Recently U.K.Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has made two major speeches (one at the party conference in September, the other this month on welfare reform) in which he has made a great deal of the virtue of being in the political centre.
To me, there is neither virtue nor sin attached to being in the centre; and the centre has never been where I though I was. On particular issues, yes of course, it can happen that the right, just or practical solution is about halfway between two other proposals put forward by opposing groups. On occasion though, one extreme is right. Imagine, say, a political leader, possibly a Liberal, saying, "On one hand there are the Fascists. On the other hand we have the democrats. We are halfway between the two, rejecting the extremism of both camps, so we must be right." A particular difficulty about being in the middle by firm preference, rather than by chance, is that the middle is defined by where the extremes are. So if someone on the right, say, or the anti-environmentalist side, or whatever duality you're looking at, moves their group way to the right or whatever, the centre moves right and you must move right with it. This gives remarkable power to extremists!
The more cynical centrists, such as the court around Tony Blair when he led the Labour Party, jink right or left to make sure that a majority of voters are nearer to their position than to the position of their main opponents. The less cynical ones are puppets just as much.
If you run through major political philosophers, you'll find some who defined themselves as conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, Christian democrats, liberals, social democrats, socialists, anarchists - but not centrists, unless you count Popper as a centrist, and I would suggest he's outside the right-left spectrum.This is because centrism is not a political philosophy at all: it's either a political tactic (stay in the middle and you'll win elections) or amounts to little more than a belief in negotiation, diplomacy, the rule of law, caution - things many people clearly not in the centre also believe to be generally a good idea.
Political parties need passion. How can you be a passionate centrist?
The old, pre-merger Liberal Party constitution said Liberals "in all things, put freedom first". That sounds quite extreme. That party was often willing to take flak proposing things that seemed way out at the time. A party sharing in power will necessarily be more selective about that, but need not lose its soul.
But where is that soul? At one time I would have said quite confidently that it lay in a combination of individual liberty, support for community and individual empowerment through free collective action (active citizenship) and fairness (equality). I still think that's the essence of Liberalism (plus environmental responsibility), and distinguishes leftish Liberal Democrats, despite snide remarks from Nick Clegg's court, from social democrats, who have more faith in a centralist state and less interest in small-group action. But the second quality in particular seems to have been forgotten by many and that, together with a debasing of community politics so that it becomes local party campaigning without any idea of empowerment, may explain why a belief in the rightness of being in the centre (as opposed to being in the centre on some key issues but not on others) has gained so much ground despite its essential emptiness.
The heart is still there, but beating uncertainly.
Showing posts with label community activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community activism. Show all posts
Friday, 21 December 2012
Thursday, 8 November 2012
What is government for?
During a BBC TV news item about the US presidential election, after the result so a bit reflective, a Republican voter, interviewed, said, more or less:
"If you believe that government's about helping people, then Obama's OK, but if you believe government's about helping people to help themselves, you worry...". This sounded quite thoughtful and the idea that government's main role is enabling (helping people to help themselves) appeals a lot to a British Liberal.
But first of all, even by Abraham Lincoln's quite narrow definition of the role of government (doing what people can't do for themselves) by any realistic analysis there is a substantial role for government, especially if you admit things that are clearly, in the best interests of people in general, done by government at some level (policing, for example: many people could instead protect themselves, but the cost in violent deaths would be horrendous and the weak and poor would be least able to protect themselves).
The idea that everybody can pull himself or herself up by his/her own bootstraps is traditionally American, but flourished when the constantly moving Frontier made such self-improvement much more achievable for people who started with nothing. If you really want to enable everyone, then some people need a help up until they're in a position to make choices and help themselves. In Britain, for example, the last Labour government laid down a minimum wage by law. It was and is pretty low, but some people were being paid below it and at that level their choices and ability to help themselves were extremely limited. Some business organisations warned that the minimum wage would drive down employment, but that didn't seem to happen. The minimum wage would look to some Americans like classic socialism; but from a libertarian point of view, what individual liberty was reduced by it? The individual liberty of those paid a bit more was increased.
Undoubtedly there is a trap of coming to rely on government to fix everything. It can't, and if it could, it shouldn't. But a trap on the opposite side is to see the alternative purely in terms of individual (or at most family) initiative. Some things can't be fixed by any individual and may not be best left to government, but are fixable by relatively small numbers of people freely banding together - a community, a society, an action group. So one of the key questions for government at any level should be, "How can government encourage and assist community and other free collective action?"
Obama was a community organiser. I suspect he understands that. Our Prime Minister David Cameron did understand that, but his "Big Society" has vanished under pressure from the economic slump, the defecit reduction programme and unimaginative civil servants who saw his agenda purely in terms of getting former public services provided by charities (which themselves might be more top-down and no better at involving volunteers than the statutory organisations).
We shouldn't give up that easily.
"If you believe that government's about helping people, then Obama's OK, but if you believe government's about helping people to help themselves, you worry...". This sounded quite thoughtful and the idea that government's main role is enabling (helping people to help themselves) appeals a lot to a British Liberal.
But first of all, even by Abraham Lincoln's quite narrow definition of the role of government (doing what people can't do for themselves) by any realistic analysis there is a substantial role for government, especially if you admit things that are clearly, in the best interests of people in general, done by government at some level (policing, for example: many people could instead protect themselves, but the cost in violent deaths would be horrendous and the weak and poor would be least able to protect themselves).
The idea that everybody can pull himself or herself up by his/her own bootstraps is traditionally American, but flourished when the constantly moving Frontier made such self-improvement much more achievable for people who started with nothing. If you really want to enable everyone, then some people need a help up until they're in a position to make choices and help themselves. In Britain, for example, the last Labour government laid down a minimum wage by law. It was and is pretty low, but some people were being paid below it and at that level their choices and ability to help themselves were extremely limited. Some business organisations warned that the minimum wage would drive down employment, but that didn't seem to happen. The minimum wage would look to some Americans like classic socialism; but from a libertarian point of view, what individual liberty was reduced by it? The individual liberty of those paid a bit more was increased.
Undoubtedly there is a trap of coming to rely on government to fix everything. It can't, and if it could, it shouldn't. But a trap on the opposite side is to see the alternative purely in terms of individual (or at most family) initiative. Some things can't be fixed by any individual and may not be best left to government, but are fixable by relatively small numbers of people freely banding together - a community, a society, an action group. So one of the key questions for government at any level should be, "How can government encourage and assist community and other free collective action?"
Obama was a community organiser. I suspect he understands that. Our Prime Minister David Cameron did understand that, but his "Big Society" has vanished under pressure from the economic slump, the defecit reduction programme and unimaginative civil servants who saw his agenda purely in terms of getting former public services provided by charities (which themselves might be more top-down and no better at involving volunteers than the statutory organisations).
We shouldn't give up that easily.
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Politicians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***£%$£££**!!!
"Politicians" has become a dirty word. However, no state that got along with an element of free participation by at least some of its citizens has ever donw without politicians. Even in the direct democracy of Athens there were political leaders.
So those who rubbish politicians as a class must stand for one of these two things:
*EITHER some kind of dictatorship
*OR much more honest and better-behaved politicians.
I do suspect that some of the anti-politician and anti-politics culture is whipped up by right-wing media because the more people distrust politics and politicians, the more they will be happy for decisions that used to be taken openly and democratically through the political process to be left to corporations and (which is not quite the same thing) to the market. I've posted on the limitations of the market before, but just remember two things about the market: it doesn't think far ahead; and if you have a thousand times someone else's spending power, for the market, you have a thousand times the power. Forget one person one vote.
However, even the most ideologically pure free-marketeers admit some room for collective, democratic government, for which you still need politicians. I think hardly anyone in stable democracies wants dictatorship. Still politicians, then, but maybe better ones?
That's a perfectly reasonable aim and the U.K. parliamentary expenses scandal gives it force. But that scandal related purely to NATIONAL politicians (control over local expenditure is much tighter) and yet it's tarred local councillors with the same brush. As for the sort of honesty that means sincerity rather than decent behaviour over money, people say they want that kind of honesty in politicians yet those who display it are often pilloried for putting their feet in it.
It's also worth remembering that opinion surveys over nearly fifty years have shown that U.K. voters have a very low opinion of M.P.s and councillors in general, yet often like their own local representatives. In other words, there is an anti-politician assumption which is unaffected by positive experience of your local person.
There's a widespread assumption that local elected politicians are paid careerists - yet if you look at the allowances U.K. councillors get, they vary between about £1,000 a year and £10,000 (excepting what a few people like a leader of the council get for what's maybe half a full-time job), not big money especially if you consider that being an active councillor will involve expenses (driving around a lot, for example, and very likely some of your election expenses) and many hours of work, not only meetings but taking up problems for people, talking with people, researchiung issues and so on.
Someone posted on a local paper discussion board that their council would be better if the councillors were all independents instead of "political careerists". Well, look at the typical local council and you'll find many of the councillors are retired people who've had careers and now want to do something for their area and promote things they believe in. Others have good non-political careers they may well be damaging through the spare time and mental energy they take on council business. Out of 50 councillors you might find about eight or ten who had national political ambitions and maybe two of those would be elected to parliament, not necessarily for more than a few years.
As for independents, there are some good ones, but here are some of the minuses:
- they're all well-off. Political parties can pay the election expenses of relatively poor candidates, but independents pay their own, unless of course they have rich friends who may expect favours in return.
- you generally have very little idea of what they stand for or how they'll vote on key issues: there's no manifesto, for a start.
- if they do express a commitment, there's no mechanism to stop them going off in a completely different direction, whereas a party candidate elected on a manifesto who completely ignored it would probably be in trouble.
- very often they're party loyalists in disguise, so you get the party rule without the honesty of knowing you're voting for the Conservatives (say) to run the council. In a recent town council election not far from me, seven people were standing as independents yet were endorsed en bloc by the Conservative district and county councillors and behaved like a party slate.
Sometimes it seems the anti-politician mood is so strong that people forget that the vast majority of local political activists are volunteers who believe in something.
So those who rubbish politicians as a class must stand for one of these two things:
*EITHER some kind of dictatorship
*OR much more honest and better-behaved politicians.
I do suspect that some of the anti-politician and anti-politics culture is whipped up by right-wing media because the more people distrust politics and politicians, the more they will be happy for decisions that used to be taken openly and democratically through the political process to be left to corporations and (which is not quite the same thing) to the market. I've posted on the limitations of the market before, but just remember two things about the market: it doesn't think far ahead; and if you have a thousand times someone else's spending power, for the market, you have a thousand times the power. Forget one person one vote.
However, even the most ideologically pure free-marketeers admit some room for collective, democratic government, for which you still need politicians. I think hardly anyone in stable democracies wants dictatorship. Still politicians, then, but maybe better ones?
That's a perfectly reasonable aim and the U.K. parliamentary expenses scandal gives it force. But that scandal related purely to NATIONAL politicians (control over local expenditure is much tighter) and yet it's tarred local councillors with the same brush. As for the sort of honesty that means sincerity rather than decent behaviour over money, people say they want that kind of honesty in politicians yet those who display it are often pilloried for putting their feet in it.
It's also worth remembering that opinion surveys over nearly fifty years have shown that U.K. voters have a very low opinion of M.P.s and councillors in general, yet often like their own local representatives. In other words, there is an anti-politician assumption which is unaffected by positive experience of your local person.
There's a widespread assumption that local elected politicians are paid careerists - yet if you look at the allowances U.K. councillors get, they vary between about £1,000 a year and £10,000 (excepting what a few people like a leader of the council get for what's maybe half a full-time job), not big money especially if you consider that being an active councillor will involve expenses (driving around a lot, for example, and very likely some of your election expenses) and many hours of work, not only meetings but taking up problems for people, talking with people, researchiung issues and so on.
Someone posted on a local paper discussion board that their council would be better if the councillors were all independents instead of "political careerists". Well, look at the typical local council and you'll find many of the councillors are retired people who've had careers and now want to do something for their area and promote things they believe in. Others have good non-political careers they may well be damaging through the spare time and mental energy they take on council business. Out of 50 councillors you might find about eight or ten who had national political ambitions and maybe two of those would be elected to parliament, not necessarily for more than a few years.
As for independents, there are some good ones, but here are some of the minuses:
- they're all well-off. Political parties can pay the election expenses of relatively poor candidates, but independents pay their own, unless of course they have rich friends who may expect favours in return.
- you generally have very little idea of what they stand for or how they'll vote on key issues: there's no manifesto, for a start.
- if they do express a commitment, there's no mechanism to stop them going off in a completely different direction, whereas a party candidate elected on a manifesto who completely ignored it would probably be in trouble.
- very often they're party loyalists in disguise, so you get the party rule without the honesty of knowing you're voting for the Conservatives (say) to run the council. In a recent town council election not far from me, seven people were standing as independents yet were endorsed en bloc by the Conservative district and county councillors and behaved like a party slate.
Sometimes it seems the anti-politician mood is so strong that people forget that the vast majority of local political activists are volunteers who believe in something.
Thursday, 19 April 2012
What is a Liberal - to me?
When I last posted I described how the term "Liberal" has come to mean different things in different places, its roots, and how it evolved in Britain. I ended by describing the party I joined at the end of 1966 as I saw it then.
So if I told someone I was a Liberal and they didn't understand, roughly what would I say?
The constitution of the Liberal Party (before merger with the Social Democratic Party) said Liberals "put freedom first". All other political creeds have at best a conditional adherence to freedom. Nationalism, for example, can be advanced along with freedom or at its expense. Many early social democrats in the Labour movement supported free expression and democracy in Britain because they were the established culture and convenient channels for creating a fairer, more rational and better planned society: elsewhere, as in the Soviet Union, they saw these things as disposable if the end result was their kind of society. But "freedom" means almost as varied things to different people as "Liberal" does.
At its most basic it indicates an absence of control. That can't be absolute, or society would disintegrate, but if I am prevented by law from drinking alcohol, criticising the founder of the state or painting my house in vivid, clashing colours, those are limitations of my freedom. Some limitations are justified to protect the interests of other people or life forms, such as limitations on late night noise or on killing rare animals. But it isn't only the law that stops me doing things. If I'm blind and paraplegic, for example, a mere absence of help will profoundly limit what I can do. In a profoundly poor, disadvantaged community, I may not need a legal ban to tell me I won't be a judge or conduct an orchestra or sail in the Olympics. This leads to a concept of freedom as maximising people's potential. The term "potential" is loaded with hidden value-judgements (what if my potential is to be a brilliant serial killer?), However, I support the idea that maximising people's opportunities is an aspect of freedom and Liberalism. Where I disagree with the "economic Liberals" who have gained leading positions in the British Liberal Party in recent years is that I see opportunities closed off by poverty, by hatred and discrimination and by the actions of big business more than by the legal restrictions imposed by a democratic state.
For Liberals, freedom is freedom of the individual. The freedom of a nation or people from a wider state - of Scotland from Britain, Corsica from France or the Tamils of Sri Lanka from Sri Lanka - should be valued if it contributes to individual freedom, but not otherwise. But stress on individual freedom can lead to an atomistic view of society, again seen among "economic liberals" and Thatcherites, viewing society as separate individuals pursuing individual goals and impeded by government. In fact, we achieve freedom and awareness collectively through relationships. Political freedom is protected by a web of free organisations, universities, trade unions, political parties, residents' associations, pressure groups and charities, churches and other religious groups. When we join and get involved in something like this we are not buying something in the market - we're sharing in common action for something we judge to be valuable.
Promoting such activity is for me essential to Liberalism. We are more free if we can influence our human environment (laws, institutions, roads, buildings, education, social care) and do so by such free association. A passive society getting on with its economic activity and voting every few years for a centralised government might satisfy a social democrat (no intention to refer to the SDP here) because it might be relatively fair and benign economically, but it should not satisfy a Liberal. Hence Liberal support for all kinds of devolution of power aimed at bringing power nearer to people.
The more unequal society is, the more freedom is restricted because masses of people have little choice and little influence on what is done in their name. An academic Liberal when I was a student argued that Liberals and (democratic) Socialists both valued freedom and equality, but the Liberals put freedom first when the two conflicted. I'd add, or amend, that Liberals and Socialists both want equality, but Socialists are more interested in equality of wealth and Liberals in equality of power. Centralised command socialism tries to achieve a degree of equality of wealth and creates profound inequalities of power. Liberals pursue political reforms and local activism to redistribute power, but in an extremely economically unequal society, the rich will always use the power much more effectively than the poor.
There is one last aspect of modern Liberalism very important to me. When I joined the party, raising environmental issues (as I did) made you seem a bit odd in any political party. The business-first economic Liberal parties of some European states are not greatly interested in green issues, but the Liberal Democrats in Britain have pursued them harder than the other mainstream parties (unless you're Welsh, as Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalists) seems to me to have much better environmental credentials than the SNP (Scottish nationalists). It isn't very obvious to me how this dovetails with the rest of Liberalism, but I suggest seeing the rest of creation as having value and rights independent of human interests (a "deep green" position) is a logical extension of Liberal internationalism and opposition to narrow hatreds and fears such as in racism.
Now someone might point out the Liberal Democrats of Britain are currently in a Conservative-led coalition which is doing some not very Liberal things by the criteria I've suggested. True - and it's doing some Liberal things (stopping I.D. cards, abolishing the default retirement age, tax reductions targeted at the lowest-paid). But the experience of power and of coalition have led to soul and mind searching by Liberals, revisiting questions like "What is a Liberal?". I think that's healthy - and I'll never accept the answer is just "Someone wanting a weak state and an absence of government restriction on civil liberties plus more freedom for business and for individuals to buy what they want in the market".
I'm a Social Liberal. I want a Liberal society.
So if I told someone I was a Liberal and they didn't understand, roughly what would I say?
The constitution of the Liberal Party (before merger with the Social Democratic Party) said Liberals "put freedom first". All other political creeds have at best a conditional adherence to freedom. Nationalism, for example, can be advanced along with freedom or at its expense. Many early social democrats in the Labour movement supported free expression and democracy in Britain because they were the established culture and convenient channels for creating a fairer, more rational and better planned society: elsewhere, as in the Soviet Union, they saw these things as disposable if the end result was their kind of society. But "freedom" means almost as varied things to different people as "Liberal" does.
At its most basic it indicates an absence of control. That can't be absolute, or society would disintegrate, but if I am prevented by law from drinking alcohol, criticising the founder of the state or painting my house in vivid, clashing colours, those are limitations of my freedom. Some limitations are justified to protect the interests of other people or life forms, such as limitations on late night noise or on killing rare animals. But it isn't only the law that stops me doing things. If I'm blind and paraplegic, for example, a mere absence of help will profoundly limit what I can do. In a profoundly poor, disadvantaged community, I may not need a legal ban to tell me I won't be a judge or conduct an orchestra or sail in the Olympics. This leads to a concept of freedom as maximising people's potential. The term "potential" is loaded with hidden value-judgements (what if my potential is to be a brilliant serial killer?), However, I support the idea that maximising people's opportunities is an aspect of freedom and Liberalism. Where I disagree with the "economic Liberals" who have gained leading positions in the British Liberal Party in recent years is that I see opportunities closed off by poverty, by hatred and discrimination and by the actions of big business more than by the legal restrictions imposed by a democratic state.
For Liberals, freedom is freedom of the individual. The freedom of a nation or people from a wider state - of Scotland from Britain, Corsica from France or the Tamils of Sri Lanka from Sri Lanka - should be valued if it contributes to individual freedom, but not otherwise. But stress on individual freedom can lead to an atomistic view of society, again seen among "economic liberals" and Thatcherites, viewing society as separate individuals pursuing individual goals and impeded by government. In fact, we achieve freedom and awareness collectively through relationships. Political freedom is protected by a web of free organisations, universities, trade unions, political parties, residents' associations, pressure groups and charities, churches and other religious groups. When we join and get involved in something like this we are not buying something in the market - we're sharing in common action for something we judge to be valuable.
Promoting such activity is for me essential to Liberalism. We are more free if we can influence our human environment (laws, institutions, roads, buildings, education, social care) and do so by such free association. A passive society getting on with its economic activity and voting every few years for a centralised government might satisfy a social democrat (no intention to refer to the SDP here) because it might be relatively fair and benign economically, but it should not satisfy a Liberal. Hence Liberal support for all kinds of devolution of power aimed at bringing power nearer to people.
The more unequal society is, the more freedom is restricted because masses of people have little choice and little influence on what is done in their name. An academic Liberal when I was a student argued that Liberals and (democratic) Socialists both valued freedom and equality, but the Liberals put freedom first when the two conflicted. I'd add, or amend, that Liberals and Socialists both want equality, but Socialists are more interested in equality of wealth and Liberals in equality of power. Centralised command socialism tries to achieve a degree of equality of wealth and creates profound inequalities of power. Liberals pursue political reforms and local activism to redistribute power, but in an extremely economically unequal society, the rich will always use the power much more effectively than the poor.
There is one last aspect of modern Liberalism very important to me. When I joined the party, raising environmental issues (as I did) made you seem a bit odd in any political party. The business-first economic Liberal parties of some European states are not greatly interested in green issues, but the Liberal Democrats in Britain have pursued them harder than the other mainstream parties (unless you're Welsh, as Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalists) seems to me to have much better environmental credentials than the SNP (Scottish nationalists). It isn't very obvious to me how this dovetails with the rest of Liberalism, but I suggest seeing the rest of creation as having value and rights independent of human interests (a "deep green" position) is a logical extension of Liberal internationalism and opposition to narrow hatreds and fears such as in racism.
Now someone might point out the Liberal Democrats of Britain are currently in a Conservative-led coalition which is doing some not very Liberal things by the criteria I've suggested. True - and it's doing some Liberal things (stopping I.D. cards, abolishing the default retirement age, tax reductions targeted at the lowest-paid). But the experience of power and of coalition have led to soul and mind searching by Liberals, revisiting questions like "What is a Liberal?". I think that's healthy - and I'll never accept the answer is just "Someone wanting a weak state and an absence of government restriction on civil liberties plus more freedom for business and for individuals to buy what they want in the market".
I'm a Social Liberal. I want a Liberal society.
Monday, 16 April 2012
What is a Liberal? 1: A Bit of History and Geography
I am a Liberal. I find that the term is used by people who have no stake in it to mean things I don't recognise - and sometimes by people who do have a stake in it. It also means different things in different places - so I thought I'd define what it meant to me.
It isn't altogether strange that the word means such different things in different countries: after all, the military dictatorship of Myanmar (Burma) calls itself Socialist, as does the main French centre-left party, which has its faults but is certainly democratic and civilian; and the same word was used by Communist dictatorships and by British Labour Party leaders who tied Britain closely to NATO, the USA and a hostile stand-off with the Communist regimes after the Second World War. "Conservative" might mean similar things around the world, but that's because it's perhaps more a condition than a programme or a philosophy; and European Conservatism has little of the moral majority flavour of U.S. Conservatism.
In the U.S., Liberal means something like "left-wing" or "social democratic" in Europe. In much of continental Europe Liberalism is seen as a creed of individual liberty and free enterprise, naturally aligned against high taxation, a strong state and a powerful church, and kinder to business interests than the Conservatives, Nationalists or Christian Democrats. South American Liberals are traditionally anti-clerical.
The roots of the word are, I believe, in early 19th century Spain, applied to reformers who opposed absolute royal power and challenged the Catholic Church on some issues. It has Latin origins and meant either "free" or "generous". Britain had a Liberal Party from the 1860s, but that party had much older roots, being a merger of Radicals (left democrats often accused of being rabble-rousers and crypto-revolutionaries) with a larger group of Whigs, a party tracing its roots back to opposition to the King in the 1670s and even to the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War and that of the Covenanters in Scotland. So there are some emerging themes - opposition to unlimited power, plus defence of individual and collective rights against a powerful centre.
The Liberal Party in Britain generally stood for the removal of privileges and barriers, for example the restriction of access to universities by religion, and led the gradual process of extending the vote to more and more groups during the 19th century. A commitment to free trade was seen as part of this opposition to unfair and divisive barriers and privileges. In the late 19th century the party increasingly perceived that liberty as well as compassion required an assault on extremes of poverty, and the Liberal Government of 1905-14 laid the foundations of a system of social insurance. Although the Whigs had once been a rather warlike party, Liberals were always more suspicious of military adventure and empire than their main opponents.
The rapid replacement of the Liberal Party by Labour as the main anti-Conservative party in the 1920s meant a deep decline but also to a painful process of redefinition and rededication in roughly the period 1928-1962.
So what came out of that? It matters to me because I joined the party as a student at the end of 1966.
I was joining a party that was uneasy with the facile categories of left and right, but on most issues stood on the left. It was not hostile to the state, but opposed what it saw as unnecessary growth of state power such as nationalisation of some industries. It defended individual liberty in moral matters and preached a revival of local initiative and collective self-help, instead of the centralisation and command planning popular with Labour at that time. It was internationalist, and without arguing against commitment to NATO and suchlike, sought a way out of military stockpiling and the Cold War. It was interested in giving real power to employees in companies. While less suspicious of business interests than Labour, it was not a "businessmen's party" as some continental Liberal parties had become.
Perhaps what attracted me most was the commitment to facilitating local, free, collective action wherever possible instead of either passive acceptance of central state power or big business power.
Next time I'll try to define what I mean when I say I'm a Liberal and what that means for British Liberalism now.
It isn't altogether strange that the word means such different things in different countries: after all, the military dictatorship of Myanmar (Burma) calls itself Socialist, as does the main French centre-left party, which has its faults but is certainly democratic and civilian; and the same word was used by Communist dictatorships and by British Labour Party leaders who tied Britain closely to NATO, the USA and a hostile stand-off with the Communist regimes after the Second World War. "Conservative" might mean similar things around the world, but that's because it's perhaps more a condition than a programme or a philosophy; and European Conservatism has little of the moral majority flavour of U.S. Conservatism.
In the U.S., Liberal means something like "left-wing" or "social democratic" in Europe. In much of continental Europe Liberalism is seen as a creed of individual liberty and free enterprise, naturally aligned against high taxation, a strong state and a powerful church, and kinder to business interests than the Conservatives, Nationalists or Christian Democrats. South American Liberals are traditionally anti-clerical.
The roots of the word are, I believe, in early 19th century Spain, applied to reformers who opposed absolute royal power and challenged the Catholic Church on some issues. It has Latin origins and meant either "free" or "generous". Britain had a Liberal Party from the 1860s, but that party had much older roots, being a merger of Radicals (left democrats often accused of being rabble-rousers and crypto-revolutionaries) with a larger group of Whigs, a party tracing its roots back to opposition to the King in the 1670s and even to the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War and that of the Covenanters in Scotland. So there are some emerging themes - opposition to unlimited power, plus defence of individual and collective rights against a powerful centre.
The Liberal Party in Britain generally stood for the removal of privileges and barriers, for example the restriction of access to universities by religion, and led the gradual process of extending the vote to more and more groups during the 19th century. A commitment to free trade was seen as part of this opposition to unfair and divisive barriers and privileges. In the late 19th century the party increasingly perceived that liberty as well as compassion required an assault on extremes of poverty, and the Liberal Government of 1905-14 laid the foundations of a system of social insurance. Although the Whigs had once been a rather warlike party, Liberals were always more suspicious of military adventure and empire than their main opponents.
The rapid replacement of the Liberal Party by Labour as the main anti-Conservative party in the 1920s meant a deep decline but also to a painful process of redefinition and rededication in roughly the period 1928-1962.
So what came out of that? It matters to me because I joined the party as a student at the end of 1966.
I was joining a party that was uneasy with the facile categories of left and right, but on most issues stood on the left. It was not hostile to the state, but opposed what it saw as unnecessary growth of state power such as nationalisation of some industries. It defended individual liberty in moral matters and preached a revival of local initiative and collective self-help, instead of the centralisation and command planning popular with Labour at that time. It was internationalist, and without arguing against commitment to NATO and suchlike, sought a way out of military stockpiling and the Cold War. It was interested in giving real power to employees in companies. While less suspicious of business interests than Labour, it was not a "businessmen's party" as some continental Liberal parties had become.
Perhaps what attracted me most was the commitment to facilitating local, free, collective action wherever possible instead of either passive acceptance of central state power or big business power.
Next time I'll try to define what I mean when I say I'm a Liberal and what that means for British Liberalism now.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
The Big Society
Odd, isn't it, that David Cameron's "The Big Society" means a small state and Lyndon Johnson's "The Great Society" meant a big one? The phrases are so vague, of course, they could mean almost anything, but to be fair to both politicians, if you try to find more specific alternatives they tend to be a mouthful. For Cameron, too, the phrase implied a rejection of his Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society" - though to be fair to her, which I find difficult, part of what she was saying was, I suppose, that making "society" responsible for things was often a cheap way of avoiding personal responsibility.
Unlike many people broadly on the left, I think Cameron really meant what he said about the Big Society, though he hadn't fully thought it through. I think he really wants (or at least, wanted) an explosion of individual and community action in place of passive acceptance of the way things are, the dictates of the state and even of big business. I'd totally go along with that. However, such a growth of community action does not necessarily mean a contraction of the state. Community groups may take over some state functions, but they may also campaign for the state to take on new responsibilities where the job is too big for community action. That has been the Chicago experience with community organisers.
The genuine Big Society idea, though, was dangerously mixed with two different agendas - the wish to transfer as many as possible public services into the hands of the voluntary or private sectors and the need to cut public expenditure to reduce the deficit. Community action and charities providing publicly-funded services are totally different things. The kind of charities that win sizeable public contracts rarely use many volunteers to deliver the services, and national charities are likely to be LESS close to local communities than the local council is. Moreover, local authorities, police and NHS trusts all make quite extensive use of volunteers, and may shed volunteers if they hand over services. As for the cuts agenda, there ARE cases of voluntary organisations and community groups achieving desirable aims massively cheaper than traditional public services, but this is a matter not of paring a few costs when a service is outsourced, but of rethinking radically how to achieve the desired outcomes. A programme in that direction called "Total Place" was pushed in the last days of the old government and did turn up some spectacular examples of how things could be done much cheaper and differently, but setting up such things takes time. The push for cuts tomorrow has sidelined the Total Place concept in favour of old-fashioned programmes of cutting what we can (often grants to voluntary organisations or long-term work that would bring in big benefits but not tomorrow). The savings achieved by outsourcing services more or less as they stand will be modest and the successful bidders will rarely be close-to-the-ground local voluntary groups, who in fact are feeling the pinch.
If "civil society" and local activism did enlarge, they would grow and gain power not only at the expense of tha state, but also at the expense of the private for-profit sector, as we see with local campaigns against, for example, Tescos.
It's all a huge pity because the basic idea was right and was not, I'm convinced, a cynical ploy; but in the hands of central-action-oriented civil servants, it soon became largely code for outsourcing.
Unlike many people broadly on the left, I think Cameron really meant what he said about the Big Society, though he hadn't fully thought it through. I think he really wants (or at least, wanted) an explosion of individual and community action in place of passive acceptance of the way things are, the dictates of the state and even of big business. I'd totally go along with that. However, such a growth of community action does not necessarily mean a contraction of the state. Community groups may take over some state functions, but they may also campaign for the state to take on new responsibilities where the job is too big for community action. That has been the Chicago experience with community organisers.
The genuine Big Society idea, though, was dangerously mixed with two different agendas - the wish to transfer as many as possible public services into the hands of the voluntary or private sectors and the need to cut public expenditure to reduce the deficit. Community action and charities providing publicly-funded services are totally different things. The kind of charities that win sizeable public contracts rarely use many volunteers to deliver the services, and national charities are likely to be LESS close to local communities than the local council is. Moreover, local authorities, police and NHS trusts all make quite extensive use of volunteers, and may shed volunteers if they hand over services. As for the cuts agenda, there ARE cases of voluntary organisations and community groups achieving desirable aims massively cheaper than traditional public services, but this is a matter not of paring a few costs when a service is outsourced, but of rethinking radically how to achieve the desired outcomes. A programme in that direction called "Total Place" was pushed in the last days of the old government and did turn up some spectacular examples of how things could be done much cheaper and differently, but setting up such things takes time. The push for cuts tomorrow has sidelined the Total Place concept in favour of old-fashioned programmes of cutting what we can (often grants to voluntary organisations or long-term work that would bring in big benefits but not tomorrow). The savings achieved by outsourcing services more or less as they stand will be modest and the successful bidders will rarely be close-to-the-ground local voluntary groups, who in fact are feeling the pinch.
If "civil society" and local activism did enlarge, they would grow and gain power not only at the expense of tha state, but also at the expense of the private for-profit sector, as we see with local campaigns against, for example, Tescos.
It's all a huge pity because the basic idea was right and was not, I'm convinced, a cynical ploy; but in the hands of central-action-oriented civil servants, it soon became largely code for outsourcing.
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