The next Labour government faces the task of delivering social justice against the tide of tight financial resources. It is key then that we take full advantage of the experience of Labour councillors, who have spent the last five years running vital local services with less and less money.
Too often in the past, the party has not fully utilised that expertise. Councillors have asked to be more involved, but it was sometimes seen as a duty for those at the top of the party to have to listen to us, rather than an opportunity for them to glean ideas and share pragmatic responses to the common challenges we face. But given the economic conditions that will face Ed Miliband’s cabinet after the election, they cannot afford to fail to listen to what we have to say.
Under Ed Miliband, Hilary Benn and his team, that dialogue has improved markedly. The party has also formed an executive for the Association of Labour Councillors, chaired by Durham’s leader Simon Henig, with the task of improving the say councillors have within our party structures. The next step is to ensure that respect agenda continues into government, to allay any fears that kind words in opposition can easily turn back into a distant relationship in government.
It is not easy to be a Labour councillor at the moment, with the rug being pulled from under local services by Tory funding cuts. It is tough to deal with such massive cuts to your budgets imposed from above when you have a belief in social justice and protecting the vulnerable. It’s much harder to pragmatically deliver social justice in those conditions, for example, than it is to theorise about it in a newspaper column. Yet often our heroes as a party are not from that school of hard knocks, but those who have kept out of the front line struggle and remained safely in the comfort zone.
As a young(ish), idealistic councillor elected in 2012, I have not found it easy to adapt to the hard-nosed language of priorities and imperfect practical solutions. As cabinet member for finance, it would have been easy to ‘make a stand’, as those on the far left would say, and refuse to set a legal budget, but that would be irresponsible and self-indulgent. I would become a mini-celebrity and darling of the far left, whilst council workers received redundancy notices and service users suffered. Some hero.
So councillors know that true progressive politics is about pragmatism, delivering what is possible. It is not about abstract theories. Similarly, we see regularly that radicalism is only worthy of the name if shown by acts that help people, not just in rhetoric that makes us feel good about ourselves.
Councillors have gained a huge wealth of experience in limiting the impact of Tory cuts, whilst working constructively with our communities, workforce, trade unions and politicians of different persuasions. We have passed budgets through gritted teeth, after hours and hours of pawing over proposals line by line to see what can be done to limit the impact on services and those who use them. The results may not always have been perfect – none of us got into local politics to make cuts – but they are a damn sight better than without the input of Labour councillors.
Think back to some of the most successful Labour governments. They have drawn talent and experience from local government and from Labour councillors, in terms of people and ideas. Think of Morrison and Bevan in Attlee’s government. Morrison brought experience from London county council and the model of the London Transport Board. Bevan brought with him from Tredegar UDC and Monmouthshire county council the values, ideals and practical experience that would help form our NHS. Ellen Wilkinson, only the second female cabinet minister, came to parliament from Manchester city council. Much more recently, think of the likes of David Blunkett, Alastair Darling and Frank Dobson, whose political skills were honed in councils across the UK.
The image of councils as ‘male, pale and stale’ is sometimes pervading – and there’s no doubt we need to build on our progress and increase diversity in local government, as elsewhere. And yes, we will make mistakes, and realise that can make the relationship awkward for central government. But for the next Labour government, treating Labour councillors like the embarrassing uncle dancing at a wedding would not only be unjust: it would be madness to ignore the experience our councillors can offer.
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Anthony Hunt is cabinet member for resources on Torfaen council
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Photo: Louisa Thomson