Metrocentric
John Nicholson, RESPECT national executive.
"National" organisations
Anyone who has worked in the voluntary sector in this country, is likely to have
experienced the way that some voluntary organisations call themselves "national"
and seek
to "represent" the sector, when what they mean is that they are based in London.
Such behaviour used to be even more galling for people in Scotland or Wales, who
did not
need smart-suited "Chief Executives" of "national organisations" making the
equivalent of
an overland trek across their borders to tell them what they needed in their own
area.
Since devolution to Cardiff and Edinburgh the focus has to some extent changed
there.
But in England, it is still the case that "London's calling", and the rest of
the country
is expected to respond. It's a "metrocentric" approach, that arguably does a
disservice to
all of us, in or out of the capital city.
The Socialist Alliance
The most obvious recent example, on the political left, is how the history of
the
Socialist Alliance is regarded, depending on where you come from. According to
received
wisdom, the Socialist Alliance "began" in 2000, around about the time that
Londoners
fought the Greater London Assembly elections.
In fact, the first Socialist
Alliance
appeared in Coventry and Warwickshire, after the expulsion of Labour MPs
including Dave Nellist in 1992. Later, around 1995-6, when Labour ditched Clause IV of its
constitution,
and when the Socialist Labour Party was forming in an unduly UK-wide monolithic
fashion,
local Socialist Alliances were launched, notably in Greater Manchester,
Merseyside (a few
times), Kent, Walsall (initially as a Democratic Labour Party), and most
significantly in
Scotland.
These developed closer contact with each other, including across the
border, and
formed the Network of Socialist Alliances in England, eventually becoming the
Socialist
Alliance. (And careful to call its activities those of the "Socialist Alliance,
nationally", rather than inadvertently putting the word "national" first.....)
Only in 2000 did this network of local groups make the historic move to admit
people from
London.
At the same time, of course, there was a political re-alignment. With much the
same view
of history. The Socialist Workers Party joined the Socialist Alliance, first in
Greater
Manchester, in September 1999, and then at various local and national levels.
The echo of
the geographic analysis is contained in SWP folklore, according to which it
would
generally appear that the Socialist Alliance only came into existence once the
SWP became
involved.
Divide and (Fail to) Rule
Depending on your point of view, it is easy for these to become very divisive
issues.
Pitting London against non-London, and SWP against non-SWP, continues to
encourage
distrust and fragmentation, rather than co-operation and unity across
geographical and
political boundaries.
While it remains frustrating for those of us living
outside London
to feel we are outside the "loop" of centralised decision-making, there is still
more in
common between all socialists, wherever we are and whatever variation of
political theory
we believe, than there is to divide us.
I would suggest some simple baselines might help to understand this:
1. London is the capital city. The national financial and political power,
resources and
media are concentrated within it. It is also a unique and distinct region in its
own
right. Its population is markedly different from any other region (more
cosmopolitan, more
mixed racially, exhibiting more extremes of rich and poor living close to each
other). Its
housing is very different (more private rented, both for poor and rich), its
transport
system is very different, its services to its residential population are very
different.
All in all it is worth attention, in its own right.
2. London does not speak for the rest of the country. Precisely because its own
situation
is so different, it is not possible to generalise from the living experience of
Londoners
as though this is the same for everyone else. Just because an organisation is
based in
London, whether due to the need for proximity to the other sources of power or
otherwise,
does not make it necessarily "national" in outlook, let alone in its ability to
"represent".
3. London is often the easiest place to get to for meetings. This is one of the
most
difficult facts of political organisational life, outside of simply
communicating in technologically virtual ways. Meetings in London inevitably attract more people
from
London. But nowhere else is as easy to get to for the whole of the rest of the
country (in
the sense that everywhere else is more difficult for someone). Sharing the
burden around
the country also leads to huge pooled fare arrangements, seeming to inflict on
the regions
outside London the added financial pain of providing hospitality to the
metropolitan
visitors.
4. London may at times justify a national political strategy, in its own
right. There is
a very good argument, from time to time, for concentrating national attention on
a
London-based strategy. For example, it could have been an effective response to
the
anti-war movement, given the forthcoming European and Greater London Mayor and
Assembly
elections, for the left to have decided to fight a unified campaign, nationally,
only in
London.
The Euro-elections are self-evidently the hardest to get anyone to vote
in, and
the natural left vote has never taken these elections seriously (even if this
implies some
historical euro-phobia among sections of the left for whom the "common market"
is still
anathema). With these conditions against us, electorally, a concentration of
resources and
forces upon one region could have been a strong tactic. Electorally, it was
effectively
this tactic that secured the Scottish Socialist Alliance (now Party) its first
electoral
gains; since when it has been able to build upon them across the country.
5. The rest of the country is also not one homogenous "province", called either
"north of
Watford" or "outside London". Without making massive generalisations, it is the
case that
there are different systems of housing, service delivery, transport, health and
education,
depending on where you live. Part of the Thatcher-Blair deregulation has been to
ensure
that there are not national services, let alone national terms and conditions of
employment. The political landscape is very different between the "old labour"
areas, of
manufacturing industry that has now all-but disappeared, and the "liberal" belt,
inhabited
by "floating voters" and concerns such as "negative equity".
6. Regions outside London have geographical and political problems of their own.
In fact,
regional centres can be as guilty, in their own regions, of "metrocentricity" on
a smaller scale. Comrades in Manchester often forget that the North West
stretches from south Cheshire to Carlisle in the north. Comrades from
Liverpool never cease reminding us that there are two cities in the
region.
Trying to fix a central point (whether for political meetings or
administrative government departments) often ends up with somewhere that
simply is neither Manchester nor Liverpool. This may lead to alighting
on Warrington (unfairly regarded as the Ikea stop on the motorway) or
Preston (appropriate, as the site of the early success for the Socialist
Alliance in the parliamentary by-election in 2000, and where a Socialist
Alliance councillor was elected in that capacity in 2003).
Similar effects exist in most regions. In the south, the geography
and distance makes life hard for any meaningful organisation,
particularly when there is one region whose boundaries go almost all the
way around London. Aside from the geography, the politics of different
parts of different regions also depend to some extent on their own local
context. Populations are much more white outside London, but even more
so outside the centres of main cities and some towns. Libertarian issues
are harder to raise in long-established communities with reactionary
local newspapers, which would hardly be credible to Londoners but are
reality for the local residents concerned.
7. There is no need to generalise. Politically it is necessary for
everyone to understand that everyone else's own experience is valid but
not universal. It can be as effective to tell a story along the lines of
"I was just speaking to someone at the bus-stop and s/he said........"
in its own right, without concluding from it that everyone must
therefore understand the longed-for upturn is just around the corner.
Politically the changes that socialists are arguing for are all those
that stem from and will enable the emancipation of the working class,
wherever and whatever these changes may be. This does not mean that one
transitional demand will meet all needs all over the place all at the
same time.
8. There is no need to centralise. Politically the left is stronger
when it enables debate and dissent. Democracy is not an added extra, nor
a bourgeois concept of the occasional resort to the ballot box (or
postal vote), but a living, long-term participatory struggle, within
organisations and the population as a whole.
Organisation (of finances, membership, arrangements for activities)
may benefit from centralisation (it simply makes sense). But letting a
thousand protests bloom is not a contradiction to this, when there are
the local or personal resources available to people to take their own
particular actions. What matters is involvement in the decision-making,
and a recognition that a vote at a conference is not the end of an
argument.
March 2004