Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

The People’s Land

Sep 18

Posted by James in Economy, Energy, Holyrood | Comments off

George IIIAs a socialist, I believe in the power of collective action, both through the state and through individuals and communities acting in concert. I believe society would benefit from more public assets being acquired and then used intelligently for the public good, to redistribute wealth and support sustainability and innovation. These may not be fashionable ideas at Westminster, but the Common Weal project from the Jimmy Reid Foundation seems to have gained a fair amount of traction in Scotland.

So here’s a modest proposal for a new institution in that vein. Perhaps we could call it The People’s Land.

Ministers could begin buying up land of various sorts across the country and bringing it together to be managed better, operated on a commercial basis but with an eye on the long term rather than a fast buck for shareholders, maintaining the value and environmental integrity of the assets. We could start with neglected rural estates that could be run for the benefit of the local community, the environment and the taxpayer rather than absentee landlords. This wouldn’t be a substitute for land reform and direct community ownership – but it could be a good fit for other communities alongside the pioneering work being done in places like Eigg and Knoydart.

And forestry – it’d be great to have a publicly owned forestry management body that wasn’t as obsessed with sitka spruces as the Forestry Commission is (although they’re getting better). The Forestry Commission also costs taxpayers £60m a year (2012 accounts, pdf, p38), even though they’re managing very valuable assets for us. This new body would be instructed to do the opposite, to contribute profits to public funds while also meeting stringent standards of community and environmental stewardship, like an ultra-modern cross between a social enterprise and a publicly-owned company – one that’s a help rather than hindrance. The kind of innovation the smart parts of the left and right should be able to support.

The land in question wouldn’t all need to be at the picturesque end of rural Scotland either. This People’s Land approach could just as successfully be used with ex-mining land, and ways could be found to turn around places that suffered when the mines closed. We need to start supporting local businesses and communities in these areas again. After all, neither the market nor the state has done much for the people who bore the brunt of Thatcherite deindustrialisation.

Maybe we could even start taking on land in our cities. Residential urban land is incredibly valuable, so it’ll cost a bit to get started, but right now those benefits accrue year after year to private owners. One day we’ll hopefully have a fair land value tax, but as an interim measure perhaps an initial investment in The People’s Land could even include money to buy a little of Scotland’s prime retail real estate. This may sound impossibly radical and idealistic, but with the will, it could be done.

The substantial sums this kind of urban asset would then bring in, year after year, could then be used to help protect public services (or keep taxes down, depending on your political perspective – there’s something even for Tories in this radical socialism lark). Just like the rural properties I’m proposing, this urban land could then also be managed with the local community too, with a ruthless focus on the social, environmental and economic opportunities.  It should operate at arm’s length to avoid becoming a puppet of successive governments, but should be scrutinised by and accountable to elected representatives.

But let’s be even more ambitious. Scotland has the best natural assets in Europe for offshore renewables, and it could be in all our environmental and economic interests to have those developments managed sensibly, in a way that coordinates activity and ensures a substantial return to the taxpayer (and the utility bill payer) by charging developers for use of the seabed. In fact, it’s hard to see how else we’ll get the booming indigenous marine renewables sector everyone says they support.

And what’s the alternative for developing our marine environment responsibly? Right now, twenty-five of Scotland’s thirty-two local authorities have a bit of coastline to manage. Just look at the map – even tiny Clackmannanshire has a bit of the Forth coast. Clearly they should still have a role to play locally, but how much better to have one body working with them, a hub of expertise, a central marine development body that’s kept separate from the regulating and planning functions of government to avoid conflicts of interest. Why should those twenty-five authorities all have to have every kind of expert required to protect the public interest and secure the benefits of offshore renewables? That’s a recipe for duplication and waste, and vastly different regimes for developers to have to get their heads round. This marine body could be a separate institution, but the values we’d want from it (community involvement, true sustainability, long-term planning, economic efficiency & commercial acumen) are the same we’d be expecting from The People’s Land. So why not roll it all up together?

The good news is we don’t have to set up The People’s Land. It already exists, and we already own it. It’s just got an unfortunate name: The Crown Estate. It does most of those things already. Through it, we own 37,000ha of rural estates from Glenlivet to Whitehill in Midlothian, 5,000ha of forestry, around half the foreshore, the seabed out to 12 nautical miles, and even some of George Street and Fort Kinnaird retail park in Edinburgh.

Each year, all its profits go to the UK exchequer. Last year, the Crown Estate put £250 million into the public coffers this way. Over the past ten years the total profit to us, the taxpayers, was £2.1 billion: a tidy wee sum for Ministers to spend on our behalf.

Disastrously for its reputation, though, it has a name which makes it sound like the Royals run it. They used to, but that ended in 1760 when George III (pictured above) handed his assets over to the state in perpetuity in exchange for being given Civil List payments. For 252 years the Royal involvement was purely nominal, until some utter idiot called George Osborne decided that annual payments from Government to our bloated monarchy (i.e. the Sovereign Grant, the successor to the Civil list etc) would be set at 15% of the Crown Estate’s profits.

Plenty of left radicals oppose the Crown Estate altogether, but it seems like a misunderstanding to do so. Even prior to Osborne’s changes, I wouldn’t say it’s perfect. In particular, there’s definitely room for more local democratic involvement in their activities, and like any other public body, they haven’t always made the right decisions. The stuff about maintaining the value and environmental integrity of the assets they manage isn’t formalised in law, and it should be, although in practice that’s already part of the thinking.

But overall, it’s a first-class seed for one of the most radical and progressive institutions we could ever devise. An independent Scotland shouldn’t scrap the Crown Estate: instead we should retain our share, boost community involvement (especially around ports and harbours), and break the link with the monarchy forever. Oh, and rename it to avoid confusion.

Pic from here.

Disclosure: when I worked for a private PR consultancy the Crown Estate were one of their (and my) clients. 

Class, Nation & Socialism

Sep 16

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution | 14 Comments

A guest today from Tommy Kane, who works at Holyrood for Neil Findlay MSP, both of whom have been setting out left arguments against independence ahead of the referendum. Tommy’s the co-editor of the Red Paper discussed below, alongside Pauline Bryan.

Tommy KaneReaction to ‘Class, Nation and Socialism: The Red Paper on Scotland 2014’ confirms, as the old saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Amongst the critiques has been the accusation that the Red Paper Collective has been indulging in ‘fantasy politics’. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Red Paper has quite deliberately sought to do the opposite.

This book isn’t about whether we should be Scottish or British; rather this is a book about class. It should be no surprise to find then that a central supposition of the contributors is that, whatever the constitution, powers must have a purpose. Namely, that we have to start addressing, substantively and not just paying lip service to, the deep inequities, which shamefully still exist in the Scotland of 2013.

It is also contended that Scotland won’t tackle the multitude of problems it faces with a border, a flag or even a list of powers – it will only do through a radical political agenda which seeks to radically challenge the perpetual failure of the dominant neo-liberal orthodoxy, a failure which has revisited us again in the guise of an austerity programme precipitated by a fundamental failure of the market system. It is against that backdrop that the thinking of the Red Paper Collective has developed during discussions over the past two years.

Featuring people who every day work for, and in the interests of, working people it should be no surprise to hear that the group who made up the Red Paper concluded early on that an assessment of what model would best serve and advance the interests of ordinary working people was needed prior to next year’s referendum. This included considerations of the status quo and some form of enhanced devolution, as well as independence. Posing this hypothesis necessitates, in fact demands, an answer grounded in political and economic realities: a direction in tune with the natural instinct of nearly all of the contributors, who in their daily working lives simply cannot afford to pander to fantasy.

A political reality is that the SNP Government won’t dissolve; they will carry on under the guise of Scotland’s party fighting Scotland’s corner. Initially this will include them writing a constitution, which will be hard to undo, and that no doubt will incorporate membership of the EU, a UK currency union (impacting on tax raising and public spending policies), remaining loyal to the monarchy and reducing corporation tax so as to attract the inward investment that can only result in a race to the bottom. Such a proposition could actually be interpreted as a form of federalism and not independence at all; critically, however, it would be an arrangement in thrall to neo-liberal thinking.

Economic realities are expertly laid forth by John Foster and Richard Leonard in the book. They show clearly how external ownership of the Scottish economy is growing. Unless I have missed something, there is no suggestion of any change on that front, unless a Lazarus-style recovery is made by those political parties who advocate appropriation. Therefore, you would have a Scottish economy still externally controlled, predominately in the city of London, but without any ability to intervene and curb that power. In such a circumstance political self-determination is, arguably, fatally undermined from the start.

The strength of the book we think also lies in its multiplicity. To take a couple of examples, Alan MacKinnon unpacks and analyses just how realistic the removal of Trident will be in an independent Scotland, particularly given the conversion of the SNP to the cause of NATO. Stephen Smellie, Vince Mills and Gordon Munro argue for an empowerment of local government, asking why within the current constitutional debate the role of councils is not being discussed.

Another section of the book considers democratic ownership of our economy. The value of this section is in the production of pragmatic, but progressive, policy ideas. Indeed, these chapters provide a pathway for progressing public ownership in various and varied sectors ranging from football to energy, but which acknowledges that this need not mean a homogenous version of public ownership. No matter the result of the referendum next year, these are chapters that offer any (progressive) government sound policy ideas.

At the heart of both ‘Yes’ mainstream and Radical Indy thinking is that there can be no British Road to Socialism. Apart from the obvious question of how and why anybody thinks the Scottish Road will be any easier this point does throw up some philosophical considerations. Is it right, for example, that we take the lifeboat strategy whereby the lifeboat escaping from the sinking ship takes only Scots without any recourse or concern for those left behind? Or, should we remain united with our brothers and sisters to fight and change from within; to this end it’s worth bearing in mind the advances made by working people and how it was class unity that helped achieve progress.

Of course, class analysis permeates throughout the book, not least the question of how working class unity would be impacted upon independence. Underpinning this throughout is the implicit belief that a bricklayer in Bathgate has more in common with a bricklayer in Bridlington than he has with the banker in Edinburgh’s financial sector. Some suggest otherwise, however, and say that we could offer a good example to the more reactionary forces elsewhere in the UK. Such an argument makes assumptions that may reflect more their own wishes than political reality.

The truth is that, as Stephen Low and Vince Mills highlight, social attitudes are very similar in Scotland and the North of England and we cannot assume that Scots are more inclined to left politics than their counterparts in England, especially those Northern regions. These arguments quite simply also ignore how class consciousness not national consciousness has been at the root of material advancement for working people across the UK.  Working class unity provides greater capacity to challenge the dominance of international capitalism and we weaken that at our peril.  Such a class analysis is, or should be, an inescapable principle of socialists that each of the Red Paper contributors forcefully remind us of.

Finally, the book suggests that perhaps an enhanced devolution settlement is something that needs considered: thus reflecting, if the polls are to be believed, the views of more Scots than those who support either of the Yes or No positions. This was a small, but nevertheless important, dimension of the book. Enhanced devolution, perhaps within a Federal system that also considers what’s best for the regions of England, amongst others, would provide us sufficient autonomy to tackle poverty and inequality but would still see us retain our link with the rest of the UK.

Such a model would also enable us to work constructively within the UK and for instance enable us to argue and fight for peace when for example the UK Government consider embarking on foreign adventures. If Scotland was outwith the UK then wars would take place regardless, Scotland might not be in them but war itself would still take place. Remaining within provides Scots with a voice to argue against war.

‘Class, Nation and Socialism: The Red Paper on Scotland 2014’ has sought to instil some class thinking into the current constitutional debate, which up until now has been sadly lacking. We recognise we have merely scratched the surface but nevertheless we have, we hope, provided food for thought, particularly thinking about what type of country we aspire to be, or should aspire to be.

The political paradigm of the commune: recovering the humanity in policy

Sep 13

Posted by Guest Blog in Holyrood | 1 Comment

Another guest post today from April Cumming, vice-chair of the Scottish Fabians, who previously wrote for us on the opportunities for Labour to be more radical on transport. Thanks April!

eiggEarlier this year, on a gloriously sunny day in Holyrood, Judith Robertson, the head of Oxfam Scotland, addressed a packed room at The Scottish Futures Forum. I listened to her wise words as I watched the crows swooping and soaring over the craggy peaks of Arthur’s Seat, riding the swell of warm spring air as the hill stood watch over the city. I am often struck by how such simple pleasures as the humble appreciation of natural beauty can make our day a little less mediocre. As I turned to continue watching the presentation, I was struck by how Judith’s words resonated with my thoughts. She was speaking about how the Humankind Index, Oxfam’s measurement of what we really value in Scottish society, provides a basis for moving forward with policy in a country where the political paradigm is shifting. She was discussing the ethereal concept of happiness.

The focus on looking at value beyond a simple measurement of GDP has become an increasingly prevalent element of left-wing thinking, and I was enthused to hear that Oxfam will soon launch a new tool to make the Humankind Index of measurement a practical way to assess the equalities impacts of policy. The new ‘Oxfam Humankind Index Policy assessment tool’ will look at recently published Government policy in order to measure the impact of policies on the real wealth of Scotland – the things that really matter to citizens. I like to think of this as the ‘wealth of humankind’; the accumulative benefit that does not focus on profit margins but instead measures worth on the basis of the real physical and mental benefits to the community and on the ability of members to support, be supported, and to contribute.

A number of experiences throughout my life and also more recently in my time at Holyrood have reinforced my firm belief that we must, as a nation and as global citizens, urgently reassess how we measure success in society. This is what the Humankind Index attempts to do and their findings chime not only with more radical thinkers like Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett but also with Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stieglitz. While we do need a basic level of income to provide the essentials of life, the index demonstrates through their large sample that, after these basics are achieved, what makes us most ‘happy’ is not our accumulated list of possessions but instead the quality of human relationships around us and our connection to our environment, both internal and external. Nothing is more detrimental to our quality of life than loneliness. We do not wish for a ‘brave new world’ where individuals spend their time alone, staring at various forms of screens, in isolated boxes for all of their days. And yet the policy decisions of western powers over previous tens of decades have led in exactly that direction.

My decision to write this piece came after a small group of close friends and I visited the island of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides. What we found there was a community of equals, resolute in their determination to achieve self-sufficiency and a cohesive sense of ‘oneness’ in a changing world. This was not about denying progress or trying to recapture some ethereal myth of crofting life. This was no Brigadoon in the mist. Here we found a modern commune with a pervasive sense of positivity and direction unlike any I have experienced before. The individuals I spoke to in our travels in no way wished to cling to tattered threads of tartan, the remnants of past grievance and the hallmark of the politics of grudge that has become so characteristic of discussions around land ownership on Scotland. They had accomplished change through the buyout, through determination and working with a shared vision to create something that was workable and sustainable. In doing so they have achieved an island that, while still facing many challenges, has recovered something of the commune; a reaffirmation of the value of human relationships and the self-determination to direct change in a manner that benefits all. The challenge is to ensure that this equilibrium is maintained.

As the Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill comes forward for consideration this year we must look to examples of best practice and embrace the need to be radical in our thinking. A cohesive community is not one where the gross output of the individual is the only hallmark of success. The ability to work with and influence our external environment so that the local economy is more responsive to the needs of the locality is essential. While brownfield sites lay vacant, while children do not have space to grow vegetables, while the elderly remain alone in sedentary boxes, while access to community halls remains insufficient, while our civic spaces take second place in the priorities of successive local councils and while our central policy fails to reflect the real human value in our society, we shall remain in a state of great mass disillusionment. The time to embrace a new paradigm is now. Listen to Oxfam, they know what they’re talking about.

Why the left outside Scotland should start cheering the independence campaign

Sep 4

Posted by James in Holyrood | 17 Comments

I originally did this as a guest post for Steve Hynd, so apologies if you saw it there already. I just like having all my ramblings in one place, as far as possible.

JMaclean1Some on the English left, including Owen Jones, think a yes vote in the independence referendum would be bad news for the rest of the UK. The typical reasons include the fear of a perpetual Tory-led administration at Westminster, and a general view that nationalism is a distasteful ideology with which the left should have no truck, working class solidarity (“a working class resident of Dundee has more in common with a working class resident of Doncaster than with his middle class neighbours”).

Not only are they wrong, but Scottish independence could actually be a radical blow to the forces of conservatism across the UK.

But first, the fears, starting with the presumption of perpetual Tory rule in Westminster. Since 1945 the Scottish delegation have only changed the outcome of a general election three times out of eighteen. The numbers are here.

In two instances, Harold Wilson would twice have had a hung parliament rather than a weak Labour majority of three or four – both in 1964 and October 1974. I like hung Parliaments and minority administrations, personally, because they require cooperation and give rare moments of power to neglected minorities.

And in 2010, the Tories would have got an absolute majority of 19 without the Lib Dems to do exactly what they like, rather than a majority with the Lib Dems to do almost exactly what they like. And the rest of the UK wouldn’t have learnt what Scots learnt when the Lib Dems were in government here from 1999-2007: that they can’t be trusted. So that’s unfortunate. But rare.

And it’s fair to say that the MPs we’ve sent to London haven’t always been first-class – and the standard continues to fall as ambitious politically-minded Scots increasingly prefer to contest Holyrood seats. Of those that remain, to quote myself, “You won’t miss them. We won’t miss them either.”

As for the distaste for nationalism, the thing people like Owen either forget or ignore is that many Scots supporters of independence aren’t nationalists. They’re Greens, Socialists, radicals, localists, and anyone else who either feels Westminster can’t or won’t be reformed any time soon. Even many in the SNP fall into this category, even if some of the “non-nationalists for independence” in their ranks gloss that as “civic nationalism”. Plus, there are nationalists on the other side as well as pragmatists – anyone who argues for a continued Union based on myths and history of Britishness falls into the former category.

What’s more, although the SNP combine a centre-right economic position with a soft liberal social policy, they’re really nothing like the kind of right-wing nationalists you see elsewhere in Europe, even if some of their fringe supporters are rather grim. Sure, the SNP are as weak on climate change as Labour or the Lib Dems, but that is hardly enough to justify attempts to demonise them by people who know little about them.

From the left arguments against independence, that leaves working class solidarity. I’ve personally never understood why that same argument doesn’t apply to the working class in Ireland, France, or Peru, but let’s leave the idea of creating a Union with them all. Also, let’s forget that plenty of solidarity and cooperation already involves working across national borders – especially between neighbouring EU members.

Instead, turn it on its head. What could independence deliver for the left, for the working class, for environmentalists, feminists, socialists, peace activists and the rest?

For one thing, Scotland could be a good example of practical alternatives to the immigrant-stigmatising, poor-hating, soggy Westminster consensus. We already are on many issues. We got control over the health service well before the worst of the moves towards privatisation in England in particular. If the English left want to point to a successful model to adopt for their health service, we’ll almost certainly be keeping the flame of the NHS’s founding principles alight. While England and Wales saw tuition fees trebled, Scotland saw them abolished (edit: apparently I’m wrong about Wales). We’ve shown how PR can work both for a national parliament and at a local council level. Across all the issues I care about, independence would let us go much further. Attitudes here are, across the parties, are much more positive about immigration and asylum, and any divergence there would be a pretty good test case for what it would be like if England rejected the “immigration is a problem” myth.

A particularly clear example is Trident. If Scotland achieves independence, it seems likely that the clock will start ticking for the closure of Faslane. That will force the rest of the UK either to spend vast and unpopular sums rehoming this Cold War technology, or to consider how to accept a scaling-back of its nuclear ambitions. At worst, that looks like a massive campaign opportunity for the anti-war left outside Scotland.

And finally, the real purpose of independence for me: a vote against Westminster governance. It’s not just the Scottish left that regards Westminster as using a barely democratic electoral system, hobbled by inherited office-holders, in hock to corporate vested interests, opaque, and alienating. Ask yourself: if you had a vote next September to get Westminster out of your life forever and to replace it with a more open and fairly elected parliament, wouldn’t you take it? And wouldn’t you be just a little bit narked when people who don’t have a vote urge you to vote for Westminster?

Bill Walker: A modest proposal

Sep 3

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 4 Comments

Contains Scottish Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Scottish Parliament Licence v1.0.Convicted abuser Bill Walker seems unlikely to step down as an MSP and while there are some avenues for removing his salary, at least while he’s actually serving his sentence, there doesn’t seem to be much Holyrood can do about it. Retrospective rule changes are incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights (incidentally celebrating its 60th anniversary today). To be perfectly honest I’m tempted to think that the problem here is not with the arrangements for removing a sitting MSP against their will but with the way that the case was handled by the prosecution, particularly the choice of summary trial.

Bringing in overarching systematic changes to one system (Holyrood) to deal with a failure in another (how the prosecution handled the specific case and, perhaps, its attitude towards domestic violence in general) seems to ignore the actual problem. That said it’s really not OK for Bill Walker to remain in office, so in the spirit of getting the violent sod to stand down I propose that when he is referred to it is done so as “convicted violent abuser Bill Walker MSP” in much the same was as Brendan O’Neill was given a prefix by Stavvers.

Hopefully he’ll step down soon: I don’t think I could take regular protests against me at my place of work, but then he doesn’t seem a very self-reflective person and maybe in the mean time his continued presence will prompt Holyrood to have a look at problems with the way the Scottish justice system treats cases of domestic violence.