In just one day - the most right wing US administration in living memory calls on Congress for billions of dollars to bail out the US financial system, the Portuguese launch the world’s first wave power plant and British Energy becomes French.
So we no longer have any ownership of our energy infrastructure. There are a lot of clichés we hear everyday from politicians these days. Three of my favourites are, “we will learn the lessons”, “the family have been informed” and “ownership does not matter”.
The last one we is a catchphrase of Business Secretary John Hutton. We never heard it when they were talking about housing of course. Forcing people to buy houses they could not afford is the main source of the current mess.
Mind it’s not a phrase you hear from people who actually own things like Warren Buffet or Lakshi Mittel or from the French for that matter. They will now have a constant stream of profits from their UK energy business. Every time we turn on the lights cash will stream across the channel.
The business secretary says this is good for Britain. I suppose from where we are it is. He has persuaded a foreign firm with some intellectual property to take over and run yet another dead British industry. So now we will get four new French nuclear power stations.
Today the UK economy is a bit like Wimbledon. We never win, but we put on a good show. All the prize money goes overseas but if we are lucky we get to stand on the hill watching it go on the big screen.
In this Alice in Wonderland world we are the winners. The stupid French have cheaper energy than us because they foolishly failed to embrace the market and invested in their energy industry for the long term. Now they have a product they can export across the world and reap the reward. Just how silly is that!
Meanwhile the global energy giants we have put our faith in are refusing to invest in UK renewables because as private firms they see more lucrative investments in existing energy sources elsewhere. To most observers the UK is facing a looming energy gap. But because of our obsession with not bucking the market we stand a good chance of being bucked by it.
Portugal has no indigenous carbon energy sources and yet has managed to obtain over half its energy from renewables. Locked into free-market dogma progress in the UK has been pitiful. We can begin to turn this around in October when the Energy Bill comes back to the commons. MP’s can give renewables the support they need with some preferential feed in tariffs to give them the certainty they need to invest.
But we need to go much further. The current global crisis in the banking sector shows the limits of regulation. When oil was discovered in the North Sea, we soon realised that it was going to be a long term and risky business bringing it to shore, we established a public sector business to undertake this challenge -The British National Oil Corporation. If we are to take on the challenge of developing a serious renewables industry particularly in the capital intensive wave and tide power arena we will need a similar public sector champion.
We need a British National Renewables Corporation.
Unlike the wind you can set your watch by the tides around Britain’s coast and if the Portuguese can harness wave power so can we. With a global shortage of credit we cannot wait for the private sector to come to the rescue.
The banks are being saved by ‘nationalisation’ in the USA and now our nuclear industry is being ‘nationalised’ by the French. If we want a significant renewables sector its early stage of development will require a large scale public sector solution believe me it will be a better long term investment than Northern Rock.
And this time we will have to do it ourselves.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Cuba, Co-op's and Hurricanes
Each day I enjoy a co-operative and fair-trade breakfast of coffee, muesli and banana and raise a glass to Cuba. Not because new Labour has driven me to drink - my toast is not with rum but with Cuban orange juice.
In the 1980’s Cuba was the world’s largest citrus fruit exporter. The end of the USSR took away their main market and put them in direct competition with two of the big citrus fruit exporters the USA and Israel.
Today Cuba is the world’s laboratory for sustainable farming and food sovereignty – the World Bank has described it as “almost the anti-model”- pursuing an approach that links ecology with the decentralisation of the control of farms. Co-operatives are playing a key part in these developments.
The US blockade makes market access crucial. In 2000, Traidcraft, the Christian based fair trade organisation stepped in to help seven co-operatives in and around Ciego de Avila find new markets and help them to win Fair-trade status. Working alongside Gerber foods they are bringing first class Cuban fruit juices to European consumers and in developing the Fruit Passion brand aim to do for fruit juice what Café Direct has done for fair-trade coffee.
Modern consumers are increasingly concerned about the provenance of what they buy from the developing world and thanks to the Fairtrade Foundation there has been a huge increase in quality making the fair trade an easier choice to make. Fair-trade is not socialism but the Fair-trade mark does guarantee farmers a minimum price and an additional 'premium' payment. In Cuba the premium is used for projects that benefit the co-operatives - better machinery, vehicles, irrigation systems etc. or to finance other activities including cultural and recreational facilities.
The Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) representing the interests of co-operatives and individual farmers are also working to increase the involvement of women in the farms and their decision making processes.
Last year I visited the region of Cuba where these co-ops are based and the extra income fair trade brings can make a real difference. One of the dreadful things about capitalism is the way the abstraction of the market separates consumers from producers.
Now Traidcraft are running meet the people tours to Cuba in November, February or March visiting the CPA and CCS Jose Marti Co-operatives in Ciego de Avila that produce the juice that is so welcome on our breakfast tables.
Writing in Granma, Fidel Castro, points out that the recent hurricanes have done between $3 and $4 billion dollars worth of damage to Cuba. Farmers have not escaped unscathed and to help their recovery the least we can do is buy some of their output. So why wait? You can find Fruit Passion in Co-op shops as well as in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, also the Co-op’s own brand fair-trade orange juice includes Cuban product in the blend.
Of course the concept of fair trade is not new. Back in 1906 the first Labour MP’s cited John Ruskin as the author who had most shaped their thinking. Ruskin makes a plea for fair trade in ‘Unto This Last’ published in 1862.
“In all buying, consider first, what condition of existence you cause in the production of what you buy; secondly whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer and in due proportion, lodged in his hands.”
Given the present shenanigans in the PLP it would seem that today the minds of some Labour MP’s seem to be shaped by an older writer than Ruskin – evidenced from their detachment of political expediency from morality – one Niccoli Machiavelli.
For details of Traidcraft trips to Cuba see: Meet the People Tours at www.Traidcraft.co.uk
In the 1980’s Cuba was the world’s largest citrus fruit exporter. The end of the USSR took away their main market and put them in direct competition with two of the big citrus fruit exporters the USA and Israel.
Today Cuba is the world’s laboratory for sustainable farming and food sovereignty – the World Bank has described it as “almost the anti-model”- pursuing an approach that links ecology with the decentralisation of the control of farms. Co-operatives are playing a key part in these developments.
The US blockade makes market access crucial. In 2000, Traidcraft, the Christian based fair trade organisation stepped in to help seven co-operatives in and around Ciego de Avila find new markets and help them to win Fair-trade status. Working alongside Gerber foods they are bringing first class Cuban fruit juices to European consumers and in developing the Fruit Passion brand aim to do for fruit juice what Café Direct has done for fair-trade coffee.
Modern consumers are increasingly concerned about the provenance of what they buy from the developing world and thanks to the Fairtrade Foundation there has been a huge increase in quality making the fair trade an easier choice to make. Fair-trade is not socialism but the Fair-trade mark does guarantee farmers a minimum price and an additional 'premium' payment. In Cuba the premium is used for projects that benefit the co-operatives - better machinery, vehicles, irrigation systems etc. or to finance other activities including cultural and recreational facilities.
The Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) representing the interests of co-operatives and individual farmers are also working to increase the involvement of women in the farms and their decision making processes.
Last year I visited the region of Cuba where these co-ops are based and the extra income fair trade brings can make a real difference. One of the dreadful things about capitalism is the way the abstraction of the market separates consumers from producers.
Now Traidcraft are running meet the people tours to Cuba in November, February or March visiting the CPA and CCS Jose Marti Co-operatives in Ciego de Avila that produce the juice that is so welcome on our breakfast tables.
Writing in Granma, Fidel Castro, points out that the recent hurricanes have done between $3 and $4 billion dollars worth of damage to Cuba. Farmers have not escaped unscathed and to help their recovery the least we can do is buy some of their output. So why wait? You can find Fruit Passion in Co-op shops as well as in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, also the Co-op’s own brand fair-trade orange juice includes Cuban product in the blend.
Of course the concept of fair trade is not new. Back in 1906 the first Labour MP’s cited John Ruskin as the author who had most shaped their thinking. Ruskin makes a plea for fair trade in ‘Unto This Last’ published in 1862.
“In all buying, consider first, what condition of existence you cause in the production of what you buy; secondly whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer and in due proportion, lodged in his hands.”
Given the present shenanigans in the PLP it would seem that today the minds of some Labour MP’s seem to be shaped by an older writer than Ruskin – evidenced from their detachment of political expediency from morality – one Niccoli Machiavelli.
For details of Traidcraft trips to Cuba see: Meet the People Tours at www.Traidcraft.co.uk
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
The Search For Utopia - 150 Years of Robert Owen
This year marks a century and half since the death of Robert Owen in 1858. The 2008 Society for Co-op Studies Conference is to be held appropriately at the New Lanark Mill Hotel, part of the New Lanark World Heritage Site, from 11-14th September and is titled, New Views of Society: Robert Owen for the 21st Century.
It is hard to do justice to Owen, in 1880 Frederick Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen. He forced through in 1819, after five years’ fighting, the first law limiting the hours of labour of women and children in factories. He was president of the first Congress at which all the Trade Unions of England united in a single great trade association. He introduced as transition measures to the complete communistic organisation of society on the one hand, co-operative societies for retail trade and production.”
Owens ideas took a radical turn from his experience of managing what was the largest cotton spinning factory in Europe. New Lanark is a world of its own, set deep in the spectacular Clyde valley, almost cut off from the outside world, the Clyde falls providing the power to drive the mills. A lack of enthusiasm for his ideas amongst his business partners was resolved when he formed a partnership with a group of mainly Quaker backers to buy the New Lanark Mills giving him a free hand.
He set about improving the factory workers lives with better housing, healthy food, education and better working conditions. He formed a sick fund and a savings bank as well as a company store that ploughed its profits back into the community. His rigid monitoring and control of the workforce together with the application of new technologies paid off with a substantial increase in productivity and profitability.
His big idea was that a person’s environment had an impact on the formation of their character. Education was the core of Owenite philosophy – the idea that through the education of future generations a better world could be created is essentially the underpinning idea of all modern education. The turning point in Owens thinking seems to have stemmed from his meeting anarchist political philosopher William Godwin. His thinking about how to apply the lessons from New Lanark to wider society developed with meetings with Godwin and radical Francis Place and political economist James Mill. It was Pace and Mill who edited his essay “A New View of Society” giving it a depth and clarity that is absent from his later writings.
To celebrate Owen’s 80th birthday in 1851, a public meeting was held in London. Owen urged his audience to continue their efforts to “well educate, well employ, well place and cordially unite the human race.” The thousand strong crowd included Karl Marx who wrote to Engels that, “in spite of fixed ideas the old man was loveable and ironical.”
Today whilst New Lanark Mill Hotel, in a converted mill, is one of the great places to stay, Owens combination of social control and paternalism seems rather autocratic. He was from a different time - a reformer but no democrat. Many of his ideas however, like labour exchanges, gave us a vision of a possible alternative future. Engels said he gave us the, “practical proof that the merchant and the manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary.”
Owen was a utopian thinker there are many flaws in his “new view of society” but we will always need those who have the vision to see that another world is possible. Unless we can imagine a different future we can not even begin to make it happen.
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when it lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country, sets sail, Progress is the realization of Utopias.”
The Society for Co-operative Studies can be found at: www.co-opstudies.org
It is hard to do justice to Owen, in 1880 Frederick Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen. He forced through in 1819, after five years’ fighting, the first law limiting the hours of labour of women and children in factories. He was president of the first Congress at which all the Trade Unions of England united in a single great trade association. He introduced as transition measures to the complete communistic organisation of society on the one hand, co-operative societies for retail trade and production.”
Owens ideas took a radical turn from his experience of managing what was the largest cotton spinning factory in Europe. New Lanark is a world of its own, set deep in the spectacular Clyde valley, almost cut off from the outside world, the Clyde falls providing the power to drive the mills. A lack of enthusiasm for his ideas amongst his business partners was resolved when he formed a partnership with a group of mainly Quaker backers to buy the New Lanark Mills giving him a free hand.
He set about improving the factory workers lives with better housing, healthy food, education and better working conditions. He formed a sick fund and a savings bank as well as a company store that ploughed its profits back into the community. His rigid monitoring and control of the workforce together with the application of new technologies paid off with a substantial increase in productivity and profitability.
His big idea was that a person’s environment had an impact on the formation of their character. Education was the core of Owenite philosophy – the idea that through the education of future generations a better world could be created is essentially the underpinning idea of all modern education. The turning point in Owens thinking seems to have stemmed from his meeting anarchist political philosopher William Godwin. His thinking about how to apply the lessons from New Lanark to wider society developed with meetings with Godwin and radical Francis Place and political economist James Mill. It was Pace and Mill who edited his essay “A New View of Society” giving it a depth and clarity that is absent from his later writings.
To celebrate Owen’s 80th birthday in 1851, a public meeting was held in London. Owen urged his audience to continue their efforts to “well educate, well employ, well place and cordially unite the human race.” The thousand strong crowd included Karl Marx who wrote to Engels that, “in spite of fixed ideas the old man was loveable and ironical.”
Today whilst New Lanark Mill Hotel, in a converted mill, is one of the great places to stay, Owens combination of social control and paternalism seems rather autocratic. He was from a different time - a reformer but no democrat. Many of his ideas however, like labour exchanges, gave us a vision of a possible alternative future. Engels said he gave us the, “practical proof that the merchant and the manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary.”
Owen was a utopian thinker there are many flaws in his “new view of society” but we will always need those who have the vision to see that another world is possible. Unless we can imagine a different future we can not even begin to make it happen.
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when it lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country, sets sail, Progress is the realization of Utopias.”
The Society for Co-operative Studies can be found at: www.co-opstudies.org
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
The End of Neo-Liberalism
How quickly the TUC and party conference season comes around. This year rather than a knee jerk response to the threat of recession we need some deep reflection on economic policy. Be in no doubt the world has changed the neo-liberal boom is over.
Our Olympic performance shows that talent is essential for success but only long term investment can guarantee it. Economically we can only sustain our standard of living with high levels of investment. Now made difficult by the credit crunch and how we used that wave of cheap investment.
Recent economic prosperity was underpinned by historically low global prices for the key economic inputs of capital, energy and labour and deregulation and liberalisation enabled us to easily import them.
Western banks recycled surpluses generated from East Asia’s export of manufactures and from the oil and gas exporting countries. For a while they had more capital than they knew what to do with. The Bank of England reports, mangers invested in such complex financial instruments they still do not know what they have done with it! Sadly here this inflow of cheap capital was not invested in crucial infrastructure and productive capacity but was squandered on private equity and PFI schemes that added little to our capital stock or was used to subsidise current consumption.
UK fiscal policy drove a large proportion of this capital into new retail capacity to take advantage of cheap imports and into housing. Not to produce more houses, despite record prices we have had record low levels of construction, but driving house price inflation. Despite conventional wisdom high house prices do not equal wealth. Houses are not businesses, they do not innovate, generate new products, undertake R&D or train people, whilst they may once have been a store of value they do not create it.
This capital was cheap but not free - now it is payback time - the price is record trade deficits, massive public and private debt levels and a weakening pound. Now we need to generate domestic capital a tough task from a generation with no savings culture.
The energy story is a similar. When it was cheap we privatised our energy infrastructure, now it is more expensive we seem surprised that private firms pursue profits rather than the national interest. Our laiseez faire energy policy puts us at the mercy of global energy markets.
We must increase the output of domestic energy requiring capital but global firms take a global view why should they invest when they are making plenty selling us the imported stuff? We now have an underdeveloped energy infrastructure which needs investment across the piece, from renewables, new nuclear stations, new gas storage systems and replacement generating capacity.
Government intervention is vital, but a one off windfall tax is not enough, given the current structure of the industry it will only be paid by yet lower investment. Now sustained investment can only come from the public sector.
The third factor has been our inability to increase the productivity of the UK workforce. Our GDP has grown not by increasing the output per person, requiring higher investment in technology and skills; but by getting a higher proportion of people into work and by getting them to work longer.
This has been further sustained by the flow of low cost, highly motivated and well educated labour from Eastern Europe and from more women working. Now the pressure for higher labour market participation rates is looking desperate with attacks on lone parents and those on disability benefits.
With recession looming, the Poles are going home and the ones that stay are demanding decent pay and conditions. We will have to re-examine our education and training systems as we are forced to depend on home grown skilled Labour - meaning an end to long hours without training or companies having a free ride on skills.
It must be clear now that we can no longer postpone the development of a high investment, high technology, high skills economy. Currently we are not productive enough to import all our inputs. Now our financial services sector has shown the world that it is no better managed than our domestic car industry was.
The NICE decade is over we need the policies to get us saving, to get us developing our own energy supplies, and for us to have a high skills, high productivity economy.
That is the program we need to hear this conference season otherwise the sacrifices currently being made in living standards by Britain’s, workers will be for nothing. We will be letting David Cameron’s Tories off the hook we know they do not have the answers to these problems but does Labour?
Our Olympic performance shows that talent is essential for success but only long term investment can guarantee it. Economically we can only sustain our standard of living with high levels of investment. Now made difficult by the credit crunch and how we used that wave of cheap investment.
Recent economic prosperity was underpinned by historically low global prices for the key economic inputs of capital, energy and labour and deregulation and liberalisation enabled us to easily import them.
Western banks recycled surpluses generated from East Asia’s export of manufactures and from the oil and gas exporting countries. For a while they had more capital than they knew what to do with. The Bank of England reports, mangers invested in such complex financial instruments they still do not know what they have done with it! Sadly here this inflow of cheap capital was not invested in crucial infrastructure and productive capacity but was squandered on private equity and PFI schemes that added little to our capital stock or was used to subsidise current consumption.
UK fiscal policy drove a large proportion of this capital into new retail capacity to take advantage of cheap imports and into housing. Not to produce more houses, despite record prices we have had record low levels of construction, but driving house price inflation. Despite conventional wisdom high house prices do not equal wealth. Houses are not businesses, they do not innovate, generate new products, undertake R&D or train people, whilst they may once have been a store of value they do not create it.
This capital was cheap but not free - now it is payback time - the price is record trade deficits, massive public and private debt levels and a weakening pound. Now we need to generate domestic capital a tough task from a generation with no savings culture.
The energy story is a similar. When it was cheap we privatised our energy infrastructure, now it is more expensive we seem surprised that private firms pursue profits rather than the national interest. Our laiseez faire energy policy puts us at the mercy of global energy markets.
We must increase the output of domestic energy requiring capital but global firms take a global view why should they invest when they are making plenty selling us the imported stuff? We now have an underdeveloped energy infrastructure which needs investment across the piece, from renewables, new nuclear stations, new gas storage systems and replacement generating capacity.
Government intervention is vital, but a one off windfall tax is not enough, given the current structure of the industry it will only be paid by yet lower investment. Now sustained investment can only come from the public sector.
The third factor has been our inability to increase the productivity of the UK workforce. Our GDP has grown not by increasing the output per person, requiring higher investment in technology and skills; but by getting a higher proportion of people into work and by getting them to work longer.
This has been further sustained by the flow of low cost, highly motivated and well educated labour from Eastern Europe and from more women working. Now the pressure for higher labour market participation rates is looking desperate with attacks on lone parents and those on disability benefits.
With recession looming, the Poles are going home and the ones that stay are demanding decent pay and conditions. We will have to re-examine our education and training systems as we are forced to depend on home grown skilled Labour - meaning an end to long hours without training or companies having a free ride on skills.
It must be clear now that we can no longer postpone the development of a high investment, high technology, high skills economy. Currently we are not productive enough to import all our inputs. Now our financial services sector has shown the world that it is no better managed than our domestic car industry was.
The NICE decade is over we need the policies to get us saving, to get us developing our own energy supplies, and for us to have a high skills, high productivity economy.
That is the program we need to hear this conference season otherwise the sacrifices currently being made in living standards by Britain’s, workers will be for nothing. We will be letting David Cameron’s Tories off the hook we know they do not have the answers to these problems but does Labour?
Friday, 22 August 2008
Can David Milliband Save the Labour Party ?
I cannot help but feel that the metropolitan commentariat do not understand how bad it has become for Labour out here in the country. The reason we need a new leader quickly is not so that we can stave off defeat in general election. Labour is in free fall. The Crewe by-election and the local and London result are not just a sign of a resurgent Conservative Party but that we are faced with the terrible fact that the electorate will vote in each place for whoever they think will beat Labour. They do not care what the policies of the Tories or Liberals are but will now vote for anyone but Labour.
This is simply not enough time to turn things around before a general election but the coming defeat can be mitigated by a swift change in leadership. The current leadership is not only politically bankrupt, can anyone remember any of the 18 Bills in the draft Queens speech, the Party as Tribune has consistently reported is also financially bankrupt.
Changing the leader won’t make things miraculously better but it will stop things getting worse. The test for a new leader is not is he or she Prime Ministerial but can they lead the Labour party in Opposition. Can they harry the Tories and set the agenda without the civil service behind them and with a rather small band of brothers.
I understand that David Milliband is the coming man, remember this is not about winning a general election frankly that is beyond any mortal at this stage, it is about rebuilding the Labour Party and stopping its destruction as any kind of force in British politics.
With this in mind I have some speech notes for David as he triggers the leadership campaign.
1) I have decided to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party. There can be no greater honour for me than to lead the Labour Party (note not New Labour). The Party has been my home and my family for all of my adult life, a family that includes, the trades unions and the co-operative movement (note to self they are saving us from bankruptcy) and it would be true to say that like all families we have had our differences some of them profound but I have never wanted to be in any other.
2) We are not conservatives, neo-conservatives or liberals we are democratic socialists and we must never forget it. I have the honour of representing a working class constituency and we have to ensure that we build outwards from the base. (Must stop the rot with working class voters)
3) Many of you will now that I had severe doubts about the war in Iraq . My loyalty to the party and its leader meant that I kept my council at that time. Today I cannot stand by when it is clear we need a fresh start to win back the trust of the people. (Message:Ant-war but loyal).
4) I have youth and experience. I understand how events in far away places can impact on life here in Britain and how we have to be internationalist in our outlook. (Cameron just has youth)
5) The greatest threat we face today is not Islamic terrorism but climate change. We have to have a major push for renewable energy we are not as a nation short of wind or waves, not only saving the planet but also saving imports of oil and gas. (I have a track record on this)
6) Britain can look forward to a bright future but we have to rectify some of the over zealous elements of the market that have damaged our country, like the housing bubble, it will take some time but we can do it. (Subtext: I will regulate where Gordon failed to tread).
How will he see the last two Labour leaders?
On Gordon Brown, he has been a great servant of the party and the country but new times and new challenges need new ideas and new remedies and that is what I can offer.
On Tony Blair, being close to the leadership I can see how it is possible just because of sheer pressure on time to get isolated from the everyday concerns of people when one is deeply involved in global politics and that is what we have to guard against.
And how can he take on the Tories:
On David Cameron, I like him, he has done a good job in reshaping the Conservative party, he accuses us of stealing his clothes but I think he has stolen ours and they look a little too big for him.
A change of leader now will not stave off defeat but it will breathe new life into the Party and give us a base to build from. There is no point waiting, that base will only get smaller, we have already lost half our members and half of our councillors all that delay can do is delay the process of renewal and rebuilding. This is the test of the new generation have they like those in Gordon Browns book the courage to make the change.
This is simply not enough time to turn things around before a general election but the coming defeat can be mitigated by a swift change in leadership. The current leadership is not only politically bankrupt, can anyone remember any of the 18 Bills in the draft Queens speech, the Party as Tribune has consistently reported is also financially bankrupt.
Changing the leader won’t make things miraculously better but it will stop things getting worse. The test for a new leader is not is he or she Prime Ministerial but can they lead the Labour party in Opposition. Can they harry the Tories and set the agenda without the civil service behind them and with a rather small band of brothers.
I understand that David Milliband is the coming man, remember this is not about winning a general election frankly that is beyond any mortal at this stage, it is about rebuilding the Labour Party and stopping its destruction as any kind of force in British politics.
With this in mind I have some speech notes for David as he triggers the leadership campaign.
1) I have decided to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party. There can be no greater honour for me than to lead the Labour Party (note not New Labour). The Party has been my home and my family for all of my adult life, a family that includes, the trades unions and the co-operative movement (note to self they are saving us from bankruptcy) and it would be true to say that like all families we have had our differences some of them profound but I have never wanted to be in any other.
2) We are not conservatives, neo-conservatives or liberals we are democratic socialists and we must never forget it. I have the honour of representing a working class constituency and we have to ensure that we build outwards from the base. (Must stop the rot with working class voters)
3) Many of you will now that I had severe doubts about the war in Iraq . My loyalty to the party and its leader meant that I kept my council at that time. Today I cannot stand by when it is clear we need a fresh start to win back the trust of the people. (Message:Ant-war but loyal).
4) I have youth and experience. I understand how events in far away places can impact on life here in Britain and how we have to be internationalist in our outlook. (Cameron just has youth)
5) The greatest threat we face today is not Islamic terrorism but climate change. We have to have a major push for renewable energy we are not as a nation short of wind or waves, not only saving the planet but also saving imports of oil and gas. (I have a track record on this)
6) Britain can look forward to a bright future but we have to rectify some of the over zealous elements of the market that have damaged our country, like the housing bubble, it will take some time but we can do it. (Subtext: I will regulate where Gordon failed to tread).
How will he see the last two Labour leaders?
On Gordon Brown, he has been a great servant of the party and the country but new times and new challenges need new ideas and new remedies and that is what I can offer.
On Tony Blair, being close to the leadership I can see how it is possible just because of sheer pressure on time to get isolated from the everyday concerns of people when one is deeply involved in global politics and that is what we have to guard against.
And how can he take on the Tories:
On David Cameron, I like him, he has done a good job in reshaping the Conservative party, he accuses us of stealing his clothes but I think he has stolen ours and they look a little too big for him.
A change of leader now will not stave off defeat but it will breathe new life into the Party and give us a base to build from. There is no point waiting, that base will only get smaller, we have already lost half our members and half of our councillors all that delay can do is delay the process of renewal and rebuilding. This is the test of the new generation have they like those in Gordon Browns book the courage to make the change.
Is the Co-op Commonwealth Still Alive?
Is the dream of the Co-operative Commonwealth still alive?
Joining the Co-op Party I had to “assert my belief in the co-operative commonwealth”. I never had a problem with this. In my sitting room there is a framed Walter Crane print of ‘liberty’ one hand holding aloft the light of ‘socialism’ shining as the ‘co-operative commonwealth’ whilst the other hand fought the serpent of ‘capitalist constriction’. This came to mind as next month sees the Co-op Party conference at Methodist Central Hall (Methodism and Co-operation – seems appropriate) begin drafting its general election manifesto.
Like the Trade Unions the Co-op movement came into politics for defensive reasons. The sector was badly treated in World War One price controls and rationing schemes where biased to private traders and the Military gave little consideration to Co-op Societies; one was faced with 102 out of 104 male employees being conscripted.
The last straw was Asquith’s clumsy attempt to tackle profiteering, an excess profits tax, which has been described as the co-operators Taff Vale. The 1917 Co-op Congress passed a resolution to “seek direct representation in parliament”. Later that year a National Emergency Conference set up a Central Co-operative Parliamentary Representation Committee and agreed a platform of ‘industrial, social and economic reform’, expressing the movement’s views on profiteering, agriculture, taxation, banking, housing, education foreign policy, and demobilisation, the ‘democratising of state services’, as well as safeguarding the interests of voluntary co-operation and resistance to any legislation that would hamper Co-op progress.
Those issues of profiteering and demobilisation seem somehow topical again. Ten years after its formation in 1927 the Co-op formed an electoral alliance with Labour that has lasted for eighty years. It maybe a relationship that is a throwback to the Labour Party’s federal past but on today’s membership cards its role to ‘promote co-operative values and principles inside and outside the Labour movement, representing all types of co-operative organisation’ could not be more important.
In the Blair years the Party was not immune to ‘modernisation’ General Secretary Peter Hunt attempted to flesh out the concept of the ‘Third Way’ with ideas of new mutualism which where developed with the aid of a new “think tank” Mutuo. Certainly the Party needed better developed co-operative and mutual public policy prescriptions. Unfortunately the ‘Third Way’ for Tony Blair was nothing more than a rhetorical device to cover his rightward drift. Hunt also worked hard on the youngsters around Brown at the Treasury as the best hope for the legislation the Co-op movement needed to make it fit for the 21st century.
For last years 90th birthday Greg Rosen wrote a new short Co-op Part history published as co-operator Gordon Brown was making his ascent to No 10. The Party was full of optimism, writing in the New Statesman; Martin Bright said that “It could be argued that the Co-operative Party is one of the most influential groups of MP’s within Labour. Its chair the international development minister, Gareth Thomas, is a respected figure. Ten cabinet ministers are members as were four of the deputy leadership candidates. All the most influential younger Brown-era ministers are also members (Ed Balls, the Milliband Brothers, Andy Burnham, James Purnell). Could it be”, he asks, “that those searching for a Brownite politics will find it here”?
Somehow I can’t imagine that lot looking for the Co-operative Commonwealth, nonetheless, new Co-op Party General Secretary, Michael Stevenson, has a record Parliamentary Group of thirty members, who maybe a broad church but with the Government looking increasingly bereft of ideas this years Co-op conference could not be timelier. The Party has the enthusiasm and talent of co-operators, from agriculture to housing, financial services to telecommunications, who now run some of Britain’s most successful businesses to call upon.
Many co-operators feel that there has been too much emphasis on selling Labour to the Co-op or putting a cosmetic co-op gloss on health and education reforms rather than ‘promoting’ genuine co-operative solutions to Labour. The true test will be real Co-op measures finding their way into a real Labour manifesto. That is the way to ensure the Co-op Party reaching its centenary.
Joining the Co-op Party I had to “assert my belief in the co-operative commonwealth”. I never had a problem with this. In my sitting room there is a framed Walter Crane print of ‘liberty’ one hand holding aloft the light of ‘socialism’ shining as the ‘co-operative commonwealth’ whilst the other hand fought the serpent of ‘capitalist constriction’. This came to mind as next month sees the Co-op Party conference at Methodist Central Hall (Methodism and Co-operation – seems appropriate) begin drafting its general election manifesto.
Like the Trade Unions the Co-op movement came into politics for defensive reasons. The sector was badly treated in World War One price controls and rationing schemes where biased to private traders and the Military gave little consideration to Co-op Societies; one was faced with 102 out of 104 male employees being conscripted.
The last straw was Asquith’s clumsy attempt to tackle profiteering, an excess profits tax, which has been described as the co-operators Taff Vale. The 1917 Co-op Congress passed a resolution to “seek direct representation in parliament”. Later that year a National Emergency Conference set up a Central Co-operative Parliamentary Representation Committee and agreed a platform of ‘industrial, social and economic reform’, expressing the movement’s views on profiteering, agriculture, taxation, banking, housing, education foreign policy, and demobilisation, the ‘democratising of state services’, as well as safeguarding the interests of voluntary co-operation and resistance to any legislation that would hamper Co-op progress.
Those issues of profiteering and demobilisation seem somehow topical again. Ten years after its formation in 1927 the Co-op formed an electoral alliance with Labour that has lasted for eighty years. It maybe a relationship that is a throwback to the Labour Party’s federal past but on today’s membership cards its role to ‘promote co-operative values and principles inside and outside the Labour movement, representing all types of co-operative organisation’ could not be more important.
In the Blair years the Party was not immune to ‘modernisation’ General Secretary Peter Hunt attempted to flesh out the concept of the ‘Third Way’ with ideas of new mutualism which where developed with the aid of a new “think tank” Mutuo. Certainly the Party needed better developed co-operative and mutual public policy prescriptions. Unfortunately the ‘Third Way’ for Tony Blair was nothing more than a rhetorical device to cover his rightward drift. Hunt also worked hard on the youngsters around Brown at the Treasury as the best hope for the legislation the Co-op movement needed to make it fit for the 21st century.
For last years 90th birthday Greg Rosen wrote a new short Co-op Part history published as co-operator Gordon Brown was making his ascent to No 10. The Party was full of optimism, writing in the New Statesman; Martin Bright said that “It could be argued that the Co-operative Party is one of the most influential groups of MP’s within Labour. Its chair the international development minister, Gareth Thomas, is a respected figure. Ten cabinet ministers are members as were four of the deputy leadership candidates. All the most influential younger Brown-era ministers are also members (Ed Balls, the Milliband Brothers, Andy Burnham, James Purnell). Could it be”, he asks, “that those searching for a Brownite politics will find it here”?
Somehow I can’t imagine that lot looking for the Co-operative Commonwealth, nonetheless, new Co-op Party General Secretary, Michael Stevenson, has a record Parliamentary Group of thirty members, who maybe a broad church but with the Government looking increasingly bereft of ideas this years Co-op conference could not be timelier. The Party has the enthusiasm and talent of co-operators, from agriculture to housing, financial services to telecommunications, who now run some of Britain’s most successful businesses to call upon.
Many co-operators feel that there has been too much emphasis on selling Labour to the Co-op or putting a cosmetic co-op gloss on health and education reforms rather than ‘promoting’ genuine co-operative solutions to Labour. The true test will be real Co-op measures finding their way into a real Labour manifesto. That is the way to ensure the Co-op Party reaching its centenary.
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
The Co-operative Dividend Finally Pays Off
A global financial crisis has woken us up to the benefits of mutual and co-operative business ownership. Converted building societies have found their plc status no protection against poor management and the drying up of international credit. Those remaining mutual, partly shielded by their structure, maybe dull and safe but with global banking in meltdown a dull and safe place is the best place to keep your money.
For some the Co-op was as an anachronism. Politicians paid tribute to its past, to Robert Owen, the Rochdale Pioneers or in Scotland the Fenwick Weavers, implying it had no future. Patronising the sector with warm words when asking for support (or an extension to the overdraft) but privately thinking there was no place in the modern world of shareholder capitalism for a business owned by its customers.
For them the news of the Co-operative Group take over of Somerfield, putting it back amongst the big boys in the retail sector, must seem like seeing Lazarus. Observers of the co-op scene know better, they may not be widely known but the Co-op has in the recent past benefited from some excellent leadership and their efforts are now paying off.
The renaissance began when the Co-op Bank was re-branded as the ethical bank. Its success surprised everyone, including many in the co-op movement, giving confidence, that after years of decline, there was nothing intrinsically uncompetitive about the co-op model.
Society mergers, mostly from weakness, looked to outsiders like the co-op was closing down and in some places it was. Quietly however from dozens of small societies the co-op was forming a new leaner and more effective organisation.
Then last year came the merger that turned the tide. The marriage of the Co-op Group and United Co-operatives, a union from strength rather than weakness meant that at last the Co-op had the critical mass to grow.
Despite the huge challenges of this merger the process of improving the customer experience went on, creating better products, with an emphasis on ethical and fair-trade products, and better stores. Behind the scenes too new IT and logistics systems helped increase sales.
Those new IT systems have enabled the Co-op to bring back the “Divi” in a meaningful way – paying out over £38 million to members this year.
Mergers are no panacea – like some trade union mergers - on paper the new organisation should be as big as the two organisations added together but somehow they end up smaller. This merger was different; the new Group has in the words of CEO Peter Marks the “best opportunity for 50 years to move forward”.
The increased buying power the Somerfield merger will bring will make the whole co-op retail sector more competitive and put an end to some of those Co-op deserts. It will not be easy to create a democratic structure for the new organisation as the new merged Group is only just coming together. But managing growth is far better than managing decline.
At this years Co-op Congress, Kitty Usher Economic Secretary to the Treasury, promised, at long last, a new legal framework to help this modernisation continue. The FSA who have responsibility for regulating the Co-op and mutual sector (you may think that currently they have more pressing responsibilities) have said “it will enable the movement to enjoy the legislative framework it deserves; one fit for this century, rather than the nineteenth.”
With immense patience former Labour MEP Pauline Green and her colleagues at Co-operatives UK have done a good job in cajoling and educating the FSA to take, a sector of some 5000 businesses employing a quarter of a million people, seriously. But a healthy co-op sector is important not just to the one in five of us that have a share in a Co-op.
The new General Secretary of the Co-op Party, Michael Stevenson, has a good story to tell - how by rediscovering its ethical values and democratic principles the co-operative sector has been able to rebuild its business. Could this be a lesson for the Labour Party and the Government?
For some the Co-op was as an anachronism. Politicians paid tribute to its past, to Robert Owen, the Rochdale Pioneers or in Scotland the Fenwick Weavers, implying it had no future. Patronising the sector with warm words when asking for support (or an extension to the overdraft) but privately thinking there was no place in the modern world of shareholder capitalism for a business owned by its customers.
For them the news of the Co-operative Group take over of Somerfield, putting it back amongst the big boys in the retail sector, must seem like seeing Lazarus. Observers of the co-op scene know better, they may not be widely known but the Co-op has in the recent past benefited from some excellent leadership and their efforts are now paying off.
The renaissance began when the Co-op Bank was re-branded as the ethical bank. Its success surprised everyone, including many in the co-op movement, giving confidence, that after years of decline, there was nothing intrinsically uncompetitive about the co-op model.
Society mergers, mostly from weakness, looked to outsiders like the co-op was closing down and in some places it was. Quietly however from dozens of small societies the co-op was forming a new leaner and more effective organisation.
Then last year came the merger that turned the tide. The marriage of the Co-op Group and United Co-operatives, a union from strength rather than weakness meant that at last the Co-op had the critical mass to grow.
Despite the huge challenges of this merger the process of improving the customer experience went on, creating better products, with an emphasis on ethical and fair-trade products, and better stores. Behind the scenes too new IT and logistics systems helped increase sales.
Those new IT systems have enabled the Co-op to bring back the “Divi” in a meaningful way – paying out over £38 million to members this year.
Mergers are no panacea – like some trade union mergers - on paper the new organisation should be as big as the two organisations added together but somehow they end up smaller. This merger was different; the new Group has in the words of CEO Peter Marks the “best opportunity for 50 years to move forward”.
The increased buying power the Somerfield merger will bring will make the whole co-op retail sector more competitive and put an end to some of those Co-op deserts. It will not be easy to create a democratic structure for the new organisation as the new merged Group is only just coming together. But managing growth is far better than managing decline.
At this years Co-op Congress, Kitty Usher Economic Secretary to the Treasury, promised, at long last, a new legal framework to help this modernisation continue. The FSA who have responsibility for regulating the Co-op and mutual sector (you may think that currently they have more pressing responsibilities) have said “it will enable the movement to enjoy the legislative framework it deserves; one fit for this century, rather than the nineteenth.”
With immense patience former Labour MEP Pauline Green and her colleagues at Co-operatives UK have done a good job in cajoling and educating the FSA to take, a sector of some 5000 businesses employing a quarter of a million people, seriously. But a healthy co-op sector is important not just to the one in five of us that have a share in a Co-op.
The new General Secretary of the Co-op Party, Michael Stevenson, has a good story to tell - how by rediscovering its ethical values and democratic principles the co-operative sector has been able to rebuild its business. Could this be a lesson for the Labour Party and the Government?
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