Almost immediately the ‘coalition of the calculating’ (those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing) has struck at the heart of Labour’s efforts to modernise our communities and bring work back to our most needy citizens. In Barnsley we have suffered for a quarter of a century from the devastation of our communities wrought by Thatcherite policies. Now they appear to have returned after a brief respite.

Just when we thought we might be heading towards improvements in education and employment, the coalition has torpedoed our plans. A double hit on Education and jobs training will leave Barnsley running to stand still. After it was announced that £1.165 Bn. (Billion = thousand million) designed to fund specific projects will be cut. Steve Houghton, Leader of Barnsley Council, warned there will be a significant effect on jobs and services. Included in his assessment of the effects of cuts are the likelihood of cuts to ‘Working Neighbourhoods Fund’ and to other services which provide local jobs. Steve also criticised the decision to axe the Future Jobs Fund, designed to create more than 60,000 fixed-term jobs for young people (600 of which will be in Barnsley) and for long-term unemployed.

Though Barnsley’s scheme is thought to be safe, Steve said it was a huge mistake to cut the scheme which he has been working on nationally and which is described by Polly Toynbee (The Guardian, 25 May 2010) as ‘…the best job scheme yet devised’.  No doubt the Tories and their Liberal friends will rely on their much vaunted increase in the number of apprenticeships to fill the gap. That would be acceptable in Barnsley if we had young people leaving school with the educational qualifications to gain an apprenticeship and the industry to provide apprenticeships.

The other element of the double whammy of Tory cuts is the mad-cap scheme to hand schools over to vested interests.  This will mean that those left behind as they struggle to keep pace with more able and privileged children will not have access to the help and support they need through schemes such as ‘Every Child a Reader; Every Child Counts’ and other similar initiatives. The Tories appear not to care about places like Barnsley which were destroyed by vindictive social and industrial policies and from which they are now withdrawing the support of government while we are attempting to climb out of recession.

The Tory plans for education mean that schools will become self-governing, quasi-private establishments run by vested interests. They will be able to set their own curriculum and determine staff wages. In return the government will give them the school buildings and land to do with as they wish. This will lead inevitably to a lottery where well-resourced, high achieving schools will attract  good teachers and the less able pupils are taught by less able teachers: a downward spiral of under-achievement by schools in poor communities. High achieving schools will get Academy status (equivalent to the failing ‘Charter schools’ in the USA) and they will be able to take over other schools which are less successful. This is a clear recipe for privatisation of education. Academies (which are supposed to be non-selective) have a record of excluding twice as many pupils as State schools. Who will pick up those young people who are excluded when all schools are private academies and what will be the social cost of having young people excluded from school with little hope of getting a good education?

Given a chance Barnsley’s young people are as good as any others. They can go to university and be high achievers if they have the right start in life. That right start means employment for their parents and resources in their schools. Under this Tory coalition government’s plans for cuts to education at all levels, lack of training for employment, and no plans for investment in new British industry, we appear to be in for a lean time in Barnsley. How long before we hear Norman Tebbitt’s famous quote again to ‘get on our bikes’ if we want a job? 

Barnsley Politics is local politics: the kind of politics that does not raise any attention at national level but is of the utmost importance to local residents. The similarity with national and international politics is real though. Just like ‘real’ politicians, councillors and candidates at local elections fight tooth and nail to get their ideas across and hope to be able to implement them for the benefit of local people. The problem often starts with definition of ‘local people’. Does it mean the whole community or just a narrow sectional interest which corresponds to the candidates ideas?

For the major parties with a national base ‘local’ means a smaller unit of their national electorate. ‘Local’ councils to the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties are mini-governments in line with their own national policies. You know what you are getting with the national parties. They have policies driven by philosophies and practice which can be examined in the light of those policies. This enables voters to compare their practice with the rhetoric. In short they are consistent and voters can rely on them telling the local truth. It is not always to the liking of the electorate but at least it can be tested against their record in government. You know what you will get with a major party.

Independents are not so predictable! They are often ex-members of a national party who have become disenchanted because they cannot get their own way. They cannot dictate policy to others in the party or community by themselves, so they leave or are ejected. The dictum that says ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ applies in this case. Individuals within a party will sometimes become so carried away with their own importance that they think they are more important than anybody else. Every dictator throughout history was convinced they were right. When they try to assert their importance within a political party they will be ‘whipped’ back into line by the party machine. That is why we have political parties: so that we do not end up with dictators. It is one of the checks and balances within the British party political system.

Too often now those individuals will continue in their delusions of grandeur, supported by the press construction of corruption in politics and the consequent rejection of national parties. Some have been rejected by the party for not complying with the rules which govern good practice and political development. Some have decided to stand for election as individuals. Some have even set up their own parties, which usually flicker and die just as quickly. They are after all not real parties but mini-dictatorships (e.g. BNP, The Barnsley Party, etc.). More often they amalgamate to make an ill-defined collection of elected members, connected only by their opposition to the mainstream parties. They have no party structure to support new ideas so they steal others’. This is probably the most dangerous stage of their thankfully short political lives.

They often look like a real party to the voters. They have a collective title (e.g. The Independents; The Barnsley Party, aka J Brown, etc.); they have a loose set of aims and objectives and a ‘leader’. What they do not have is a credible common ideology, philosophy or ethic which drives their policies. They are often what the French revolutionaries called the ‘Party of Little Shopkeepers’. Not always a literal description of their members but close enough for definition of so-called ‘Independents’.

They are often drawn from that class of people who know vaguely that they want to do something but are not quite sure what they want to do, so they go into business in a small way. They are in short ‘small thinkers’. When they are tested they only know what not to do. They are limited by their own imagination, rather than supported by the collective imagination. Politics should be about people discussing ideas and reaching conclusions which improve their lives and those of their communities. It should not be about small-minded self-interest.

In the final analysis these so-called ‘independent’ politicians are neither independent nor politicians. They are usually a pale imitation of the major parties. The problem for them is that they are a collection of many ideas from all the major parties and none, which quickly dissolves into chaos. The problem for the voters is that they often do not find out how bankrupt their ideas are until they are elected. They are political parasites who are accountable to nobody once they are elected. They do not need to even turn up to meetings or do any work for their electorate.

Barnsley stands at a cross-roads in political terms. Do voters stick with one of the mainstream political parties and hope their collective ideas serve them well; or do they branch out on an adventure into the unknown political wilderness led by a bunch of individual small thinkers, peddling their untested ‘common-sense’ solutions. The only political capital these people have is that which they have stolen from mainstream political parties. Barnsley is better with the Mainstream parties which are backed by think tanks, universities and tried and tested practice; set against an ideology of service to the common good. At least they are accountable.

The dilemma in Barnsley is that politics in the shape of Mrs Thatcher destroyed the system of democracy we had in Barnsley when she closed our economy and destroyed our communities. Now we need to build a new democracy, which speaks to individuals and caters for the common good. We can only do that by joining and working with mainstream political parties which are accountable between elections.

My father-in-law Robin Norbury, who died recently after a short illness aged 78, was widely regarded as ‘a true champion of the environment’ whose work benefited many in his adopted home town of Barnsley. He played a leading role in establishing the Trans Pennine Trail, Old Moor Wetlands Centre and Elsecar Heritage Centre, as well as being a prominent peace campaigner and a leading local advocate for mental health.

Born in Coventry in 1931, Robin was old enough to vividly remember the blitz and firestorm which devastated the city in November 1940 and killed hundreds of civilians. His family, including older sister Daphne, then moved to Leicester. After attending the Friends School at Sibford, a Quaker boarding school near Banbury, Robin became a conscientious objector to national military service, and instead joined the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), working as an orderly on a cancer ward at Bradford Royal Infirmary.

Returning to attend Art College in Leicester, Robin met and married Margaret Hatton, with whom he went on to have four children, George, Helen, Harry and Isobel. Training as a teacher, he taught at Stratford Grammar School and lived in Upminster, taking his two year old son on the first CND march to protest against atomic weapons at Aldermaston in 1958 (and again in 2008).

It was in 1964 that the family moved to Yorkshire, where Robin took up an exciting post as lecturer at Bretton Hall College in the new discipline of environmental studies, working under the inspiring and radical leadership of Sir Alec Clegg. At first they lived in Denby Dale (where they were known as ‘the family that missed the pie’ for moving in 3 days after the first pie festival for 36 years), then Woolley, then Haigh Hall. Whilst at the college he oversaw the acquisition of a historic collection of farm machinery and helped set up the first exhibition at what is now the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. During this time Robin was also active in Barnsley Quaker Meeting and served as Quaker chaplain at Wakefield Prison.

Taking early retirement from higher education in 1981, Robin stood for election to Barnsley Council, serving as a Labour councillor for Darton ward from 1983-99.  His commitment, hard work and mastery of detail saw him soon promoted to be Chair of Housing Committee and Chair of Planning Committee; and even after he stepped down the regard of his former colleagues was shown by his subsequent co-option to the Environment Scrutiny Commission, where he recently stated his desire to see “Barnsley’s very fine environment fully valued and cherished by all; and Barnsley’s education system nurturing human values and sustainability, learning from and about its society and surroundings.”

Whilst on the Council, he played a major role in linking up with other local authorities to establish the Trans Pennine Trail for walkers and cyclists from Liverpool to Hull via Barnsley in 1989 , and later to link this across Europe with long distance footpath E8 from Cork to Istanbul. During his time as Chair, TPT won the ‘Amazing Space’ category of the 2006 National Lottery awards competition which Robin was presented with on national television by Linda Barker.

Robin spoke of the Trail as: “a complex blend of pathways, tracks and off-road routes designed to permit users to pass through areas of great natural beauty, sometimes in very close proximity to areas of industry and urban sprawl, so that beautiful, wild places can be enjoyed in one of the UK’s most densely populated corridors.”

He also played a leading role in setting up Old Moor Wetlands Trust (now RSPB), was Chair of Elsecar Heritage Centre when the Queen visited in 1994, Vice-Chair of Dearne Valley Groundwork Trust and latterly had thrown his considerable enthusiasm into being a trustee of Wentworth Castle Gardens, where he was credited with playing ‘a huge role in the rescue and revival of this historic estate.’

But his concerns were not purely environmental. He supported striking miners in South Yorkshire during the Miners Strike, a grim time when he believed his phone was being tapped by the authorities, and was active for many years in both Barnsley CND and the Barnsley Stop the War campaign. At the height of the Cold War he helped set up the Barnsley branch of British Soviet Friendship Society, and persuaded the council to town twin with the Ukrainian mining town of Gorlovka. More recently he had been appalled by the devastation in Gaza and had hosted a fundraising garden party for Medical Aid for Palestine. Just last week the national Stop The War campaign produced a pamphlet of the best questions sent in to the Chilcott Inquiry on Iraq, and Robin’s question was one of the ones selected.

Arising from direct experience within the family, Robin also had a great concern to ensure better support for patients and families of people with mental illness. He was active on the regional carers group of the Making Space charity, and championed carer involvement in the health service through Barnsley Arena and the Patient & Public Involvement Forum. In recent years he helped set up the Barnsley Carers Garden and jointly with Margaret was named Barnsley ‘Carer of the Year 2008.’

Robin was a very committed family man, for whom his four children and six grandchildren meant everything. In the 1960s there were ambitious family expeditions in a VW camper van to the Outer Hebrides and along the Galician coast to Santiago de Compostella, whilst in later years he took grandchildren to Cuba, Morocco and Norway. However, only months after celebrating their Golden Wedding in 2007, it was found that Margaret had a terminal illness. Although devastated, Robin felt privileged to use his early FAU hospital experience in being able to nurse her at home throughout her final weeks until her death in February 2008.

As a person Robin has been described as having a ‘quiet and kindly demeanour which hid a real fire for all his passions’. He had a huge fund of stories and memories, which linked into his great charm and ability to relate easily to all kinds of people. Although a scholarly person, with a great historical insight which helped him read landscapes, and understand great art, architecture, and music, this was rooted also in his own skills as an oil painter, woodworker, poultry keeper and gardener. Throughout his final months, perhaps unaware of the extent of impending illness, he managed to drive across the Pennines each week to look after a daughter recovering from brain surgery and then to fulfil a long held ambition to visit Auschwitz just weeks before his death.

A truly gregarious companion, his hospitality was wide-ranging – from hosting the repentant USAF chaplain who had blessed the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima, a lifer from Wakefield Jail, and a Soviet Cosmonaut to (a source of great family mirth) the appropriately named Belgian President of the European Ramblers Association, Monsieur Eeseboot.                     [Ian McHugh 8^th February 2010]

Electoral reform is not something the Liberals dreamed up to ensure they get a larger share of the vote at General Elections; nor is it a means of getting extremist parties elected when nobody really wants them. We need to ask of ourselves whether a Conservative government under First-past-the-Post would be preferable to an alliance with the smaller parties under Proportional Representation (PR). PR is a means of ensuring that every vote counts and that every voter has a part to play in the election of a government.

If we are afraid of those ‘smaller parties’ including the Far Right  extremists, we must ensure Labour ideas, principles and ethics are presented better to the electorate. The notion of fair elections under a truly representative system holds no fears for Labour thinkers as evidenced by those who support it (Fabians, Compass, Left Foot Forward, Progress): all left of centre think-tanks.

Robin Cook said he was not prepared to put up with a system which ‘gave Labour an opportunity every 30 years to get a majority the way the Conservatives do and then govern in the same way’. (Robin Cook 1998) The fact of political life is that one party turns the ratchet to the right and then another turns it to the left. The status quo remains the same. If we want change we must change the system of electing governments.

The real issue should be whether elections will deliver power for the electorate! Will the parliament be representative of the population? If the system is representative then the issue of how our country is governed will be a matter of policy rather than tactics, half truths and disputed statistics. Labour will no longer need to act as a one-party-coalition in order to please the whole electorate before trying to get re-elected. We can campaign on real issues of importance to ordinary people.

If voters were able to vote in favour of who they wanted they would be less likely to vote against those they did not want; and allow the extremists to get elected by default.

In 1951 under the current system of voting, we had the absurdity of a Conservative government with a 17 seat majority after having polled almost a quarter of a million votes less than Labour. In every election from then on Labour and Liberal parties have together polled more than the Conservatives. Yet there have been eight Conservative governments in that time.  Perhaps that is why the Tories plan to reorganise the boundaries to cut 10% of (Labour) seats if they ever win a general election. Then they will exploit their built-in majority to ensure an increasingly  right wing bias to policies. 

This might be the last significant chance for Labour to change the path of  ordinary citizens’ lives for the better. As Polly Toynbee points out:

“Despite the distorting mirror of its right wing press, this country has always had an essentially social democratic majority, split for historic reasons between Labour and Lib. Dems: Margaret Thatcher never had a majority.” (Guardian 26 Jan 2010 polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk)

The dream of socialism appears to have vanished in 1979 but we can still dream of having socialists elected who will have a say in government if we have a fair electoral system.

Turkeys do not vote for Christmas; nor Tory MPs for PR. We must have a referendum as soon as possible. Then we can move forward into debate and fair representation.

In light of the unequal power relationship between working-class and owning- class in Britain it is not before time that John Denham on behalf of the Labour government declared that:

“For the first time, public bodies will have to take class into account and consider what action they can take to tackle entrenched socio-economic disadvantage.” (Denham, J. 14 Jan 2010)

Not least because the potential of many working people is being wasted and:

“We cannot afford the inequality and discrimination at work which restricts opportunities, wastes talent, and sets artificial limits on people’s careers and prospects.” (ibid.)

In Barnsley, where the vast majority  of residents are by most definitions ‘working class’;  there can surely be no real doubt that the status brings with it real disadvantage in a society which is hierarchical and competitive.

As a borough which had a culture of hard work and community solidarity, Barnsley was at ease with itself. The wages were low and the work was hard but coal-mining engendered comradeship and brought benefits of assistance from workmates and community members in hard times.

When the Tories under Thatcher destroyed the mines at a stroke they also destroyed communities. In the interests of global capitalism miners accustomed to a communal work environment found themselves competing for work as individuals against workers from poorer economies as well as the home economy. The education and training system until then had not fitted members of our communities to compete as individuals. There was massive unemployment as a result of pit closures and a switch in roles between the sexes. Many women now became bread-winners and since then we have witnessed many former ‘women’s jobs’ in service industries, being filled by men.

There was a palpable sense of disempowerment and a lack of identity on the part of men in our communities: though it was beneficial that women now found a new sense of power and identity. If the transition from coal-mining to alternatives had been handled sympathetically our communities could have grown from it. Instead it appeared as a means to destroy communities and the power of trades unions, which had represented and educated miners for generations. In place of stable strong communities with lower than average rates of crime and disorder, we now have higher rates of crime, weaker communities and disempowered workers: a classic case of working class communities and individuals being victim to the capitalist system.

When a member of the upper (owning)-class loses a job they often have friends and contacts who will ensure they get another career opportunity: e.g. Tory MPs to TV presenters, disgraced bankers to business consultants, etc. When workers lose their jobs they are at the mercy of ‘the (international)market’.

Discrimination and disadvantage stem from an unequal power relationship: in Barnsley’s case between the Thatcher government and the miners; in other cases capitalism and workers; in disempowered communities long-term residents and migrants. The capitalists in the form of Bankers, Press barons, C.E.O.s of multi-national companies, etc. wield disproportionate power to control the lives of working citizens, internationally. 

John Denham also pointed out in his recent speech, that: “…we’ve also got to recognise that the context for what we are doing has changed.” Tony Blair said that it would take three terms of Labour government to change Britain for the better. It has taken three terms to get to a point where we must do something about inequalities or we will all suffer further from divisions in society. Whether it is the Conservatives with their small government, few services, devil-take-the-hindmost philosophy where Britain is ruled by a classically educated ‘elite’; or a Nationalist party’s strategy of divide, discriminate and rule; we will be victims of disadvantage if we are not (as John Denham said in his speech:) “…committed to tackling disadvantage wherever it exists”.

For Barnsley that discrimination would be due to working-class disadvantage and the deliberate discrimination of a Tory government against the working (by hand and by brain)-class. Most immigrants into Barnsley are members of that working class, just as they have been for generations. We must be careful not to allow the forces of the far-right to drive a wedge between us and create a false divide between workers, of whatever ethnic/cultural origin. We are stronger together.

Barnsley Labour Party extends a big ‘Thankyou’ to the thousands of workers in essential services who have maintained our quality of life through the last few cold weeks. We are thankful to the snow-plough and gritter drivers, personnel in the emergency services, shop workers, social workers, bus drivers, etc. and all the back-room administration staff who keep our borough working at times of stress. They are part of the network of workers who deliver universal services to all those in need regardless of ability to pay. (Even bankers get the benefit of emergency care and rescue.) The cold weather is not ended yet, according to weather forecasts, but we all know that these workers will continue to do their best for all their fellow citizens. Thankyou!

The snow and arctic conditions have been with us in Europe and parts of the USA for several weeks now: almost as if the weather has taken over from where the economic crisis left off. We all appreciate it is not anything that could be controlled by those in government but still the Press appear to want to blame someone: they whine about ‘lack of grit, not enough snow ploughs, salt running out, roads clogged etc. etc’. Actually it’s just winter and if we all appreciate that winter comes and winter goes in a natural cycle; and we tailor our life to the conditions, we would be less stressed.

We can only control the consequences of nature to a limited extent. Gritter vehicles cost approximately £100,000 each; salt about £50 per ton. Barnsley has 11 grit spreading lorries to cover approx. 1,500 Kms. of road. Your Labour council could change the budget to buy more resources but that would affect other services which are needed all year round, instead of the few weeks that the roads are frozen. What service would you like to see cut to pay for the cost of a £100,000 lorry which is not used for most of the decade? It would be useful if citizens requested grit bins to put on their streets for the next time we get snow. Barnsley has 500 of these bins out already which enable residents to clear their own streets when lorries cannot. That way we can pay in effort rather than money.

It all comes down to the fact that ‘you get what you pay for’. If everyone contributes, we all get more from our services. Even those with high salaries get more from universal benefits. After all, high earners still depend on workers on low wages to clear the roads, run the emergency services, staff the shops, work in hospitals, etc. It is at times of stress on the system that we most appreciate the people who oil the wheels of society … from the bottom up.  If we did not have universal benefits for all members of society we would all have to pay for emergency services as they do in other parts of the world. The workers who supply the services would then be paying to be rescued to provide a service for those who pay their wages. Sounds like business people get it both ways then.

Thankyou again to all those who work (often for low wages) on our behalf to keep society healthy.