Stepping Back from Party Political Activism

Two weeks ago, on a train journey back from Bournemouth, I spoke with a fellow Liberal Democrat PhD student. He is a student in Vienna and was considering stepping back from party politics. It is safe to say that both PhDs and party politics take up considerable time.

Last year, I had hoped informally to step back from party politics when I started my PhD. Over the previous 12 months, I have not been successful at this. Amongst other things, I attended several conferences, stood as a paper candidate in the local elections and helped to edit two Lib Dem related books (including writing a chapter in one of them).

This week, I am starting my second year as a Politics PhD student at Lancaster University. So far everything is going well, I successfully passed my first-year panel and was upgraded at the first attempt, a few months ago. My workload is likely to increase this year especially as I am starting teaching first year Undergraduate Politics seminar classes, which is an exciting opportunity to somebody who aims for a career in academic teaching.

This naturally means there will be extreme limitations on my time. Earlier this month I stepped back from my position on the Social Liberal Forum Executive, as their Vice-Chair North, the Chair of their Editing and Publishing Board and the Social Media Manager. However, I have now decided that I will stand down from the Social Liberal Forum Council next Summer when the Council is once again up for election.

In addition, I will be stepping back from using Twitter. My days as a “keyboard warrior” are gradually coming to an end. Twitter currently tends to reflect the echo chamber of our contemporary political crisis. This in turn reinforces tribal party positions and facilitates aggressive partisan trolling. Such an environment is not healthy for my personal anxiety levels, especially as someone who has a pluralistic approach to politics. So, I will be limiting my presence on Twitter to my new Twitter account devoted to my academic work, teaching and research.

However, I have also now decided that it is right for me to take a step back from most aspects of Liberal Democrat party politics. This is especially the case given the likelihood of a general election in the next couple of months. In the previous two general elections I was the election agent for the Liberal Democrats in Blackpool South; however, my participation will be limited at best to an odd afternoon of leaflet delivering for the party at the next election.

I am not leaving the party, of course, but my involvement in party related activities will be very limited for the next 2-3 years while I complete my PhD. It is also likely that my attendance at party conferences will be limited over the next couple of years. I wish the best of luck to all those who remain active in the Liberal Democrats during this time, I am extremely hopeful that several of you will be elected MPs in the near future. You will undoubtedly serve your constituents, your party and your country exceptionally well.

The party currently has the ideal policy in relation to Brexit; Revoking Article 50 following the election of a Liberal Democrat majority government, or in the event of a hung parliament, negotiating for a People’s Vote referendum where the party would campaign to Remain in the EU. I would encourage the party to make the social justice case for the EU not forgetting the vital protections for workers and the poorest regions of the Union, as well as arguing that the EU is the most successful peace process in world history. 

The party must be a vehicle for social liberalism and social democracy and I hope the party’s ambitious new welfare policies are not side-lined during the upcoming general election campaign. Social justice needs to be at the forefront of any future Liberal Democrat campaign, alongside our commitment to “Stop Brexit”. I encourage the party to reconnect with its radical political heritage, build on the big ideas of the past and develop new and imaginative narratives for the present.

As a lifelong social liberal, social justice and its capacity to advance individual freedom has been consistently my driving passion in politics and will continue to be so. It was after all the ideals of that great social liberal, Charles Kennedy which originally drew me into the Liberal Democrats in the first place. I would plea with the party to reach out more to working class communities and to recognise that the Remain cause is not just limited to middle class areas. In my native Blackpool for example, despite the high Leave vote in the EU Referendum, almost 22,000 people voted Remain. It is votes like these which could prove pivotal in any future People’s Vote referendum.

I hope my close Liberal Democrat friends will forgive me if I appear a little distant over the next couple of years. I will of course remain easily contactable on E-mail, Facebook and Twitter. I may be taking a break from party political activism, but my involvement in the study of politics as a social science is only going to increase. This is an exciting moment in the history of the Liberal Democrats. I will continue to be with you in spirit and wish you all the luck, good fortune and success over the next 2-3 years.

Empowering The Poor and Tackling Poverty at the Local Level

In 1909, the Liberal Party Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George delivered his People's Budget. During his delivery he stated that;

"I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.”

One hundred and three years on from the People's Budget how close are we to seeing David Lloyd George’s "good time" when poverty will be remote to this country? Well in the previous century, Britain has developed a strong welfare state, built a National Health Service (NHS) and established progressive taxation, much on the foundations laid by Lloyd George. However despite these progressive achievements poverty still remains in 21st century Britain.

The United Kingdom is currently going through a period of harsh austerity measures. The nature or austerity means that it will naturally impact on the poorest and most vulnerable, especially when cuts are made to the welfare budget and to social services. The charity, Save the Children in its first ever UK appeal says that too many children in Britain today from poor families "are going without hot meals, new shoes and winter clothes" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/05/save-the-children-uk-campaign).

For most of the last few decades the poorest people in Britain have been suffering. This was long before the latest period of austerity. During this time Britain has seen both Conservative and Labour governments come in and out of power. Take my hometown of Blackpool in the mid-2000s for example, I had many school friends whose parents struggled with food bills and struggled to feed themselves and their children properly. Added to this, many of their parents couldn't afford new clothes and often had to put up with damaged and worn out shoes. Food and clothing are the very basics in life, and yet in the mid-2000s during what Labour would have you believe was an age of plenty, the poorest in our country still struggled to afford them. Many poor working class areas, most of which vote Labour have in many cases been abandoned by the tradition party of the working class.

In-order to tackle poverty we need a multi-pronged approach. An approach that includes a redistributive welfare state, free healthcare, a good education, tackling personal debt, tacking addiction and community engagement and local empowerment. I shall focus mostly on the last one of these prongs, community engagement and local empowerment.

It is time for a truly localist route to tackling poverty. We must tackle poverty at its local grassroots. Firstly we need local authorities to be actively engaging with their poorest communities. This should include establishing community leaders that can work alongside the local council, local councillors, police officers, social workers, trade unions and local charities. This should establish an active and positive dialogue between communities and local authorities and charities. This community engagement should be used to recognise what the social issues are that prevent poverty from reducing. The community and local authorities should cooperate in addressing the social issues.

Secondly, their needs to be an efficient targeting of resources at a local and community level. National government should devolve funding and recourses to local government specifically for tacking local poverty. Local councils should be able to target this funding at the poorest areas where it would be most effective at eradicating poverty. The funding should be directed according to what problems need to be tackled to reduce poverty and increase opportunity. This funding could be directly redistributed to the poor, used to improve underperforming schools, used to tackle alcohol and drug addiction or used to renovate poor areas and communities.

Thirdly we must ensure the poor have an effective democratic voice. Having the vote and actually feeling part of the democratic process are two different things entirely. What is needed in order to give the poor an effective democratic voice is community politics. Community politics is the doctrine of empowering individuals within their communities. It is an ideology of “social transformation” (The Theory & Practice of Community Politics: http://www.cix.co.uk/~rosenstiel/aldc/commpol.htm).

Community politics is a doctrine that is most practiced by the Liberal Democrats. It involves active local politicians engaging with communities to determine what local issues are affecting those communities. Local politicians and local people then campaign together by delivering leaflets, lobbying the local authorities and by organising local petitions. The hope being to achieve the enactment of the policy being campaigned upon.  Examples of community politics may include the need to have a new playground built, to prevent the closure of a youth centre or to protect local hospital services.

Community politics should form the liberal and democratic foundations of any attempt to tackle poverty as well as any attempt to empower and engage with poorer communities. In short, community politics should be perused to give our poorest communities a genuine stake in the democratic process. We must not only strive to tackle inequalities of rights, wealth and opportunities, but we must also tackle inequalities in power between the rich and poor as well.

To tackle poverty in the 21^st Century, we must empower people especially the poor. We must ensure that society has a social minimum below which no one is allowed to fall. Rights, wealth, opportunity and power must be openly available to everyone. It has been 103 years, since Lloyd George’s budget and poverty is still not “remote to the people of this country”, far from it. But if we are to tackle poverty we must not just redistribute wealth through an active welfare state, but actively seek to engage with, direct resources to and democratically empower our poorest people at the local level.

People with Hopes and Opportunities don’t Riot

Over the last few nights, many riots have occurred in British cities. The riots were disgraceful and all the people responsible for them deserve to be brought to justice. Shops have been looted, windows have been smashed and buildings burnt to the ground; these are truly disgraceful acts and display the worst of humanity creating anarchy on the streets of the UK. Now there are many reasons why such people would resort to such criminality and looting and over the next coming days politicians from the left and the right will try to bring some clarity and understanding to the causes behind the riots. However it is worth saying that regardless of the causes that may have led up to the disturbances they in no way justifies them whatsoever.

There are many explanations going round as to why people can act in such a vile and unlawful manner. One train of thought advocated by the Prime Minister today was that there was a lack discipline and family responsibility from the households of the youngsters committing the acts of crime. Another thought was advocated by the former Labour Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone who associated the austerity cuts, the scrapping of EMA and the rise in tuition fees with the recent violence. On the one hand, David Cameron might be partially right when he says that these youngsters lack a sense of family discipline; however I don't think this is the beginning and the end of the reasons behind the rioting, since many adults also took part. Nor do I take the view that the rioting comes as a as a response to any particular policy enacted by any particular government. It is more likely to be the case that these people riot because for successive generations their communities have lacked sufficient hope and opportunity. Although, some of the people involved would have just been taken advantage of an opportunity and the only issue behind their motives was criminal greed.

In the 1980s, Britain saw similar inner-city riots and although the reasons behind the 1980s riots were different from the reasons behind the riots of 2011 there remains a significant group of people who are devoid of having any aspiration, hope or opportunity. Some may refer to this group of people as "the underclass." The underclass are those people who spend their days in relative squalor, living off the proceeds of benefits and who have fallen out our society and out of what our society deems to be acceptible. It's the same people who are often referred to in the media as being "dole spongers" and "chavs." For over 30 years these people have been neglected by successive governments from across the political spectrum, who focus on the most desirable constituency of support and representation that of Middle England. If we are to ensure that these riots never happen again, governments will have to open a strong dialogue with community leaders and young people will need community role models who they can aspire to be like. Governments will have to acknowledge that Britain doesn't start and end with Middle England and that at all times governments will have to address the grievances within the poorest communities of the UK. Whether this is ensuring that a sufficient number of people get a good education or that a sufficient number of jobs are available or that there is a strong dialogue between members of our communities and local government.

Now no matter what the grievances of people are it is never a justification to commit acts of criminality. But if we are to ensure that Britain's streets remain safe in the future we will have to tackle the root causes that leave many members of the so-called underclass in a situation where they deem it acceptable to rob, loot and destroy. If politicians from all parties forget this constituency of the British people (no matter how undesirable it may be) and just focus on Middle England; we will see similar acts of criminality and destruction in the decades to come.

The Forgotten Deficit of Social Justice

Every evening on the news, we are reminded of the fact that Britain has a massive economic deficit. This is reinforced by the notion of hard times and austerity that the country is currently going through, along with further threats of future cuts and public service strikes. Although it is widely accepted that this deficit is in need of being tackled (all three main parties were committed to the tackling deficit in their 2010 manifestos) we mustn't lose sight of another deficit that has been looming over the United Kingdom for more than the past 30 years. This is a deficit of social justice. We in the current climate of austerity may find it easy to believe that now is not the best time to be promoting social justice or seeking to combat the economic inequalities between the poorest and the richest. In many respects given our current economic climate, it may be believed that social justice has become the forgotten deficit.

Between 1979 and 2009 the gap between the richest and poorest grew. (graph six, http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtml?2). In 2009, the income inequality gap was higher than at any time in the previous 30 years. Also in a decade from 1999 to 2009 the average income for the poorest 10% of the population decreased by 12% whereas the average income for the richest 10% increased by 37% (graph one, http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtml?2). These statistics show quite clearly that in previous years the gap between the richest and poorest has continued to grow. Since 2009, Britain has embarked upon a period of austerity designed to tackle the deficit in Britain’s economics. Although it is necessary to ‘balance the books’; they should not be balanced on the poorest people in our society.

It is evident that one factor in the current economic hardship was the excesses and risk-taking practised by many banks and bankers, which almost led to the collapse of the financial industry and which led to costly bailouts and fiscal stimulus. Given that the overwhelming majority of the economic crisis was not caused by the poor why should they have to pick up the pieces? It is vital in tackling the current economic circumstances that we don't further impoverished those who have been neglected from government to government over many decades. The poor may not have the loudest voice and they are often vilified in the right-wing press as being feckless, dole spongers or chavs but we mustn't forget our social obligations to them. No one in a rich western country like Britain should have to choose between feeding themselves and their families or choosing to put the heating on.

But what can be done to tackle inequalities in wealth given the current economic circumstances? The Coalition Government has shown flashes of social justice in their key policies such as to take almost 1,000,000 of the poorest people out of income tax and to attribute a pupil premium to the poorest children to ensure that they get the best start to their education. But this does not go far enough to tackle the long-term deficit of social justice. Any revenue reaped from taxing the bonuses of the bankers should be redistributed to the poorest who have suffered due to the bankers’ malpractice. The government should also regulate energy companies who try to hike their prices up unnecessarily, which can impact hard on poor families. Land value taxation may also be introduced to tax those wealthy individuals who own land and shift the burden of taxation of the poorest, as well as giving the government more resources to tackle the social and economic injustices faced by the poor. If progressive taxation and regulation was used in such a way to protect the poor and to redistribute the wealth from the richest it may go some way to help tackle the vast gulf in economic inequalities. Of course taxation and regulation are only parts of a potential solution; other things for consideration would be the socio-economic conditions that keep a poor person within the poverty trap. However, first we need to acknowledge at the highest level that tackling the gap between the rich and the poor is a major priority. The poorest should not have their opportunities curved by a lack of economic resources, and no rational government should bring about circumstances that would make the plight of the poor worse. In a time of austerity cuts we should not hurt the poorest more than the richest. While tackling the deficit in our economy we must not yet again forget about the deficit of social justice in our society. Social justice is an issue that needs confronting and we cannot allow it to be neglected any longer; the opportunities of future generations should not be determined by the circumstances of their birth and their lack of resources but by the range and scope of their talents.