Bring Back The Machine
Guest Contributor, William Brett, on why localism is nothing to do with virtue and everything to do with organised power
William wrote this piece as a direct response to Michael Merrick's thought-provoking Disraeli Room post on his idea of 'virtue-localism,' which can be found here.
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“I never take leaflets or mention issues or conduct rallies. After all, this is a question of personal friendship between me and my neighbours.”
Does this sound like something a member of a local political party might say in Britain today? Of course not. In this age of hyper-rationalisation and legal-bureaucratic omnipotence, the chances of any of us being on familiar terms with our local representatives and their agents are slim to none. If there's a problem on my street in London – burst water pipe, uncollected rubbish – then I can contact the council, but that means an hour of frustrating phone conversations with a series of strangers, followed by a stack of paperwork. Does anyone else dream of being able to call up a political “friend” to sort out the mess?
It doesn't have to be this way. The above quotation was made by a Chicago precinct captain whose job was to organise voters in his precinct for the Democratic ticket in the 1950s and 1960s. The phenomenon of the American political 'machine' was largely consigned to the scrapyard over the course of the 20th century, dismantled by civil service reform, changing immigration patterns and political competition from “reformers”. The machines are remembered chiefly for corruption and inefficiency: city-based political parties like New York's Democratic Tammany Hall won elections by “looking after” their voters – simple cash payments in return for votes weren't unheard of – and they filled public offices with cronies, rather than with those most qualified to do the jobs.
But the machines also performed another task: they created a communal and civil political culture that stretched its sinews down into every last street and tenement building. They were the cardinal element in the process of naturalisation for new immigrants, and they performed a micro-level public service by providing for those in need (in exchange for votes, of course, but a service is a service). This was community outreach in action, but without the whiff of elitism that often accompanies such work. And it was above all political, ensuring that residents were deeply enmeshed in the civic fibre of their home towns and cities.
Perhaps it seems a stretch to bring these considerations to bear on the debate surrounding localism in Britain today. Certainly, no one can seriously advocate rolling back the administrative functions of the central state to such an extent that clientelistic local parties could blossom again, bringing with them all the old problems of graft and abuse of patronage. But if we are serious about fostering the civic and encouraging communities to become self-aware, then a case must surely be made for re-politicising the local. This means giving councils more power – power to tax more, to spend more, to take the lead on service provision, to build housing, to succeed brilliantly or fail drastically. If it really mattered who won the election to sit as councillor for my ward – if he were directly responsible for the quality and type of services provided and the destination of my tax contribution – then I'd be a fool not to vote, and a fool not to scrutinise the actions of whoever won. Political participation is the key to civic awareness. In approaching the concept of community, of the local, it is above all power – who has it and what they do with it – that matters.
This argument runs somewhat against the grain of Robert Putnam's highly influential social capital thesis, which posits that political participation and “civicness” follows from high levels of voluntary association and activity within civil society. It also confounds what ResPublica and Phillip Blond have argued in several places over the past year. But it is precisely the particularistic, machine-style politics of Southern Italy, which Putnam militates against as anti-civic, that contains the germ of a realistic and workable conception of power. When local politicians are directly responsible for policy, the requirement to associate, to form active social groupings that can bring influence to bear on local political structures, follows inevitably (and voter turnout increases). How do we encourage voluntary association without reference to politics? How do we create social capital from scratch? Without power, you are pointless.
My argument is not approving or disapproving of this fact. It simply advocates a return to direct power relations between citizens and local officials. As things stand, with so much of the administrative slack being taken up by the Whitehall-Quango Junta, the democratic deficit will continue to grow and a real crisis of legitimacy will duly follow. That, then, is the clarion call: for a grown up discussion about where we want our power to be. Thereafter, the rather more subtle question is 'how.' How can we pay off this deficit? How can we re-inject the political into the local?
We will respond to William's challenging post next week.