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How to solve the paradoxes of politics? A Response to David Blunkett

David Blunkett offers some compelling reasons why we should defend our traditional democratic institutions. But are they increasingly distant compared to people’s everyday social and political lives? Matt Wood suggests we need to investigate new forms of participation and ‘everyday politics’ to address the paradoxes of disengagement.

David Blunkett’s Policy & Politics lecture is a lucid and reflective statement on many of the paradoxes that we find in contemporary politics. As has become somewhat of a mantra for our times in academic circles, he notes that many British people are incredibly disillusioned with and disengaged from traditional democratic institutions. But he goes a bit further than this, noting that people make unrealistic and contradictory demands of government and that these put politicians in an unenviable position of having to ‘please all of the people all of the time’. People want conviction politicians like Tony Benn or Margaret Thatcher, but they also want an end to ‘Punch and Judy’ politics and ‘common sense’ governing where the solutions, apparently, everyone agrees on. This makes things doubly difficult for addressing disengagement because the causes of the problem are often as contradictory and confusing as the various solutions.

What should be done, then? For Blunkett, the first point is not to resort to extremism. He argues passionately that as a society we should resist the temptations of David Graeber’s ‘anarcho-populism’ and the politics of Russell Brand. Simply ‘taking to the streets’ will be destructive and regressive, as any glance at the history of revolutionary politics tells us. Instead, we should all try and be more understanding and less hateful of politics and politicians. Politics, Blunkett notes, is a deeply civilizing and uplifting practice. Politics may not be perfect, but has been necessary to achieve some of the great social advances of the twentieth century (and hopefully will be the same in the twenty-first century). As he rightly notes, establishing and maintaining those formal political institutions that we in Britain take for granted is critically important for consolidating the gains made in the Arab Spring and to avoid the horrific bloodshed in countries like Syria. Blunkett mentions Bernard Crick’s famous book ‘In Defence of Politics’ as a brilliant statement of precisely this point, and Matthew Flinders’ update of the book, ‘Defending Politics’, makes a similar argument for the twenty-first century. The media, the market and meretricious, Brand-esque figures are in danger of doing down the social, economic and cultural benefits that we gain from our stable Parliamentary democracy, despite all its faults.

Is it enough though simply to defend the old system when, as Blunkett mentions towards the end of his speech, people are still often interested and engaged in political issues, they just might act on that interest in different ways?  In fact, as a lot of current research shows, we may be seeing a real sea-change in how people engage with and try to solve what they see as the big political issues. Political scientists have a number of words for this type of behaviour, but a good way of summing it up is the term ‘everyday politics’. People doing everyday politics know all the values Crick defended are important, but they also know that new technology can be utilised to drive change outside the formal system. They do politics when they like, where they like and how they like. This might be on the internet, through a local community project, a charity, or boycotting unethical corporate brands (some people see boycotting the BBC by not buying a TV as a political statement!). These people might vote occasionally, when they get time out of their busy lives, but they don’t see voting as the best way to get things done. They’re similarly turned off by party politics, which strikes them as too narrow or obsessed with media spin, or by Parliament, which seems dispiritingly anodyne and idiosyncratically outdated.

There are, of course, a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies here as well. People might ‘act locally and think globally’, but does that really make any difference? Everyday politics is often sporadic, disorganised and consumer-driven. While people might think they can do more by acting ‘closer to home’ rather than with the system, are we in danger of throwing the democratic baby out with our institutional bathwater? Would it really be better if the NHS was organised on a part-time ‘do-it-yourself’ basis? We think not. Traditional democratic institutions clearly do, and should have a place, as Blunkett makes clear. What we do think is these new forms of participation aren’t going to go away soon, and that simply defending the old system isn’t necessarily enough if we’re going to improve politics for the twenty-first century.

The challenge for us at the Crick Centre as we embark on an exciting programme of research is delving into how people live their political lives in the twenty-first century. While there’s already a lot of research out there on alternative forms of participation, we think there needs to be more into how and why there is a disconnection between people’s increasingly busy and congested everyday lives and the slow, churning world of ‘big-P’ Politics. Once we understand this better, we can begin to address how the institutions we should cherish (our national and regional parliaments, political parties and local councils) can evolve and adapt to our paradoxical political world.

Matt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield Department of Politics, and Deputy Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics. He is currently researching ‘everyday politics’ and solutions to political disengagement in advanced liberal democracies.

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Live Q&A with David Blunkett on how to involve people in politics

A live debate on engaging voters in politics and policymaking will be taking place on Friday 28 March with David Blunkett MP.

The Labour MP David Blunkett will be joining The Guardian on Friday 28 March from 12 noon –2pm, following a lecture on bringing politics alive and a Twitter conversation via #askblunkett at the University of Bristol on 27 March. He, and the rest of an expert panel, will discuss:

• Why it is so difficult to engage the public in politics and policymaking
• The role of the internet in political participation and engagement
• Whether the way political processes and institutions are set up hampers efforts to engage citizens
• Good examples of citizen engagement in politics and policymaking, both within the UK and overseas
• What government and politicians should do to tackle disengagement among citizens

Mr Blunkett, Visiting Professor for the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, will be joined by Matthew Flinders, Professor and Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, along with other panellists including Sarah Birch, Anthony Zacharzewski, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Richard Berry.

This debate takes place in the comments section below the article here.

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Tony Benn Was a True Man of the People

Following the sad news that Tony Benn has passed away at the age of 88, Professor Matthew Flinders pays tribute to the veteran politician.

The news that Tony Benn has died at home at the age of 88 has stimulated intense reflection and discussion about his career. But when reading the obituaries and listening to the various television and radio discussions I cannot help but think that too many commentators are missing the deep and enduring reason that Tony Benn really did become a national treasure. He listened, he spoke and he connected with the public in a way that most contemporary politicians can only dream of.

It’s too easy to focus on the obvious landmarks in a career that spanned well over half a century and overlook the deeper and richer features – often the personal and professional contradictions – that made Tony Benn such a remarkable man. And there is no doubt that he was remarkable. In a period when politicians are increasingly distrusted, reviled – even hated – he was regularly voted the most popular politician in the country.

The burr of his voice, the look on his face, the cheeky smile, the smell of his pipe, the glint in his eye; these were the things that made Tony Benn such a special man; a man of politics but increasingly not in politics.

Tony Benn’s life seems defined by an almost stubborn desire to swim against the tide. His privileged education (Westminster School followed by Oxford University) was rejected at a stroke with the words: “Education – still in progress” in his Who’s Who entry in the early 1970s.

He insisted upon “Tony Benn” rather than the full name, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, he had been given at birth, and later renounced his peerage. In June 2001 he famously left the House of Commons to “spend more time on politics” – and in a sense this decision defined both his personal values and his approach to politics.

In a period when politicians take the temperature of the nation through focus groups and online surveys Tony Benn spent his time talking to and listening to the public in a manner that is curiously rare among today’s professional politicians. Indeed, in a period when the relationship between the governors and the governed is dominated by twitter and blogs and conducted within a fairly narrow model of a market democracy, Tony Benn could often be dismissed (even slightly ridiculed) as a political dinosaur.

But that conclusion in itself would miss the great power he had to captivate an audience, to make people think and reflect upon their assumptions, to inspire a sense of capacity and a belief in change for the better. He could unite social divides and talk sense to the senseless. As he demonstrated in relation to a range of issues – not least in the Stop the War movement – he was a man that would march with the public and was not afraid to stand on the barricades.

Politics for him was not a spectator sport but a vital element of the art of life. It was also an art form that took many forms, as demonstrated by the popularity of his diaries, his poetry, his one-man show and his appearances at events as varied as pop festivals and school assemblies.

Put simply, he possessed the rare gift of being able to connect with the public in a manner that most contemporary politicians simply cannot do.

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Look Beneath the Vote

In a new post for the Oxford University Press blog, Professor Matthew Flinders discusses voter registration and public disengagement from politics, and asks: “How do we re-establish a connection between ordinary people and politicians?”

Hands up if you’ve heard of National Voter Registration Day? And in the somewhat unlikely event that you have, did you realise that it took place last month?

If this momentous milestone passed you by, you’re not alone. Whatever 5 February means to the people of the United Kingdom, it’s safe to assume that electoral participation doesn’t figure prominently. This is not a surprise; it reflects a deep-seated public disengagement from politics, as indicated by the fact that only two thirds of eligible voters in the 2010 general election actually voted. Throughout the twentieth century, general election turnouts almost always exceeded 70%, but that’s a level of participation that has not been seen since 1997. Incidentally, the highest turnout since 1900 was 86.8% in January 1910, though only rate-paying men over the age of 21 could vote.

Low voter turnout is clearly a problem, but arguably a much greater worry is the growing inequality of that turnout. As a recent report from the Institute for Public Policy Research makes clear, the United Kingdom is very much a ‘divided democracy’, with electoral participation among the young and the poor declining dramatically. In the 1987 general election, for example, the turnout rate for the poorest income group was 4% lower than for the wealthiest. By 2010 the gap had grown to a staggering 23 points. A similar pattern is observable in relation to age groups. In 1970 there was an 18-point gap in turnout rates between 18–24-year-olds and those aged over 65; by 2005 this gap had more than doubled to over 40 points, before narrowing slightly to 32 points in 2010. ”If we focus on participation within these age-groups,” the IPPR report concludes “we can see that at the 2010 general election the turnout rate for a typical 70-year-old was 36 percentage points higher than that of a typical 20-year-old.”

If this isn’t bad enough there is little evidence that young people will simply start voting as they get older. On the contrary, the IPPR’s research suggests that “younger people today are less likely than previous generations to develop the habit of voting as they move into middle age.” These trends mean that politicians tend to address themselves to the older and richer sections of society – the people, in other words, that are most likely to vote. This, in turn, reinforces the views of the young and the poor that politicians don’t care about them. And that, naturally, leads to even greater political estrangement.

So what’s the solution? How do we re-establish a connection between ordinary people and politicians? In particular, how do we persuade the young and the poor that the political system really does have something to offer them?

- See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/03/look-beneath-the-vote/#sthash.jA4aGCvd.dpuf

The Utter Small Mindedness of STEM over STEAM

The arts are an integral part of our humanity and much of the value they offer us is challenging to articulate, it’s often emotional or experiential and our language is ill-equipped to deal with its complexity. It being difficult, we often ignore much of the intrinsic value of the arts. When something is inexpressible, it can easily be forgotten or ignored. However, this is not all there is to say of the value of the arts. There are instrumental aspects of the arts which are more easily measured and described: this is especially apparent in the benefits of the arts in education. The sheer scale of evidence portraying the benefits of the arts education is significant staggering.

These are not ‘fluffy’ or biased reports: many use the same rigorous, unforgiving scientific data as their ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) counterparts (CASE 2010, Catterall et al. 2012) and some use datasets collected through more qualitative methods, which arguably present the subtleties of the value of the arts more holistically (Matarasso 1997, DICE 2010). There is evidence, laid out in the language of government, sometimes even laid out BY government, eg. CASE commissioned by DCMS.

Some explore the economic importance of art in schools. This is especially apparent in the Cost/Benefit report (2010) on Creative Partnerships. Creative Partnerships (CP) was an initiative put forward by the New Labour government, from the recommendations of Sir Ken Robinson, to put creativity at the heart of the school environment. The report estimates that for every £1 that was put into this project, £15.30 was gained. This was made up of savings on costs of truancy and bad behaviour, savings on recruitment (for teachers who stayed because of the initiative) and likely economic benefits for students receiving 5 A*-C GCSEs (students from CP schools performed better in their GCSEs: including in maths and science). I am personally sceptical of reports which attempt to make the complex values of creativity fit into an economic model such as this. But for those policy makers who respond to numbers, this is pretty black and white, and is certainly not the only of its kind.

The STEM agenda also has an incredibly limited notion of what our economy actually looks like: our creative industries are growing and in 2011 already had an ‘aggregate turnover of £12.4 billion’ (ACE, 2014). That is a pretty sizable asset, and can be built upon, but not if we fail to value the arts and culture from an early age.

But I do not want to focus only on the economy and the economic arguments as they are only the very tip of the iceberg of what the arts may offer our education system, and this argument has been made. The value of the arts goes far beyond its monetary returns.

Ironically, the arts also play a huge role to our proficiency within the subjects mentioned in STEM. Maria Miller in her recent speech calling for STEAM (the ‘A’ standing for Arts) over STEM used a Steve Jobs quote to hammer home this point: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” Creative thinking is needed for truly excellent scientists, engineers and mathematicians, and how better to foster this than a rounded education, which includes arts subjects? Neuroscience has shown the importance of art not only for itself, but for encouraging and fostering the imagination needed for excellence in other fields: “One of Einstein’s great insights, which was the basis of relativity, occurred when he imagined he was riding a light wave.” (Professor Kagan, Harvard) We learn more than how to paint or play piano in music and art: we learn to use our brains.

 

A simple place to begin is to ask what we actually want from our education system. Of course we want a huge range of things but a few themes keep coming up: a system which prepares the next generation for the working world, a system which teaches our children social and political values needed for civic and community life, and if we’re feeling ambitious, one that actually improves the general welfare of our children.

In terms of the first theme, we need students graduating with skills relevant to employers. Indeed, it’s how the whole STEM debate began. In the USA, and in the UK, there is an apparent dearth in competent maths and science teachers, and in those adequately equipped with the skills necessary for the recent and dramatic rise in computing jobs. However, reports have also shown that, along with maths, our literacy rates are shockingly poor. Where is the literacy in STEM? Employers may want technologically savvy staff, but they also want staff who are able to write articulately. They want staff who can work in teams, think critically and who use their imagination to create new products and services. These are all skills proven to be fostered by arts education, and not through biased research: by scientists, sociologists, psychologists and employers themselves.

Indirectly, I am still focussing on the economic benefits. Still I am looking at our students as the ‘workforce’ which earns our country its GDP and makes us competitive on the world’s economic stage. I hope it will not appear too artsy or soft to now move on to a discussion of the importance of the arts in creating a healthy democracy, with happy citizens. The United Nations Development Program has recently introduced the ‘Human Development Paradigm’ model, which emphasizes the importance of the access of all citizens to health, political participation and education. The arts and humanities play a key role in this. With declining civic engagement and increasing distrust of the political system (especially amongst young people), now is certainly not the time to be downplaying the importance of the arts.

At the Crick Centre, we are currently researching the potential for participatory arts to facilitate political participation, with particular emphasis on young people. The theory follows the work of a number of thinkers from a variety of disciplines and explores a number of datasets and studies which claim a connection between the arts and empathy, arts and building confidence, arts and social capital, cultural capital and civic engagement. But one theme for me feels particularly relevant in terms of the STEM and STEAM debate: the important role the arts play in building upon our capacity for imagination. We need citizens who are demanding, who are creative and innovative. We need citizens who are engaged and challenging. But most of all, we need citizens who can imagine a different world. Otherwise, the STEM tools needed to get there become quite meaningless.

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Documentary Filmmaker Opportunity

The Crick Centre (crickcentre.org) and Art in the Park (www.artinthepark.org.uk) have recently received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its broader Cultural Value Programme for the research project: ‘Participatory Arts and Active Citizenship’. The project will be examining the potential of participatory arts in the promotion of political engagement amongst young people.

As part of this project Art in the Park will be commissioning a documentary filmmaker to record and artistically respond to the research. The documentary will be a key output of this research and the filmmaker(s) will play an active role in project from beginning to end.

We are seeking a professional filmmaker or filmmaking collective with a track record of ambitious and inspirational projects rooted in a documentary style. A background in working with diverse partners (eg. artists, academics and young people) is preferable.

The film to be produced will be under 30 minutes in length (to adhere to the ‘short film submissions’ requirements of the Sheffield DocFest). The deadline for the first edit will be September 2014, when feedback and discussion will be given from the research team and Art in the Park. The final deadline for the final edit will be November/December 2014.

Deadline for submissions is 12pm (noon) on Monday the 10th March, interviews to be held in the week beginning 17th March in Sheffield.

For more information and details for submission please download the Filmmaker Brief

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Public Service Reform: Evidence Session to be Held in Sheffield

A public evidence session into how successful the Government’s public service reforms are is due to be held in Sheffield.

MPs from the Public Administration Select Committee will question local organisations involved in delivering public services in Sheffield at a session held Monday 3 March 2014, 2pm to 3.30pm.

The evidence session will focus on:

  • Opportunities for communities to get involved in public service design and delivery
  • How successful the Government has been in devolving power away from Whitehall and into local communities.

Evidence gathered at this event will inform the Committee’s current Citizen and Public Services inquiry.

The public session will take place in the Sheffield Select Committee Suite, ICOSS, University of Sheffield, 219 Portobello, Sheffield, S1 4DP. Places are limited so booking in advance is essential. To register for this free event, email or call 020 7219 1650. Please be aware that the session will begin promptly at 2pm.

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Mad Politics: Politicians, Mental Health and the Pathology of Social Stigma

Professor Matthew Flinders

University of Sheffield

If you are reading this blog then you’ve obviously survived ‘Blue Monday’. That is, the day in the third week of January when suicide levels tend to peak and demands for counseling rocket as a result of post-Christmas debt, dashed New Year resolutions and the inevitable sense that this year is actually unlikely to be much different to the last. The publication by the coalition government of its ‘Priorities for Essential Change in Mental Health’ underlines the fact that mental health is likely to become the defining ‘super-wicked’ problem of the twenty-first century. But what does the politics of mental health – and particularly the mental health of our politicians – tell us about the state of our society?

It is estimated that approximately 450 million people worldwide have a mental health problem. Nearly 60 million Americans suffer from some form of mental illness and in the UK the Office for National Statistics estimates that one-in-four British adults experience at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any one year. This might range from anxiety and depression to more extreme forms of psychosis or schizophrenia but whatever the specific condition mental illness is scary, painful and exhausting – and it’s woefully under-funded. ‘There is a substantial gap’ the opening line of the latest version of the World Health Authority’s Mental Health Atlas states ‘between the burden caused by mental disorders and the resources available to prevent and treat them’. Even today only one penny is spent on mental health for every pound spent by the NHS and mental health services seem to have borne the brunt of the ‘age of austerity’.

But what makes the experience of mental health arguably far worse is the social stigma and almost ridicule that often accompanies even the merest hint of a mental health condition. Those lucky enough to have supportive friends and family will generally find that recovery is not only possible but that the whole experience may also have unexpected positive side effects in the sense that experiencing the lows of life can add new vitality, colour and understanding to even the simplest things. Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve ever read. But those who lack supportive families, friends or lots of money frequently find themselves shunted between a bewildering range of services and the spiral of decline into unemployment and homelessness or worse can be rapid.

But what about those individuals who have roles in society that could almost have been designed to undermine their mental health? The work-life variables associated with mental breakdown and exhaustion are relatively clear from the rich seam of literature in the field of organizational psychology – high-stress and unrealistic expectations, divided and incompatible loyalties, a high-blame low-trust work environment, living away from home, long hours, an adversarial atmosphere, unpredictable hours, precarious employment, low levels of public regard, etc. – and in many ways the role of a modern politician ticks every one of these boxes. It is not therefore surprising that stress levels amongst politicians tends to be incredibly high and the life of an MP is frequently associated with poor-decision making, ruined health, family break-up and the occasional bizarre walk upon Clapham Common. For those MPs with young children, ministerial duties and constituencies many miles from London the pressure can be intense – even brutal.

And yet how MPs manage their mental wellbeing and cope with the pressures of their profession remains a largely hidden topic. This is reflected in the manner in which periods of poor mental health are generally admitted only in the past tense in memoirs and autobiographies. John Biffen, a Cabinet Minister under Margaret Thatcher, suffered from debilitating depression for most of his career but this fact was only recently revealed six years after his death in his posthumous autobiography  – Semi-Detached.  More recently, Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, has written of his secret battle with depression but – as Alastair Campbell has explained – it remains incredibly difficult for a British politician to stand-up and admit to being human – by which I mean one of the one-in-four of us that will at some point experience a mental health condition. But it’s not only the adversarial culture of Westminster and Whitehall that explains this reluctance to speak out. Its also the social context because the public understanding of mental health issues remains very poor and the dominant narrative (perpetuated by the media) is that ‘Mad=Bad’ when in fact (like flights on airplanes) the vast majority of mental health patients are completely safe and manage their conditions through a mixture of talking therapies, medication, fitness, art, writing, singing or whatever else helps relieve their condition.

The 14 June 2012 is therefore likely to go down as a significant moment in parliamentary history as a number of MPs used a debate on mental health in the House of Commons to discuss their own psychological problems. Charles Walker MP described himself as a ‘practising fruitcake’ while outlining a battle he has been fighting with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for more than three decades, Kevan Jones MP admitted to having suffered from bouts of depression, and two female MPs (Sarah Woolaston and Andrea Leadsom) also discussed their experience of post-natal depression. If we add Jack Straw and the Labour MP John Woodcock, who last December admitted to suffering from depression, this makes a grand total of six out of 650 MPs who have acknowledged their own mental health challenges when in reality the available data on mental health, in general, and stressful occupations, in particular, would suggest that a far higher number of MPs will actually have experienced (or be experiencing) some form of mental disorder. Obviously it is a decision for any individual to decide on the boundaries between their private life and public duties but what’s really interesting is that we actually know very little at all about the mental health of our politicians. David Owen has written about ‘the hubris syndrome’ and the poor decisions made by those intoxicated with power but for most politicians, politics is – if we are honest – generally quite dull. It is the ‘slow boring of hard wood’ and the gradual realisation that the challenges of winning office are nothing compared to the realities of actually driving through significant change. That is not to agree with the recent statement of the Conservative MP for Penrith, Rory Stewart, that an MP has less power than ‘someone running a small pizza business’ but it is to acknowledge the stresses and strains of political life.

There are, however, signs of progress. In 2007, Section 141 of the Mental Health Act – whereby MPs who were incapacitated through mental illness could be automatically removed from the House of Commons after six months – was considered and then retained by Parliament (even though there was no equivalent legislation to govern physical incapacitation). This example of institutionalised intolerance and inequality was repealed in February last year with the passing of the Mental Health (Discrimination) Act 2013. More recently, a small budget has been agreed within the Palace of Westminster to cover the costs of counseling for MPs that are understandably reluctant to seek help within their constituency. But even with this small step in the right direction, the stigma surrounding mental health remains acute in Parliament. The hook, twist or barb in this argument is that recent surveys suggest that significant sections of the public would not vote for a political candidate that admitted to previously suffering from mental health problems. And yet at the very same time the public constantly demand that they want MPs to be ‘normal’ people – an adjective generally followed by the phrase ‘like you and me’ – but normal people suffer from mental health problems. The tension is obvious and as a result the secrecy and stigma surrounding mental health continues. It’s mad politics at its worst.

Professor Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He has suffered from depression throughout his adult life but generally manages to keep his black dog on a fairly tight leash. 

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Energy and Climate Change Select Committee

MPs from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee met at the University of Sheffield recently as part of a public evidence session to examine the potential benefits of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Senior industry figures and specialists were questioned by the Select Committee in this oral evidence session, which focused on:

- Alternative ways of capturing carbon
- Safety, climate change and public perceptions about CCS

Evidence gathered at this event will inform the Committee’s current inquiry into carbon capture and storage.

The event was hosted by The Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics.

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