Going against the flow
“Birds of a feather flock together” as the old saying goes. But can being surrounded by people who are very similar to each other be damaging?
I am prompted to ask this question by a number of otherwise unconnected observations that have recently occurred to me.
Yesterday I chaired an event at the RSA with the excellent Ian Leslie, talking about his book Born Liars. Leslie argued that self-deception is part and parcel of human nature. As he said, there is a phrase to describe people who have an accurate picture of how attractive, funny and charismatic they appear to others and that phrase is “clinically depressed”. Unless we kid ourselves that things will get better, there is very little chance that they will.
A member of the audience raised the question that Barbara Ehrenreich raised in her RSA lecture, namely, isn’t there something unseemly about promoting self-deception? Ehrenreich’s examples include the careers advisor who takes money to tell you that being made redundant is the best thing that ever happened to you.
Leslie was not willing to go this far, but he did say that people who are prone to extreme self-deception are not well served if they are surrounded by other people with a similar degree of self-deception. This can lead to a delusional state in which people become quite removed from reality.
I have also been re-reading the seminal article by Thomas Pettigrew on “Intergroup Contact Theory”. One of his most interesting observations is that “in all samples, Europeans with outgroup friends scored significantly lower on five prejudice measures” That is to say, white Europeans that have BME friends are significantly less prejudiced that those who do not.
I was prompted to connect these two observation by the news that the Telegraph have published documents detailing plotting around the change of Prime Minister from Blair to Brown.
I do not have much to say about the details of the plotting but I do think it’s noteworthy that senior politicians tend to be surrounded by quite tight knit cabals of advisors. Apparently, Thatcher used to ask of new appointments, “Is he one of us?”
The advantages of having a closely connected group of quite similar advisors are obvious; loyalty, shared vision, team work, but there are disadvantages too. Teams made up of very similar individuals can become delusional, can adopt a bunker mentality and can fail to adapt to changes in circumstance. It takes a brave leader to bring in potentially disruptive individuals but sometimes it is the right thing to do.
Parents already buy their children’s place at university
The UK is on course to have the most expensive public universities in the world once increased fees kick in in 2012. It is therefore unsurprising that there has been such uproar over the suggestion that British students might be allowed to apply for extra university places providing they are able to pay unsubsidised rates. David Willetts – the universities minister behind this faltering suggestion – has made it clear these university places would be ‘off-quota’ (meaning additional to the places that are administered through UCAS) and as such he suggests they would leave normal places free for disadvantaged students.
There are a number of problems with this analysis. There is no evidence that any of the places left ‘free’ by some students opting out of the quota system would be taken by young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. In fact, is it not more likely that these places will be taken by the people they are normally taken by, i.e. middle class, white young people from relatively affluent backgrounds? But the greatest objection is that Willetts’ proposal implied richer students will have two shots at university – one through the quota system, one through the off-quota system. Many of us instinctively react against the idea that people should be able to use their wealth to directly access university places not available for others with less money.
The proposals have now been watered down following a public and political outcry. However, our concern about inequality in education should not diminish. The reality is that there is already a two tier system in education. Social class – not ability – remains the strongest predicator of educational achievement in the UK. Recent statistics have highlighted that British children’s educational attainment remains overwhelmingly linked to parental occupation, income, and qualifications. Perhaps this government will not let rich parents buy their children places at university after all. But these same parents are already able to use their wealth and status to give their children advantages such as private education and tuition, interview training, work experience and CV-enhancing extracurricular activities that undoubtedly make their children more likely to reach university than their less affluent (but just as able) counterparts.
To ensure that all young people have a truly equal chance in reaching university, we must start engaging with the barriers disadvantaged young people face a long time before they begin looking at a UCAS form.
For more information on the RSA’s work in this area click here
There’s more to getting “a stronger voice” than AV
On 5th May British citizens will be asked to vote on their preferred voting system; First Past the Post (FPTP) or the Alternative Vote (AV). One of the boldest claims that the proponents of the AV make is that it will give voters “a stronger voice”.
If this were true (I have no idea if it is true I’m afraid) it would be an attractive offer to a lot of people. According to the Citizenship Survey just over a third (37 per cent) of the UK adult population believes they can influence decisions in their local area whereas almost three quarters (73 per cent) feel that it is important to have an influence and 44 per cent said they would like to be more involved in decisions made by councils affecting their local area.
Of course voting is only one part of this problem. There are a number of ways that we can influence the world around us ranging from voting to campaigning to getting out our brooms and cleaning the pavements ourselves.
The government has recognised this and have announced that they will fund the training of 5,000 community organisers; to act as “catalysts for community action at the neighbourhood level”. This has proved to be a controversial decision. There are even those who argue that community organisers should never take money from any government, ever.
Tessy Britton has written a couple of blog posts (here and here) with an interesting take on these questions. I think she is arguing that an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) (http://abcdeurope.ning.com/) approach is preferable to an Alsinky style community organising approach if you want to build stronger communities.
You might crudely boil the question down to; “do we want to run projects or campaigns?”
I think the discussion can usefully be split into three parts (As Matthew Taylor has written it always seems to be three parts…); building campaigns, building stronger communities and building more empowered communities.
Building Campaigns
The main achievement that the London Citizens like to boast about is their success in securing the ‘London Living Wage’ for a number of workers, for example cleaners at major banks. This campaign used a number of classic Alinsky style techniques including focusing their campaign on one individual (normally the CEO of the bank in question).
These campaigns are able to achieve certain types of change. They are good at changing the practices of organisations that benefit from a community but are not rooted in that community (e.g. slum landlords, employers that pay low wages etc…).
Building Stronger Communities
The Alinsky model for community organising brings together existing organisations (e.g. churches, trade unions etc…) and gets them to focus on campaigning. Part of Tessy’s argument is that this approach is not conducive to building better connected, creative and stronger communities. Since the campaigns are designed around conflict and attack there is little space for creative collaboration. Instead, she argues that we should use an approach that brings people together in shared spaces in a way that celebrates and builds on those things that people already value. An example she gives of the type of project she supports is the People’s Supermarket.
This type of approach can be very successful, especially in areas that have a large amount of “hidden wealth” i.e. community assets (broadly defined), that can be connected or mobilised.
Building Empowered Communities
This suggests the tricky question; which of these approaches will give people the influence that they seem to want and that AV is promising?
Alinsky’s supporters point towards visible changes that happen directly as a result of their campaigns, whereas the ABCD enthusiasts point to the spontaneous emergence of new projects that arise out of their approach.
You will have to make your own mind up on this question. However, I do see a deeper similarity between the approaches than might be apparent.
Connectivity
Both approaches rely on building and utilising relationships within communities.
The Alinsky model works on the assumption that there are more or less formal associations already in existence within a given area. The organiser’s job is to bring these associations together, to connect the connectors, with a sense of purpose.
The ABCD model also tries to make new connections, although these are often between individuals rather than formal associations. Once these connections have been made the creative collaboration can take place.
One might even speculate that a community organiser using the Alinsky method would be much more successful if they worked in an area that had benefited from one of Tessy’s Traveling Pantries than if they worked in an area where there was much weaker levels of social connection.
But perhaps I am drawing connections where none exist?
Is Labour Doing Its Job?
I was very struck by the image of Ed Miliband last night on the BBC news speaking alongside the slogan: “Labour: your voice in tough times”. It seems to sum up well the current strategy of positioning Labour as a staunch campaigner on behalf of the “squeezed middle” and anyone else who feels hurt by cuts, high prices or job loss. This approach though raises the pretty fundamental question of whether this is what Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is for.
I’m not at all sure that the opposition party is doing its best for public debate - or maybe the wider public interest – by acting, strangely enough, simply as an opposition – as a megaphone for disgruntlement. No-one expects an Opposition to come up with excessively detailed plans for government but surely its main role is to present a realistic option to the public of another way of doing government not simply to chuck bricks.
There may also be a misunderstanding occurring here about what the public expects of an Opposition. Mainstream parties are fundamentally part of the establishment – hence that label HM Loyal Opposition. They are not street protest movements nor campaign groups and are unlikely ever to be accepted as such by the great majority of the country. There is a risk of trying to be something an Opposition never can be and in this failing to actually do the more prosaic job that the public rightly expects and wants.
This is a problem that tends to afflict the left more than the right because of its pride in, and maybe nostalgia for, its history as a genuine grassroots movement. It is a problem I experienced almost every day when I worked at the TUC – where the dominant view amongst the current trade union leadership is that trade unions remain some type of working class movement for radical change. I was never really convinced they are that much more than a well-established civil society institution with a specific role to play in workplace improvement and protection.
But maybe this is an issue of time. Moving from government to opposition literally overnight when you have been parking your bum on the back seats of ministerial limousines for well over a decade is always going to take some adjusting. Labour may well have to try on a few different outfits before it finds the one that really fits its new and important role.
To AV or not to AV – what is the question?
There is a tremendous irony at the heart of the current debate on AV. Politicians of all persuasions are looking the electorate in the eye and telling us, as sincerely as they can, that we are the audience with the greatest stake in the issue of voting reform. But their internal debates suggest something rather different. Where does that leave us?
Those in favour of AV tell us how unrepresentative the current system is, how only about a third of MPs secure a majority of the votes in their constituency, how many MPs can effectively ignore the needs and votes of many of their constituents, how the existence of safe seats means some don’t even need to work hard to engage their core support, and how most voters are effectively disenfranchised by this situation.
Those in favour of FPTP invoke the ghoul of perpetual coalition government and compromise, the fact that second, third and fourth choices should not have the same weight as first choices, the relative complexity of AV, and even the fact that AV is too small a step and should be rejected in favour of something closer to PR. Oh, and the fact that the only countries in the world to use AV for national elections are Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji (which is apparently considering a change anyway).
These are all reasonable arguments, and positive reasons to engage with the question of electoral reform. They should in themselves persuade people that it matters to them and encourage them to think about it and vote on it.
And yet, when those same politicians look each other in the eye, the debate takes a rather different course. Those in favour of AV claim that FPTP is mainly being defended by politicians with a stake in it (mostly the Conservatives). Those in favour of FPTP claim AV is really being advanced as a mechanism for increasing the power of the Lib Dems.
In other words, the debate turns negative, and is about power for politicians, not power for the people. And politicians, let’s not forget, have the loudest voices on this issue, so people are well aware of their internal wranglings. The debate on Newsnight a couple of nights ago, in which four politicians spoke a lot and two non-politicians said less, was a case in point.
Isn’t this exactly what we don’t need? Our voting system is at the heart of the relationship between Parliament and the electorate, and all politicians acknowledge that something needs to be done to engage with us again (even if they can’t agree on how). Surely an extended debate on the future of that system should be taken as an opportunity to re-engage people, and to persuade them of the importance of their part in the electoral relationship? It would be a shame if it actually reinforces the disconnect between us.
It comes down to the question of what are we voting for in May – something that matters to us, or something that really concerns the fortunes of 650 (for now) MPs?
Beyond the swing
Ed Miliband has only been leader of the Labour Party for 48 hours and already the taunts of ‘Red Ed’ are beginning in the press. The editorials of the Mail, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun all counsel the importance of the centre ground in British politics. Labour’s old guard is emphasising that the party’s appeal to the swing voters that occupy this centre-ground is a crucial element of electoral success.
Who are the swing voters that the press and politicians are so worried about? Swing voters are people who are undecided about how they will vote. Political parties target these voters, particularly in the most marginal constituencies, in order to win elections. But swing voters are a tiny minority of the potential vote. For instance, the Conservative Party only needed to persuade 2 million swing voters to back them to win a full majority in the recent election. That’s 2 million out of a potential 44 million voters.
Our current political orthodoxy on the importance of swing voters means that all parties try to appeal to the same small minority of people who change their mind. It means that policies can only be as radical as the swing voters will allow for, and important debate is stifled. So, is it a foregone conclusion that the new leader of the Labour Party will have to put these voters at the heart of his agenda? Perhaps even more importantly, is it true that he cannot win an election without them – or is there another group of voters who could push Labour over the finishing line?
Of the 44 million people who were eligible to vote in the last general election, a staggering 15.5 million failed to do so. Roughly 7.2 million of these were 18-24 year olds. If Ed Miliband can find a platform that appeals to these voters, that inspires even half those young people to turn up to the ballot box and cast their votes for him, then politics defined by the centre-ground swing vote might well be a thing of the past.
The politics of TINA
TINA has been responsible for some of the most far-reaching political decisions of the last two decades or more. You’ve never heard of her? TINA is the popular abbreviation of ‘There Is No Alternative.’ A political catchphrase made famous by Margaret Thatcher when explaining economic liberalism, which was picked up almost two decades later by Tony Blair when justifying military action in Iraq. As Polly Toynbee has recently pointed out, TINA is being used again – this time when outlining the government approach to the financial crisis. At the Liberal Democrat party conference yesterday, Nick Clegg invoked TINA when trying to ingratiate party members to huge spending cuts.
Whatever your opinion of Thatcher, the Iraq war or the coalition government’s economic plans, we should be suspicious of people who tell us that TINA is justification enough for any political decision. There are always alternatives. There are alternatives to free market liberalism, to war and to coalition, whether or not you agree with them. When Labour introduced a minimum wage in 1999, many businesses argued this would force redundancies and that there was no alternative to painfully low wages. But there was an alternative, and in this case a very effective one, which business has now come to embrace.
TINA is too often used as a means of sidelining real debate and avoiding difficult conversations. But avoiding these conversations does a disservice to citizens and prevents us from getting to heart of the social, political and economic problems we face.
Take spending cuts as an example. Whilst there is unquestionably a need for action in the face of a £148 billion shortfall between government expenditure and government revenue, it is not the case that there is no long-term alternative to tackling our spending habits by cutting services. As is often quoted, the British public want “Swedish” welfare for “American” taxes. At the moment, the government has decided to get rid of Swedish welfare. But there is a long-term alternative in challenging our American rates of tax and opening up a conversation with the public about how much they are willing to pay for the services they want.
This short post is not necessarily an argument in favour of the alternatives, but it is an argument in favour of acknowledging them. Our society and communities are faced with a range of alternative futures at the moment: now is not the time to avert our gaze.
Strange Fruit
Filed under: Education Matters, Social Brain, Social Economy
Is it just me, or does politics on the other side of the pond invariably seem more interesting?
It is fairly clear that the next Labour leader will be a Miliband, if not an Ed, and I find myself underwhelmed by either prospect, and the contest as a whole. The aftermath of the general election was hugely exciting, but now that the coalition seems to be holding itself together, I find I am less trigger happy with my mouse on British news pages. The ‘Big Society’ interests me at a conceptual level, but it’s a slow burner, and Tony Blair’s biography will doubtless create a media frenzy, but the focus will be on Iraq, and I will be surprised if we learn anything that transforms existing opinion.
Politics in the USA invariably feels more vivid, dramatic and personal, perhaps because of the way it is reported. I got into the habit of watching The Daily Show while I was a masters student in the US, and I now watch it on Channel Four. Rory Bremner is funny, but frankly he is not a patch on John Stewart, who hosts the show with a rare mixture of insight, humour, respect and side-splitting incredulity.
Last week’s main story was the Fox news anchor Glenn Beck’s speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in which he used the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to ‘reclaim civil rights’ and ‘restore honour’ to America. Neither idea makes much sense to me, but the Guardian’s American editor, Mike Tomasky, frames the issue in a typically astute way:
“Part of citizenship, a crucial part of citizenship, is standing in their(the less privileged/prosperous-JR) shoes for a few moments – as they must stand in yours, and understand your point of view too. The Beck movement is the we-stay-in-our-shoes movement. It’s Grover Norquist’s “leave us alone” coalition.”
Perhaps it is such binaries that make American politics more engaging. Indeed I strongly encourage anybody interested in exploring the mutual incomprehension that lies at the heart of political debate to read Jonathan Haidt’s excellent essay called: “What makes people vote Republican?” Haidt(author the critically acclaimed ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’) contends that the American right has a wider range of moral reference points:
“The second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it,” this is the “it” to which they refer.”
Our social brain project is partly founded on building a deeper appreciation for this ‘it’, because the importance of group membership and institutions falls out from our understanding of human nature outlined in ‘Changing the Subject‘. However, ’sanctified and noble’ remains a hard sell in a relatively secular society, and is perhaps closer to Glenn Beck’s motivation, who referenced ‘God’ several times in his speech.
But what of the strange fruit in the title? I also read the New York Times on most days, and I was prompted to blog by one particularly elegant Op Ed by Charles M Blow called ‘I had a Nightmare’, in which he lambasts Beck’s decision to associate himself with Dr. King and refers pointedly to ‘strange fruit‘. This expression rang a bell, but had no emotional impact, until I looked at the wikipedia page above.
If you are not already aware of the poem or the song, made famous by Billie Holiday, I will leave you to discover it for yourself, but be warned that the image may haunt you for a while.
Perhaps American politics seems more interesting because such atrocities are still visceral, and form part of the collective political unconscious there. Our political discourse seems to be relatively bereft of such intense cultural reference points, or perhaps I am missing something?
Between tension and contradiction – the wonderful complexity of people
Let’s celebrate something. People are polymorphous – they take many shapes, and I don’t just mean their bodies. I mean, people, on average, can hold a variety of evaluative moods and attitudes; produce a plethora of responses to the ways of the world. They can see that sometimes one has to be disciplined and unforgiving, at other times compassionate and fraternal. They can see the need to stand up to a bully, but also to put an arm around him and ask what’s wrong. On people incapable of this polymorphous social and ethical engagement, we are none too keen.
There seem to be two crucial ranges of polymorphousness. The first is ethics. Most of us hold a certain set of values that pull us in different directions: we can see that bullys should be reprimanded, but also that they are probably hurting too. The second range spans methods. We hold to a certain set of rules of thumb, conceptual frameworks, nuggets of practical know-how and principles of thinking and doing. Some examples: don’t change everything at once; if ain’t broke don’t fix it; don’t bite off more than you can chew; don’t just treat the symptoms treat the cause.
Our view of the world is a complex plot of points on the ranges of ethics and methods. One range is in the domain of values, the other that of facts. And of course, these domains influence one another: punish too hard out of moral conviction and you may well increase the bullying you seek to stop; be too caught up in the empirical causes of bullying and you lose sight of the moral clarity that it is wrong.
So within a single person there will be conflicts in ethics, conflicts in methods, and an almighty conflict between ethics and methods. In all their wonderful polymorphousness, people constantly negotiate these conflicts. And hooray to that.
In politicians, it seems to me, people want to see individuals who recognise the complexities of this delicate process of negotiation. They don’t take kindly to John Redwood style neo-liberals and they don’t much like dyed-in-the-wool socialists like Bob Crow. In short, they don’t like ideologues: their certainty across the terrains of ethics and methods is disconcertingly simplistic.
But although people will welcome ethics and methods that are in tension, what they can’t stand are outright contadictions. For example, take the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. This acknowledges a tension that most people feel in terms of both ethics and methods. In terms of the former, that committing a crime is wrong, but that so is the fact some criminals have grown-up in awful circumstances. In terms of the latter, that tackling a problem properly requires getting to its root causes.
But within time, the tensions captured in this slogan become too great. It becomes apparent that people haven’t been sold a workable blend of values and methods, but an unworkable contradiction. For example, as was reported on the Today programme this morning, we now incarcerate children between twelve and fourteen years-old that don’t complete their community-based sentences. The idea of the latter is that they rehabilitate youngsters – get them to understand the consequences of their actions and to take into account their responsibilities to themselves and others. But incarceration just turns them into criminals. So being tough on crime actually means being pathetic on the causes of crime.
The way out of a contradiction like this is to convert the blend of ethics and methods back into a workable tension. One option would be to take the view that because crime is wrong, we are justified in locking people up and throwing away the key, and that since most criminals will be off the street, we’ll be tough on the causes of crime too. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, it is the causes of crime that are considered the real moral wrong, so let’s put much more effort into rehabilitation – spend more money on it, make the process far more thorough and multi-faceted.
Either kind of rebalancing will have to take into account both facts and people’s cherished ethics and methods. Both will run aground on these sandbanks. But people do want to see their own polymorphousness shone back at them from politicians. This makes the challenge the development of policies that accept the requisite tensions, but which don’t push as far as contradictions.
It’s the ethos, stupid
What is it to win the centre ground in politics? It is in part to incorporate policies that appeal to the centre-left and centre-right. But that is quite a shallow definition. I want to suggest a slightly deeper one based on Jonathan Haidt’s five (apparently universal) moral senses: a sense of fairness, a sense of caring about harm, a sense for in-group loyalty, a sense of spiritual purity and a respect for authority. It seems to me that winning the centre-ground convincingly requires embodying all these senses to some degree in an ethos that people can understand and identify with.
Haidt argues that Obama should appeal to all five senses if he is to be a truly unifying president. To a certain extent Obama achieves this – he is clearly concerned with fairness and harm, and he appeals to a kind of purity of spirit in terms of personal magnanimity and Roosevelt-style national fraternity. His speeches about Islam and race have shown a respect for responsible authority. He perhaps comes up short on loyalty to the in-group – the least attractive of the moral senses – but then, a unifier tries to forge a new in-group identity at the national level.
In this country we have Gordon Brown. Why can’t he seem to win the centre-ground? Setting aside issues of personality, it seems to me Brown does not utilise Haidt’s five moral senses. He is obviously strong on concern with harm and fairness. But he doesn’t appeal to in-group loyalty (despite his Britishness rhetoric) and he is nowhere on spiritual purity, despite his Presbyterian beginnings.
What he requires is a unifying narrative that incorporates the five senses. Without that, people feel there is something missing. He presents his Government as championing public spending and thus a sense of fairness about opportunity that such spending can redress. And he does this with an avuncular sense of authority and technocratic respect for expert opinion. But this comes across as tired and empty.
Everything has to align – a concern for fairness and harm needs to be united with a sense of purity – a moral vision if you like. At the moment that vision should be largely a reaction to the excesses of a marketised society: it’s greed, dishonesty, materialism and selfishness. Brown would need to present himself and party as humble, prepared to be restrained, honest and very concerned with sustainable living (this would be the right version of spiritual purity for the times). If he allied this with his concern for fairness and harm, as well as a respect for the authority of democracy – rather than just technocratic authority – then in-group loyalty would follow naturally.
This is because people want to see reflected in a political party or leader the kind of coherent unity found in a person they admire and respect – a person who coherently combines the full five moral senses. Achieving that unity in a communicable ethos seems to me the deeper psychology of winning the middle-ground.
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