We need a state that responds to regional issues, not a Big Society

Conferences are supposed to highlight the differences between parties. Members and MPs are paraded before the media to denounce their rivals and rally the troops in anticipation of the next round of political combat in the Commons.

However, the bombastic rants of shadow cabinet ministers (think Ed Balls and his criticism of “Butch Cameron and the flat-line kid”) tells us less about the differences between the two main parties than the more subtle ways Labour MPs respond to issues on which there is broad agreement on across the political spectrum. It is by listening out for those key phrases spoken at Fringe events that are repeated again and again that the humble party supporter can understand where his/her politicians will draw the battle lines against the opposition.

At this year’s Fabian Fringe, the emphasis has been on building a more intelligent, more flexible, and more responsive state. The need to “innovate” has been stressed at various events, as has the need to accept and adapt to a post-financial crisis landscape where old ideas and values no longer have the same relevance. In particular, we have witnessed at this conference a de-emphasising of redistributive measures and the role of central government in securing economic fairness in favour of ‘higher level’ mechanisms of achieving more equality, and local or regional means of stimulating change.

There is overlap here with the Conservatives’ rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’, where the powers and responsibilities of providing state welfare and services are devolved to voluntary organisations, civic society, and local government. Is Labour seeking to adopt the ‘Big Society’ from David Cameron in the same way that Ed Miliband adopted ‘One Nation’ from Benjamin Disraeli?

‘NO’ is the resounding response. While both parties are emphasising the importance of localism, participatory democracy, and regionally-tailored services, only Labour is making the connection between these three objectives and central government’s role in making it happen. On the evidence of this year’s conference, Labour is aware that divorcing issues of regional investment, regional pay, and regional welfare from regional democracy and regional funding is a recipe for disaster.

Helen Goodman, writing in The Shape of Things to Come: Labour’s New Thinking, explains that for a more decentralised state to work for the people, Labour must build regional responses on the basis of trust, rather than control:

“The localism agenda of this government purports to give more local accountability, but the various arms of policy are pulling in too many opposing directions for this to work. Labour needs to develop its own collective approach, building on local democratic institutions and expanding and strengthening accountability. Even on a practical level, extracting maximum efficiency from funds will mean trusting local politicians to know their own areas and deliver on priorities in the most efficient way possible.”

However, the party can go further than this. Instead of relying on local representatives to deliver what is needed, Labour could embrace participatory budgeting and champion micro referendums on issues of community spending to ensure that council decisions are fully democratic and placed in the hands of those most affected.

A Labour government would also have to ensure that regions had access to an adequate supply of funding. To this end, it would be prudent to stop talking of a ‘British Investment Bank’ now and start talking about the need for ‘Regional Investment Banks’ instead.

The party could also revive the idea of regional parliaments, buried in the first term of New Labour. These don’t have to consist of expensive ‘white elephant’ legislative buildings or the creation of an extra layer of bureaucracy. Instead, they should be hotbeds of creative thinking on local government, given real powers by Westminster but then left alone to come up with imaginative solutions to their own geographical areas of responsibility.

The truth is that some councils are more innovative and willing to try new things than others. It is up to the state to promote best practice and provide the funds and expertise to ensure each locality is properly equipped to tailor the solutions right for them. The above are just a few ideas on how to achieve this.

Perhaps if some of them are taken on board, we can replace Cameron’s bankrupt ‘Big Society’ with a Britain where communities are fair, free, and properly funded.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog 

Generation Crisis: Better, Stronger, Closer Communities

How can young people contribute to thriving communities they feel at home in?

The question of how young people can feel at home in their local communities and have a positive role to play in society seems ever more urgent at a time when young people are the easy target for Coalition cuts and dangerous policy experiments.

In his welfare speech a few weeks ago we heard David Cameron proposing that the best way to cut the benefits bill even further would be to stop young people under the age of 25 claiming Housing Benefit and suggesting that they should be sent home to live with their parents.  Working at the YMCA, I have already heard worried and vulnerable young people say that they would be homeless without this support; moving back home just simply isn’t an option for most young people who receive Housing Benefit.  Mr. Cameron, we don’t all have a family property portfolio to fall back on; young people today have very limited options when it comes to finding a place to live in our twenties.

The housing debate was brought to the fore last month when the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a piece of research highlighting the housing prospects for young people between now and 2020. Unsurprisingly, there will be a sharp increase in the number of young people living in private rented accommodation, projected to rise by 1.5 million young renters compared to 2008.This is a worry due to the rapidly increasing rental levels, particularly in urban areas where demand for housing is always high. Private rented accommodation can often be of poor quality, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum.

How do we solve the housing crisis for young people? Is the stark contrast in living standards between older and younger generations causing tension in our communities? How do we prevent young families living in poor quality, over-crowded accommodation? Does the answer lie in Continental approaches to renting, whereby tenancies are long-term and rental levels remain stable? Is the aspiration for everybody to own their own home sustainable in the long-term?  There is no single, easy answer to these questions, but young people are becoming increasingly marginalised in their own communities by inadequate housing policy. Tory propaganda about young benefit scroungers only serves to compound the problem.

The Commission on Better, Stronger, Closer Communities will be looking at several key themes and in addition to the question of affordable, good quality housing we will be examining:

• The negative portrayal of young people in the media
• How we can utilise technology and online networks for communities of the future
• How we can overcome the increasing tensions in our communities between the young and older generations, the rich and poor and those of different social classes.

As our local services are being cut and closed across the country, communities need to look at new ways to support young people and help them play their full part and achieve their full potential in society. Whilst the media reinforces the view that communities are breaking down, grassroots activism led by young people has never been stronger. The Commission on Better, Closer, Stronger communities will examine how we can harness this activism and sense of purpose to help rebuild our communities so that they can offer all citizens, including young people, the chance to play an active and positive role within them.

If you’ve got strong views on these issues and you’re interested in getting involved, we will be hosting several policy events over the coming months, so keep an eye out on the blog and website, or alternatively follow me on Twitter: @MaryHillLondon for updates.

Mary Hill is a Young Fabians member

Sharpening the Knives

The frenzied atmosphere of an election season may not seem to be the best time to try and make sense of the strange political manoeuvrings we have witnessed lately.

However, the Council and Mayoral elections taking place on May 3^rd are an important milestone for all the national parties. In a political and media world that seems obsessed with mimicking the drama and dynamism of the American system, the 2012 elections have taken on the character of the US Midterms- with important implications for how the results will be processed by those in the Westminster village.

There has been a noticeable surge in backbench unrest among Conservative MPs. Today, Nadine Dorris launched a blistering attack on the “arrogant posh boys”   (David Cameron and George Osborne) running the country, while another unnamed Tory sneered that Cameron seems to be “putting the school run ahead of the national interest.” These comments can be legitimately dismissed as the bluster of a few loose cannons, but they conceal a deeper malaise in the Parliamentary Tory Party. Badly bruised by a mishandled Budget and suffering the worst polling since 2008, some discontents have been publicly sharpening the knives in a show of defiance toward No. 10, egged on by a press eager to witness a big upset.

There is no suggestion that there will be a leadership challenge any time soon- if at all. However, it is possible that those Conservatives who have been put off by Cameron’s wishy washy social agenda and perceived capitulation to the Liberal Democrats on issues like Lords Reform and internet surveillance are trying to ‘talk down’ the party in the run-up to the elections. Why? So that they can use a bad result to force the Prime Minister down a more Conservative path, by claiming that Tory voters are deserting Cameron’s party because he is not conservative enough.

What about Labour? England’s ‘mid-terms’ will serve as a useful indicator of the party’s revival in the South.  Labour’s next majority cannot be attained without the help of at least some of those seats wooed by Tony Blair in 1997. A strong result here could act as the green light for the party to begin rolling out a more detailed policy plan and tell the nation just how it would do things differently. There have been glimpses here and there of Labour’s plans, fromenergy companies to the NHS. A resounding win on May 3^rd would give Miliband the momentum he needs to really press how Labour would govern in 2015 and beyond.

However, the knives haven’t been sheathed for him, yet, either. A failure to topple the Tories nationwide, and a Livingstone defeat in London, could throw the polling gains tortuously won over the last few weeks out of the window. The press will emphasise that even after all the Coalition’s failings, Labour are still not capable of winning back the people’s trust. Miliband himself will be blamed for failing to articulate a clear message to win back votes, and the vultures will begin circling again. One rumour doing the rounds is that a Labour defeat on May 3^rd will prompt an attempt by disgruntled MPs to push Yvette Cooper forward as Miliband’s successor. Naturally, this is all hearsay and smokescreen. What is certain, however, is that the forthcoming elections will be used by anti-Milibands and pro-Milibands alike to push their own agendas on the leadership.

Will the Council and Mayoral Elections be for Britain what the Midterms are to America- namely, a political gamechanger? Obama has certainly had to change his tune since losing the Senate to the Republicans. Perhaps Cameron will have to obey the more hardline elements in his party in the wake of a defeat. Miliband must also be wary too- a big win will place big expectations on him that he might struggle to fulfil, while a loss will bring the old naysayers out of the woodwork again. For both parties, it’s all to play for.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

In politics, mud sticks- but does gravy stain?

The political reporting of the last week bears some resemblance to the art of making a discount sausage roll. You take some meaty substance- in this case, the fact that this government is run by a cabinet of millionaires, that they have introduced a tax cut for the rich while slapping VAT on all manner of working-man lunch fare, and most recently started a fuel panic in the total absence of any impending strike- process the hell out of it on Twitter and the blogosphere and wrap it all up in an appealing, though haplessly flaky, veneer of ‘serious reportage.’

What many already knew and believed of Cameron and pals was spread across the nation thanks to ‘pastygate’- the embarrassing revelation that George Osborne can’t remember when he last ate at Greggs bakery, and that David Cameron was caught lying about when he last bought one of Cornwall’s finest baked exports. The scandal had the unexpected side effect of summing up all the issues of class and wealth surrounding the Budget and cash-for-access debacle, and communicating more effectively than any Guardian front-page just how out of touch this government is.

Fantastically for Labour, the end result has been a ten-point poll boost and the revelation that 2 out of 3 voters think that the Conservatives are the “party of the rich.” However, Ed and co should be hesitant about popping the champagne corks just yet. As damaging as ‘pastygate’ may seem to the Tories reputation now, it has to be remembered that such storms have been weathered before by politicians of all stripes, and that public perceptions that seem striking in the immediate wake of these PR disasters simply emphasise underlying trends.

A YouGov survey of public opinion on the three leading parties held at the beginning of this month showed that 49% of people thought that the Conservatives “seem to appeal to one section of society rather than to the whole country”. The Tories have always been seen as the party of the rich. They will never be able to clear themselves of this charge, so they can take hits on issues like ‘pastygate’ as it simply affirms what the public already know. Increasing the tax on pies and other baked goods that they don’t eat in the first place will not change their reputation. That mud will stick forever. The addition of a few splashes of gravy won’t make a difference.

Importantly, such labels do not change voting intention when push comes to shove. Margaret Thatcher was an infamous ‘milk snatcher’ before she even became leader of the opposition. She went on to win three general elections. Tony Blair became ‘Tony Bliar’ in the wake of the scandal over tobacco advertising (in an incident uncannily similar to the cash-for-access scandal engulfing David Cameron right now), and again following the Iraq War. It didn’t stop him achieving a historic third term.

Despite what those championing ‘pastygate’ think, the public have a general understanding of the character of their leaders before such scandals break. This is especially true of that part of the population that actually votes. What all the PR scandals of the last 30 years show is that the people know what they think- they just don’t vote on that knowledge.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

A PM held to ransom

David Cameron returned from the European Summit last week announcing that he had vetoed a new treaty in the ‘national interest’. It would be more accurate to say he was ‘held to ransom’ by the Conservative Party’s friends in the City.

Cameron’s Conservatives are a new breed of Tory. It would be wrong to say that, like the resurgent Wispa bars, they are the same 80’s product in a shiny new wrapper. Nearly 150 Tory MPs are ‘newbies’ who took their seats in 2010. Fewer of them attended private school then in years past- 54% today compared with 70% in 1983. The party is a different shade of blue from Thatcher’s time.

One thing that has not changed is the party’s vested interest in protecting the perceived generators of national wealth. The Smith Institute reports that 27% of the current Conservative crop have a history in financial services. According to Aditya Chakrabortty of The Guardian, the financial sector in this country employs about 1 million people. This means that an industry that employs less than one-thirtieth of the working population is represented by one-quarter of MPs in the dominant governing party.

The Conservatives and the financial sector are entwined in other ways too. A report by GMB reveals that nearly 60% of donations to the Tory party come from individuals and companies linked to finance, hedge funds and other City interests. The Square Mile has often been touted as the beating heart of London. In many ways, it’s the beating heart of the Conservative party too.

In light of such figures, it should come as no surprise that a Conservative Prime Minister should fight tooth and nail in the most prestigious of arenas to protect City interests. Cameron’s so-called ‘veto’ was not a free decision made by a plucky little Englander taking on would-be tyrants overseas, it was the ransom he was forced to pay in return for the continued sponsorship of the financial wizards of the City. On Newsnight, the Minister for Europe effectively conceded this point when he argued that: “There was a real risk that without the safeguards [Cameron] wanted…you would over time have a read across from the closer fiscal integration that the Eurozone countries want to do towards measures that would influence financial services in particular.” The ‘national interest’ was revealed by the bumbling Minister to be code for ‘financial services’.

Is it right that the diplomatic strategy of the British government should be dictated by a closeted club of multi-millionaires detached from the everyday experiences of the vast majority of Britons? Once again the formidable array of interests that profit or benefit from the mysterious operations of finance capital have shifted into gear in spirited defence of the sector. Financial services provide billions in corporation tax. Financial services are one of very few sectors that Britain can boast of being a world leader in. Financial services have a noble heritage reaching back to the dawn of empire, and deserve their vaunted position at the apex of our commercial society.

These are all true statements. What is interesting is that very similar things were said of the coalmining industry in this country thirty years ago, of shipbuilding, and of manufacturing. Other things were true of these industries. They were inefficient, could no longer compete with other nations, and required huge public subsidies just to keep going.

Curiously, the same could be said of the financial sector today. It is no longer efficiently allocating credit to those businesses that need it. It is losing ground to American and European competitors, a process that will only speed up as Britain is left out in the cold while closer fiscal consolidation of the Eurozone takes place. It has required £289 billion of direct financing by the taxpayer since 2008 just to stay afloat, far more that the £193 billion it pumped into the treasury in corporation tax between 2002-2008.

This is the final damning reason why Cameron’s Conservatives are a kind apart from Thatcher’s. Her government identified failing industries, stripped them of their workforce and let them loose to explore the seemingly endless opportunities promised by the ‘knowledge economy.’ Cameron’s government is being held hostage by a failing industry that continues to suck up the resources of the British state and dictate policy terms to a country that no longer sees it as a source of any worth.

Louie Woodall is a member of the Young Fabians and Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog

Tomorrow’s world

Do we have a feral youth? It’s a question that many have asked since riots erupted across the country over the summer. Images of young people destroying their own communities, presented a challenge to those of us who have long rejected the stereotype of the feral hooded youth. Yet, while no analysis can excuse such wanton violence, it would equally be wrong to reduce these events, as the Prime Minister has, to “criminality pure and simple.” Labour’s former Home Secretary Charles Clarke was right to rebut David Cameron’s over-simplified conclusions in an article for The Evening Standard. “Criminality”, he argued, “is neither ‘pure’ nor ‘simple’.”

This is surely correct. As IPPR Director, Nick Pearce, outlines in the essay in our Autumn edition of Anticipations, “unless you believe that the riots were simply random acts of criminal violence, then some attempt must be made to explain why they happened and what can be done to prevent them happening again.” Of course we need a robust response and should not shy away from punishing those who have broken the law. However, it is also important, as Pearce points out, not to ignore the fact that most of the areas affected had high rates of youth unemployment and low levels of educational attainment.

This is not an excuse for violence and it would be wrong to argue that the disorder occurred as a direct result of policies such as the scrapping of EMA. Many of the rioters were not young at all; many more already had criminal convictions. However, it must also be true that only people with no aspirations for, or connection to, their communities are willing to set them alight.

There are important lessons for Labour here.  While New Labour’s focus on modernisation was vital for reforming our public services, the party had too little to say about community itself. This is now starting to be rectified and it is crucial that Labour continues to avoid pandering, as the government has, to those who talk of ‘moral decline’. The party must focus instead on practical ways to strengthen civil society from the bottom up.

London Citizens community organiser, Emmanuel Gotoro, outlines a powerful example of how this can be achieved. The CitySafe Havens initiative, established following the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen in 2008, successfully brings together young people, police and shopkeepers to tackle local violence and anti-social behaviour. It centres upon the reporting of 100% of incidents and on the idea that strong relationships are the bedrock of community. The CitySafe campaign serves as a pertinent reminder that, far from being feral, many of our most active and civic-minded citizens are young people.

That’s not to say that we should ignore the vital role that the police have to play in all this. Safety and security must always be the overriding priority for any government and Yvette Cooper is right to highlight in this edition’s interview that effective policing is crucial to maintaining this. Cooper offers a devastating critique of the coalition’s approach to law and order, pointing to the evident contradiction between spending well over £100 million on Police and Crime Commissions while at the same time cutting the policing budget by 20%. Strong communities need properly resourced police. Just ask the young people campaigning with London Citizens.

We do not have a feral youth. Most young people are hard working, socially-conscious and responsible individuals – just like the rest of society. The lesson of the riots is not that our young are out of control, but rather that in some parts of the country, in areas of low aspiration, society has grown weak. In our effort to reweave the fabric of these communities we could do worse than look again at the opportunities available to our young people.

Now is the time for a fundamental rethink of youth policy.

James Green is Anticipations Editor and a Fabian Society Executive member

• You can read our online taster edition of the Autumn 2011 edition of Anticipations here. The full edition of Anticipations is only available to Young Fabian members. Joining couldn’t be easier and six months membership costs just £5. Click here for more information on joining the Young Fabians

Every issue is a women’s issue

In this member post, Debbie Moss introduces a new publication by Young Fabian Women, which is being launched as part of Young Fabian Equalities Month.

This week, Young Fabian Women launches its first pamphlet, Women’s Issues - a selection of essays covering a wide range of policy issues, from the impact of the economic downturn on young people to Labour Party reform, youth violence to European cooperation.

Young Fabian Women provides opportunities for young women on the British left to get involved in politics and policy. We hope this pamphlet, no doubt the first of many, will encourage others to make their voices heard. As Oona King points out in her foreword, a century after the Suffragettes, the fight for equal representation and equal rights is far from won. As young, progressive women we have a responsibility to keep fighting to break through the glass ceilings that still characterise every area of public life.

A key vehicle for achieving greater equality, whether in the political or social realm, is the Labour Party and the wider progressive movement. And now is the ideal time to prove that Labour is the party of gender equality. As Sunday’s papers made clear, the Coalition Government is losing its electoral appeal to British women.

The problem is twofold: first, the Prime Minister’s attitude appears patronising, out of touch, and at times sexist, and second, his programme of swinging cuts – the defining feature of the Coalition to date – disproportionately affects women. No surprise then that a new study shows female approval for the coalition has plummeted to just 25%, with only 13% of women believing the Conservatives are the party “closest to women”.

Labour should take the initiative and make real equality for women, in terms of representation in the Commons, seats in the boardroom, fair access to pensions and support for carers, at the heart of its opposition to the Coalition. And we must play our part, by engaging in policy debates and standing for election.

After all, every issue is a woman’s issue.

Debbie Moss is a member of the Young Fabians and a contributor to Women’s Issues, a pamphlet by Young Fabian Women.

• Women’s Issues can be downloaded here. To find out more about Young Fabian Women click here or contact Claire Leigh on cleigh@youngfabians.org.uk.

Conference – a view from outside Liverpool

The 2011 Party Conference season is giving me déjà vu.

Watching Labour from outside Liverpool, through the prism of media, blog and twitter coverage – to be fair – there was a lot to be happy about.

Keynote speeches received a lot of airtime and the key message punched through, particularly Balls on fiscal discipline (which coincided nicely with the Fabian publication “The Credibility Deficit”), Cooper on police bravery and reform, and Ed Miliband on ‘I’m my own man’.

The fight against the (perception at least) of a lurch to the left is going well. Ed M is speaking more passionately and more confidently. I believe he’s having speech training. That was a good idea, which is paying off. Ken also made some noise, that punched through to national media, on transport fares. And he dovetailed nicely with a simultaneous SMS campaign.

Ed’s main message, around ethics in markets and not-business as usual, needs a bit more work to stick in the minds of the man on the Clapham omnibus. But I think it could resonate well. I’d caution though, that just “being against business as usual” only works when you explain quite a bit of context.

On the down side, there were a lot of blogs and tweets pointing to the party being in lemming mode. There is a body of opinion that is frustrated by a sense that we know we have an unelectable leader and we are not landing the blows against the coalition, but that we are happy to stick our heads in the sand and keep congratulating ourselves. From outside of Liverpool, I picked up quite a bit of this sentiment.

But what do I mean by déjà vu?

It was the summer and autumn of 2008 when the credit crunch turbulence escalated into a full-blown financial and economic crisis. It came to a head around the time of the Party Conference season. In 2011, the Labour leadership speeches were ok. There were no big fails. But the Labour conference seemed slightly blind to the fact that the global economy is standing on a knife edge, in a similar position to where we were in the Autumn of 2008. Failure to reach a solution to the eurocrisis will affect all our lives in a very bad way for a long time to come. It will be a source of economic malaise and deprivation and, who knows, potentially a source of conflict.

In 2008, Cameron – in opposition – grasped the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and ripped up all the main speeches (and conference agenda) and refocused on what was happening in the economy. That showed a bit of vision.

Unfortunately, Labour didn’t do the same in 2011. Perhaps our heads are a little too far in the sand.

Nick Maxwell is Partnerships Officer for the Young Fabians.

The ‘Invisible Link’

The connection between rioting and economic deprivation must be recognised by a government and public venting its fury in all the wrong directions.

The chaos and wanton destruction of the past week has provoked a new bout of soul-searching within Britain. In the race to identify the origins of the rot that spread out to consume an alarming number of our communities, politicians, broadcasters, journalists, and British citizens have scrutinised the social fabric of the nation and unearthed a rich variety of possible answers. The public can already choose from a range of conceptual lenses through which they can interpret the acts of rioting, looting and murder that have so shaken the national psyche. It is tempting for the politically conscious to grasp at the interpretation that best accords with their stance on the political spectrum to the exclusion of all others, and understand the rioting through the distortions of their personal ideological prisms.

There are many who have already taken this course of action, and are lashing out in screen and print with their own half-formed ideas on the cause of the rioting. The Daily Mail published Melanie Philips’ decidedly right-wing analysis of the riots, attributing “the violent anarchy” of the last several days to “the three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.” On the other end of the spectrum, Nina Power has projected the London riots as the inevitable manifestation of an unequal society where “the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country”.

In a previous post, Alex evaluated the riots as an economic equation balancing costs and benefits. Labour and their supporters have spouted dozens of statistics in a bid to prove a link exists between economic instability with social disorder. Such analysis may appear cold, sterile and unappealing to the passions of many who want to brand those responsible as “scum”, “feral”, and “evil” in order to vent their understandable frustration. But it has to be recognized, it must be understood that there is a real, tangible link between economic permutations and social unrest.

It also has to be made brilliantly clear that there is a link between personal economic success and psychological resilience. I have discussed the correlation between unemployment and mental health in a previous article, but still many will state that an individual’s employment status is detached from their internal moral compass. The real link must be made more explicit.

Why does a certain individual see a discarded brick, pick it and throw it through a window, while another walks on by? Why does one teenager loot while another, who has the same ability to take what he wants and the knowledge that no-one will stop him, attempt to prevent him?

The answer lies in the individual’s psychological make-up, and the temperament of the invisible policeman of his conscience. However it can never, never be said that the mental state of any individual is constructed in a vacuum. The argument that the environment an individual grows in shapes his character is termed ‘behaviourism’, and is studied as a branch of moral philosophy. It has featured many times as part of discussions on incidences of supposed moral disintegration, perhaps most recently in Britain with the 1993 murder of Jamie Bulger, when Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair said: “We hear of crimes so horrific they provoke anger and disbelief in equal proportions… These are the ugly manifestations of a society that is becoming unworthy of that name.”

Would those words being any less aptly used today?

Were the riots a product of moral disintegration in some sections of our community? Yes – and the right is quick to acknowledge this. What it fails to do, and what the left must impress upon the public, is that this moral disintegration occurred in community environments that bred contempt, hate, and anger, and that these environments have been allowed to flourish because of institutional failures that neither Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron have successfully addressed.

The depressed communities of Tottenham, Hackney, Birmingham, Salford and elsewhere have been failed by both left and right. They have been cut-off and isolated from the rest of society just as the rich and powerful have cloistered themselves away in opulent London enclaves.

The Prime Minister has been careful with his choice of language over the last couple of weeks, but I applaud him for acknowledging that this is still “our” society, thereby implicating all peoples and classes in the shame that has engulfed our country. As he stated in the Commons, “There are pockets of our society that are not only broken, but frankly sick”.

When one part of the body falls ill, the rest will soon follow unless immediate action is taken. That action cannot be isolated to condemnation, imprisonment, punishment and further deprivation. To do so would be to poison these environments further, and conjure up an even greater storm a decade down the line.

Instead, the link between deprivation and disruption needs to be made more explicit than ever, and severed once and for all.

Louie Woodall is Assistant Editor of the Young Fabian Blog.

Banning social media is a tool of despots, not democracies

Yesterday David Cameron edged closer to unlikely and somewhat troubling bedfellows: Hosni Muburak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muammar Gaddafi.

In his statement to Parliament, the Prime Minister floated the idea of giving the relevant authorities the power to suspend communication networks to prevent repeats of the violent disorder that erupted earlier this week across England. The role of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry’s instant messenger service will now be scrutinised by politicians to better understand their role in the riots, and to determine whether the authorities need powers to prevent such communication in future.

“Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media.

Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

I wrote a couple of days ago about the costs and benefits of rioting, noting that modern communication techniques have reduced the perceived costs to rioters of their actions. It is understandable that the government is looking at any and every method possible of preventing the riots from occurring again, if only to look vaguely like it is in control of events.

But placing constraints on freedom of expression, a right enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act, is the wrong tonic.

Yes, the events of the last few days have proved that communication networks can be used for ill.

But those events have also proven that the very same communication networks can be used for good – the Riot Clean Up movement is a good example. Social media has also been an important tool in the police’s ability to predict where trouble is likely to occur and to manage resources effectively.

But more importantly than that, the events of the last few days have not proven that politicians or the police will be able to discern appropriately between communication that supports acts of illegality and communication that supports legitimate acts of protest, or defiance. The powers the PM proposes could be used by the police and politicians to prevent a march against government policy, for example, should they decide that there is a reasonable prospect of “disorder” (howsoever defined).

That is troubling.

This week’s riots were extreme. But introducing powers to curb the ability of the people to communicate with one another would be extreme in response.

More than that, those powers would fail to address any of the root causes of the aggression and wanton criminality we witnessed in the last few days.

Blackberry’s instant messaging service facilitated the riots. It didn’t cause them.

Should David Cameron succeed in introducing such powers, he would quickly move from democrat to despot, arming himself with weaponry more commonly deployed in dictatorships.

That would be a devastating epilogue to a difficult week for Britain.

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” – Noam Chomsky.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians and Editor of the Young Fabian Blog