Are Tameside 'Town Councils' a ploy to get the public to do unpaid council work!

By Steve (Starlord) Fisher

IT isn't absolutely clear to me why Tameside Council decommissioned all 8 District Assemblies on 24th May 2016, but I can guess that it's got something to do with a lack of money, rather than the official line that they've had their day.  They've now come up with the idea of nine new 'Town Councils' which started last month when Stalybridge Town Council held its first meeting on Wednesday 15th February at Stalybridge Civic Hall.

The meeting that I attended was advertised in the Tameside Reporter about a week earlier and was well attended. Around 80 people turned up including ten councillors.  The meeting commenced at 6.30 pm and went on for over two hours.  A lot of people questioned the validity of  Town Councils as the councillors tried to sell the idea to a sceptical public who wanted to know - 'What can it do, what is it for and basically, what is the point?'

One person asked  about the sale of the Aldi car park and why councillor Dave Sweeton had voted for it, even though it wasn't clear, who it had been sold to.  A number of people were angry about what they perceived as the neglect of Stalybridge, by an Ashton-centric Labour controlled council and some wanted to know, what the council was going to do for small businesses in the town. An elderly lady expressed her concern about the proposals to introduce do-it-yourself self-service libraries (Open+) which constitutes part of the 'Tameside Vision'.  Other people asked about the legitimacy of the meetings - it seems that some Stalybridge residents  had been petitioning to set up an independent Town Council for Stalybridge -  while others were angry that the Mayor, rarely ever came to Stalybridge.

Someone else asked if minutes were being taken of the meeting. I asked if there would be any powers devolved to the Town Councils and do these bodies have the full support of the Executive Cabinet of Tameside Council. Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick said there would be no devolved powers and that a majority of councillors had voted to support Town Councils.

While the Stalybridge meeting was well attended the same cannot be said of other Town Councils. Only two members of the public  attended the Dukinfield Town Council meeting and just seven members of the public at Droylsden. Councillor Brian Wild - a local property speculator and labour councillor from Dukinfield - told the local press that Dukinfield Town Council, couldn't afford to hire the town hall for an evening meeting and therefore, had to meet in the afternoon.  We understand that Cllr. Wild, a retired window cleaner, is reluctant to drink in Dukinfield, because people ask him questions about his extensive property portfolio.

Dukinfield Property Speculator - Cllr. Brian Wild

Although the official mantra of Tameside Council is that they are bringing democracy closer to the people with their Town Councils, that would help to create a bottom up form of government, instead of a top down one, where the public could influence decisions, my overall abiding impression of this meeting -if you cut out the official bull-shit - is that the council are seeking to co-opt members of the public as volunteers to do many of the jobs that were previously done by paid council workers, under the pretext of civic obligation, known euphemistically as 'ACTION TOGETHER!' 

Last November, Sir Richard Leese, the Labour leader of Manchester City Council told a meeting of the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations (G.M.C.V.O.) that it was the role of voluntary organisations, to 'fill in the holes' left by public service cuts. Personally, I cared very little for District Assemblies and was unperturbed by their demise.  However, they did have financial resources to fund community groups and to pay for such things, as street cleaning.  With no real powers, the Town Councils, have been allocated budgets of around £2,000 per annum.  If the future is one of volunteers, cutting grass and picking litter, why don't we go back to the era, of volunteer unpaid councillors who did an excellent unpaid job in their Urban District Councils?

Schumacher & the Big Society

E.F. Schumacher

David Cameron's Big Society? Well, actually, economist E. F. Schumacher thought of it first, forty years ago, and his daughters have recently been invited to No 10 to discuss their father's ideas. This summer marks the birth centenary of Fritz Schumacher, seminal author of the newly re-published "Small is Beautiful - Economics as if People Mattered". And a long-lost recording of one of his public lectures given at the Findhorn spiritual community in Scotland in October 1976, has just been lovingly restored.

The recording, now broadcast for the first time, is a revelation. Quite simply, just months before his sudden death, Fritz is on fire! He is relaxed, inspirational, extraordinarily witty, and highly prescient. "The economic party is over," he says, "we're just left with the washing up. At the height of our achievements, we're bankrupt. Our civilisation is experiencing the second fall of man and must get up again."

Jonathon Porritt examines how the philosophy of this German exile, described as "one of the few original thinkers of the 20th Century", is now being taken seriously in British government circles, even to the extent of unwittingly helping today's Prime Minister shape his ideas for Big Society. It also reveals how Cameron's predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, was a Schumacher fan - but only up to a point - and how Schumacher championed the now fashionable concepts of well-being measurement, localism, and volunteerism

Contributors include: Satish Kumar of the Schumacher College and George McRobie (with whom he pioneered the Intermediate Technology Development Group), Findhorn members who were present at his1976 talk, economist Wilfred Beckerman (author of Small is Stupid), and members of Schumacher's family.

Producer: Chris Eldon Lee
A Culture Wise production for BBC Radio 4.

WHO ELECTS THE PEOPLE?

Rochdale Memorial Gardens by Pimlico Badger

SAWDUST CAESARS & UNELECTED COMMUNITIES!

'SOCIETIES ...', said the Oxford academic and political theorist, Stuart White, at the Memorial Meeting dedicated to the social thinker Colin Ward* held last year, '... use various techniques to meet needs and solve problems.' They use markets that rely on private property, competition and the pursuit of self-interest; and they use organisations based on authority, command and bureaucracy. But besides the pecuniary motive of the businessman and the power-drive of the politician and the office functionary, there is the social method of do-it-yourself, mutual aid, cooperation and self-help.

This month, in the Rochdale Observer, a dispute broke out about a planning decision to chop down some trees in the Memorial Gardens, originally designed by Edward Lutyens, in Rochdale Town Centre. Two regular writers in the printed version of Northern Voices have conflicted over whether or not the Council have an obligation to consult before embarking on these kind of 'cosmetic' enterprises: should they for example consult the 'Friends of Rochdale Memorial Gardens' - a group which the Council was anxious to set up to get funding for the gardens? Dr. Les May, a local biologist, thinks not and in last Saturday's Rochdale Observer wrote in response to a representative of the 'Friends Group' and local campaigner Mr Jason Addy: 'Even though members of 'friends' groups are self appointed, unelected and unaccountable Jason Addy seems to feel that such organisations should be allowed to interpose themselves between we the voters and council tax payers, and our council...'

Fair comment! But, without considering the merits of the specific case of Rochdale Memorial Gardens, Dr. May's broad brush challenge to the activists of the 'friends groups', if followed through, does imply an apology for a kind of elective dictatorship. After all, as the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht pointed out during an insurrection in the old East Germany, we the people are 'unelected' and he even suggested that we needed to elect a 'new people'.

To be fair Les May has outlined his criticism of both voluntary groups and Colin Ward's theories in more depth in the current Spring issue of Northern Voices No.12** ('Rochdale's Weeds Beneath the Snow'). In that article he argued that '(Colin) Ward's ideas are not a million miles from David Cameron's "big society",' and '[b]oth start from the point that formal, state or local government institutions are slow, overly bureaucratic and unrepresentative.' Les May insists that: 'In spite of their good intentions experience suggests that all organisations whether "voluntary" or "official" have the potential to lose sight of their origins and purpose and become more concerned with perpetuating their existence.'

Les May writes that Cameron's 'Big Society' is close to Colin Ward's view of voluntary action, but Colin Ward's ideas are more all embracing than he gives them credit; according to Stuart White 'Colin's work prompts us to ask: how far does the "big society" apply to the economy?', and 'is it a corrective to the "big market" as well as the "big state"?' Furthermore, does Cameron's concept stretch to 'workers' control' in industry? Will it mean the replacement of commercial banks with mutualistic financial institutions? Shall it mean building up community production as an alternative to reliance on the market?

Les May, in both the Rochdale Observer and Northern Voices No.12, produces some evidence from which he claims to show that some voluntary bodies develop bossiness among their leaderships and lose sight of their more virtuous aims. From this, Dr. May develops a sweeping, broad-brush criticism of voluntary activism and an implied support for the status quo that borders on the idea that 'We should render unto Caesar that that is Caesar's'; just so long as Caesar is properly elected and constitutionally accountable to some electorate.

The Big Society (or a Bullingdon Club Conception of ‘Anarchism’) by Laurens Otter

Recently, a young Muslim woman was tried for attempted murder; she had violently attacked an MP who ardently supported the invasion of Iraq (knowing it to be illegal under International Law) and, not understanding why he had not been punished in any way for sanctioning the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, she took matters into her own hands.

No doubt her methods were not the most well chosen but anyone who examines her motives and general inspiration must see how closely they match the ‘Big Society’ ideal as preached by the Government.

Curiously, however, the Prime Minister did not dispatch the Attorney General (nor even members of his department) to the court to plead the woman’s case - to point out that she was a volunteer, acting to redress an unpunished crime in the public interest. Indeed, whilst the Attorney General might have argued in court that, in a country that has (at popular demand) abolished the death penalty, this woman should have confined herself to some lesser sanction, there can be no argument that she was acting in the spirit of the Big Society as it has thus far been outlined.

One may deduce, of course, that there is an unstated premise of the Cameron Big Society theory, i.e. that only such ‘voluntary acts’ and ‘local initiatives’ that support the Establishment and reinforce the existing class structure (or which meliorate the evils it creates without inconveniencing the elite) are to be applauded. In fact, one only has to look at the general context of the theory to see that it can only be advocated by Tories on the basis of such a premise.

If it were not so, unofficial strikes against injustice would be applauded. The Government would be giving grants to the students now protesting against their policies. And the peace movement, who have for years opposed war with only the resources available via their own pockets or appeals, would not be in such a position. Do the military hold a coffee morning every time they need a new tank? If Cameron meant his Big Society - without that unspoken Tory premise - he would have already moved to redress this disparity.

So, the Big Society cannot mean volunteering and local initiatives in order to attain a society of liberty and equality. Despite all the talk of decentralisation, there is to be a highly centralised decision-making process to determine what does and does not constitute good local initiatives and, as the criteria will never be spelled out, they cannot be debated, so the elite will decide with no popular discussion of any real sincerity.

The published arguments for the Big Society might have been purloined from anarchism but the arguments are used to cover Bullingdon Club elitist prejudices and those who know anything of the actions of this club’s membership may doubt whether a failure to support the Muslim woman was even based of any particular dislike of her methods.