(Second in the series starting with The Sovereignty of the People)
ADRIAN HART August 2019
Wherever we stand on Brexit and however much we despair of the parliamentary forces squabbling over how to implement some version of it (or stop it altogether) there’s more unity across the land than we might think. Disillusionment with democracy cuts across left/right and leave/remain divisions. Unifying millions of us is the desire to reclaim some level of self-determination over the places in which we live. If ‘take back control’ was the chosen campaign slogan, articulating (as it turned out) a mass-popular demand for national sovereignty over borders and laws, it’s no less an apt slogan for demanding sovereignty over neighbourhood. On some level the tortuous Brexit experience has turned pretty much all of us – remain or leave, party political or not – into an alliance of the politically frustrated [1]. It then throws up a choice. Hunker down or target something you might have some semblance of control over.
If you live in a modern British city taking back control of local government wouldn’t normally be the first thing that comes to mind when pondering all things controllable. (A spot of guerrilla gardening maybe?) But it seems a beacon has been lit. Ninety percent of us live in cities. Viewed from space Earth cities glow like fairy lights. By comparison the myriad small towns of England hide in the dark. But if you live in one of these you might have more power at your disposal than you realised. The first beacon was lit by the people of Frome in Somerset way back in those dull pre-Brexit days of 2015. In the May elections that year Frome (population 26,203) elected independent candidates to every one of its 17 seats and took over control of the town council. Independents for Frome had formed 5 years earlier taking 10 seats. Disgruntled with the usual lacklustre party-affiliated councillors this group of independents formed around a set of shared values. As the group grew it found itself able to include individuals occupying a variety of political standpoints. In fact it turned diversity of opinion into the group dynamism we so often forget about as we instinctively gravitate toward those feelgood echo chambers.
Connecting Independents for Frome was the feeling that confrontational party politics didn’t belong at town council level. The energy and focus needed to solve problems or think expansively and muster the courage to innovate had no space to breathe amidst the town’s Tory and Lib Dem councillors who were constantly fighting each other, pursuing their careers or playing golf. Nor were the time honoured council structures (present here much like all town councils) even remotely conducive to the participatory democracy so often claimed as the core value of local government. Archaic rule books leading to turgid committee meetings with public input squeezed into 5 minute deputations is indeed the norm. No wonder so many of those fierce advocates who impress us at election time end up distinctly less impressive when they vanish behind walls of mind-numbing bureaucracy and regulation.
Lying at the heart of the Frome experiment was a determination to take advantage of the Localism Act (2011). Born out of Cameran’s ‘Big Society’ moment, the legislation is doubtless intended to out-source state responsibilities to brigades of cheerful volunteers (while carefully vetting, controlling and monitoring all of it). But actually its origins were, like Blair’s Freedom of Information Act, rooted in a desire to curry favour with voters. Both have entailed magnificent unintended consequences except the Localism Act needs exploiting far more than it has.
Dotted around the country news of the Frome experiment inspired an outbreak of similar endeavours. At the May 2019 local elections upwards of 40 independent groups stood candidates.
Some 6 months earlier I decided to attempt a version of this rebellion here in Brighton. Looking back on the May elections I think one Guardian commentator got it right when he spoke of a fast mutating politics ‘with everything now infused with the cultural and political tensions brought to a head by Brexit.’ It makes sense to me that the insecurity and uncertainty generating out of parliamentary deadlock might sharpen the focus on things closer to home – things we might be able to control. In the hotchpotch neighbourhood group we’d formed in east Brighton one positive side effect of the unedifying politics raging in Westminster was the perversely unifying quality of mutual contempt toward party politics. Such contempt was underpinned by countless experiences of townhall party games so evidently held more important than the piffling concerns of constituents. It came with an instant approval for the notion of independent councillors (so long as they were ‘neighbourhood’ councillors rather than those ‘pop up’ independents who turn out to have had a row with their party and got kicked out).
Unlike the Frome group, ours had emerged from an unsuccessful campaign against a luxury apartment development (a ‘Yimby’ Yes-In-My-Backyard campaign) but by then we were a cohesive neighbourhood. From atomised city dwellers we’d become more like townsfolk meeting in pubs and coffee shops and having the rolling conversations people have who meet again and again. Like the Frome group these conversations would stray not just to the usual subjects of drug dealing, filthy streets and the lack of affordable accommodation but almost inevitably to the hopelessly inefficient and technocratic council.
To consider standing an independent candidate in a city of almost 300,000 inhabitants is the moment comparisons with the small towns rebellion fall away. It’s true that our ward (‘Queens Park’) with a population of 15,000 is small-town in size but its identity blurs into the city as a whole. As does lived experience – city living is, by definition, more atomised. Its not impossible to imagine fast mutating politics creating ‘Independents for Brighton’ but certainly our efforts to connect with like-minded citizens produced no results (none so far at least). Me standing as an Independent was, therefore, an attempt to use the election itself as a megaphone – a first step to seeking out the like minded and building a local movement.
In the Queens Park ward of 2019 pinning a red rosette on a shop window mannequin would (if it were allowed) still result in election victory. Another plastic politician we might say. Or you might gamble on green. Red or green, either way these mannequins (with head-office leaflets stuffed into their skinny plastic hands) were going to beat me by upwards of 1000 votes. Nor would the lack of effort subsequently shown by the victorious mannequin in sticking up for its 15,000 constituents raise too many eyebrows if the previous 5 years of Labour Party ward representation is anything to go by
For us the whole point of standing an Independent was to propagate the idea that the traditional parties are dead and that, at local level, there’s no point in them anyway. In Brighton, child-like tribal conflicts between the parties would make student union politicos blush. And their net effect is to leave decision making the preserve of unelected senior town hall officials [2]. As with Frome and the other towns that followed, 2019 was surely ripe for promoting a model of local governance that bypassed party politics with something far more representative. In Devon another Frome spin-off, the Dartmouth Initiative Group (DIG), describe themselves as part of a quiet revolution ‘shoving aside of the big parties in pursuit of new ways of doing things’. Spanning political positions from left to right, by early April DIG had registered candidates to contest the town’s 16 seats. It even included a supporter of the Brexit Party. It is precisely the diversity of political opinion (of background, of everything) that makes these groups work – so long as party politics is absent oxygen flows back in to the space allowing ideas and common cause to emerge unimpeded. More importantly, the candidates that are stood by these groups are elected on the basis of concrete positions relating to council governance rather than by ‘rosette’ votes that owe more to party loyalties at a national level.
And so, at the May 2019 local elections Frome’s Independent candidates won all 17 seats. DIG won 11 out of the 16. Elsewhere, over forty groups operating the Frome model won numerous seats. In Queens Park our embryonic project – carefully set out in its hand delivered booklet – managed to inspire 500 people to vote for me. I sometimes wonder if, by the end of the campaign, I’d met and spoken to every one of them. The three seats on offer were snapped up by one Green Party and two Labour Party candidates (they each got 1800 to 2000 votes). Our Queens Park experiment shot a firework up into the sky but then it was gone. We knew by then that the next election in 2024 would need the ward to be a town and Independents for Queens Park to ready. Not far away in west London another area (coincidentally also called Queens Park) has done exactly that.
However, eclipsing England’s small town rebellion was the fact that across the country independents of all kinds did extraordinarily well. Impossible to ignore was the extent to which these local elections became a release valve for nation-wide frustration over the Brexit debacle and a chance to punish both government and opposition. Yes, I’m afraid so – many of these independents could easily have been mannequins too, ballot sheet ciphers for popular discontent. May’s Tories lost a remarkable 1,330 seats. But whereas Labour in normal circumstances should have been the beneficiary, it managed to lose 84 council seats overall. It was telling that both the Tories and Labour lost most of their seats in their traditional heartlands. With discontent over Brexit uniting remain and leave voters alike gains made by independents or any of the non-mainstream parties could only be interpreted as an ‘anyone but you’ message aimed at Labour and Conservative parties [3]. That said, even this backlash was rivalled by unprecedented numbers of spoilt ballot papers.
Although the small town rebellion got tangled up in this voter backlash I would’ve liked to have ended this piece by simply celebrating the rise of the Frome-style independents. Frome’s model of ground-level democratic renewal seemed like a perfect formula for uniting Brexit divisions and answering a question that both sides ask: is there a better way of doing politics? Back in January we still thought Britain would be leaving the EU on March 29th (albeit, perhaps, a Brexit in name only) After all, Prime Minister Theresa May had stepped up to the dispatch box to confirm this hard and fast deadline no less than 50 times. It was to be a good deal, no deal or perhaps a deal so hopelessly compromised that staying in would be the better outcome. With any of these scenarios in the offing many of us imagined that the date would still hold. On March 22nd it was extended to April 12th. On April 11th it was extended to October 31st. The extension to October 31st triggered a flashing danger light for democrats and a morale booster for those still hoping that the Brexit decision is ultimately reversed or, failing that, placed in permanent limbo.
By the time I’d started my own election campaign the mood in my ward was altering. I was asking people if they’d consider voting for a non-party independent candidate and they’d smile and tell me ‘I’m never going to vote again’. One said ‘I’m out, I’m done with it’. Another said ‘why would I ever vote for anything ever again?’ This wasn’t the only mood-swing though. Faithful middle class Green and Labour voters who’d always vote in the local elections were now supercharged around either Extinction Rebellion’s April campaign or the big Momentum push to have its newly selected candidates win the ward. Unedifying Green and Labour flyers, each claiming their side as the saviour from the scourge of the other, landed on doormats every few days. Each party knew that election success pivoted on a few hundred voters. Anyone who wasn’t voting Green or Red were irrelevant. And of course the 57 percent who were soon to ignore the election anyway were especially irrelevant.
So the way I have to end this piece is forced upon me by circumstance. At just the moment when I thought Brexit divisions might be substantially healed by unifying around burgeoning desires for better democracy, suddenly the fight to defend the very principle of it is back on with renewed vengeance. Healing tribal differences using Frome style or any other ground level experiment will have to wait. From the very moment the 2016 result was announced the remain/leave fault line has rumbled with fractious tensions. We could sum these up as ‘respect the result’ versus ‘bollocks to brexit’.
As a general rule the everyday life of remain-voter dominated neighbourhoods does not witness animosity breaking surface. In Brighton, our neighbourhood group is, from what I can tell, a reflection of how the city voted (30/60 percent leave/remain from a 74 percent turnout). None of us have fallen out over it – it is as if our common cause is too valuable (indeed, our existence as a group is too valuable). Nonetheless, swirling all around us like banshees in the wind, Brexit tensions are unavoidable. They cannot be contained or calmed right now. It feels like a disaster movie and yet the horror for those anticipating going over a cliff-edge is the exact flipside of the horror facing leave-voting democrats. From the standpoint of democratic engagement, the prospect of a Brexit decision over-turned (as though it were Armageddon averted) – its implications and knock-on effects – is, all by itself, disastrous. In other words, for leave-voting democrats – for me – it’s a call to arms. A month before the May election, halfway through our modest, neighbourhood driven campaign, the symbolism of Britain blithely drifting across the March 29th exit deadline shrieked out. I felt as though I lived in a tiny village in which the residents would now need to decide where they stood in an impending civil war.
It was Karl Marx who noted that when it comes to history-making and the struggle against having it made for us, we don’t get to choose the circumstances. Like the referendum itself we can wait for less imperfect conditions or we can act. The post referendum battleground right now presents an easy win for ruling elites. Or at least it did until the Brexit Party appeared. You may think Farage makes an unconvincing Cromwell (the comparison is a bit of a stretch). On the one hand he represents a reactionary (albeit libertarian) conservative agitator for the interests of Britain’s business class – an adept politician and darling of many a ‘little Englander’ for sure.
But history has thrown him into the mix in the strangest of ways. In some parallel universe there is probably a left mass movement pitted against those elite forces eager to clip democracy’s wings. In this reality, with his affiliation to the rightward drifting Ukip ditched, Farage returns to the stage reanimated by a role no-one else could play. The circumstances we find ourselves in mean that only the Farage ‘brand recognition’ can do the job fast enough. The job couldn’t be more explicit – to challenge and defeat the anti-democratic assault on Britain’s decision to leave the EU. In our current reality, in these circumstances, there is no leftwing fightback. In the same way that Benn and Foot sat on a platform with Enoch Powell, in the same way that Levellers gathered behind Cromwell, that workers put aside deep animosity toward Churchill ahead of WW2 there are some fights that are as urgent as they are principled. In Brighton the words “Brexit Party” triggers an instant requirement to groan, swear, shout ‘fascists!’ or otherwise vilify. To which one of the best retorts – paraphrasing the ironic quip of Remain voter friend (who is, nonetheless, a democrat) ‘determined to implement the result of the referendum – BASTARDS! ‘
Former prime minister Michael Foot was fond of recalling advice he’d been given as a boy: always judge a man by which side he would have been on at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644 – for Parliament or King. As I write, 2019s battle for democracy sees another general ride in to the fight. Be it Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage – unlikely actors, both nursing ambitions for British society possibly light-years from our own – can we afford to be squeamish? Far into the future, a ‘Marston Moor’ question might come around again, this time with Cromwell’s later betrayal of the Levellers firmly in-mind. The question might therefore be: if you’d been alive in 2019 what principle would you have stood up and fought for? – that parliament should respect the sovereignty of the people? Or the principle that parliament, if so minded, may overrule direct democracy in favour of the majority of MPs desire – of remaining in the European Union? [4]
Are we to be ruled by kings once again? In 1657 Cromwell toyed with the idea of declaring himself King. Cromwell, like Edmund Burke 120 years later, like the Remainerist dominated Parliament of today reveal their affinity for the rule of ‘politically enlightened betters’ over low-information commoners. A better Marston Moor question might be: ‘with whom do you regard sovereignty rests? the people or parliament?’
One very specific reason for posting this article (and its accompanying piece The Sovereignty of the People) is to share with Brighton friends, with the neighbourhood group we’ve built, with city councillors, activists and others a perspective on democracy which seldom gets a hearing. Irrespective of agreeing with it, without an appreciation of this perspective the prejudice of shouty remainers gets an easy ride. Indeed, millions of remain voters must surely cringe at the contempt ‘remainerists’ show toward fellow citizens who voted differently. If Brexit-wars subside and peacetime comes soon – if the small towns experiment has a chance to resume – everyone (leave/remain, all political colours or none) has to be a part of it. We should not merely tolerate diversity of opinion but actively embrace it, use it, relish all our clashes and conflicts, never be ‘offended’. I might add, if the group includes the likes of Adrian Hart regularly blurting out half-baked hokum (as a few might think he’s done here!) then tell him where he’s wrong. Seriously, please, do this.
Unshackled from party dogma this model of democratic politics is proven to work. The toxicity of Brexit-wars cannot alter the fact that the conditions are right for a period of experimental, ground-up democracy. The demand for electoral reform, for the abolition of the House of Lords, the end of party run town halls and the advent of a genuine citizen-led politics is unstoppable
Notes:
- insecurity and uncertainty always focus our minds on questions of control. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/17/prime-minister-democracy-dystopia
- The ‘Valley Gardens’ debacle is the current Brighton example of vanity schemes lusted after by party ideologues but ultimately bungled and driven through anyway by the stalwart officer elite (my piece on this will be posted soon) For now see valleygardensforum.org.uk
- See: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/06/even-the-local-elections-were-all-about-brexit/
- It wasn’t just the direct democracy of 2016 being overruled: In 2017, Parliament passed Article 50 (that triggered the formal process for leaving the European Union) by a majority ratio of 4.5 to 1. In the 2017 General Election, over 80% of votes went to parties explicitly and unequivocally promising to honour the Referendum result. Our Remain parliament are Burkean when sweeping aside any requirement to respect 2016 but revert to a mouthpiece for constituents ‘who didn’t vote to be poorer’ (etc etc) as and when it suits.
featured image: Brexit Britannia – https://www.janbow.com/
