No, Labour won’t hand power back to the people. Neither will the Tories.

Sunny. I never thought it would be possible to say this, but I agree with your sentiments 100%.
As to your question. Looking at the record of the Brown/Blair regime – there is not a chance that they mean it.
Apart from the Emancipation Acts, is is difficult to recall any government taking action to decentralise or return power to the electorate. Using the Emancipation Acts as an example, the Party that pushed them through expected and recieved a long-term political advantage from doing so.
I suggest that the nature of socialist government is built round controlling as much of the life of the population as possible- the record of this gov’t of one law a day for 12 years (?) would appear to back me up.
The Tories since 1970 havn’t been much better, and Dave is going to spend time in consolidation before he can start to lengthen the reins. I cannot realistically see any such programme moving up the priority list until the economy is under control and the most barmy of Labour’s Laws have been replaced or repealed. Not Foxhunting, silly billies, but the Prevention of Terrorism Act and some of the more unworkable parts of the Equality and Human rights Acts.

They can’t possibly mean it: pressing on with ID cards, surveillance,the the removal of many civil liberties, and the bastard Welfare/workfare Bill give the lie to declarations of handing back power. Gauge them by their deeds not their proclamations.

Alisdair is right, as usual. The oily Byrne has been one of the most complicit in NuLab’s tabloid agenda, every bit as ILLIBERAL (note name of this blog!) as Blears or Purnell; the kind of career politician who’ll piss on your back and tell you it’s raining.

Atropos: ‘I suggest that the nature of socialist government is built round controlling as much of the life of the population as possible- the record of this gov’t of one law a day for 12 years (?) would appear to back me up.’

There’s nothing remotely ‘socialist’ about this government so the last 12 years hardly count against socialism. They’ve continued the programme started under the Tories – perhaps they were socialist too?

I’d agree that there is a centralising, authoritarian streak in those forms of socialism derived directly from Marx but they’ve never been practiced here in the developed West. They seem to find a more natural home in countries which already had a history of totalitarian government.

I’d like to see more discussion of Parecon in the mainstream media. In many ways it seems a return to pre-Marxist notions of socialism, back to when socialism and anarchism where more closely identified.

What are the left admitting they are wrong?? And the people they seek to help actually don’t care??

Again…look at Liberal views…

Sigh..

No.

And now back to our regular programme.

@Sunny Hundal

Rules for Radicals,by Saul Alinsky.”As a disciple of the book I had to get my two pence in”.

From wikipeda; “When describing power,Alinsky could be irreverent.
Rules for radicals begins with an unusual tribute “.

Quote;” From all our legends,mythology and history ( and who is to know where mythology leaves of and history begins–or which is which, the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did so effectively that at least he won his own kingdom–Lucifer.

I must confess, I don,t know all that much about Saul Alinsky.Which I now believe is unexcusable.
Even as an Atheist it would be interesting to know just how much influence this “apprentice of Lucifer”has had throughout the Western academic intelligencia.
I,m a little confused here–I thought the indigenous population of Britain and Europe had already been the “lab rat of some hybrid,corporate, marxist creeping experiment” for the last 40 years.
This Saul Alinsky fella sure sounds like a nasty piece of work.
A self-confessed “ends justifies the means” freak.
I presume then,we are in for more of the same–but worse.

I’d read his book before dismissing him to be honest….

Anyway, in response to Sunny I’d say this: power is never given. We the people take power or we have no power, we cannot sit around waiting for some politician to give it to us.

@Leon (9)
“I read his book before dismissing him to be honest ”
I,m just curious,but why did you dismiss Alinsky.Do elaborate .

“He quoted a book that made my ears perked up – Rules For Radicals, by Saul Alinsky.”

I suspect that this is why…

“Today, as Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton face off for the Democratic presidential nomination, their common connection to Alinsky is one of the striking aspects of their biographies. Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life.”

(Why he quoted it, of course, not why your ears pricked up.)

Something unusual happened this week: Lord Adonis spoke of leading from the front, because of the failure of notions of ‘partnership’ between government, communities and privatised service providers (the failure of the NuLab idea, often associated with John Prescott, that you create an enabling environment, gather all the key people together, and say ‘go do it’). He was speaking at the Transport Times conference which was the launch of the ‘Door-to-door by public transport’ report, and he went on a couple of days later to expand on this, rather more informally, to a railway industry gathering.
In the end I agree with Leon above, but definitely NOT in terms of us having a revolution in which all that is there at the end is people power – we need a public sector that organises the ways and means in response to the people’s needs, and also a public sector that ensures there are checks and balances to keep service delivery on track. That last is being neglected in these new ideas, because the control freaks cannot understand how to ensure and maintain quality in service delivery without being micro-managers.

Sunny. you profess to be a Liberal. Why do you then advance the writings of a hard-line Marxist?

Agreeing with Sunny (unusually) here. The first thing they could do is give business rates back to local councils. Then stop making infrastructure funding conditional on meeting central/EU targets (I could bang on for a while here about the effects of these constraints on public transport in Bristol, but I won’t.).

They don’t need to re-invent the wheel, just give local govt back to local people. Especially like the bit about social justice. At the moment local government agendas are driven by vocal minorities, cyclists, the green movement, “community” leaders etc etc. Whatever happened to one man/woman, one vote………….

Journeyman, I don’t really care, but you totally misread what Leon was saying. He said, “I’d read SA before dismissing him”, so that’s “I would” contracted, in response to someone who hadn’t read SA .. dismissing him. Jesus. Reading comprehension anyone?

Greater Bristol has caused much heartache in central govt circles, because of the constant inability of the UA Councils (certainly of 3 of them, because BANES is geographically a bit separate from the other 3) to get on with doing things together and also because of the old Bristol culture of making profit out of every square foot of land – it isn’t funding constraints causing the public transport problem. Hence the Adonis method, which should be used to push them as well as lead them into creating an ITA – but don’t forget that two local govt Ministers tried to get the UAs to get back together and go for an elected Mayor, something that was a crass way to go about things (smacked of reinventing Avon County). I’m told by people who know about these things that Greater Bristol is the largest UK Metropolitan area that doesn’t have a PTE.

“to get on with doing things together and also because of the old Bristol culture of making profit out of every square foot of land ”

Indeed, which is why instead of a new and upsized bus station next to the train station, the land got developed for offices, and we have the old, tiny bus station in the wrong place, with a lick of paint, natch

By central funding conatrints I mean, for example, that new money for road improvements is made conditional on the inclusion of ever more bus and cycle lanes, meaning that they hardly benefit the car driver, and in fact of often make journeys by car even worse than they were befor the “improvements”

Why do you then advance the writings of a hard-line Marxist?

Is that meant to be a critique? You let me know the problems you have with what he says in the book and we can discuss that.

In response to Matt, it seems that the long term aim in Bristol is to drive most car traffic out of the central area, and a good thing too. The new extension to the shopping area (Cabot Circus) has a large car park on its outer edge, accessible from the bottom of the M32, and traffic flows at that side of the central area have been much improved by installing a proper urban traffic management system (UMTS) – i.e. by spending the right amount of money. In two other areas you have not got it right, for the bus and coach station is brand new build (a commercial investment by or for First Group) with a little more space than before (but it is indeed obvious that it is still grossly inadequate) and dramatically improved environment, and the land immediately adjacent to Temple Meads station is still being argued over – so there is hope for moving car, bus and taxi access over there instead of via the very constricted historic station approach. Agreed that there should have been a large transport interchange centred around Temple Meads station and connected to the M32, but that was of course a casualty of the antics of the greedy developers to whom the City Council seems to bow and scrape. However, the property men who built all those offices in Bristol city centre after being wooed by Avon County Council have suffered because big employers have been moving out to cheaper areas with better Motorway access…

‘In the end I agree with Leon above, but definitely NOT in terms of us having a revolution in which all that is there at the end is people power – we need a public sector that organises the ways and means in response to the people’s needs, and also a public sector that ensures there are checks and balances to keep service delivery on track. ‘

We need a public sector that allows people to meet their own needs and neither capitalism nor centralised State socialism fit the bill. That has to be done locally, with the full participation of local people, not left to the cold monster of a State which serves only it’s own inhuman self-interest.

“in response to Matt, it seems that the long term aim in Bristol is to drive most car traffic out of the central area, and a good thing too.”

Why is it a good thing ? Many of the shops in cabot circus are struggling, in part because getting in and out of central Bristol by car is a nightmare (worse than London in my view despite being far smaller)

The economy depends on being able to move people and goods in and out of the city. Like it or not many chose do that by car because they cannot use public transport/cycle/walk for a variety of reasons (I can’t but I won’t bore you with the reasons here).

This is what is getting up peoples noses, the idea that cars are an unqualified bad thing which should be taxed/controlled/banned. It’s ebcause of this mentality and the Alice in Wonderland “Traffic management” (intersteting that the traffic where I work was improved when the lights were out of action)

My response, like others is to move to the suburbs, making my journey to work shorter (time, not distance) but probably incvreasing my car use overall. A lose/lose for the city I would say.

What makes me so mad – and an entry spelling this out will be out on labourhome tomorrow – is that Byrne is now shimmying in the direction of less cautious about public spending than Ed Balls is (see misread article). Balls commented that provided there is an economic heal, or, in my opinion, we start to lose unnecessary bunk like ID cards and Trident, we (Labour party) can be the party of spending. Now Byrne, after failing to understand Balls’ proposition, and henceforth writing it off lock, stock and barrel, has said that with a dash of cuts in capital expenditure, power to people, economy boosts, “Public services are the way in which we … open up those new horizons … [for] a more equal Britain”, in order to be at the centre of the public services debate.

Now on a close reading of Balls’ words, circling around the so-called “Balls-up promises”, why is Byrne’s new found optimism any more “deluded” that Balls’. It seems to be the most cautious of opinions to take, and much more so than the Tories, and Osbourne, who are now “committed to public spending cuts”.

BBC R4 is reporting that there will be a govt announcement today about giving citizens more rights in relation to public services. Given that Lord Adonis was talking last week at the Transport Times conference launching the working group report ‘Door-to-door by public transport’ (but without any govt stick behind it) and later in the week to a gathering of railway people talking about his one year Manifesto to lead from the front in getting all parties involved to set about real improvements in public transport, it looks as if we have today the launch of ‘power to the people’. It still needs that govt stick in many service environments where the public have no real choice of service provider and thus the market does not work for us.

It’s easy to figure out whether they’ll really hand power back to the people (or at least make themselves accountable to the people) – the Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill. It’s about to be re-introduced for debate in Parliament. If your MP supports it, then they’re sincere. So far just under 20 MPs have signed up. Write to yours.

I think wee have to face the fact that all the parties have known that they were travelling towards this democratic crunch of the inconvenient ned to let people have more say or ‘voice’ as well as ‘vote’ for decades. They have also had a lot of time to think about how to cope with it – although the net has really pushed things on a little too quickly.

All parties have been hoping that a good dose of local politics might soak up those UK citizens persistent enough in the elephantine task of getting to have say. Now Labour is wondering whether in addition they will have to fall back on plans that were progressive 20/30 years ago when I remember debating them – that is proposals for parents to get more involved in education and patinets much more proactively and democratically involved in health. They are of course still clinging to a consumerplus model of how to distract us from our democratic right to determine the world we live in.

The other time-honoured alternative is – as you say – getting people to fight each other over scarce resources, stressing ‘Them’ and ‘us’- type formulations. If all else fails to distract – that dangerous tack can usually be counted on. Isuggest that this isn’t about whether the politicians ‘mean this’ – but, their calculation about the least they have to concede to keep things going as usual. And that of course is ultimately up to us.

Surely what we have to decide is how we have more of a say in a deliberative, pluralist, diverse, self-educating way which is not just a consumer add-on – but which really decides how we want to live together from the local to the global – and how we can set about getting there ?

Stop using their language – none of them can “return power to the people” because we never gave it up; the power is still ours. What we’ve given up is the exercise of that power, we’re allowing others to use it on our behalf. It may seem pedantic, but no-one should even accidentally slip into the mind-set that power is something they’ve taken and may or may not want to return if they decide to.

Not while elitist Fabians still have their grip on the minds of government.

Won’t anybody save us from fabianism?