Hi Kate,

Excellent article and excellent series.

The point about the malign role of private landlords is an important one. When people criticise the Left for abandoning the white working class, they never suggest taking action against bad landlords – this is a really big issue and one which would not only help in itself, but also reduce resentment about immigrants.

Hey Dan,

You’re certainly on the money regarding private landlords – my standards aren’t that high, but it’s been a while since I saw a tip (as in rubbish dump) like that.

Thanks for the comment about the series.

Credit where it is due, as well – it pains me to say it, but i was impressed with the local Labour councillors. Sure, they’re infighting like bastards, but there are a few hearts there in the right place – they didn’t want to spin, and guys like Furey and Nolan actually live on these grubby estates, along with the people they represent.

I’m so used to meeting and talking to people who are parachuted in to this and that seat or ward that it was refreshing to see something more like real representation. There may be hope yet.

And why would it pain you to say it?

Aaah, Mr Cotterill,

It pains me generally to speak in support of politicians. It just ain’t who I am. I think it’s an authority thing.

Also, one can so soon find oneself eating one’s words.

For instance: I’ve been busy on another LC thread today praising Sally Bercow and her feminist attributes. I may wake up tomorrow to find the Tory blogworld pointing to videos of her on all fours in nappies with an apple in her mouth, taking paid-for punishment from Nadine and Call Me Dave. That’s why I’m usually circumspect about praising politicians… kind of playing the longer game.

Why do you ask?

“taking paid-for punishment from Nadine”

Damn you, Kate, I didn’t want this mental image.

Could do you a real image…? Just faffing round with photoshop here….

If you do I’ll do my best to get it banned under those new violent porn laws.

Can’t have that. I’ll move the apple.

8 – Blimey, where to?

I ask for the very reason you point to in your reply, Kate. I’m interested in why you start from what appears to be a priori assumption that Labour councillors will be tossers/numpties/blow-ins (insert chosen term of hostility about motives and capacity)?

Clearly, I’m glad you find your assumptions challenged, but my own experience suggests that the majority of Labour councillors up and down the country are decent, committed people like Barry and Neil, and that it’s an unfortunate mix of ‘Whitehall’ ignorance about what councillors actually do obn a daily basis, and a more general anti-politics flow born of stoked by Westminster shenannigans, which leads people to think councillors are necessarily twats.

I said the same to Alex Massie of the Spectator a while back when he insinuated that all councillors were like low ranking Nazi party members, and he did have the good grace to half apologise. See http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2009/11/07/apparenty-im-a-nazi/

Declaration of interest: I am the leader of the Labour opposition in West Lancashire, where Kate’s interviews were conducted, and hold Barry and Neil, the councillors interviewed, in the highest regard.

Here endeth the self-righteous rant.

Hi Paul,

Good answer.

Here’s mine.

I am a journalist. You are a politician, as indeed are Neil and Barry. I take politicians with a grain of salt – my primary interest lies with their constituents.

You are right to say that a lot of local councillors are good and very committed – indeed they are, and I usually say so when I meet them, as indeed I have above. You guys were impressive – not least in your eagerness to avoid spin at all costs. That is impressive, particularly for Labour as it recently has been.

Thing is – I’ve also met no end of wankers, liars, snake oil salesmen and ladder climbers as I have dragged my carcass round the town halls of the world over the last 20 years – people whose key interest has been their own promotion through the party ranks and the lining of private sector pockets via the outsourcing of public services. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory councillors have all been guilty of that – here, in New Zealand, wherever (I wrote on local politics for the Herald for a while). I see the devastating results of that kind of behaviour – stood out in the rain with sheltered housing residents as councillors blew past in taxis to the meeting at which they decided to cut sheltered housing warden services, and so on and so on and so on and so on… I’ve sat through thousands of totally farcical consultation exercises, and watched from a small union office as the town hall carpark across the road has filled up with consultants’ late model luxury cars… That’s my tax money parking up in those cars. I did not intend my tax money to be spent on those people.
There’s no doubt that you guys have had to take a lot of the fallout out from some quite appalling behaviour in Westminster – expenses scandals, illegal wars, and god knows what else. There’s also no doubt that a lot of you guys in West Lancs are living the problems along with your constituents and are excellent local representatives.

Thing is, your gig and mine can never be on the same page. Journalism – whatever its form and whatever its level – is supposed to be the watchdog of power. It follows that praise, at best, can only ever be faint.

Glad we’re having this discussion at last.

The assumption that leftwing, committed journalists will never be able to take Labour/leftwing ‘politicians’ seems to be sefl-defeating. Shouldn’t we be aspiring to actually be in support of each other rather than always suspicious of each others’s motives (I don’t deny that the development of mutual support might be a testing period, as it takes time to get rid of ‘baggage’).

Allied to this is your definition of what a politician is. How is being a local politician different from being a resident & political activist who happens to have been successful in the electoral aspect and therefore gathered a bit more resource to push forward their political activism?

I aspire to be a politician/journalist, representing my constituents not just through my formal office but by accurately reflecting living/working conditions faced by the working class and agitating through my writing on same. I’ve not got very far yet, certainly, but are you saying that this is a vain hope.

ps. You seem to be suggesting I’ve been a bit slow to engage on this. Certainly it’s taken a while to chew over what could I hope be a signficant departure in how committed local activists (whether elected or not) engage with journalism, and certainly I missed the appearance of this piece yesterday as I was out and about, but I did leave a longish and unengaged-with comment on the first piece to appear at your site.

May write a longer piece on this at Though Cowards Flinch.

Hey there,

Thanks for the response. A couple of things – I’m really not making personal comments about you at all – the journalist/blogger/politician thing just happens to be a real point of interest to me, so I can rattle away on it.

I think you’re an excellent writer, and that you’re making substantial headway with it. Regarding the tension between journalism and being a politician, though – well, there would certainly be a lot of merit in reporting your constituents’ issues, and indeed some of the better political (as in elected) bloggers do that. There are some good TU blogs around as well.

My view is that there would always be a tension between the two roles – what, say, if one of your constituents said something unpleasant or unhelpful about the party you represented? Would you report it? Maybe you would. I personally think that people need to be indifferent to the political class to be genuine grassroots reporters – but that is only my view. That isn’t to say for a moment that politicians don’t make great writers. They just don’t make completely independent writers.

I say again, though – that’s just my view. I’m not talking about you here,either – this is just general thought and a point for discussion.

“Near the bridge is an ‘English Village’ which pays respect to our culture. It has Tudor style architecture, and the shops and restaurants create the atmosphere of old England, with tree-lined walkways and local breweries for hand-brewed ale.”

A description of Lake Havasu from the aforementioned BNP blog. I think they’re serious.

Kate makes the point that there is a tension between journalists and politicians. I think that is overstated. Particularly in the case of local cllrs who are, after all, part-time and often live in the wards they represent. In such a situation, there is little difference between a local activist/local vocal resident and a cllr – a cllr is simply a local resident who decided to stand for election. It seems strange to treat them with disrespect simply because they have been elected.

Of course, journalists may disagree with what they say – query whether its really true. But then they should be also sceptical of what non-elected local vocal residents say. For e.g., if someone moans about spending cuts but then also moans about tax levels, then a journalist should ask them why they are inconsistent and oppose spending cuts while also opposing the taxation neeeded to pay for public spending. Such scepticism needs to be applied to complaining local residents/lobbyists as much as to politicians. Failure to do so, plays into an anti-political mood which – in the long-run – will only play into the hands of those on the Right who want the state to do less and less.

Good piece, more of these please!

Thanks, Dan. Will be posting another one tomorrow.

Anonymouse – I see your point, but I think it misses a few crucial elements.

One – while local councillors are of course often local people who deal with the same issues the people they represent do (the two in the article in this post are examples of that), they also are party members (mainly – there are a few independents here and there. There were more in NZ).

That means that they are irrevocably linked to a party line – they required to support a party at a national level, as well as represent it locally. They must campaign on behalf of MPs, be mindful of causing upset that might reflect badly at national level (particularly at a time like this, when a national election that Labour is likely to lose is looming) and so on and so on.

For these Skem articles, for example, some of the local councillors were concerned about comments a couple of residents made about local Labour MP Rosie Cooper. They wanted residents to have the chance to speak, but were also concerned about pissing Rosie off. That’s fair enough – that’s how it goes. Those councillors were entitled to have those dual concerns. It’s just important to acknowledge that they have dual concerns and loyalties. As I said above, party affiliation doesn’t mean you can’t write great stuff about issues affecting the people you represent. It just means you need always to be upfront about your affiliation.

Regarding playing into the hands of the right by letting people speak their minds – well, I disagree with you. It’s about doing your research and getting both sides of a story. There’s no doubt that if you walk down any street and just ask random punters what they think of their local council or of the government, a lot of people will just say something like ‘well, they’re all useless overpaid fuckers.’ I might well say the same myself half the time.

What you do is look for the balance – in this article, the woman I interviewed and her husband made derogatory comments about Rosie Cooper:

http://www.hangbitching.com/2009/11/21/bare-market/

and they were quite acidic about her. They had dealt with her directly, though, and were entitled to a view about that experience. The other thing was that they said the same thing independently of each other. You’ll see that I rang Cooper’s office and put that comment to her, and asked her to get me a response, to provide some balance (I personally thought the comment she provided proved the point the residents had made). I also interviewed local councillors for this series of articles, so you get Skem from different perspectives – some residents, some councillors, some people who had nothing to do with politics (haven’t posted these yet). I’m well aware that you occasionally come across people who rant and make completely unjustified allegations when asked for their views on politicians – that’s one of the reasons you check things back. However, I don’t start from a position where I think the people I’m interviewing – whether they are locals, politicians or whatever – are full of shit. I wait to see what they say.

I’d also make the point that people are entitled to their views and I am entitled to record them. Politicians usually have a whole press office spinning on their behalf, or putting out statements to combat or generate publicity, etc. A bunch of council tenants worried about the demolition of their flats doesn’t have anything of the kind. I’m not inclined to water down their views and statements just because the local MP doesn’t care for the way those views reflect on him or her. It’s one thing to airily describe your local MP as a useless cock, apropos of nothing, and another to outline concerns about your directly dealings with that person.

I would argue one of the reasons there are so few independents is because people don’t want to stand for election [or people don't want to vote for those independents who do].

Of course someone’s party affliliations may affect the way they do things. But, we do need parties as a lot of independents running around doing their own thing will not necessarily lead to coherent policy-making.

In terms of your last sentence, I agree that the latter [directly outlining issues of concern] is important. But too much commentary these days is the former [airily dismissing local cllrs, MPs as useless cocks]. This contributes to a public cynicism which does not help left-of-centre politics

Thanks for this engagement anonymouse @18etc..

I’m one of the Labour councillors to whom Kate refers.

To be clear on Kate @17, the reason I was a bit uncomfortable initially about the ‘comments a couple of residents made about local Labour MP Rosie Cooper’ to which Kate refers to above, was that when they were first posted Kate had not at that point contacted the MP’s office to seek a response; I felt that was a bit one-sided, and said so while seeking to re-iterate to Kate that I was happy for her to take her own line. At the same time I sought to acknowledge as openly as I could that the whole experience of hosting an independent journalist and seeking NOT to get in the way was new to me, and that I recognised the tensions that that brings, and which Kate rightly identifies as being between a desire to get tenants’ voices heard in a way that hadn’t happened before (and for which I know at least one is really grateflu, because she told me the other day) and the fact that as a local politician I have always had control over my own ‘message’, not least because there’s no one else to give it.

I wouldn’t therefore want it to come across that Labour in Skelmersdale has been anything other than upfront about its affiliation. I should also be clear that while the initiative was largely Kate’s, as a Labour group we did a fair bit to facilitiate her visit, giving her initial leads but without, as I’ve said, trying to influence what she wrote other than to ask for a bit of editorial ‘fairness’ (readily granted by Kate) as I’ve set out above.

What I should also add, in substantive comment on Kate’s excellent piece, is that the MP does not in fact have material control over what happens in respect of public housing. This is the role of the Tory council, and it is they who have loused it up to the extent that tenants are as understandably pissed off as they are. If I have one criticism of Kate’s piece, it is that she focuses a little too much in what is said of the MP, rather than on the Tories who are really responsible, although Kate does make the point that a leading Tory councillor didn’t respond to her calls.

In general, I tend to concur with you that identifying MPs and councillors as a priori baddies who are likely to be full of shit can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course we’re more likely to ‘spin’ and affect positively what comes out in the media if, when we try to be honest, we get called liars and cheats. Who wouldn’t?

This approach with Kate was an attempt to break down some of those barriers between elected activists and committed journalists, and I hope it’s an approach that will continue, but given the baggage tht both ‘sides’ bring it’s unlikely to happen without teething troubles.

Evening all,

Going back to your point, Anonymouse – are you saying then that members of the public shouldn’t be asked for their views on politicians, because they might come up with something idiotic that ultimately plays badly for the left?

I see your point, but think it’s lazy. We on the left need to ask why there’s such cynicism about politicians afoot. Sure – it’s partly because writers lampoon politicians, but they’ve always done that, and I can’t help feeling that a little disrespect for one’s overlords is healthy. The other point I’d make, though, is that the cynicism also exists partly because political behaviour warrants it. Let’s not forget that at the moment, we’re enjoying a government that has killed half a million Iraqis, continues to bumble round in Afghanistan, has played fast and loose with expenses, and overseen a massive banking bailout and recession which seems to be dragging us toward cuts in public services that so many of us rely on. There is reason for ill feeling, and that ill feeling can’t be discarded. That isn’t to say that individual politicians can’t and don’t do a good job. It’s to say that the PLP has a lot to answer for.

Paul – to let you know how things are progressing, I contacted the council as well as the leading councillor you mention on several occasions, and have published their responses. I’ve approached Edwina again since the Kirkby decision – the reason she gave for not responding in detail when I first contacted her was that the council wanted to wait for the Kirkby decision to come in before making any statement. Now that the Kirkby decision in, we’re going ahead. And two – while we agreed there was sensitivity around the comment about Rosie, the sensitivity was that of politicians. I suppose it’s just a matter of deciding whether I should publish a story before all responses are in. I personally felt that I’d delayed long enough – had been buggering around for several weeks just trying to get a word from the Tories.

I would say again, though – and I hope Rosie and other Labour party members see this – that you and the Labour group members were impressive in your desire to keep out of things and let people speak for themselves. I am more than happy for that to be a matter of public record. You were very conscious of Labour spin – the spin that leads to exactly the public cynicism that Anonymouse describes above – and understood that the future of the party may just depend on getting back to people on the ground. You took a big risk, and I suspect some of your fears came to pass. You may well have other Labour party members breathing down your neck over this. You still have sight of your constituents, though, and if they’re feeding back as you say they have in your statement above, then things aren’t too bad.