Blue Labour

There's been a lot of talk recently of Blue Labour, Maurice Glasman's 'traditionalist' proposal for future Labour Party policy. It is an interesting idea, one now widely discredited in light of Glasman's recent remarks about immigration. This is a shame, not just for the sake of pluralism and discussion but because it did offer a coherant alternative to technocratic New Labour capitalism, Conservative libertarianism and 'old' Labour social democracy. It also seemed to resolve a problem many of us on the left who have always believe in the importance and value of a large and active state have felt concerned about for the last fifteen years: how to provide meaningful and progressive public services when the political class is now drawn from such a limited pool, when the major political parties vary so little in leadership or ideas, and when the dominant ethos and discourse is so childish, empty and right wing.

The answer is not distantly related to Cameron's 'big society' - the use of mutuals, trade unions, faith groups, community groups, cooperatives, etc - traditional aspects of left wing policy making stretching back decades and predate the Labour Party. To use of a horrible cliche: 'grass roots' politics, where it is associations of people outside politics but supported by government, carrying out political activities. Labour's obsession with Westminster politics, with statist changes, with business, the EU and the major levers of state could be replaced by focus on domestice policy, providing or helping people to provide services in local areas. The key to this idea is not social conservatism, although Glasman did stir in a healthy dose of it largely as a vote winner, but embracing and supporting communities which include social conservatives, socialists who are also concerned about immigration say.

It would not of course take the politicians out of politics, unlike Cameron's proposals it would require funding, an active state run by left wing politicians who understood the importance of taxation for the provision of a healthy public leaf in Britain. But perhaps it would allow the flourishing of real communities, locally specific engagement, the mixing of human beings with their neighbours and a diversity in public life.

The big society

As the Conservative government cuts away at public services it hopes to recreate some of them, at no or little cost to itself, by relying on volunteer replacements with little support or funding to help. It's called the Big Society.

There are many problems with this idea. In my village the local library is to shut. A few jobs will be lost, a local resource ended, the many elderly people in the area will be that much more limited in their access to company, books, information, newspapers and the internet, a social space gone. The alternative is to set up a new 'community run' equivalent, relying on volunteer staff, presumably open for vastly reduced hours and without specialist workers. Where the funding for this will come from is anyone's guess.

This blog is not intended to critique government policy. What I want to focus on is the patronising idea that the Big Society is something new or that it depends on government support. Most of us don't have to look far to find examples of extraordinarily generous acts on behalf of volunteers - or, as often as not, we even use services that we don't even realise are being carried out by volunteers. There are a host of television programmes on at the moment recording the nineteenth-century history of social entreprenurship and philanthropy, see the one about Robert Owen or Dr Bernardo. In the former the presenters are amazed to discover that the Big Society wasn't a twenty-first century creation. It isn't a nineteenth-century one either.

Every medieval monastery was obliged to give hospitality to those who asked for it. Tithing in medieval villages was intended both for the poor and for the church. I'm sure there are ancient examples too, but it's a period of history I'm less familiar with. Government can help a little - it can provide funding and expertise, and it can seek out the projects that need these resources - but it isn't the creator, only a sustainer. And now, of course, it has stopped doing even that.

Capitalism, TV and God

At an Anglican discussion group this week and the question <<is distrust endemic in our society?>> came up. Surely, I thought, everyone will pitch in with examples of distrust - bankers, lawyers, politicians on the make - you don't have to look far for excellent folk examples. But there was silence.

I give it a minute and ask everyone what they think about capitalism - specifically does competition, relentless competition, breed distrust? It isn't the kind of statement that would always be guaranteed much traction in this kind of environment, but no one demurred. One woman in her thirties agrees, giving an example of students competing for results. A priest goes further - is it possible to stop competition becoming reflected in a relationship with God? What happens when consumerism, individualism and competition become defining characteristics of our relationship with other human beings - it doesn't seem credible that the faithful of any religion could shake off these shackles when having a relationship with God.

There's a new television programme on the BBC by the Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker called 'How TV Ruined Your Life' (I don't think the irony is lost on him) which argues that the media has used fear to increase ratings. An obvious one I guess. But he pulls out research which argues that the more a particular image is repeated on TV the more ingrained it becomes in the brain; the more real it seems. Inevitably, therefore, other studies show that those who watch more TV believe they are in greater danger from crime and other threats than those who watch less. And, equally inevitably, this bares little to no relationship to reality as represented by falling crime statistics.

Competition and fear are natural bedfellows, and, of course, they undermine trust and then justify distrust by leading us to behave in untrustworthy ways. And TV, one of the most irresistible conduits for information about our world that there is, uses every tool in the disaster movie handbook to amplify competition in any way it knows how.