MILLBANK'S REVENGE ON LONDON
When Londoner's snubbed New Labour and elected independent Ken Livingstone (below), party officials at Millbank Tower took revenge by re-directing funds out of the capital, and out of the new Mayor's hands.
Europe's Agenda 2000 budget discussion was scheduled to re-draft conditions for regeneration funding. Under EC rules, the government must justify its own spending under the Single Regeneration Budget. The British government map of areas for funding had included three London areas: Lea Valley, Thames Gateway and Park Royal, in West London.
Park Royal is the largest industrial area in the South East. More than 1500 companies make up what remains of London's industrial base. But Millbank pressured the DTI to remove Park Royal from the map, costing London millions in regeneration funding. Since the meeting DTI officials who objected have been re-posted as far afield as Gibraltar and Singapore.
London has more unemployment than Scotland, Wales and South Yorkshire put together. But Millbank has gone out of its way to redirect funds out of London since it became clear that Livingstone would be elected. When officials prepared the new 'Index of local deprivation' 13 of the top 20 most deprived districts were London boroughs. Millbank demanded a recalculated 'Index of multiple deprivation' that beat 13 down to eight.
MAY DAY WITHOUT WORKERS
On May Day, anarchists and environmentalists fought with police in London and Zurich, while Fascists and Anti-Fascists clashed in Hamburg and Berlin. The international workers' day was noticeable for the absence of workers, as middle class concerns dominated. In London Reclaim the Streets' 'guerrilla gardeners' aimed to replant the capital, but mostly just tore up the turf on Parliament Square and played in the sand. Police tactics were initially indulgent watching on as the protestors trashed McDonalds - the symbol of the mass society they hate - only intervening as a shop next-door was looted. Hemmed-in in Trafalgar Square, protestors taunted the police lines with bottles. Around eight the police cordon tightened around the 3000 remaining. Demonstrators were released in groups of four, searched and photographed. Scores of arrests have followed from film evidence.
The Prime Minister, Home Secretary and the press denounced the 'violence' of the Carnival Against Capitalism. Tony Blair raged 'their actions have nothing to do with conviction or belief and everything to do with mindless thuggery'. In fact the volatility of the protests was skin deep. The police were in control at all times, letting the crowd let off steam. The defining feature of the Carnival was its social composition - mostly middle class and prone to hysteria. May Day was celebrated by trade unionists across London at open day at the Millennium Dome. A small march led by Rover Union officials - but mostly made up of Turkish migrant workers - was turned back from Trafalgar Square by the police. The day belonged to the crusties of the Reclaim the Streets campaign, and in the end to the police.
The political establishment denounced the violence, and the desecration of war monuments. But this was a family squabble between the elite, and its own radical fringe. The powers-that-be have no alternative to the anarchists' green beliefs, and if anything, they envy the degree of commitment they imagine they see there. Bereft of beliefs of their own, the government is intimidated by the shallow sincerity of the green activists.
AN EXCLUSIVE LITTLE ELECTION IN LONDON
Just 1,714,162 of the five million plus eligible London voters went to the polls on 4 May, and gave independent mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone a landslide victory of 58 per cent. The upset to the political system was dramatic. Tony Blair's drive to devolve power to regional assemblies created the London Mayor, only for the Labour rebel Ken to snatch it away from the official candidate, Frank Dobson, who came a poor third with just 223,884 votes.
The defining feature of the election was the shrinking sphere of public interest in government, local or national. Local elections have often fallen below 50 per cent, but the new mayoral contest engaged just 33.5 per cent of the electorate.
The importance of the low turnout is this: With a proportionately smaller mass of people involved in the contest, the balance of forces has changed. Labour's core working class vote stayed at home, leaving the election to a middle class minority.
One obvious example was in the local council elections that took place outside of London. There the Conservative Party won 37 per cent of votes cast, against Labour's 29 per cent. But overall just 29 per cent of all those entitled to, voted. The Tories seemed to have returned from the dead. But then conventional wisdom is that a low turnout favours the right, as wealthier people are more likely to vote.
Less obvious is why Ken Livingstone, once a radical left-winger should do so well on a reduced turnout. But actually the process is similar. The middle class component of Labour's support peeled off to back Ken. In a numerically smaller pond, the importance of the chattering classes is greater. Just as Livingstone won the backing of truculent Labour Party members in the selection contest, he also won the kind of radical middle class support that endorsed Labour in 1997: artists, popstars and the well-heeled. Livingstone won 33 per cent of traditional Liberal Democrat voters and even 24 per cent of Tories. Before the result he polled 57 per cent of social category ABC1 voters, though that fell on the day.
With just a third of the people voting, the election is coloured with the prejudices and preoccupations of the middle class. The Green Party won three seats on the Greater London Authority, even the far left London Socialist Alliance won as much as seven per cent of the vote in some contests, and the British National Party mayoral candidate won two per cent. But in numbers these are just a few thousand votes here and there. The appearance of volatility in the election is largely due to the low numbers involved.
The Labour spin-doctors at Millbank Tower have talked down Livingstone's triumph as a prank played by the voters. Livingstone rode the anti- political mood to get elected. Towards the end of the campaign, Livingstone realised that he got more votes the less he said, and promptly disappeared from public view. But it was New Labour that did most to turn the voters off, by insisting that the working class had no role in public life. New Labour journalist David Aaronovitch denounced as 'troglodytes', those who want 'a return to heartlands' (Independent, 5 May). The fact that the 'troglodytes' stayed at home left the field wide open for Ken's celebrity campaign.
More inclusive than thou
The discussion about future relations between Livingstone and Blair on the one hand, and about the kind of administration the mayor will create has led to a contest about who is the most inclusive. Through gritted teeth, Blair insists that he will respect the Londoner's choice and do everything he can to work with the Mayor. Livingstone wants to heal the rift with Labour, and is offering all his rivals in the contest seats on the new London executive. Fixed smiles, all the politicians insist that they want a broad church. That's the new politics. Volatile, but shallow.
SO WHAT NOW FOR TRANSPORT?
Ken Livingstone has pledged all along that he will reject the government's Public Private Partnership (PPP) financing plans for the Underground in favour of a New York-style bond issue. His campaign has been given added poignancy by his anti-Big Business stance around the Paddington rail crash, criticising business' lack of concern for the public good. Ken's dilemma is that unfettered capitalism may be worse than Hitler but with limited powers, how can the mayor make the trains run on time, writes Austin Williams.
Never mind the thin distinction between a bond issue and privatisation, Ken's goal is to make people to pay for their travel many times over. If he can pull it off, maybe Blair can do business with him after all.
In the first instance, Ken wants Londoners to stump up the money to kick start investment in the Tube system, because, as far as Cockney Ken says, this is 'our system'. It would be selfish not to pay. Paying a little bit up front would keep costs down for everyone. Your London Needs You.
The second issue is that of congestion charging. It is worrying to think that this was the only substantive issue in the lack lustre mayoral 'contest' - a pledge to subsidise his meagre £20 million budget by introducing congestion charging at £5/day within the first half of his tenure. His strategy is to reduce congestion by 15 per cent in the next 10 years by pricing people out of their cars and onto public transport, which is calculated to raise up to £400 million each year. Building more roads, tunnels, flyovers, underground car parks are not on the cards. Reduction is the name of the game. The money raised, however, would be pledged to improving public transport.
But what 'improving public transport' means to policy makers is, as other trial projects around the country have shown, is not the same thing that it means to users. If you reduce cars on the roads, you tend to improve (the take-up) of public transport. More bus lanes, better signage and well-lit waiting areas are all low cost examples of improvements, with no discernible improvement in journey time and ease of transit. Indeed money raised from congestion charging can be re- cycled into more technologies to collect congestion charges. This Catch 22 is too good to be true for most cash - strapped councils. With 84 per cent of Londoners actually using the existing under-funded and overcrowded public transport networks and no major infrastructural improvements on the cards - of the sort generated around the Jubilee Line to the Dome - cramming the remaining 16 per cent onto the network seems like a recipe for disaster.
So it seems that, the transport debate as usual, has very little to do with improving the ability of people to get around London. Livingstone could have said that he was introducing horse-drawn carriages and compulsory Penny-farthings and he would have got the anti-Dobbo vote. The debate around transport goes deeper than just giving Blair a bloody nose.
Livingstone has talked about making London into a place of his youth, where you could walk down the street and chat to your neighbours. Under Livingstone, the community aspect may remain illusory, but you'll definitely have to do a lot more walking.
Austin Williams is organising the 'The Need For Speed' debate, (sponsored by the Institute of Ideas, Prospect magazine and Interchange), at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore on July 11th. Copies of the book, 'Transport in the New Millennium' are available from Transport Research Group, priced £11.95, (+£2.20 p+p)
Read the Week at www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/week.htm
-- Jim heartfield