Look at the rubbish on our streets and the run-down state of our High Road. It’s appalling.’ This was what concerned heartland voters in the Tottenham constituency during the by-election last June. They were interested in local issues: housing, regeneration, education. People were not looking for someone to blame, content that the culprits were now out of government. They were solid Labour voters but voiced feelings of frustration, apathy and resignation at the pace of improvement in their everyday lives locally.
At the time of the by-election, the national papers were reporting Tony Blair’s reception by the Womens’ Institute as a highly significant watershed in the life of the present Government. The people of Tottenham had a more realistic view of it. They never mentioned it. Other national and international issues, too, found little resonance unless, like the housing of asylum seekers, they had a local dimension.
It is not controversial to suggest that we in Tottenham have grown up to expect little of government. We remember Margaret Thatcher proclaiming after the 1987 General Election that she wished to do ‘something about those inner cities.’ We could tell by the tone of her voice that trouble was in store, and that was what we got: an attack on vital public services, the failed Youth Training Scheme and the deplorable poll tax.
We also remember John Major talking in 1992 about a ‘classless society’ and then going on to part-privatise the NHS and opt out of fair European employment legislation. Moreover, many of us in Tottenham, who come from diverse, multi-ethnic communities, have experienced governments in other countries who do little good for their populations.
It is against this backdrop that Labour has avoided the ‘quick fix’, gesture politics that has effectively patronized communities like ours. In 1997,Tottenham was reeling from eighteen years of Tory squeeze on public services. The fruits of radical legislation are now beginning to bud. Real money is reaching Tottenham.
Just one example. Under the New Deal for Communities, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in my constituency will receive a £50 million package of investment. During the campaign, I visited a school at the heart of this very neighbourhood. One frustrated parent gave me a whole list of problems that she and her children have to live with: rats in the nursery school, uncollected rubbish, prostitutes around childrens’ play areas leaving used condoms behind, overcrowded housing and the day to day struggle to make ends meet.
This very same woman is going to be one of several residents on the steering council that will decide how the £50 million should be used. But this did not lessen her anger and frustration. She hears that the money is definitely coming in, but she feels that it is wrong that the people who need it most are still waiting. I hope to see her feelings of frustration transformed into ones of triumph, because I see great merit in shared ownership of community problems and their solutions.
In 1997 most first-time Labour voters did not have the same range of issues at the forefront of their minds. The party attracted support from affluent groups for whom first-hand problems with rubbish collection, high crime, weak schools and housing do not arise. The City, business confidence, interest rates, tax levels, inward investment – these are areas that can be ticked as ‘successful’ in any pre-election assessment of the party’s performance. The voters of Tottenham would love to be able to tick off their list of local issues in the same way.
But the legacy of eighteen years of Tory neglect was so severe that the Labour Government had to begin by making radical structural changes to key institutions – reforms which it tackled head on: restructuring the NHS; employment legislation including the minimum wage; pioneering welfare reforms such as the Working Families Tax Credit; and initiatives such as the New Deal for Communities and direct payments to schools. We’ve also witnessed the most radical reform of devolving power to regional assemblies.
In London, we have the new Greater London Assembly. The new Metropolitan Police Authority is better designed to address the concerns of London boroughs, particularly in light of the MacPherson Report. All these structural changes will impact on local issues – employment, wage levels, policing, education, health and community facilities – that I kept hearing about on Tottenham’s doorsteps. But it will take time.
That is why there is an inherent danger in the so-called Labour heartland approach to politics. At best, it panders to a narrow constituent politics, celebrating a century in which parties catered primarily for their own. At worst, it plays into the hands of the Tories.
Either way, it is woefully myopic. Constituencies like Tottenham always come off worse in this tug-of-war, because the Conservatives ignore us and Labour are never in power long enough to affect us. It takes much more courage to attempt to govern for the entire British community, and, quite rightly, this is the project that modern Labour has embarked on.
By its very nature, fundamental transformation takes time, and achieving results at grassroots level takes even longer. Labour’s agenda for communities like mine is, and must be, far more than either the ‘band-aid’ politics of the past, or the vacuous idealism of the future. What communities like mine want is ambition and transformation, concrete improvements in our neighbourhoods and investment in our people. If we achieve this, we will have achieved a goal that has eluded successive governments since Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities. We will have achieved not a divided Britain of many inner cities, but a truly united Britain of opportunity and prosperity.
This project will take at least two or three terms in government. On this journey we must all accept that, while voters in heartland Labour areas may still vote in a Labour Member of Parliament for the time being, they will only do so with one cheer, not two or three.