti-reform could be left unsaid but at least implied. Labour too should become champions of the environment. The Conservatives have stolen the eco-friendly ground from beneath Labour’s feet but there are still concerns that the Tories will struggle to satisfy investment in the environment with their penchant for spending cuts. Conservative MPs voted against green investment in the budget and Ken Clarke’s recent faux pas on wind-farms seemed to reveal the depth of division and hostility inherent within the party to investment in the environment. Labour could still seize the initiative on one of the most pertinent issues to modern, everyday life. A green drive might expose the shallow depths of the Conservative commitment to the environment as well as providing a positive response to recession: investment now could make Britain a leading exporter of green technology in the future. Part of this is also about reengaging with the British worker: no one wishes to repeat the plight of Vestas workers on the Isle of Wight witnessed over the summer. In 1929 Labour promised to protect “wage-earners, shop-keepers…lower-middle classes…workers”. As the financial system receives a painful scalding and bankers a severe telling off Labour should look to its core support and consider how best to protect the interests of workers in the services industry and in manufacturing. Labour’s electoral victory in 1929 was a close-run thing but a bold agenda and hard fought campaign transformed them from a party of relative obscurity into a party of government. Similar bravery needs to be shown 80 years on.

I have my darker political moments, the days when it becomes difficult to hold onto that progressive optimism in an age when every main party is talking the language of austerity and cuts whilst banks are given blanks cheques signed by the taxpayer. Socialism, it would appear, can be ever so attractive to the rich when their precious market crashes and burns.
Quite what we here on the ‘Left’, whatever that highly generic term means anymore, are supposed to think when one of our last great public services struggles for a cash injection to modernise whilst banks only to need click their fingers to gain instant financial relief, is not clear. No one seems to be asking that vital question of why the hell it is the irresponsible rich have screwed up and receive instant recompense whilst men and women across the country are now faced with picking up the tab.
For years we’ve had the same story of low public expenditure, low taxation and liberal job markets and have enjoyed our secular worship of the twin gods of supply and demand. As our generation has been indoctrinated in this market run society in which wages drifted into murky waters of insufficiency we’ve all accepted that if we want to get anywhere in life we’ve got to take onboard a lifetime’s worth of debt.

One David Harvey, wrote about this bank bailout being a massive consolidation of the banking industry at the expense of the populace in general; nothing new there. In fact there is a particularly relevant precedent in the case of Mexico in 1982 when the IMF mandated austerity for the populace in order to protect the banking industry and the New York Stock Exchange. However the real point he made was that credit finance has been a mainstay of our economic system since the late 1970′s as a means of covering the shortfall between what the labour force has been earning and what it has been spending. Since we live in a consumer society, which lets face it, loves to hate the poor, spending was always likely to run ahead of the earnings that have been sunk by the declawing of the Unions in the mid 1980’s.
Given that we have a Labour party who “are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” and seem to have, at a basic conceptual level, gone for the self-interest virtues of the market over any fuzzy socialist notions of co-operation; it becomes difficult to see its current political compass as being part of the solution at all.
Of course it was quick to rediscover Keynesian policies and exhume them when the banks came rattling their collection tins outside Parliament, which leaves a lot of us who now face higher taxes, a higher retirement age and a future in which we’re all going to struggle under the ‘burden’ of increased public expenditure wondering just why it is that our government were happy to enforce this on us after years of telling us that to they couldn’t afford to raise taxes to pay for public services, or education or health or maybe even the poor, which to be honest don’t seem to have got any richer recently.
What this situation has entailed is the now cast-iron certainty of a Conservative administration stepping into power come the next general election and even more reasons to despise tax and despise government ‘meddling’.
Lest we forget, we’ve got a generation of people singing songs of market supremacy when they owe their health and their education to the large-scale edifices of the socialist experiment of the Attlee administration. I for one know that if it were not for the social democratic institutions that exist within this country I’d be lucky if I could read, let alone write this little rant, let’s not even go into the health side of things.

Most importantly, none of this was achieved by simply giving up.

Renewal and change, pleasant buzzwords in a world of class division and social injustice; if I could make such words mean something I would make them mean the rediscovery of Democratic Socialism, and the recollection that we’ve a duty not just to the under-privileged of today but to those of tomorrow. I don’t think that socialism is about bowing to the market or a mere managerial style of government, I happen to think it is about continuing the work towards a classless and equal society. So if like me you’re subject to the doubt that comes when faced with a looming Conservative government the message is; “This is our chance to reclaim our party, reclaim our principles and carry on this fight.”

Perception is important, and there can be little doubt that the 2008 conference, and the shift of the BBC to Greater Manchester, has a great deal to do with the government’s decision to delegate more powers to a city region.  Economically the case is already proven. The City Region of Greater Manchester already accounts for a fifth of the North’s economy, adding £47 billion to the UK accounts. This is more than Wales, which has its own Assembly, on both a raw numbers and per capita basis.

Yet since 1986, with the dissolution of the Metropolitan Counties, the city has been punching far below its weight. The siphoning off of £500 million designated for improvement of the Metrolink system to in effect prop up London’s Jubilee Line in 2004 ensured that many voted against the congestion charge this year, sceptical that money would be forthcoming. While Manchester is paralysed by the effect of deregulation, Transport for London remains a public concern. When politicians and civil servants keep public transport in public hands where they live and work, one must conclude that they consider it to be the most reliable system. Which begs the question why, and by what right, they subject the rest of the country to chaos. That such a progressive city as ours pours millions into the pockets of Stagecoach boss Brian Souter, an anti-gay, anti-union fundamentalist, rather than back into the local economy via a public service is a travesty.

With all this in mind, it is important that pressure is applied to our political leaders for greater devolution of powers. The Manchester City Region needs its own authority to match its own identity. It needs a council drawn from each of the fifteen districts, and most importantly it needs a mayor. We can then strip away the bureaucracy of the North West regional assembly, and confusing muddle of the county councils. Each district can elect a local council for local issues, and a representative for the City Council.

With the political infrastructure in place, this city would have a voice on the national stage, while its citizens would still have a direct link with their representatives. Under the current arrangement, impotent and anonymous local councils take decisions which people then ascribe to national government, and complain to their MPs about. Constituents do not get their problems addressed, councils are not scrutinised, and MPs divert time from holding the government to account to being social workers. A devolved assembly would bring transparency to the system.

The strength and determination with which this old, industrial giant has renewed itself is something every citizen should be proud of.  It has survived the decimation of its industry, the machinations of Margaret Thatcher and the devastation of the IRA, and it has come back stronger. Though I like the weather, I am not a North-Westerner. Though I like the history I am not a Lancastrian. I am a Mancunian, and my city deserves a voice: as one city, united.