One-nation politics means winning power to give it away

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/one-nation-share-power-communities

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Within weeks of my election as leader of Lambeth council in 2006, the whole community was shaken by a spate of teenage killings. Gangs, mostly of teenage boys from poorer backgrounds on council estates in and around Brixton, south London, were involved in drug dealing and attacking each other with guns and knives. The mother of one teenage gang member, a black woman involved in a local church, led a group of youths to a police consultation meeting and demanded funding for the community-run projects that were far more successful at stopping gang crime than public services had been.

Over three years her group, working with barely any resources, got 60 young people out of gangs – far more than the council had managed. And yet, when she had asked the housing managers on her council estate how she could do more to help, she was told to leave it to the professionals because they knew best. That is wrong, and under Ed Miliband's leadership Labour is beginning to understand that top-down public services fail to either understand the needs, or harness the insights and resources, of the communities for whom they exist. Instead, one-nation Labour is developing an approach that sees public services as social and economic investment to enable citizens and their communities to realise their potential, and improve their quality of life and life chances. That means reform to correct a long-standing imbalance of power and narrowness of vision.

The action we eventually took in Lambeth to curb escalating youth gang crime was to share the council's power with the communities that were most affected. They had already shown how much they could achieve without funding; combining the council's staff, financial and other resources with the community's insights in finding solutions that worked was a logical development. The Young Lambeth Co-operative is a new youth services trust owned by the community that is taking control of the council's multimillion-pound youth services budget. The trust will work with affected communities to help them define the support they need then bring it in. Instead of parents feeling terrified and frustrated with public services that are slow to respond, they will have the power to influence decision-making by working in a new partnership of equals.

If you live in social housing, rely on home-care services or are unable to find work, then major aspects of your life are controlled by the people who run the services on which you depend. Dependency is not created by over-generous benefits, as the Tories claim. The culture of dependency is the result of forcing people from poorer or more excluded backgrounds to live by the decisions of people who have not shared their life experiences, and who have never asked them what they really want.

Sharing power has a radical and transformative effect on people and communities. By involving groups of citizens in the decisions that affect them we strengthen the relationship between people within their community as well as between people and the services they use. By allowing different communities to try new ways of tackling problems, we create more space for innovation that can be shared to improve lives more widely. This more co-operative model of public services demands radical change from government at both the local and national levels.

One-nation politics means sharing power more equally so that everyone can play their part. It involves strengthening relationships between people within communities, redirecting scarce resources to where they can make a bigger difference, improving people's experience as employees, and tackling economic decline by making our communities more productive. While the Tories want to roll back the state, one-nation Labour will change the role of the state, so that it is controlled by and serves the people who rely on it.

One-nation politics is about bridging divides and bringing people together so that they can achieve more and participate more fully in society. We recognise that co-operation, not just competition, is a driving force for positive change. We will work together with the people of this country and their communities to rebuild and revitalise politics so that we can transform lives for the better. To do that, Labour must trust people enough to do what no party has done before – to win power so that we can give it away.

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