Philobiblon

I was speaking on Saturday at the Compass Conference, in a joint Fawcett Society/One World Action session on women and the recession, which was highly interesting, and which I’ll try to report separately, but this also gave me the chance to hear several other sessions.

There was an interesting mood at the conference, given Compass’s position — closely tied to the Left of the Labour party. Depression of course, about the state of the Labour party, but also a sense of new possibilities (with lots of talk of progressive coalitions), of new political space opening up.

The idea that clearly received the strongest support (that I heard anyway) was for a binding referendum on PR to be held simultaneously with the next election. There were many calls to campaign for that.

That new openness was shown by the invitation for Caroline Lucas to address the opening keynote session, aand an afternoon session also featuring her with Salma Yaqoob from Respect and Aadam Price from Plaid Cymru. Although there was little sign of openess from the Labour Party: Harriet Harman also addressed the opening session, but sat removed from the other speakers, and generally managed to convey that she didn’t want to be there.

Caroline Lucas suggested that Blair’s “experiment” with New Labour had been to attempt to bring readers of the Mirror into the same big tent as the Daily Mail. She suggested that what was needed instead was a campsite of smaller tents, within which events could be more honest and transparent.

Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, defending the invitation for Caroline, referred to the 10 proposed policies of the No Turning Back campaign. The Greens had supported nine of them, the Lib Dems six, and Labour none, he said.

He said that the rise of the BNP shouldn’t be attributed to the personality of the PM, but the rise of inequality.

We have reached the end of “steam-age politics” he said. People were fed up with waiting for leaders to do things for them, and were increasingly prepared to do thme themselves. “We are the people we have been waiting for.”

In the afternoon session, Salma noted that since 1997 not one single council house had been built in Birmingham, and it was now a Tory-led council that had taken a lead in recommencing building. “Most young people associate Labour with war, with deregulatign banking, with anti-migrant policies.” Among tthe three main parties, the neo-liberal approach had become so ubiquitous as to be invisible – it was the seen as the natural approach.

Adam Price said the progressive movement had to identify and support ideas as heretical and radical as free healthcare and council housing had been seen at the start of the 20th century. He proposed as the big idea the expansion of public services, to include free school meals, free personal care for the elderly, free uni-level education and free childcare.

And he said that inherited wealth was unacceptable. Rather than the “negligible” baby bond, there should be a social inheritance fund from which all could benefit.

He drew cheers when speaking about education changes in Wales that abandon formal learning until age seven. “We are finally turning out backs on the Prussian-based model of learning to prepare children for army and factory, and empowering children to believe that they are free, autonomous individuals.”

Caroline pointed out that when you counted the members of Amnesty, Greenpeace, the Terence Higgins Trust and many other progressive organisations, the movement had never been stronger. The problem was to engage these people in mainstream politics, when they were not inspired by Labour or the Lib Dems, and faced many barriers actively designed to keep them out: the voting system, the unelected House of Lords, and the fact that within the largest parties differences of views were ruthlessly suppressed.

Jon Cruddas said that the rise of the BNP couldn’t be attributed to PR: rather, first past the post had created the conditions in which the BNP can thrive, by leaving so many feeling excluded from the political process.

Responding to an enthusiast for independent candidates from the audience, Salma said the problem with British politics wasn’t too much ideology, but not enough of it. Caroline said politics should be about bringing people coming together, not becoming more atomised.