Category Archives: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
Liverpool 2007 And 2008 – Different Emphases, Similar Opportunities?
Liverpool is excitedly preparing for its big years in 2007 (the city’s 800th anniversary) and 2008 (the European Capital of Culture year). With such a long and dramatic history of diaspora, who knows what the city will be like by the end of the celebrations? The scope for enterprise – both in Liverpool and by other cities and regions – to build relationships across Europe and beyond is enormous.
BBC Radio 3 hosted a fascinating Free Thinking event in Liverpool’s FACT building last weekend, with presentations, discussions and performances by an impressively eclectic array of debaters and artists. And, perhaps appositely, the very next day the City launched its initial plans for the 2008 European Capital of Culture year.
One of the sessions at the BBC event focussed on the question, ‘Is Liverpool an English city?’. ‘Everyone in the country knows Liverpool is special – and unique,’ says the blurb, ‘but do they secretly mean it’s “unenglish”?’
Sadly, I couldn’t be at the debate, but it’s an interesting question – and one that, although I’ve lived in Liverpool for over three decades, I’d find difficult to answer. All of us have only one shot at life, so comparisons are difficult, but is it usual for people who have been resident in a place for over a third of a century still to be asked where they ‘come from’?
Ports are meeting places for the world
Working up the hill, away from the ports in the education and cultural sectors, it actually took me a while to realise that for some of my fellow citizens, Liverpool’s maritime history is the city’s autograph feature. Indeed, until the Heseltine interventions in the 1980s it was not even possible really to see much of that history. At least the reclamation of the southern docks for retail and leisure use (the Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum are situated there) helped us to see what an important port Liverpool was – and in fact still is, for freight rather than passengers.
So Liverpool is cosmopolitan in a particular way. In the mid-eighteenth century that one port was involved with 40% of the world’s trade. Liverpool is therefore home to many whose predecessors reached the city by sea, or who in some cases had intended to travel onwards, but halted when they got this far.
We have communities of several generations from the Caribbean and parts of Africa, from China (Liverpool’s China town is a large and important feature of the city) and the Indian sub-continent, who travelled from the West; and, from Eastern and Central Europe, reached us from the East. With these historic influxes has come of plethora of religious and cultural understandings – Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Orthodox and many others.
Ireland and Continental Western Europe
What is less evident in our overt cultural mix is the direct influence of Southern Europe – though it is certainly there, especially in the sometimes overarching ethos of Roman Catholicism and Southern Ireland (Eire). And then there is the strongly Protestant Orange Order influence of Northern Ireland (Ulster), whose descendants in Liverpool, like their southern counterparts, have traditionally lived siloed in tight-knit communities with little knowledge or tolerance of other ways of seeing the world.
As is well known, the clash of Southern and Northern Irish influences (Catholics ‘versus’ Protestants) was only be resolved when, in the 1980s and ‘90s, the leaders of Liverpool’s two great cathedrals (Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock) by their personal example called time on this damaging friction.
Liverpool 2007 – 800 years and proud of it
Given the particular diasporas from which Liverpool has benefited historically, it will be fascinating to see what the city can make of its opportunity to shine on the world and European stage in 2007 and 2008. There are a number of factors here, even apart from the celebrations as such, which should enhance the opportunities for Liverpool at this time – amongst them, the massive privately funded Grosvenor ‘Liverpool 1’ commercial development (at £950 million reputedly the largest project of this kind in Europe) which is currently taking root in the heart of the city centre.
The 2007 event will celebrate Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary. (The city’s charter was signed in 1207.) This surely is the opportunity of a lifetime to acknowledge and embrace the rich and diverse cultures and traditions of the city, to look back at our past but also forward – not only to what follows in 2008, but also much further into the future.
This is in a very real sense ‘Liverpool’s year’, a ‘birthday’ (as the locals insist on calling it) worthy of pulling out the stops. 800 years as a city, even if others can also claim it (Leeds’ charter is also dated 1207), is an important milestone.
The birthday party will be for the people of Liverpool. Others will be very welcome to join us – what’s a party without honoured guests? – but the style, the scene itself, needs to be determined by those, the citizens of Liverpool, whose ‘birthday’ it is.
Liverpool 2008 – European Capital of Culture
But what does Liverpool’s history mean for its year as European Capital of Culture? It has consistently been said that it was ‘the people’, Liverpudlians themselves, who won this award. Is there a danger that 2008 could be ‘more of the same’, an extension of the scenario for 2007?
If we return to our first question, is Liverpool “unenglish”?, we need to note that, so it is said, some 60% of Liverpudlians have never even been to London (and I’d guess that maybe 90% of people living in England outside the North West have as yet never been to Liverpool).
Given this situation, we must ask how many of the citizens of Liverpool so far have a real knowledge of Europe outside the influences we have already noted? How many are fluent in other European languages? How many have business or other formal connections across Europe? The answer is surely that here is a city at the start in every way of its journey into the twenty-first century.
Unique opportunity
Liverpool 2007 / 8 offers a unique opportunity to establish two-way connections with the city. The very next day after the BBC debate on Liverpool’s ‘englishness’ or otherwise, the city launched its initial programme for the 2008 year with a grand civic event in St. George’s Hall, and another one in London for the wider world. 2007 is for Liverpool; 2008 is intended for the world,
2008 offers business and cultural entrepreneurs from around Europe and beyond a real chance to establish themselves in the city, whilst Liverpool’s eyes are firmly fixed on the global stage – and, we hope, theirs on us.
The full extent of the outward-facing Liverpool ‘offer’ for 2007 and especially 2008 remains to be seen – there is increasing confidence that something interesting and worthwhile will be made of these unique opportunities.
The scope for inward investment, connection and synergy with elsewhere is however already established as truly enormous.
Here is a city ripe for growth of every kind, and increasingly ready to jump at the chance. This is a virtuous circle for anyone enterprising enough to recognise it.
Global players
Whether Liverpool is “unenglish” we must leave the BBC debaters to determine. Whether that same city is now positioned once again to take its place as a major player at the European and global levels we can answer for ourselves.
The answer is Yes.
And, in contrast to the last time Liverpool was a great trading city, when the odds were stacked against ‘outsiders’, this time Liverpool will be trading on an even playing field with its external partners.
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This article is also published (as Liverpool: Ripe For Growth in 2007 And 2008) on the European Renaissance website.
Diversity Watch Widens
It’s not just public conferences which often fail on diversity. The Bank of Scotland Corporate’s advertisement today in Merseyside’s Businessweek shows the distance still to go before the chaps grasp what diversity might be about – and why everyone, from banks to sub-regions like Merseyside, needs to implement it.
We have already established the Conference Diversity Index on this website. Now it seems we need to widen the scope of Diversity Watch, to encompass other aspects of public presentation.
On the day when The Guardian carries an article by Jill Treanor entitled ‘No room at the top – fewer women reaching boards of Britain’s top firms’, the weekly supplement of my other morning newspaper, Liverpool’s Daily Post Businessweek supplement provides plenty of evidence of how this comes about.
The Daily Post has today a Special Supplement on ‘Business Success:’ with a ‘ Focus on corporate growth on Merseyside’, in which the lead feature considers ‘Nurturing seeds of growth’.
My precision with titles here is because what follows further into the Supplement demonstrates very clearly why everyone needs to be very worried, both about gender (and other) equality in business and, more specifically, about the Merseyside economy.
More of the same
The Post Supplement carries a full page advertisement for the sponsors, Bank of Scotland Corporate, featuring twenty eight photographs of staff, no doubt all fine folk, who offer Merseyside a service which the Bank of Scotland says is ‘Commercial. Efficient. Entrepreneurial’.
Of these personnel just ONE is a woman. And you have to look very hard to find her. Her photograph is in the very bottom corner of the page, the last of the twenty eight people displayed.
Could it be that Merseyside, to refer back to the lead article above, is ‘nurturing’ the opportunities or ‘seeds of (corporate) growth’ for chaps rather more than for non-chaps?
Unembarrassed?
It beggars belief that anyone could find this acceptable; but presumably they do. Discrimination legislation aside (and that must surely be where they have put it), how can there be any confidence in an organisation which so unashamedly flaunts its lack of awareness of, or perhaps respect for, the issues?
You would have thought that at the very least the Bank of Scotland Commercial might have decided against photoraphs to advertise their diversity deficit.
Missing the point
Diversity is critical both to basic notions of fairness and, from the hard business perspective, to economic success. Obviously to some people the status quo must still be more acceptable (very acceptable?) than looking to see how to better the Commercial. Positive. Entrepreneurial aspects of the enterprise, whether it’s a bank or the whole of Merseyside we’re thinknig about.
And here’s the final irony: the strapline for the Bank of Scotland Commercial advertisement is ‘Look at things differently’.
The BURA ‘Futures’ Debate
The 2006 British Urban Regeneration Conference (BURA) conference ‘Futures’ Debate raised many important issues. Critical to all these, if regeneration is ultimately to be effective, will be increasing focus on (1) the implications of global warming and sustainability, and (2) the challenging task of mutual ‘translation’ between the many stakeholders in any developing programme, to ensure that understandings and ideas are shared and can evolve.
I went to the ‘Futures’ Debate at the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) Annual Conference in Milton Keynes, on October 11th. The debate was a vigorous affair, chaired and led by BURA Director Jackie Sadek, a woman who knows how to keep the exchange of ideas flowing.
The format comprised an introductory address by Government Minister Richard Caborn, two minute slots each for six leading regeneration practitioners, and responses from a ‘jury’ of expert witnesses. Then the discussion was opened to the floor – more than a hundred practitioners and attendant media representatives from around the country and beyond.
The central issue under debate was how we all perceived the future agenda of regeneration in the U.K.
The event was, as Jackie Sadek herself said, a ‘rollercoaster’ of deeply informed give-and-take, covering matters from the micro and to the massively macro. No single brief report could do it justice, but I will try here to give a feel for the ideas which in retrospect caught my attention, at least.
Keeping the Government’s attention
Leadership and ‘guidance’ from on high were felt by several speakers to be missing from the regeneration agenda. There’s plenty of regulation – to judge from comments, some of it outdated – but too little real enablement. Some said that governmental attention spans are too short; regeneration is a long-term proposition. Others criticised the ‘constant’ changes which they saw in regulation and funding, and wished for more attention to large-scale infrastructure.
No-one, however, suggested that the government is not committed to regeneration as a seriously long-term venture; and most speakers thought it can be demonstrated by ‘real’ examples that regeneration does work. There’s scope here for dialogue at the highest levels, if common positions between protagonist practitioners can be elucidated.
Silos and scale
Regeneration still is not joined up, if we are to believe the comments of many speakers. We continue to operate in silos (including fiscally; no
Where’s The Soul In Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance?
Are ‘regeneration’, ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ different? Perhaps they are. Regeneration is predominantly a physical thing, whilst ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ are increasingly about the real meaning, the ‘soul’ of the regenerational process. The journey from one to the other is a transition from the literal to the artistic and cultural. But how best to get there?
How can regeneration work so that it is in the end more than just developing markets for investors, important though that financial interface is?
Experience of regeneration and renewal in the UK tells us that it is a mixture of positive and negative. As numerous reports (including Lord Rogers’) have shown, there are things which have been done well, and things which have had seriously unfortunate outcomes. Both sorts of experience need to be recognised for the valuable lessons they offer.
The different ‘voices’ of regeneration, renewal and renaissance
There are several perspectives here: those of the community activist, the politician, the business operator, the planner, the economic strategist. Only rarely however is the voice of the artist heard; and this is where it may be possible to make a difference. Arts and culture, ‘high’ or less so, can give people common cause, something in which, if presented positively, they can all share and become involved.
From that can arise also a common sense of purpose and direction. People who feel involved feel a stakehold and ownership. This is what makes regeneration into renewal, and then into renaissance. This is the essence of the journey from bricks and mortar to genuine community.
Hope Street Liverpool
An example of this approach is the renaissance of Liverpool’s Hope Street. This process, over more than a decade, evolved from a deeply held ‘grass-roots’ conviction that Hope Street deserved the very best of public realms, to give everyone a sense of pride in what was slowly estabished as the Hope Street Quarter. Hope Street is home of the city’s two great cathedrals, two universities and of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Everyman Theatre, not to mention the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), Blackburne House and much, much more.
Yet on first acquaintance Hope Street looked tired, dirty and possibly unsafe. Hardly an appropriate ambience for world-class cultural institutions which are found from one end to the other of this historic thoroughfare. HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a voluntary ‘arts and regeneration’ charity, was therefore formed to change this sad state of affairs.
Nonetheless, it took enormous focus and years of hard work by volunteers to move the authorities (and even some of the major institutions) to perceive what was evident to those with eyes to see: Hope Street is a place with soul, a place for creative and exciting people with ideas. In other words, it was and is the ideal place from which to nurture renaissance and renewal, to the benefit of both local people (more visitors and customers, more jobs, more fun, more sense of community…) and the city’s wider economy.
The soul of renewal
There has to be a way to get to the ‘soul’ of renewal, to its ownership by people in a way that enables economic benefit but does not preclude the human reality which lies behind the more formal contexts of the action.
Again, Hope Street offers a (cautionary) example. The Summer of 2006 at last saw the completion of the long-sought £3 m. public realm works programme. Everyone was delighted and, after delays on the part of some authorities, eventually there was the opportunity to celebrate in the biggest street festival since the Silver Jubilee visit of H.M. the Queen in 1977. But at the very same time those who had worked so hard as volunteers to bring the transformation about found they had in many ways been displaced by new commercial and corporate interests who now at last saw the potential of the Hope Street Quarter.
The immediate parallel which springs to mind here is with Hoxton and Shoreditch in London, where many creative people say they have been driven out, ‘displaced‘ by high prices. The parallel, though valid, is not however exact. In this instance it is those who who give their activities voluntarily who are at risk of displacement, perhaps at least as much as individual artists and non-corporate creative professionals.
Regeneration for whom?
The jury remains out on the extent to which those grass-roots visionaries who dreamed of a great future for Hope Street Quarter will continue to be central to the area’s destiny. What sort of ‘community’ involvement there will be in years to come remains to be seen.
How often do regeneration proposals move beyond the physically visible in any real way, to what it actually means to everyone concerned – whether those who live in the area, those who work or visit there, those who invest there, or those who are concerned for its conservation, historically or environmentally?
And, if the claim is made that getting to the real soul of renewal does happen, why are the people entrusted to do it so often the same team who draw up the physical plans? This is a hugely different task.
Is it business-like?
But the question of soul alone is not enough. It is also necessary to demonstrate actually to those who invest large amounts in regeneration (a) that ‘soul’ is critical to meaningful renewal, (b) that it makes business sense in the best meaning of the term, and (c) that it is of itself business-like, that it can create value for the people who talk about ‘soul’, as well as for others.
Without evidence of these things, it is difficult to ensure this deeper aspect of renewal will ever happen at all.
For this is a far cry from the way that most regeneration and renewal is conducted, and it requires a constructively critical approach of a kind only rarely encountered, the courage to articulate vision and show leadership in facing up to difficulties and opportunities openly.
Case studies, honesty and imagination
One challenge for those who believe in this wider vision, collaboratively, is to find a way to nurture such a new emphasis, probably through a combination of case studies, disarming honesty and imaginative leaps. Perhaps this is most importantly where that artistic voice is needed.
What certainly won’t work on its own in sharing this ‘message’ is the conventional conference, addressing the usual suspects…. But neither perhaps would suddenly challenging everyone’s expectations in too dramatic a way.
The next question is therefore, what balance in the greater scheme of things can be made between strictly ‘regenerational’ activities and more meaningful, longer term, ‘renewal and renaissance’ ones?
And should we expect that balance to change over time?
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This article is also published (as Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance: Where’s The Soul Of The Enterprise?), with Jim Greenhalf’s response, on the European Renaissance website.
Penny Lane, Not Any Lane (Liverpool)
Penny Lane in Liverpool is one of Liverpool’s most famous streets. How sad then that the high hopes of this community have been dashed so many times, as they try to secure their dream of a Millennium Green and a Centre for visitors and locals alike. A decade waiting is quite long enough. Now there must be some action.
Ten years is not a long time in the life of a city, but it can be in the life of a community. In that time people can arrive and depart, have families or see their youngsters leave. Many things determine the likelihood of any of these events, not least changes in the tone and appearance of that community’s actual location.
These thoughts came to mind as I recently made a visit to Penny Lane, that part of Liverpool’s inner suburbs, not far from my own home, which has been immortalised by our most famous sons, the Beatles.
Does it have to take a decade?
Ten years ago local residents decided they would like a Millennium Green and a Centre for locals and the many visitors, on the Grove Mount site of fairly undeveloped land along Penny Lane. After much hard work they secured a promise of such an amenity as long as they were able to secure the land and produce a sensible business plan. As part of the celebratory activity following this promise, I took ‘before’ photographs of the area – which I had hoped would swiftly be superseded by the ‘after’ photos.
Three cameras and thousands of photographs later, I’m still waiting.
The City Council has made various vaguely encouraging noises over the years, but nothing of substance seems to be happening. The field still hosts very occasional children’s football matches, but is if anything is more derelict than before. It is strewn with litter and worse; and the building in the corner is in a serious state of collapse.
Community impact
Unfortunately, much the same can be said of some people in the local community. Local youngsters (by no means a majority of them, but enough) use the field to hang out, disturbing and worrying other residents, whilst those who campaigned for the Millennium Green hand on grimly to their dream, never having imagined when they began that so much later still there would be no evidence of success.
Is this the way to treat people who give whatever they can of their time, imagination and enthusiasm in trying to improve their community?
People Power
Someone once said that a theme to which I consistently return is People Power. Too right, if what is meant by that is respecting and helping decent folk to maintain the areas in which they live. This, in my books, is a requirement on us all.
For now, the only satisfied ‘resident’ of the proposed Penny Lane Millennium Green is the cat who suns himself on the entrance pillars to this sorry, derelict site. I really hope that before long the powers that be will get a grip, and that, before the humans decide to give up completely, this happy little felix will have to relocate.
Learning From BURA
Membership of the British Urban Regeneration Association has helped me to see a wider picture of renaissance and renewal in the U.K. Lessons learned include: 1. Wider stakeholder engagement is vital right from the start of a proposed regeneration programme. 2. Environmental sustainability also needs to be built in from the start. 3. There is a need, increasingly recognised, to ‘translate’ the perspectives and understandings of different players at all levels in the process of renewal.
I’ve been a member of the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) almost since its beginnings. They held an early event in an enormous marquee on the brownfield site of the old Liverpool Speke Airport, now home to the Liverpool South Marriott Hotel; and somehow HOPES, the community-led charity which I chair, was invited to send a representative.
Now, a decade or so later, I am delighted just to have been elected to the BURA Board of Directors.
So the past few weeks have been a steep learning curve for me.
Engaging in the business
Firstly there was a visit to the BURA offices in Hatton Garden, London, where I met the very busy and welcoming officers and staff. There’s nothing like seeing people actually at their workstations for perceiving how involved and interconnected their business is.
Then I found myself in Manchester, chairing a BURA Forum of practitioners from all sorts of backgrounds who are connected with that city. And again, a few weeks later, I attended a dinner in that same location where we discussed the issues currently facing the construction industry, as it moves towards a more coherent and cohesive identity.
And finally this week I went to my first full Board meeting, in London – an event where, new girl as I am, I felt immediate resonance with many of my own concerns and interests, but in the course of which I also discovered a great deal more about the wide and fascinating remit of BURA overall.
An emerging consensus
Three things have struck me particularly about everything I’ve seen and experienced over the past couple of months.
Firstly, there is a rapidly emerging new core emphasis on what it means to talk about stakeholding in regeneration and renewal. At last it seems to be understood (a) that the engagement of wider stakeholders (for which read, ‘the community’ and others who have no direct commercial or public service interest) is not a desirable add-on to be pursued once the main objectives of a programme have been determined; but, rather (b) that without the insights and active consent of at least the majority of those unto whom a programme will be ‘done’, there is little point in the programme anyway. And this applies whether one considers the proposals from a straight business or from a wider social perspective….. Look no further than this week’s High Court judgement on proposed Edge Lane (Eastern Approach) developments in Liverpool, for evidence of the impact an individual – the doughty Elizabeth Pascoe in this case – can have on a situation where, in some people’s view, more emphasis should have been given early on to stakeholder issues.
Secondly, the consensus now developing offers a much more integral position on environmental sustainability. Again, those involved in regeneration now concur that this needs to be built into their plans right from the beginning, especially since energy will often be produced much more locally to its destination in the future.
And the third lesson so far? It’s that the sort of tasks I tend to find myself undertaking these days will become even more an aspect of professional activity in the future. There is sometimes a real need, now much more commonly acknowledged than previously, to ‘translate’ the work and understandings of given parts of a professional team to people in other parts of it; and often on top of this there is also a requirement to translate the perceptions of wider stakeholders to the professionals (and vice versa). Sometimes this has to be done on a ‘salvage’ basis, to re-stabilise a programme already under way, and other times it can be undertaken, more comfortably, far earlier in proceedings.
The humble joined-up approach
I suspect we are seeing the establishment of a new phase in now-maturing regeneration good practice.
For some while there has been considerable consensus about the core skills and activities which comprise most of the professions relating to regeneration. There are now established paradigms around particular professional contributions to regeneration, with all the power and conviction which arises from clearly defined and accredited expertise.
Alongside this however I detect a growing realisation that with acknowledged power and expertise must come a new humility, a genuine desire to learn from other stakeholders of all sorts (and as early on as possible) if regeneration programmes are to achieve their objectives. Whether it’s renewable energy specialists talking with construction engineers and planners, or developers and local residents trying to communicate with each other, everyone is having to articulate their positions very clearly, whilst they also try to perceive how other people see things.
It’s these wider perceptions about how we can learn from each other which BURA’s developing agenda will help to bring about.
In Praise Of Politics
The benefits of modern democracy which we in the U.K. enjoy are diminished by the media when they invite us to confuse the real thing with synthetic ‘political entertainment’ concocted by those who then ‘report’ it. At a time when cyncism about politics is rife, people need to know about the realities of political involvement, so they can make informed judgements about whom they wish to support.
I’ve just returned from the Labour Party conference in Manchester. Personally, I was impressed. The Prime Minister and Chancellor each spoke with great authority and conviction about what politics means to and for them, and I think it would be fair to say their orations resonated clearly with what the large majority of those attending believe and were looking to be affirmed.
My belief is that the Labour Party, whatever its blips and foibles, stands for a way of life which is fair, progressive and ambitious for everyone’s future. Other major parties in the U.K. can make their own case, but there is no doubt that those who seriously subscribe to these alternative credos also believe that their politic represents a way of life which makes sense to some people. I am content to acknowledge this – and where necessary to ‘take them on’, as Tony Blair urged in his speech. No doubt willingness to contest the political territory would apply in reverse for other parties, too.
Political debate about the future
The Labour Party national conference is one of the largest and without a doubt one of the most inclusive conferences in Europe. Women and men, first-time attenders and cabinet ministers, delegates of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and walks of life, meet in the course of that event as equals to bring their richly diverse experience and expertise to the issues of the day.
And the same applies to the democratic political process in the U.K. on a wider scale.
The critical point is this. Where citizens are prepared to give their time and other personal resources to engaging in debate about the future of our country (and that of the globe), they should be respected for having the courage and conviction to do so.
Of course there are caveats to this general position. When opposing parties permit the debate to become unpleasantly personal, or when they step outside the boundaries of decency (as for instance the British National Party does frequently) they diminish fundamentally the democratic process and thereby lose the right to respect and engagement in that process.
Synthetic ‘news’
So what do we make of the media coverage this week?
Frankly, it has not so far been consistently of the best. I have no problem about considered critiques, or even criticism, of the political offer – that’s what politics is about – but I have plenty of reservations about lead stories concerning what Cherie might or might not have muttered to herself, or about the future prospects of John Reid and Gordon Brown, following the synthetic televised gruelling of a supposedly ‘representative’ (and, for its purpose, woefully small) focus group.
This is the media making the news, not reporting it…. Not an unusual occurrence, but one which does not deserve the headline reporting these matters were given. There are serious issues at stake, and the wider public needs to know about them. Such trivial issues are entertaining, but they don’t take us very far in understanding what the underlying politics is all about.
Politics as commitment
Perhaps this needs to be said loud and clear: Many people are involved in politics with no expectation of personal reward. Most professional politicians go the extra mile and more (if they don’t, they deserve the abrupt termination of their political careers which is likely to follow).
Politics on the ground comprises hours of envelope stuffing and telephone calls; it requires rainy Saturday mornings in surgeries in what are now called challenging contexts; it involves knocking on the doors of not-always-appreciative strangers; it requires digging into one’s own pocket far more than filling it. And, critically, it demands the courage and conviction to stand up and say what one believes, and to take the reputational consequences.
And, most of all, decent politics at every level is underpinned by hope for the future – the belief that people can be persuaded to one’s view of what could be.
Politics as entitlement
I disagree fundamentally with the politics of the right, but I agree that sometimes the questions posed by right-wing politicians are valuable pointers to important issues which require resolution. I also accept that, within the bounds of decency and respect for other decent people (a requirement of us all), those who promote such right-wing positions have an entitlement to do so.
Political debate from the beginning of time has been the fairest way to decide who has the best ideas about what should happen, and who should be given the power to make that come about.
News, Politics or Entertainment?
If the media want to tell stories about what Cherie might have said to herself, or about a synthetic, manufactured event around the future of Gordon and John, no-one should stop them, self-serving of media pundits and distracting from serious debate though these stories are. Indeed, perhaps we are all complicit in this, at least insofar as the media would say we read this stuff and don’t challenge it.
But let’s at least ask that spurious ‘political’ stories be reported under the heading of Entertainment, not News; and let’s try to ensure that proper political reporting is delivered in ways which mark it out as Politics properly defined.
Politics is a difficult and sometimes even dangerous game; it needs, and democracy itself needs, the best people and the best efforts we can muster – and this in turn requires a modicum of underlying respect for those who still choose to make the effort.
Hope not cynicism
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If there were a better way to run modern societies than democratic politics, someone would have invented it by now. At a time when the victory of cynicism over respect for engagement in the political process has probably never been greater, we, the public, damage ourselves as well as the politicians if we don’t insist at some level that politics is fundamentally about hope for the future; and that political media-created ‘entertainment’ and democratic politics are different things.
The Conference Diversity Index
Conferences involving public funds and public policy are still too often devised and conducted as though the vast majority of the population were white, male, able-bodied and middle class. The time has come to start measuring in some way the extent to which this limited approach offers the general public value for money.
This is the twenty first century. We in Britain live in a democratic and accountable society run, on the whole, by people who are serious about ‘getting it right’.
How come, then, that I find myself so frequently incensed by the line-up and arrangements for public conferences on critical matters? The answer is simple: conferences about pressing civic matters are still very largely (not exclusively) organised and presented as if the entire planet were inhabited by able-bodied white, middle class, men.
Democratic underpinnings?
There are of course many excellent conference speakers and delegates who happen to be able-bodied, white and middle class; but theirs is not the only perspective or understanding which matters. It therefore follows that policy developed largely on the basis of this perspective will probably be weak or even downright unhelpful (and the evidence of this abounds…. just choose your own example.) So check out the next conference on any matter of general public concern:
Does it have significant diversity in its speakers and and their positions? For gender? For age? For ethnicity? For influence?
Is the agenda helpful in terms of recognising and giving weight to the diverse perspectives within its given community of interest? Do the topics listed for discussion demonstrate this clearly? Do they include specific consideration of possible future action on diversity within the theme being considered?
Is it accessible to everyone? Does it offer a significant number of places for sensible prices (say, the cost of two meals, perhaps £20)? Is it near a train station on a main line (especially if it’s more than local in its remit)? Is the venue easy to navigate for those with mobility and related problems? Assuming the issues under consideration are not privileged in some specific way, will the end-point papers be published on a free, publicly accessible and openly advertised website?
Where’s the action towards inclusion?
The Fawcett Society recently calculated that, at the present rate, it will still be four hundred years before men and women are equal in terms of their influence in the corridors of power.
This is simply not good enough. Not at all. Not now, let alone in several hundred years.
I have decided therefore to take one small step for diverse-person-kind, and begin work on a Conference Diversity Index, which will be developed to indicate, however, impressionistically, just how much value and weight might be placed on various publicly funded events about matters of public concern. More diversity of involvement and experience, more value…..
I know a few conferences coming up on Merseyside which may prove to be of interest; and no doubt you know of others.
This is my website version of the article ‘Can I have a speaker that reflects the community? Too white, too male and too posh. It’s time conferences had an injection of diversity’, published in New Start magazine, 27 October 2006, p.11
Hope Street, Liverpool: History And Festivals (1996 – 2006)
The Hope Street Festival in Liverpool, delayed from Midsummer, was on Sunday 17 September. This exciting milestone in Hope Street’s history, introducing of a start-of-season early Autumn ‘Feast’ to go in future alongside the Summer Festival, is however neither the beginning nor the end of the journey.
Liverpool’s Hope Street Festivals And Quarter (1977 – 1995)
The first Hope Street Festival was in 1977, to mark the Silver Jubilee of HM The Queen. The next event, marking the Centenary of the Incorporation of the City of Liverpool, was in 1980. There followed a period of great concern for the cultural fortunes of Hope Street.
During the 19803 and into the ’90s Hope Street’s cultural institutions were in great peril. From this time of peril however, in the early 1990s, emerged a community-led campaign -The Campaign to Promote the Arts on Merseyside (CAMPAM) – to ensure that Liverpool kept its flagship organisations; and from CAMPAM in turn emerged HOPES: The Hope Street Association, the registered charity which was to seek renewal of the Quarter and which was later to resurrect the Hope Street Festivals.
The original Hope Street Festivals were organised in 1977 and 1980 by a group of people who included Stephen Gray OBE and Andrew Burn, then managers at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, as well as the late Adrian Henri, one of the founding Liverpool Poets, and other local artists and restaurateurs such as Berni Start of Kirklands Wine Bar, and Paddy Byrne of the Everyman Bistro.
Talking to people in Liverpool today, many of them recall the 1977 event as tremendously exciting, taking part as school children in one of the most massive pageants imaginable – 17,000 participants enacting eight scenes depicting the four seasons along the length of Hope Street, from one cathedral to the other. (As those then involved will tell you, some children even had to run from one point to another, to enact different parts of the pageant!)
In both 1977 and 1980 there was much support from the business community. The list of sponsors contains names which sometimes take one down memory lane: Leighton Advertising of 62 Hope Street, Modern Kitchen Equipment of Myrtle Street, Ford Dealers J. Blake and Company of Hope Street, , WH Brady of Smithdown Road, Girobank, Littlewoods, Radio City, and Higsons Brewery amongst them, alongside further flung organisations like the Chester Summer Music Festival, Welsh National Opera, Theatr Clwyd and even Decca, who recorded much Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) music during that time… Strange to say, the first three businesses are now lost to Hope Street; but most of the others of course remain as current concerns in Liverpool. As we shall see, it was in part an enthusiasm once more to energise the business community in Hope Street Quarter which led to the resurrection of the Hope Street Festival in 1996.
1977 – The Queen’s Silver Jubilee
The 1977 Festival was centred on celebration of the visit to Liverpool of Her Majesty the Queen, during her Silver Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom. Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music, wrote a pageant entitled The Valley and the Hill, to be performed in Hope Street on 21st June. (I know; I made thirty children’s ‘sheep’ costumes for the performance, whilst on a teaching practice!) This was recorded in 1983 with a choir of 2,000 local school children and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (my violinist spouse was there…).
The 1980 Hope Street Summer Festival
Then there was another Hope Street Festival in 1980, directed once more by Stephen Gray as General Manager of the RLPS, with his colleague Andrew Burn – again an impressive programme of concerts, talks and other events by leading performers and commentators, including the Allegri Quartet, Christian Blackshaw, John Cage, <a href%3
Dreaming Realist 