Peter Lee and Localism Today.
| Date | 22 March 2018 |
| Author | Reeves, Rachel |
Peter Lee offers an example of Labour politics rooted in a local community and founded on finding practical solutions to local problems. To follow his example today, Labour needs to work to localise power, build an industrial strategy based on the needs of the everyday economy and democratise the way our economy works.
In recounting Peter Lee's story, John Tomaney offers a powerful account of the source and character of Labour's strength in one of its traditional heartlands. Many of these communities, especially in the North East and Midlands, detached from global growth and benefiting least from the knowledge and creative economies, have been drifting away from Labour since midway through the last decade, a process which continued--despite our success in Britain's cities and university towns--in June 2017. (1) All too often, in Tomaney's evocative phrase, the party hangs on thanks to the 'diminishing moral and physical capital accumulated' by past generations.
My own predecessor as Leeds MP, Alice Bacon, grew up in in the febrile atmosphere of a West Yorkshire mining town in the run-up to the General Strike of 1926. Raised by a father immersed in trade union activism, local politics and community leadership, Alice recalled that 'there was never a time when I decided to join the Labour Party'--she was born into it. (2) For someone like her, to join Labour was 'as natural as breathing'. (3) It is hard to imagine that would be true of many working-class girls growing up in a town like Normanton today.
Historically, Labour's strength in towns and villages across County Durham, Yorkshire and elsewhere was rooted in a claim to represent the working people of those communities. That didn't just mean representation in terms of their material and social needs, but also in a proximity and sensitivity to local culture and identity. Communities aren't static, and Labour needs to be in step with social change; we are a more diverse society, and the importance of taking into account gender, sexuality and ethnic diversity when we think about identity and equality is--thankfully--far more widely acknowledged than it was in the first half of the twentieth century. In part, recovering Labour's closeness to the communities it seeks to represent is about ensuring that the party, at every level, from councillors and activists to the Shadow Cabinet, is more representative of them. It means working closely alongside local groups trying to improve those...
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