The spirit of the New Town movement can inspire the new era of Labour in local government, leader of Stevenage borough council Sharon Taylor tells chair of Progress Alison McGovern as she tours the country meeting the Labour leaders who are governing Britain
Alison McGovern: Tell me a bit about Stevenage. People obviously support Labour here, they have voted for a Labour council here in Stevenage. If you had to say why that is, what would you say?
Sharon Taylor:
I think the original vision for Stevenage is still very powerful here. I think it’s the same things that people have always wanted, really. They want to have good homes and to think that their children will be able to go into good homes. They want good jobs with reasonable pay. They want to have good access to health services, they want to feel safe where they live, and they want an environment that’s clean and green and pleasant to live in.
It was the 11th of November 1946 that the original agreement was signed to build a new town of Stevenage and the New Towns Act went through in 1946. Those people had moved on from the garden city visions of pre-war to a new vision for what Great Britain could be like going into the 20th and 21st centuries. I think it was an incredible vision of that Labour government and it wasn’t disconnected from all the other things they did like the welfare state and the NHS because what they wanted was for everybody to have the opportunities that obviously, pre-war, were only available to some. They wanted to see environments created that supported that and supported everybody having an opportunity to have a good education, a good job, a good home, and a good life. I think people still feel part of that vision here.
Alison McGovern: Yeah, and they connect that with us, with the Labour party.
Sharon Taylor: Yes, they do.
Alison McGovern: Do you have a sense that we have forgotten that moment in history on New Towns? Because people do talk a lot about the spirit of that Labour government and connect it mainly with the NHS, I would argue, but Nye Bevan was the secretary of state for health and housing.
Sharon Taylor:
First of all what housing is, is absolutely critical to that and I think it would be fair to say that the Labour party, in spite of pleading from some of us, didn’t take enough account of the role that housing plays in creating that sense of opportunity for everybody. It is a vitally important role. I’m all for people buying their own houses when they’re ready to do so, but often social housing will be the only option available for people in certain stages in their life. We must not lose that part of it. Looking at the bigger picture around how we create those opportunities that are there for everybody alongside quality of life is really vital. I think we need to get back to some of that again.
The detractors of New Towns will often talk about us as concrete jungles. I often read very silly articles by middle-class journalists who live in London or the Forest of Dean, I have nothing again the Forest of Dean, I’m sure it’s lovely, but they live in places like that. They’ve never been here. That’s what I object to.
They don’t come here and find out what it’s like. They’ll make an assumption based on what they think in their head about what places like Stevenage are like, and it is often miles off the plot of where we actually are. When you look at all the advantages we’ve got here, and I think one of the things in looking at successful New Towns, being very well connected and making sure there was a sound economy in place was vital to getting going. There are some that were less successful, we can’t pretend everything worked with the New Town movement, but the ones that were successful have great communities, economies and connectivity. All those kinds of lessons we need to now harness and think about where that goes for the 21st century and as we move forward with a digital age, we move into an age when we’ve got to think about low-carbon communities, digital connectivity and those sorts of things. We should be learning the lessons from what was done in the 40s and 50s in the New Town movement and then move that forward a generation and see where it takes us now.
Alison McGovern: And where do you think it does take us? By the time Stevenage has its 100th birthday, what do you think it’ll be like?
Sharon Taylor:
Well, I think we need to keep our focus on some of the things that we’ve always done here. As we develop our new housing that we’ve put into our local plan, creating sustainable developments is vital. I think that’s been lost in a lot of planning recently. I think we have to be careful because we know we need a lot more housing in the country, the temptation is to build huge housing estates that aren’t sustainable. They don’t have the things they need to make a successful community and I think we have to take that a stage further to consider the factors that will make a 21st century community successful and sustainable.
Alison McGovern: Do you think that goes back to your experience growing up in Stevenage? The fact that you emphasise it being sustainable housing, and you mentioned quality of life before. That’s clearly something that you really believe is part of your Labour values.
Sharon Taylor:
Well I grew up in a good-sized house with a nice garden and green space all around us, my school was a few minutes’ walk away from where I lived, there were shops a few minutes’ walk away, the doctors’ surgery was there. That didn’t happen by accident, that was all planned. You have to plan properly to do that.
The argument we’ve always made with Stevenage when we’ve been through years of our planning trials, trying to get urban extensions to Stevenage rather than cram the existing space we’ve got here, is that our town was planned to have that green space. It’s part of our quality of life. We want to create new developments that do the same thing. So developments with the schools in walking distance, with the medical facilities there, with places you can shop and places where you can go for entertainment all within easy distance.
Obviously there are new issues now – when Stevenage was built there wasn’t much thought around energy usage. We have to think about those things now, so one of the things we have done in Stevenage, we’ve created some of the first carbon-neutral council housing in the country. It was built working with some real building experts who have taught us how to do some of the building techniques we’ve used and we wanted to contribute towards the learning that would help eventually to make sure that many homes are, if not carbon-neutral, then at least very energy efficient. Not just because that’s good for the environment, which it is, but also because it’s much better for people that live in them because their energy cost is so low or they’re making a net contribution to the grid, which is even better.
Alison McGovern: Fab. Let me just take you back to the Labour party. We’ve been in opposition in Westminster for five years and it looks like we’re set to have five years more, depressingly. That means that even if there are people in Westminster who are ministers under the last Labour government, that experience is dated now, or if they’ve been council leaders themselves that experience gets out of date quite quickly. In our learning how to be government that is going to come from a local government, it’s going to be local government leaders who show the way in that sense. You’ve achieved some amazing things working in a political situation that’s not perfect in terms of the running of the country. How have you done that? How have you been able to make that work? Getting agreement for building houses is not easy. What would you say the biggest lesson is for you in terms of your own leadership on that?
Sharon Taylor:
I think you’ve got to be absolutely determined and focused on what you want. I always remember Tony Blair saying the one thing he regretted about his time in government was not moving quickly enough when they had that huge majority when they came into government in 1997. So much could’ve been achieved because they had the huge goodwill with a massive majority and a huge turnout. That mandate brings with it responsibility. I understand how complicated government can be, but you need to keep your focus on your political priorities. When we get to Westminster, and you will know I served as a candidate twice so I obviously wanted to put myself into that framework, but I think once you get the machinery of Westminster around you it’s sometimes quite difficult to keep the focus on your political priorities, and I think we all have to do that. I think a future Labour government will need to be crystal clear about the thing it wants to achieve – what are the outcomes we’re actually looking for to deliver for the people we represent?
Alison McGovern: What makes it worth it for you? Because you’ve been leader of really strong level council, stood for parliament twice, you’re not giving up here. What is it that makes it really worth it?
Sharon Taylor:
I would never give up on it because I have this very strong sense that the opportunities that are available in this country should be available to everybody and I don’t think they are at the moment. I volunteer at the foodbank and I see people coming in there and I do fear for where we’re going to be even if we win the general election in 2020. This government in particular, this Tory-only government, is so destructive to everything that we hold dear as a Labour movement, and our values are being absolutely shot to pieces by this government.
I think people in this country feel that. I think they feel they want their NHS to be looked after, they want it to be there. What they don’t want is for people to take the mickey out of the system, they really don’t want that, and I completely understand that. We do want a system that picks people up when they are at rock bottom. We won’t have any of that left I fear after the next five years. We’re going to have to be very focused on what it is we want to achieve. I think there’s any amount of issues around foreign policy that we can think about and think about where Britain wants to be in the world, but that has to be equally matched by where do we want Britain to be in this country? What sort of a country do we want to build for the people that are growing up here now?
I think that’s just as important. I don’t think we can do it by privatising everything because what happens when you privatise everything is everybody that can afford it gets the best and nobody else gets anything. Having listened to my grandmother who grew up in the East End in some really tough times in the 30s and hearing stories from her parents, we must not let this country get back to that. I don’t want us to be back there again. That is not the country I want to live in.
Alison McGovern: I’ve got one final question. Everything that you said I think is really very important and national conversation, however, still tends to be dominated by Westminster and its issues, and also individuals who are elected members of that House of Commons, normally. Councillor Claire Kober from Haringey who I’m sure you know very well has said that there’s a test for the Labour party here, whether it’s prepared to change in that we should be seeing people who are speaking for a party nationally from local government just as much as the House of Commons or the House of Lords. That goes for all the big political shows like Question Time or Marr or whatever. So my final question, this is a yes-no, prime minister’s questions time-style, my final question is” imagine it’s Tuesday afternoon, you’re really busy, the phone rings and it’s the Labour party’s press office down at HQ saying that Question Time is being recorded on Thursday and they’d really appreciate it if you were Labour’s panellist. Yes or no?
Sharon Taylor:
I’d jump at it, yes, absolutely. I despair when I see Question Time and it’s coming from one of our big cities like Liverpool and there’s no Joe Anderson on the panel. Joe runs Liverpool – why isn’t he on that panel? I can’t understand it. It’s just beyond me. It just shows what a narrow Westminster focus we have in this country. And yet there will be someone on there now from the SNP. Nobody from the SNP runs Liverpool. It’s run by Joe Anderson. He should be on that panel. Same if it was Manchester, Richard Leese, and the amazing work he’s done. Shaping Manchester, driving its future forward, of course he should be speaking for Manchester on Question Time.
Alison McGovern: And speaking for Labour?
Sharon Taylor: And speaking for Labour, absolutely.
Alison McGovern: The point is, I suppose, not to be critical of any of my colleagues, but let me speak on behalf of myself. I have never run anything. I would like to, I’d love the opportunity, and I’ve got ideas, but in comparison your experience is one of government. Mine is not. I suppose my frustration is the Labour party needs to demonstrate the capacity it has and if we miss out local government we will never achieve that.
Sharon Taylor:
I’d just like to add to that by saying one more thing about devolution – it is Labour local government that’s driven the devolution agenda. I worked on the innovation task force last year for most of the year and went all around the country looking at all the innovations that Labour has in local government, and joining up public services at local level is an absolute must for Labour. Because that is what creates the vision of places like this. If you can join up public services at local level …
Alison McGovern: Health, housing, schools …
Sharon Taylor:
Health, housing, social services, join it all up. I showed you our public health hub on the way over, our healthy hub, joining up health with housing and with social services and all those things, you can only do that at local level. We waste so much money in this country spending money on public services that are designed in a way that will allegedly meet everybody’s need everywhere in the country. That’s never going to work. You need to design services that work at local level, and I feel passionately about that. I think for Labour to pick that agenda up is vital. What I see coming out of the government at the moment is nothing to do with devolution, it’s to do with local government reorganisation by the back door, and it’s a disgrace. I feel furious about it, because what they’ve done is take what is really good Labour work and done want Tories always do bend it to their own ends. It isn’t devolution by any stretch of the imagination and I understand why my colleagues feel very frustrated and cross that it has been corrupted in that way. Labour needs to get that back when we come into parliament 2020.
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