The institutionalisation of Hazel Blears (part 1)

Hazel Blears has been high up the blogging agenda for a week or so now, mostly in a self-referential kind of way because she’s been talking about bloggers a bit.

But it’s good to see some intelligent comment on the wider issues of political legitimacy etc. that she’s was also speaking about, notably from Dogstarscribe and Paulie at Never Trust A Hippy, who also gives appropriate acknowledgment to Chris Dillow’s contribution at Stumbling and Mumbling.

(I did try to comment on Mr Dogstarscribe’s (DSS) piece, but the wordpress technology stuff defeated either me, my computer’s, or Mr DSS’s, or all three.)

Like DSS, I make no apologies in my contribution for a fairly lengthy quote from Hazel Blears and some analysis of it.  However, I go back a bit and quote from the first paragraphs of her very first speech as Minister for Communities and Local Government, made to the LGA conference on 05 July 2007, in which she (as with last weeks’ speech) uses her experiences in Salford as her ‘evidence’.

‘Thank you for that introduction. 

I’m delighted to be here as the new Communities Secretary. 

I feel in some ways like a round peg in a round hole. So much of my formative political experience was in local government and as a community activist. I was a councillor for eight years and a council officer for 18 years. 

When I was first elected in 1984 onto Salford council, there weren’t many young women on local authorities. At an early meeting, the Town Clerk took me to one side.

‘I have an important job for you’ he said. ‘Well, I thought. Education? Housing? Perhaps even economic development?’ ‘Yes’ he said ‘we’d like you to choose the curtains for the members’ lounge.’ 

Well I’m glad to say that things have moved on a little since then. 

I chaired my SRB board, and when you have 500 angry residents in a room, it teaches you a lot about yourself!  I met my husband at the council – and he is today head of legal services for a local authority. Not just my CV, but also my whole political approach, fashioned on the streets and estates of Salford, is anchored in localism and devolution. 

I believe that the best experts, advocates and leaders for local communities are local communities themselves. There isn’t a single service or development in Britain which hasn’t been improved by actively involving local people, and there’s more common sense on the average street or estate than in all of the think tanks and seminars put together. 

Devolving power from Whitehall to the Town Hall, and from the town hall to local communities – is not just the right thing to do.?………………’

In the first ‘crowd warm up’ paragraphs she makes three statements that are – let me put this politely – in the grey area between factual statement and narrative technique.  They are:

 Para 4:  The term Town Clerk went out of  official use in Salford in 1973, and would not have been in any use at all in 1984 (I have checked with the Council) – it is used here imply to make the Council and all who inhabit it look old-fashioned.

Para 4:  Even as a new councillor she would have known that what we now call ‘portfolios’ would be given out by the leader, not the Chief Executive/’Town Clerk’.

Para 7:   SRB only came to Salford (or indeed anywhere) in 1995, 3 years after she stopped being a councillor (in 1992) – not even she could not have been that ahead of the game.  She may of course have chaired it after being a councillor, at least until 1997 when she became MP, but she’s still stretching it all bit.

 So what is she up to here?  Well, I think there’s a pretty obvious  and deliberate juxtaposition of her  a) (factually dubious) attack on elected local government-as-was-on-Salford to;  b) her call for devolution from ‘town hall’ (note again the use of this loaded term instead of a the more neutral ‘councils’ or ‘local government’) to ‘local communities’ (implicitly legitimized as the ‘proper’ holder of power by this juxtaposition, whatever the vagueness of the term. 

In so doing, she is, I contend effectively suggesting that elected local government is not and cannot be up to the job, and needs to be moved aside or at least managed if ‘proper’ empowerment is to take place.  This sidelining/management of elected local government is at the heart of DSS’s post, and there is some justification in what he says, especially about non-elected management positions (e.g on Sure Start Boards) now being more attractive to people than the idea of being an elected local councillor.

But why is she doing it?  Why, indeed was she doing it to a Local Government Association meeting full of local councillors? 

First and foremost, this post (and part 2) are not about bashing Hazel Blears.  I don’t really understand why, but she does appear to be a figure of fun and/or loathing within sections of the Labour party, and Labour supporting bloggers have been quick enough to join in the condemnation over the last week. 

I’ve met her three times over the last few years, including at a one and a half hour round table chat with about 15 other councillors, at which she gave me the scope to speak about a number of local government issues close to my heart and really did appear to be listening and noting stuff down for action with her officials. On each occasion I’ve got the impression of her as a straight-up, well-meaning, decent politician person. 

Of course, I accept that I come with my own unusual bias of belief that the vast majority of local and national politicians, even those with political views very different to mine, are decent people trying to do decent things.  Or maybe it’s just because I’m from Salford too.  But even so, I can’t understand why some people have got it in for a straight-talking politician – one who is prepared to stand up in front of the LGA and say that, while councillors have a validity, they are not the real answer.  I may disagree with her on this, but it’s still straight-talking. Maybe it’s actually because she does a this ’straight-talk’ thing that people think she ‘phoney’ – in which case she can’t really win, can she?

So no, I don’t think she’s indulging in the rhetoric above because she ‘got it in’ for elected local government.   I think she’s been doing it because she has become ‘prey’, like ministers before her, to forces of anti-local government institutionalisation that run through central government (and the academia that supports it).  And I think this deep institutionalisation and accompanying negative discourse about elected democracy is actually much more worrying, and damaging to our longer term democratic future, than anything Hazel Blears had to say, last year or last week.

However, dear reader, you’ll have to wait for further illumination on this important matter till part 2 later, as I have stuff to do. 

It will, I can confirm though , make reference to Gerry Stoker, Hilary Armstrong, Geoff Mulgan, David Blunkett, Tony Blair’s experience of CLP life as related by George Jones, Fabian Society pamphlets written by Hazel Blears years before she became minister for local government, urban regeneration funding, Section 151 posts in local authorities, the theory of path dependency, routes to being an MP, and all manner of exciting stuff. 

So log in soon, you hear?