Nu Labour- Goodbye and Good Riddance
23 May 2010
There is a pleasant country walk that goes from the Haregate Estate in Leek to Tittesworth Lake. It takes about an hour to do and there are excellent views over to the Roaches.
Along the walk are a series of benches, which have been provided by the local PCT so that people can sit and admire the views. Cut into the 8 benches is a series of health promotion messages about obesity and exercise and the need to raise your heart beat.
I cordially detest the messages and have to think that they are pointless what is the reason for directing messages at people who are undertaking some moderate exercise but I hate the messages for the simple reason that they sum up the ethos behind Nu Labour perfectly.
If I were to characterise the last Government I would be using one word that word would be control. The messages on the benches seem to perfectly encapsulate that. It suggest that the people cannot be trusted and only we the middle class professionals who devised the idea and used public money to have the messages inscribed know what is good for you. It says we really despise you for your unwillingness to accept the messages we give you.
Of course sometimes the loathing spills out such as Brown at Rochdale but the evidence has been all around for some time.
“ Friends of the people” sometimes I struggle to find a connection.
I have experienced it myself. On the occasion when I took my 3-month-old daughter to a Sure Start Centre in Ellesmere Port and was told that I, as a white man, I must be a bad parent. I have seen it at innumerable meetings when some one makes a disparaging comment about the people of Stoke because they are stupid or fat or lazy or vote BNP. The people who make these comments are usually middle class professionals who live some distance away from the City. They use their prejudices to further seek control over the lives of the people they have so little time for
My other example, which I like to use to illustrate the folly of Nu Labour, was the setting up of the School Food Trust following the expose of Jamie Oliver on the condition of catering in schools around the country. The response of Nu Labour was to set up the Trust based in Sheffield. My partner at the time was working in a school kitchen. The findings of the TV programme on the general poor quality of school food led to more food preparation time for the school cooks. However it did not lead to more pay. On the other hand the newly set up quango in South Yorkshire quickly acquired a Board of Nu Labour cronies as well as well paid posts. I seem to recall a media officer employed on £95,000 a year.
Then there were the targets. Not a week seemed to go under the previous regime without some manifestation of the consequence of the target culture. Trolleys in hospital corridors have their wheels removed so that they become beds thereby meeting a target. Schools teach to the league tables when the number of 16-18 year olds not in education or further training rose. Police Officers spending less time on the beat and more on paperwork to prove that they are meeting a central imposed agenda.
Social Workers occupy much of their time huddled over computers imputing data rather than dealing with their clients. Everyone it seems has a target and it seems to be getting in the way of the ability of people to provide a public service.
There are many reasons why people should have been in open revolt by the way that in which many have to leave professional judgement outside their place of work. Let us hope the new Government has learned the lesson.
Let us hope that if the axe is to fall it falls on the panoply of the target industry. It has been calculated that performance management costs an average size local authority of around 300,000 £1 million a year. Then there are the consultants that are employed. Then there are the computer systems that have to be developed to monitor this questionable system. Costly systems which have blighted the management of the NHS, farm payments, child benefit, employment records and tax credit. And of course an aspect of the performance management culture is the impenetrable jargon filled language, which frequently attends it. All culminating in the grotesque spectacle of an authority have to have passed all its targets and deemed a 3 star authority at the same time as Baby P was happening.
There were of course were the other failings. The dalliance with the finance industry and the light touch regulation that lead to a. Finance Services Authority which failed to protect the public from risk. The wars, the overweening arrogance that led it to blatantly ignores the wishes of ordinary members over uses of council house revenues, the 10 pence tax fiasco, the growing inequality, ID Cards, the surveillance society meant to combat terrorism, but used to see what people were putting in their bins or living within a school catchment area. I could go on and perhaps you have your own favourite.
Now it seems to me that the candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party have sworn not to follow the mistakes of the years of Nu Labour. I do not think that this goes far enough and that they should be made to rub their noses in the mess that they have created.
I have been watching quite a few films about US Presidents as well as reading avidly. FDR strives me as a individual who believed that politics could be made to work for people and the role of government was to mobilise individuals to deliver a good society. That is what I want from my politics to believe that an individual through the democratic process could work for the betterment of society and the crucial difference from the failed Nu Labour experiment in communities that are empowered.
The terrible verdict on Nu Labour that despite the good will and the popular mandate it had in 1997 it allowed an opportunity that it was given to be wasted.
This is an excellent blog
This is an excellent blog Bill.
I don't know the specific walk you mean but I do like the walk around Tittesworth reservior and the one around Carsington reservior. Plus we are lucky to have so many good canal walks locally. Exercise is great for sure, but so is the chance to enjoy the outdoors and observe the wildlife and try to get away from the controlling contemptuous government for a while (will the current one be any better - more on that later). So having a reminder there on the bench would tend to spoil it.
"If I were to characterise the last Government I would be using one word that word would be control." Absolutely! They had that white paper, 'communities in control' which was really 'communities under control'. What was particularly sinister about nu-labour is their pretence to be listening, pretence to be providing choice and empowering, whilst doing the opposite.
"Let us hope the new Government has learned the lesson." Doesn't bode well so far with schools, they're imposing academies every bit as much as labour did and on primaries too, which we knew they would. But what can be do - vote labour get academies - vote tory get academies - shafted either way. And the same spin. They're talking about taking it out of LA control but neglecting to say it goes into sponsor control with typically only one parent on the governing body, fewer than is typical for foundation/trust schools or the good old community schools that are dying a death now. Have some reservations on free schools, not sure yet. If they're like foundation status schools it's not too bad but how will they be maintained, by the LA or will there have to be sponsor funding, going towards academies via another route?
See also Sentinel today:
http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/education/Headteacher-set-earn-reco...
"Then there are the consultants" - enough said.
"Costly systems which have blighted the management of the NHS, farm payments, child benefit, employment records and tax credit."
I've some stories on this. Had no problem with child benefit for many years, then just recently two issues. Firstly the minute your child leaves high school they write to you saying they have amended the records to stop the child benefit from September, then when they sign up for 6th form college they have to change the records again. How daft, they could just wait slightly longer and only do the change one time or not at all as required. Then this April, instead of getting the usual letter explaining the child benefit increase and the date it comes into effect, I got - no communication. Then I noticed the payment into my bank account had increased so I 'phoned them up to ask why no letter. I was told they don't want to write them anymore. They did tell me what the new payments were and the date they changed. But I wanted it in writing. Why - because if there were ever any dispute we would both have a record of exactly what had been paid over which periods of time. I asked for a letter and said to save postage an email would do. You would not believe it - they said they don't do email! With all their supposed fancy systems and they don't do email letters. They sent me a letter but it did not specify the date of the increase so it wasn't precisely what I requested. Sloppy. And you have to wonder whether they are just trying to disempower the individual so as they have the ultimate power and you wouldn't be able to dispute anything. As for child tax credits, well the amount of form filling there is for that seems unnecessary - but hey I guess that'll be axed soon anyway.
"The wars" - yes outrageous.
"Now it seems to me that the candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party have sworn not to follow the mistakes of the years of Nu Labour." Trouble is they can't be trusted. We have the chance to see locally whether they perpetuate past mistakes or not as labour's got the most control of the council again. So are they still under the Meredith trance or not?
When will the transition board be kicked out? Will they take back the local election system cruelly removed by Meredith hauling government imposition in?
Nicky Davis - non-party political activist - a firm believer in grass roots democracy and strong local communities.
I was having a converation
I was having a converation with an old friend of mine Phil in a pub in Leek a few days ago. he is a long term Labour party member who is profoundly disillusioned with the chice of candidate for the Labour party leadership. I have to say I agree with him. From all of them it is the language of managerialism. O for an FDR. "I am hated by the bankers and I welcome their hatred". But personalities aside we both felt that the new political reality required contemplation which a speedy election will not bring.
Phil is something of a historical romantic and it is certainly a trait I share, but if one were to look just over a hundred years ago when Marxists in SDf, radical Liberals, a nascent Labour Movement had a porouseness and openness we do not get nowadays. The Trotskyists organisations are a good example of this sectarianism, but all parties have in some ways. What is needed is for people of like mind to sit down and exchange ideas. I hope it happens because what we have had is the imposition of a control that syas that your views count for nothing and our opinions cannot be challenged.
Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world
www.billcawleyresearch.co.uk
I think you summed in up Well
I think you summed in up Well Bill, when you said New Labour failed to Listen. This is a point that I made to Rob Flello and Tristram Hunt when I met them in a pub in Blurton. That despite voting Labour in the past and despite growing up in a Labour household. Labour had shown contempt for the very people who put them into power and so couldn't rely on my vote.
I reckon TH is a good guy but I wasn't impressed by his answer. It was New Labour through and through, it's us or them. My feeling was, The government can really manage and determine how the people vote, a government that listens to the people need not fear the people. In the Late 90's the Tories had been in power so long they didn't think they could ever lose.
Labour became infected with the same arrogant complacency. Wars that no one wanted, id cards surveillance the rise of the speed camera, massive immigration, academies the Millennium Dome, Body armour for troops....etc, etc, etc were just all reasons why there was a massive disconnect from Labour. People who had supported them all their lives thought ..."they no longer represent us"...and people who swung over to Labour in 97 decided they had had enough and jumped ship to what they knew best.
Allowing Brown to dodge the election was a bridge too far in many peoples mind..and I have no doubt that if he had called the election when he had the chance , he may well have won because people remembered him as a good chancellor, instead he'll go down in history as a terrible PM.
I don't like all this NU business as bad as Labour had become, they are a million miles away from Robert Mugabe.
http://tideswellman.blogspot.com
Twitter: @tideswellman
The immediate future of
The immediate future of British politics has therefore been framed. The Coalition will cut like crazy and it is up to the rest of us to stop them.
But to use a phrase of Lenin's What is to be done?
The definition of ‘progressive’ has taken a bit of a bashing over the past few days, and we should expect that trend to continue. The spectre of seeing arch New Labour lackeys such as whatever Ed or Milliband combination claiming to stand up for ‘progressive’ policies against ConDem cuts will be galling – precisely because these are exactly the kind of cuts Labour was promising, just a little later than the more bloodthirsty Tories and Liberals. Labour cannot be trusted to put up any kind of ‘progressive’ bulwark to the ConDems – and it is up for other voices and groups to expose this.
Of course, truly progressive voices are somewhat difficult to find in parliament. Caroline Lucas is there, as do some of the excellent Labour Left backbenchers of McDonnell’s and Corbyn’s ilk. And it’s only fair to say that, comparatively speaking, Plaid, the SNP and the SDLP can also be counted on to fight cuts that are likely to disproportionately hurt the nations. But, go beyond that, and you really are scraping the barrel.
Parliamentary figures do have a role in fighting ConDem – Caroline Lucas will lead the charge in parliament, putting up a dignified challenge to the neoliberal agenda that many Labour MPs are likely to support in name of the ‘national interest’. But the true role for progressives in parliament the vehicle for making change.
That movement is weak, but nowhere near dead , it stil has a pulse. I believe that the trade unions are a vital part of this movement as the collective vehicles for the workers who are going to be on the end of savage cuts. But we now need to see other progressive organisations rise up and join the fight – the environmental and anti poverty movement, for example, and, of course, the student movement.
So often these movements focus in on their own peculiar interest without reference to the wider narrative that affects all progressive issues.
Getting organisations so accustomed to carving out whatever concessions they can to join together in action will be difficult, but it is the model that has worked in other countries and successful campaigns.
Bringing Citizens UK and the other, newer community organising movements on board will be an absolute must to ensuring a truly mass movement is formed.
Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world
www.billcawleyresearch.co.uk
Post new comment