Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Rory Hamilton, communications co-ordinator for Common Weal and a PhD researcher in urban studies at the University of Glasgow. To receive it direct to your inbox every week, click here.
It is almost certain that this year we will face a General Election, and when voters go to the ballot box, it cannot be a repeat of the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, which saw voters in a a predominantly working-class constituency stay at home.
It is hardly surprising that constituents felt none of the main political parties in Scotland speak for them when both Labour and the SNP offer the same neoliberal economic model that has done nothing to lift their material conditions and the only difference is their opposing stances on the constitutional question. Parties need to reach out with something different, and they can start with local democracy.
This year it will be 30 years since John Major’s government created the current 32 unitary authorities we have today, the last time local government was seriously reformed.
Scotland is lagging behind.
The average European population size of the most local level of democracy is 17,241 citizens, meanwhile the average population size of Scotland’s most local level of democracy is 169,525.
READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: Scotland is crying out for a bolder vision
And we’re not just lagging behind in terms of the size of our local governments. Common Weal has advocated for more local democracy alongside our land reform campaign for some time now, and we have consistently advocated for at least another layer of municipal government with real financial powers as a way to tackle local issues.
However, it is crucial that we avoid the "local trap". Those who say we don’t need more politicians may well agree with the thrust of this argument, that local does not necessarily mean better. Connecting with local struggles and community resilience must go further than the easy assumption of doing the same but smaller and develop democracy in places away from the state, however local.
By bringing the state to people we will be able to develop municipalisms akin to those transforming the lives of citizens in Barcelona, Cleveland, Jackson, Thuringia, Montpellier and Naples.
In Barcelona, for example, a city similar in population size to the Greater Glasgow region, a major economic hub in an area of Spain with its own constitutional questions, a type of "platform municipalism" developed out of a response to the global financial crisis by Platform for Mortgage-Affected People (PAH), a housing movement which sought to address the material concerns of ordinary people in the city.
The advantage offered to them by the local and municipal levels was that they were able to take their movement from beyond the state into the state in order to achieve a more strategic end: Socialising the economy.
In the case of Barcelona, the political party which emerged from PAH, Barcelona en Comù, were able to take power and implement policies which returned power to ordinary people through a democratic engagement in the economy practices of the local state. For example, by incubating local co-operatives and social enterprises around the city, remunicipalising key public services and utilities, introducing tighter regulation of tourism and tackling AirBnb head-on, among other things.
Prior to Barcelona en Comù’s election in 2015, Barcelona shared many similar characteristics to the struggles faced in Glasgow and Edinburgh today – complicity between mainstream political parties and economic elites, an urban housing model oriented to luxury tourism, consumption, real estate speculation and foreign direct investment, as well as the emptying of spaces for citizen participation.
The example set by activists shows the need to connect up our struggles to bring about real change, something lacking across all social movements whether independence, environmental, housing, or trade union campaigners. The forces against us all are strong, and a successful counter-hegemonic strategy requires alliance-building, something made easier when institutions and finance are taken seriously at a local level.
Take another example, Berlin, where a citizens’ energy co-operative was established as a means of remunicipalising local energy generation and distribution – the idea was sold to citizens as both a democratic and investment opportunity. The local scale and spaces created by the local governments were able to incubate citizen engagement and create change that put power back in the hands of ordinary people.
The use of the municipal scale as a means to achieving energy sovereignty through renewable energy provides a direct contradiction with the challenges faced in Scotland’s energy sector where public ownership could provide relief for citizens across Scotland.
READ MORE: Robin McAlpine: What 2024 will mean for Scottish independence
The Scottish Government backed off the idea of a public energy company at a national level in favour of more local energy development agencies, and then sold off our offshore wind assets for foreign direct investment. If it weren’t for lack of ambition we could be repeating the rewards of municipal energy ownership
Investing in our local democracy is not just a case of doing the same but smaller, it is a case of making the everyday political and giving ordinary people the means to change things for themselves.
Voters need something to vote for, so let’s give them something.
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