Discussion – Len Arthur
Generalising
from a community council
A little bit
of Labour history was made in Pontyclun in the May local elections: we managed
to win the two county council seats and four seats on the community council.
There are some disputes about the dates, but it may be that this is the first
time Pontyclun has directly elected Labour borough councillors since 1968. In
contrast to some of the other discussion pieces, this one will start from the
bottom and work up, and not from the blue skies down.
The
Pontyclun Community Council (PCC) is composed of 11 councillors, so the four of
us are in a minority. There is one Plaid councillor and the other 6 are
independents, of whom 4 at the time of the election were associated with a
group that is called the Pontyclun Action Group (PAG). Instead of trying to
scrape together an alliance with couple of councillors who might talk to us, it
soon emerged that most councillors were initially willing to talk strategically
and long term about how the Council should operate until the next election, so
we decided to test this out at some informal meetings open to all councillors.
A general
strategic aim was agreed and we then established 6 working groups with specific
aims within which most of our election commitments and other ideas could be
covered. The working groups are administration; economic development; community
engagement and accountability; social and cultural action – including issues of
poverty; physical environment; and young people. We used the term ‘working
groups’ so that all decision would still be referred to the full council, and
non-councillors could join the groups and help develop policy and new agendas.
In fact non-councillors could be in the majority. Greater detail is available
on our Pontyclun Labour Party blog.
The system
has been in operation for about 4 months and is working reasonably well but has
been rather demanding for those of us taking the working groups seriously –
remember all councillors are volunteers and receive no pay or set allowances
including the chair. We have managed to employ a new clerk following the
retirement of the existing one, using rigorous ‘blind’ procedures, and have
started to put considerable flesh on many of the election commitments. Our key
innovation of directly involving non-councillors in policy discussion and development
is slowly taking off, and is resulting in many creative suggestions in what
could be described as a greater ‘sophistication of proposals’.
Some of us –
of course – have notions of soviets in mind, but putting the humour to one
side, there are three key democratic socialist achievements. First,
accountability moves beyond the ballot box and becomes an everyday part of the
process of council work, enabling local people to directly influence areas in
which they have an interest. Second, we start to break away from the ‘customer’
notion of social democratic politics, that as councillors we can only ‘prove’
ourselves only by being good deliverers or unpaid social workers. Direct
involvement means the electorate have an opportunity to experience self
activity and to be an integral part of making change happen. Third, power is
experienced as a direct reality, not only in how decisions can be put into
practice, but also the downside of just how challenging can be the real balance
of forces against us.
Now, of
course, we are a small community council with an annual turnover of £110k and
£150k savings in the bank. There is little to cut and much to play for to bring
in additional sources of money. Two of our Labour community councillors are
also county councillors and this improves our access to a wider range of
support, both in terms of specialists and some grants. It is, however, possible
to see in this relationship with county councillors how the local experience
can be generalised up. Where community councils exist, open working groups can
be established and where they don’t, local councillors or groups of councillors
could establish working groups to act in the same way. Similarly, with
structures like this in place, AMs and MPs can have a direct and accountable
input. Trade unions and other parts of the labour movement, such as
cooperatives, also have another route into direct decision-making.
No
organisational form or structure is nirvana; it becomes a terrain of struggle.
Letting go in a way that is suggested here will mean that councillors and other
representatives will be faced with proposals that they might not like, or face
difficulties in implementation. It will mean that the political case will have
to be argued through, as opposed to being ignored or avoided. It will also mean
that, faced with cutbacks, people may be armed with an understanding that will
lead them to take challenging direct action or expect us as Labour Party
members to take the lead: we should relish the opportunity!
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