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Tag: uk-politics

  • When Plans for the North East Region were actually done well compared with the inane drivel we get today

    I am currently writing a chapter entitled: The North East of England – Post-industrial Carboniferous Capitalism in a Birthplace of the Capitalocene for a book dealing with Mediating Industrial Change: Construction and Perception of Discourses about (De-) Industrialisation. My abstract indicates what I propose to deal with:

    This chapter will examine the trajectory of the North East (NE) of England towards a postindustrial character in terms of all of economic base, employment structure, cultural character, and political systems. The NE was a birthplace of industrial capitalism globally. It was where railway systems were first developed and was a major producer of coal, ships, iron and steel, and chemicals over about 250 years. It was also the location of major technological innovation. From the 1930s there were introduced a range of department two industries including clothing, textiles, and light electrical engineering so the region for the first time had a large industrial female labour force. In the 1960s over half of all employed adults were employed in production industries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the region was one of the great industrial zones of the world and seen as such with. After the first world war there was a massive slump in  consequence first of UK economic policies and then of the global depression. During this  period national government began to intervene to resolve unemployment by diversifying the industrial base. These policies continued until the election of the Neo-Liberal Thatcher government in 1979. Since then, the region has lost the great bulk of its mining and  manufacturing base with profound implications for culture and identity. An important aspect in how the region was seen in the UK beyond itself was the development of a regionally based popular culture, particularly in television series, which documented lived experience. Although these presented a realist but positive version of place, at the same time national political culture began to frame the future of the regthe ion in terms of managed decline.

    As part of the background research for this I have been reading a range of public body documents produced during the 20th Century. Of particular value have been the Barlow Report  of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population with the work done before WWII but published in 1940, the Hailsham report of 1963 on The North East a Progamme for Regional Devlopment and Growth, and two indigenous documents.   These are the the Northern Economic Planning Council’s Challenge of the Changing North (1966) and the Northern Regional Strategy Team’s Strategic Plan for the Northern Region(1977).  Reading these well researched and written documents is a pleasure. I had criticisms of the latter in the 1970s but the plan was entirely accurate in its description of the origins of the issues it was confronting. This is in marked contrast to the inane boosterism of  The Interim North East Local Growth Plan of March 2025 produced by nitwit Kim and her team. The abolition of the Government Office for the North East in 2011, apparently at the behest of the idiot LibDems in the coalition in favour of localism, eliminated the expertise and professionalism necessary for getting even a proper timeline of the past together as a basis for planning the future. It is worth noting that the Barlow report proposed elected regional governments but we lost our chance at that in 2004 when a poorly run campaign in favour of a North East Assembly (for too reliant on nobs and not on civil society) was done in by Dominic Cummins with the support of the UK branch of the wretched US Heritage Foundation and the refusal of Labour MPs and councillors, scared of losing their own power to a regional level, to campaign at all in support of it. So we have an apolitical body  which has to accommodate the idiots who thinks Farage has the answer to our ills and the good Tory friend of his business associates on Teesside (for a good summary of  Private Eye’s excellent coverage of this see https://northeastbylines.co.uk/region/teesside/teesworks-scandal-a-dark-tale-of-public-wealth-lost-and-private-gain/ ).  Consensus means no politics. Any decent Labour politician should be calling these bums out, not giving the portfolio responsibilities, but the system does not work that way.

    To be fair to nitwit Kim there was no evidence in Driscoll’s period as Mayor of “North of the Tyne” of any coherent informed planning and no sense of any political direction. His application for a Tyneside Freeport which would have involved suspension of trade union rights and environmental regulation over a wide stretch of his area was particularly inane but there was no political machinery for holding him accountable for this action.

  • The Problem with politics in  the territory of the North East of England Combined Authority

    Let me begin with a historical set of memories. I have been actively involved in politics in the North East of England since I was a student at Newcastle University 60 years ago. I was very much engaged both with support for tenant and resident activists in the West End of Newcastle and with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. In the latter capacity I organized buses to take people to the famous riot in March 1968 in Grosvenor Square (in which I participated enthusiastically). This meant I went around all the left groups on Tyneside ranging from the then International Socialists  and Communist Party across a range of Trotskyist sects – including the truly bizarre Posadists who believed socialism would be brought to Earth by aliens who being more advanced would inevitably be socialist and who published the only newspaper I have ever seen where the headline went onto the second page), Maoists – very odd group of very working class incomers living in Walker, and some others who combined an interest in  and practice of black magic with anarchism. There were lots of them including many trade unionists of a generally left tendency and they were spread across the whole conurbation including a strong group in my native South Shields.

    That was the character of the Left across the North East and one thing that was very evident was that whilst  there were people active who were blow ins (very useful Irish expression) the great majority of the politically active were from the north eastern working class and they were spread everywhere. Until the defeat of the miners in 1984 there was more focus of the Left as a whole on the trade union movement than on the Labour Party as such but that changed in a kind of quantity into quality fashion towards  the Blair years. Trade unions, even the wretched GMWU dominated by the Cunningham dynasty, were no longer the power players in selection of parliamentary candidates although they retained some influence and a mix of blow ins like Wood and home grown dross like Armstrong made sure that they were endorsed by unions representing sectors in which they had never worked.  In the Blair years opposition to policy focused on the Iraq war and there was much less sustained resistance to the continued privatization of public services, even when through the appalling PFI, or of the removal of powers over housing and education from local government by the creation of separate management bodies like Gentoo in Sunderland for housing and academy schools. There was opposition but it was almost invariably defeated. Real estate capital was given free reign in planning issues by Blair, Brown, Cameron and subsequent Tories. This has been continued by Starmer and Reeves. The Blair and Brown governments not only continued privatization but labour had no meaningful industrial policy whatsoever.

    Blair and his allies not only systematically destroyed any semblance of internal democracy within the Labour party but through the Local Government Act 2000 replaced the committee system of management of departments and the overall authority (Policy and Resources Committee) with a Leader and cabinet system where the Leader appointed cabinet members to head functional departments. This was another major erosion of democratic process because in most authorities (not in Newcastle under the rule of the petit bourgeois “Labour” Beecham) committee chairs had been elected and committees were not whipped on party lines but actually discussed policy issues and changes.  The 2000 act also introduced the principle of elected Mayors as Executive rulers, originally of single local authorities but this has been extended now to cover major city regions. Alongside these changes in elected governance there was a continued growth of “the new Magistry” (Stewart 1996). The Urban Development Corporations established under Thatcher which de did so much damage to estuarine conurbations were an extreme example but the Local Enterprise partnerships established in 2011 were important bodies. These have now been subsumed into the Mayoral authorities as boards.  There is very little democratic element in the Mayoral authorities, only the Leaders of Local authorities who are not directly elected as such and as said before should be focusing on their own service providing authorities. Key city region decisions have no real democratic basis. The future of city regions should be a key focus of politics but is not. If we compare the Structure Plan developed by the elected Tyne and Wear County Council or even the North East Regional Strategy constructed on a corporatist basis with the kind of real estate dominated planning of Burnham in Greater Manchester (with the real decision making being done by Bernstein – the real estate very friendly former chief executive of Manchester City) we see a focus on the real needs of people and not of capitalist profiteers.  If we look at what Driscoll did during his time as elected Mayor of North of Tyne, he functioned in exactly the same way as Burnham not least in his support for a Free Port in which trade union and environmental protections would not apply.

    Driscoll’s selection as Labour candidate for his Mayoral role was a consequence of the desire of Labour Party members in Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland to stick it to the wretched Blairite hack Nick Forbes. His failure to get selected by Labour as their candidate for the  North East Mayoral Authority was both revenge for this and a consequence of his association with Corbyn’s faction within Labour. In a real democratic selection for Labour  he would have had some competition from a socialist figure from the wider area, most of which was not within the North of Tyne area, and where he would have been challenged on his record in office and particularly on the Free Port issue.  He is now a key figure in the “Your Party” initiative.

    Driscoll is a resident of Gosforth, one of the most affluent areas in the North East, and well served by state schools but he sent his children to private schools before withdrawing them to home school to avoid embarrassment – probably not a good move since many teachers have deep suspicions of home schoolers.  He has a North Eastern working class background but retired after selling his business. In everything but his smoggie origins he is typical of a breed of middle class blow ins who have assumed considerable prominence in North East politics.

    Alongside this elite element there is also now an emphasis on identity politics. This has had a particularly malign effect on the Green Party where the rights of Trans men identifying as women now have absolute priority and a total lack of interest in the way politics at a city region level might be directed towards confronting the polycrisis. The Greens were always full of eco freak anti science elements, notably on nuclear power’s role in confronting climate crisis and a rejection of genetically modified crops, even CRISPR modifications which are based on the existing gene set rather than importation of genes from other species. This went way beyond any sensible precautionary principle. There are some good people in the NE Greens, notably Rachel Featherstone of Sunderland who is also a good union activist, but the party stood candidates in the 2019 election against left Labour MPs, notably Laura Pidcock in North Durham who lost when the Green Vote was greater than her losing margin. Labour have now imposed the Zionist agent Luke Akehurst in that seat so I hope the Greens are happy.

    So a  political scene which was dominated by working class people and working class interests and in which women played an important part, alongside people of colour in the seafaring and dock unions in the two Shields, has been replaced by one in which safe labour wards fell to Reform, I well remember when the Felling, having got rid of the vile crook Cunningham, was won back for Labour by young working class people who were part of the Militant. That area is now represented by a Labour MP who is a complete supporter of the rights of trans women identifying men against biological women. The Felling deserves better and even the Morlocks of Jarrow (living proof of the epigenetic effects of red lead) do not deserve her (I am from South Shields). Identity politics is a disaster. I write as someone whose family were among those who in the early 20th century brought the Irish working class on Tyneside into the Labour party and who has seen how identity politics work out in Belfast. The arrogant and contempt of these people for working class and indeed people in new middle income groups who do not endorse what are described as ‘woke’ ideas is extreme. In Tribune edited by Alex Niven from the Tyne Valley although describing Newcastle as his home city we find articles asserting that the Trans women identifying men are a key group of persecuted people. Niven’s book The North will rise again  is not only marked by trivial but annoying historical errors – Dan Smith had nothing to  do with the development of the Tyne Wear Metro – that was the TW County Council – but really does not grasp the essentials of North Eastern culture. He has neither lived experience or technical expertise.  

    I almost could give up when I look at the character of this absolute shower but I guess I won’t.

  • Why I am keeping an eye on the North East (of England) Combined Authority

    The North East of England Combined Authority has been in existence for just under a year since Kim McGuiness was elected Mayor beating Jamie Driscoll and gaining 42% of the voted on a 31% turnout. I voted for Driscoll despite having a lot of reservations about him and the nature of his campaign. He was barred from standing for the Labour nomination by the zionist clique on the National Executive which was a point in his favour but he had supported a Free Port for Tyneside in which trade union rights and environmental protections can be suspended / ignored which was very much not. He is a businessman with very limited political experience before being elected as Mayor of the absurdly named North of Tyne combined authority (much of which was south of the Tyne) and had no real record of trade union activism. He ran the campaign to appeal to everybody on a kind of anti political basis. This might have worked in a transferable note election but this was first past the post. It was certainly not a socialist campaign which would have required attacking Labour for it neo-Blairite and zionist turn and attacking McGuiness for her manifest inexperience and status as a political hack for Labour and being a sort of revenge proxy for Driscoll having defeated Nick Forbes in the North of Tyne Labour selection process. Driscoll has now established his own political party – majority – but it seems to be pretty much a one man band so far.

    So what about McGuiness and the Comined authority. First it has a cabinet consisting of Council Leaders alongside a business representative (but no trade union representative) and a community / voluntary sector representative. As usual that person is a charity background individual with no discernible community status. There are substitute members from the councils, business and the community / voluntary sector but the leaders (and Redfern as elected mayor for North Tyneside) have executive functions. This of course is absurd. Council Leaders and Redfern should be devoting their time to their own authorities and not playing at doing something (or more likely very little to nothing) at a regional level. There is no mechanism for political accountability at the regional level unlike the days when Labour was more or less democratic and there were district and county parties. None of these characters other than McGuiness has been directly elected and the non-political character of the cabinet means that the Tory leader of Northumberland has responsibility for the environment – much like giving a clock to a malign monkey.

    I am old enough to remember Metropolitan Counties and their structure plans – democratic bodies with a serious focus on confronting issues and creating change.

    And what about McGuiness herself – well she lives in Northumberland with her RAF officer husband and posts pictures of her dogs on facebook. She was elected asserting that her priority was getting rid of child poverty – kind of hard that when a major factor in child poverty is the two child benefit cap which has been kept in being by austerity not so light New New Labour and Reeves. There was a big event about this with the usual suspects in attendance but the outcome was just the usual inane drivel about expanding opportunity in an era when educational attainment is no guarantee of a secure life. I promised to do as the Skibbereen Eagle of County Cork did in in the 19th century in relation to the Czar of Russia and keep my eye on them. Not a pretty sight so far.

  • What Durham Going “Reform” means for the NE Combined Authority

    The sweeping gains in Durham by Reform have given that party control of the county council. Reform are now the second largest party in Northumberland with the distinct possibility of a Conservative / Reform partnership in control there. The response of our nitwit Mayor Kim McGuiness was to say that whilst disappointed in relation to massive Labour losses she is: ’as determined as ever to continue to work cross-party to keep delivering for our amazing region and creating real opportunity in the North East.’ Fat chance of that in relation to at least one crucial issue – confronting impending climate catastrophe by working towards net zero. There is an good publication by that excellent institution – the House of Commons Library – on the role of local authorities in achieving net zero: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2023-0122/CDP-2023-0122.pdf Lots of good stuff in this but one crucial point. There is no statutory obligation on local authorities to work towards net zero. Central governments since the establishment of net zero and the introduction of legislation in the Amended Climate Change Act (2019) took it for granted that local authorities would go along with the general programme. Reform’s County Durham Manifesto endorsed Reform National’s Contract with the people of the UK. Here are some relevant quotations from that document:

    We will unlock Britain’s vast energy treasure of oil and gas to slash energy bills, beat the cost-of-living crisis and unleash real economic growth.

    Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries likesteel, and making us less secure. We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not  impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets.

    They go on to propose a role for small modular nuclear power. Even loons are right sometimes.

    “Nigel Farage has warned council staff to look for other jobs after Reform took control of Durham. The Reform leader had a message for anyone working in a host of roles for Durham council, which his party is now in control of. Speaking at a victory rally in Durham on Friday (2 May), Mr Farage said: “These include those with working on climate change, diversity initiatives or even just from home. “You all better be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly.” (Source Independent)

    Given that there is no statutory obligation on local authorities to pursue net zero this may well happen.

    McGuiness kept the Tories happy by handing over control over environmental issues to them and their country landowner and farmer allies – see previous post on composition of the boards of the authority.  Reform will be ranting and raving to support the national NO NET ZERO position of their reptilian leader. David Icke claimed that we were controlled by alien lizards walking amongst us in human form. I don’t think Farage has made much of an effort on the human form.

    What happens in relation to the combined authority’s programme on net zero will be crucial. The Greens with their quasi religious opposition to nuclear and genetically modified crops ( I am with James Lovelock on these issues), not to mention their support for aggressive extreme trans policies – men should be able to play women’s rugby – will not provide any sort of realistic opposition to failure to deal with this existential (when did that become the word for this but it has?) issue.  Take to the streets on this – talking to the school kids who did that before.

    I am looking to see what I can find out about the Reform Councillors in Durham. They look like (in photos) a mixture of renegade Tories, golf club bores, and young nutters. However, there are local elections coming in Tyne and Wear in 2026. Labour is useless at addressing real discontents. If there is no development of a force which can do that before then, Reform may well sweep the board there as well – they very nearly won the North Tyneside mayoral election (why a North Tyneside mayor?).  Bad times coming.