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FINAL Goss Democracy Works
FINAL Goss Democracy Works
WORKS
Sue Goss
Published March 2023 by Compass and Unlock Democracy
By Sue Goss
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the
purpose of criticism or review, no part of this publication may be
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otherwise, without the prior permission of Compass and Unlock
Democracy.
About Compass
Compass is a platform for a good society, a world that is much more equal,
sustainable and democratic. We build networks of ideas, parties and organisations
to help make systemic change happen. Our strategic focus is to understand, build,
support and accelerate new forms of democratic practice and collaborative action
that are taking place in civil society and the economy, and to link those with state
reforms and policy. The meeting point of emerging horizontal participation and
vertical resources and policy we call 45° Change. Our practical focus is a
Progressive Alliance, the coalition of values, policies, parties, activists and voters
which can form a new government to break the log jam of old politics and usher in a
new politics for a new society.
3 Democracy Works Powering Up
Contents
Introduction 5
Democracy in communities 10
Democracy is a Mindset 14
What Next? 23
Endnotes 25
But now, in the 21st century, that sense of collective power over our own lives
has all but crumbled away. We know that people are angry about being taken
for granted and hungry for a voice. We know that young people, in particular,
are losing faith in politicians.1 We know that people experience government as
distant and unresponsive. We know that, for many, work is difficult,
unrewarding and dehumanising.
We also know from our own experience that we commit to things that we have
helped to shape and that working collaboratively with others for collective
good offers a sense of empowerment, nourishment and growth that few other
activities do. For decades, many of us have been involved in initiatives that
demonstrate that a strong, social democratic society is one that moves
beyond voting; to include citizens and communities in shared decision making.
But we should see them as a starting point for a wider, deeper discussion –
learning from the many thousands of initiatives that demonstrate how
collaboration, dialogue, participation, inclusion are important not just to make
good decisions, but to make more fulfilling lives.
CAs have been responsible for serious shifts in policy, which enjoy greater
public consent because of the participatory way decisions are made. The
landmark legislation in Ireland that legalised equal marriage and removed the
ban on abortion were both the direct results of recommendations from CAs.
Closer to home, the UK’s National Climate Assembly broke new ground in
helping politicians think through the practicalities of their commitment to net
zero by 2050.
There is increasing interest in employee ownership models (such as John Lewis) and
in co-operatives. According to Cooperatives UK, the UK currently has 7,237
independent co-ops with a turnover of £39.7bn, 13.9 million members and 250,128
employees. Many of these businesses are more resilient than traditional corporate
models with only 1.5% of co-ops dissolved in 2020 compared to 6.5% of businesses
generally.4 Similarly, a report from Cooperatives UK in 2019 found that almost
three out of four co-op start-ups (72%) continue to flourish after the difficult first
five years of existence, compared to only 43% in the case of new companies.5
And while there are many companies that are simply posturing as environmentally
friendly, socially aware or non-hierarchical – others are serious about change. The B
Corps movement works globally to provide a standard by which to assess the
commitment of organisations to work in different ways, measuring a company on a
number of metrics, relating to governance, treatment of workers, accountability to
community and consumers and protection of the environment. B Corp companies
change their legal status to demonstrate a primary duty, not to shareholders, but
to multiple stakeholders.6
One in four people volunteer. There are over a million civil society organisations,
most of them informal groups that meet in someone’s front room or a place of
worship, not an office. As well as the big charities and the prominent activist
organisations; there are hundreds of thousands of small organisations where people
work collaboratively to create the lives they want to lead, through sports clubs,
dance classes, book groups, gardening societies, volunteering to protect the
environment. The skills and experience of self- organising are all around us.
New social organisations and social enterprises are rethinking and redesigning
services to meet the changing needs at a speed and with a creativity that public
services can’t match.
In part, it could be because of the history of the Labour party.7 The socialist left in
Britain didn’t begin as centralisers. In the late 19th and early 20th century, working
people created a vast independent network of friendly societies, women’s co-
operative guilds, trades unions and co-operative societies. At that time, a different
image of a socialist society was imagined - one of decentralised organisations co-
operating at a national level. But at a crucial moment in the 1930s, Labour’s
leaders, influenced by both Fordist production lines and the vast Soviet machine
being created in the USSR, turned towards a more centralised, industrialised vision
of a socialist society. Because the UK had no constitutional crisis to resolve, the
balance of governance between local and central government was never really
discussed and, slowly, via successive governments (mostly, but not always
conservative), power and resources have been stolen from local government and
returned to the centre.
And, of course, our ‘first past the post’ electoral system creates a sense of ‘all or
nothing’ – a mad dash to power. In a new Labour government, we will have ministers
that have spent so long waiting, have climbed so hard, that it must seem to them
paradoxical, almost criminal, to give their little chance of power away. Labour has
been in government so seldom, that one can see how much, once politicians feel
their grip on the levers of power, they want to cling onto them. What makes this
tragic is the unexplored belief that these levers work, that they are connected to
something, and the state is something you can just slide inside and start pushing
buttons. In reality, nothing changes because you make speeches or publish papers,
or even launch initiatives. Change always happens on the ground, somewhere,
because people do stuff. So unless change is built alongside the experience of people
on the ground, constantly adjusted and reviewed it is unlikely to work.
Some socialists worry that putting too much power in the hands of local
communities might lead to a defensive selfishness which could undermine efforts on
climate change or to reduce inequality, with memories of the local residence
qualifications that barred immigrants from council housing, or local campaigns
against housing development, windfarms and travellers. Labour, as a movement, is
so unused to participation within its own ranks that it still doesn’t feel comfortable
with the techniques, behaviours and skills that are now well-developed to ensure
that shared decision-making is fair, equal and respectful.
For some, socialism is still equated with big state public services. The involvement
of volunteers, residents and community activists has sometimes been seen as
undermining the status and protection of public sector workers, and our citizen
entitlement to services we pay for through our taxes. There is a fear that
volunteering requires resources and energy that the poorest people don’t have and
is yet another stealth version of cuts of public provision.
And many people are concerned about a post-code lottery and worry that if power
and resources are devolved to local areas regional inequalities will grow. There is a
comfort offered by the idea of nationally enforced minimum standards; even if, in
practice, outside the NHS, there is little evidence that they work.
These are valid concerns. In public policy there are no risk-free options. There is
public support for greater public participation, greater accountability, devolved
decision making, more control over our lives. But the public, because they are wise
and careful, express some of the same doubts and concerns as politicians - will it
cost more? How will it improve outcomes? Will I have to spend my life in boring
meetings? How do we stop bullies taking over? How do we make it fair?
But holding onto approaches that have been proven to fail is the riskiest of all. We
are all beginning to recognise how broken UK government is, and the impossibility of
governing well with such an over-centralised system. If Labour’s leaders understand
that over-centralised government is ineffective and inefficient, as well as
undemocratic, then we may yet become bold enough to achieve radical change.
Democracy assumes that many voices will be better at solving complex problems
than a single voice, that people have a right to be part of conversations about their
own lives and that autonomy and freedom to shape our own lives is a human right.
Democratic practice involves being eager to listen and being open to views different
from our own however challenging they are to our own assumptions. Public services
are a test of a society’s values. If they are top-down, controlling, forbidding and
excluding then that is the type of society they create. If at work we have no power
to shape our work or to solve problems then a huge part of our lives becomes arid
and stressful.
In Finland, policy makers, academics and government have been working to craft an
approach they call ‘humble government.’9 They argue that conventional
policymaking works well for maintaining routine state functions but are inadequate
for solving complex social problems. The current approach, they argue, suffers
from political short-termism, a siloed institutional structure, a culture of infallibility
and a failure to understand how societies work.
Government should stop trying to design and deliver detailed policy solutions.
Instead, it should set policy direction; and work with others with depth and breadth
of experience - with the four nations, with local government, with civil society
organisations, with communities - to find the best solutions. The role of a realistic,
generous government would be to create the infrastructure that enables shared
working to flourish. Not ignoring the risks but creating spaces where alternatives
can be explored, and mitigations proposed. It requires a different way of thinking –
not that government ministers have all the answers, but that through collaborative
work, exchange, learning, and experimenting, consent can be built for more creative
approaches.
The role of government is then about creating the conditions for a democratic
mindset; ensuring all voices are heard, paying attention to power imbalances and
preventing the abuse of power. The legitimate role of politicians would be to set the
rules and tone of the conversation and model the behaviours that make agreement
possible.
Local leaders are learning how to convene difficult conversations between people
who don’t agree; to bring together divided communities, as Jim McMahon did in
Oldham, and to empower vulnerable people as Georgia Gould does in Camden. They
are able to share power with local communities without letting go of the legitimate
roles they have to ensure fairness, kindness, integrity and due process.
But this is not the case everywhere, and there is further to travel. What is
experienced, repeatedly, is the collision of two different working logics. The friendly,
but informal, relationships in community and the loose, tentative, pragmatic trial-
and-error of self-organisation comes up against the rigid rules and dull process of
bureaucracy.
Local government is having to rethink their own ways of working; to respond with
kindness to match the excitement, energy and speed of communities on the move.
By recognising the validity of both systems, we can fashion tools for a creative co-
existence.
But, for that to happen we need a deeper shift of thinking; to change working
practice inside organisations. Public servants need the freedom to work
collaboratively with each other as well as with residents; the autonomy to think on
their feet and try things out. They need a work environment that gives them time
to think, to draw on their own values, to challenge, discuss and co-create new
solutions. Different channels of communication would enable front line staff to be
heard.
Even the most progressive councils are only at the beginning of a challenging
process of change. These changed relationships are almost impossible to sustain as
isolated islands of creativity when the wider system is hostile. Valiant leadership
can only hold onto experiments for so long before they crumble under the onslaught
of government directions and targets. Unless national government learns to
change, these initiatives will continue to be short-lived and often reversed.
Communities build themselves through doing. They create a sense of belonging and
identity through the process of working together. Jon Alexander, in his recent book
Citizens, distinguishes between citizenship as ‘status’ – in which we argue about
who is or isn’t entitled to be a citizen – and citizenship as ‘practice’ - it is something
we do. In John’s analysis, citizens are people who do citizenship. And the practice of
citizenship is something we can learn and develop through doing.
If self-organising is to become part of our lives, we need to equip ourselves with the
skills to do it well. We need our schools to skill up our children, enabling them to
practice by working collectively to address their own dilemmas. Collaborative
leadership should be part of the education of all public officials and politicians. We
should all be able to facilitate a meeting, to reduce the heat in a conflict, to help
build a consensus. In self-organising, as anywhere else, people can behave badly and
things don’t always go according to plan. We need to develop a ’literacy’ in self-
organising, so that all of us feel competent to take the appropriate balancing
actions, or to rebuild relationships. These skills are as necessary for online
communities as they are in physical communities.
Part of the problem of the relationship between government and community is the
extent to which community organisations rely on public sector funding. This could
change. Local and regional wealth funds could provide capital for community
endeavour. The profits made on land and planning could be used to find capital
funding for projects in perpetuity – land could be granted or buildings handed over
to communities. Community Trusts are being adopted in a number of places to
ensure that community organisations can develop the way they want to.
There is much in the current relationship that has become cruel and destructive.
Hard work, and a change of culture will be needed across government to change
this. The recommendations on devolution in the Brown Commission will play an
important part in this, but not implemented ‘top down’ but through a conversation
with local government, the four nations, communities and citizens – taking them as
a starting point for a wider and deeper exploration of what it might mean to
become a vibrant, future-facing democracy. If these are the values we carry into
our practice of citizenship, then the state and citizens must work together to craft
the rules and frameworks that underpin our interactions with each other.
A first step would be to create the space now for these conversations, so that a
future Labour government would have the skills, the understanding and the ways of
working that would enable it to create a more democratic society.
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