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Interview with Ken Livingstone 16 November 1981 Marxism Today County Hall, London: home of the Greater London Council Interview with Ken Livingstone Interviewed by Jeff Rodrigues the local authorities' senior officers and with establishing a superior and Ken Livingstone was born in 1945 and went to Tulse Hill Compre- decisive role for the elected representatives. hensive school in Brixton. He worked for eight years as a medical Do you share this concern? technician at a research institute and subsequently did a three year course at the Phillippa Fawcett teacher training college. I think it's a mistake to make a comparison between Lambeth and He became a Lambeth councillor in 1971 and served for seven the GLC. The big additional resource which we have, and they years. In 1978 he became a councillor for the London Borough of don't, is that we've got sixteen members who are virtually full time Camden. But in 1973 he also became a GLC councillor and he has here, and who operate in much the same way as an executive body carried that job on a full time basis ever since. itself, whereas in Lambeth there are only really three members who Following the Labour victory at the GLC elections in May 1981, are full time. We have overlaid the officer structure with our own he became Leader of the Labour Group. member level structure. Also, the Labour Group meets every week, He joined the Labour Party in 1968. He has been a member of unlike Lambeth's six week cycle, and every decision as it arises goes ASTMS and NUT and is currently in the Transport and General through the Group. So there's that effective level of control. Within Workers' Union. each committee all the Labour members are given a specific role with responsibilities for overseeing some executive function. Say on the transport committee, one member's responsible for bus lanes, one's responsible for reviewing the roads programme etc. And those One of the problems I want to explore in this interview is the way in committee groups tend to meet fairly frequently to discuss what which a left wing leadership intervenes in local government, the way in they're doing. which it has to re-create its relationship with firstly, the committees So in a sense the difference in the way we operate is that we've which elected it and, secondly the local authority administration with tended to give each of the members a role within the bureaucracy, in which it has to work. terms of trying to oversee the bureaucracy and guide it. Lambeth, The emergence of this Labour leadership in the Greater London having so few full timers, has a more centralised leadership, whereas Council is London's second experience of a left wing local authority leadership here can be more collective. leadership: the first began in Lambeth in 1978. In Lambeth, one of the first acts of the newly elected Labour Group So you feel that the Labour Group holds the initiative in County Hall? was a review of the council structure, with a particular emphasis on establishing what Ted Knight called 'member will'. Yes. The problems arise from legal constraints rather than chief The Left has been increasingly concerned with challenging the power of officer ones. We know we are working in a hostile environment. Marxism Today November 1981 17 There's no question of that. But the major problems we face are the Now, in terms of transport we want to set up eight district Government and the district auditor, and the fact that our income committees, corresponding with the bus districts, and these com- base is the rates. mittees will involve commuters' representatives and the bus trade unions. We've also asked the transport unions to start to consider In a recent interview on Radio 4 you said that 'all bureaucracies are methods of workers' control. I would like to see us implement a inherently anti-socialist'. The danger of regarding a bureaucracy and its system of genuine workers' control throughout London Transport senior officers as potentially obstructive is that all Town Hall workers because it's the largest near-industrial employer we still have in are tarred with the same brush. As a consequence left wing leaders have London. Had the GLC retained its housing stock we would have often alienated their workers by failing to use and develop worker- devolved the complete power of control to borough-based units potential and believing in an authoritarian and abrasive manner. without any central bureaucratic involvement by the GLC. There's no question that the staff association here, a house union for The remoteness of the GLC from London's communities which you white collar staff, is hostile to the new administration: they've made mentioned poses a particular problem for a leftwing leadership when it is it quite clear. related to the political changes which have affected the capital city's Look at the role of white collar staff in the borough councils: in people. Camden, the NALGO branch voted to undertake handling redun- The south east of England produced a strong vote for the Tories in the dancies for blue collar workers; in Lambeth, although the NALGO 1979 general election. Although London possesses an inner core of branch is led by a load of SWF activists, the branch has voted to call Labour local authorities, Greater London has a strong Tory on the council to make cuts in order to protect them from redun- representation. dancies if the Council is eventually crushed. The GLC elections that brought the present administration to power So, I think your question overestimates the degree of political this year did so on a Labour vote that was not as large as one might have consciousness amongst white collar town hall unions. I mean, the expected in the midterm of a Tory government as rightwing as this. majority of them clearly vote Tory and have done so consistently at Although the people may be disaffected with the effects of Thatcher's one election after another. They don't feel any great affinity to a policies, the basic rightwing shift that has taken place in the country socialist council, whereas they've often felt affinities to right wing seems not to have been shaken. administrations in the past, and I don't know to what extent the This seems in part to have created the conditions favourable for the election of a Labour GLC is going to radicalise that sort of strata of growth of the SDP, who won a couple of council seats in Lambeth, 16 society at all. It is regrettable, and it's one of the problems we face. seats in Islington and who are having some effect in your own council. In addition, the labour movement in London is relatively weak. But there are socialist officers in County Hall: what channels exist for The class and economic profile of London has also changed very them to involve themselves in any way with the plans or policies of the substantially in the last decade, with a major loss of manufacturing Labour Group? industry and a relative growth of service industries and administrations. In these conditions — Tory voting trends, potential SDP support, a Our problem is this log-jam with the Staff Association, which, in weak labour movement and a changed class profile — what strategy does relation to NALGO, has a majority on the negotiating committee. the Labour Party have to regain its mass base and revive support for Our white collar staff voted 2 to 1 against having a closed shop. Our 'municipal socialism'? problem is that over the last 50 years the Staff Association has had a sort of symbiotic relationship with the right wing Labour lead- The problem is partly the one you've spelt out. The organised erships. It's been a fist and glove operation, and they are as appalled working class, industrial, skilled trade unions have left London. And by my election as the Tories are and at the moment they are doing London has very much gone the way that Paris is, in that it is everything possible to obstruct the implementation of our pro- composed of skilled middle class people that basically administer gramme. Now that isn't the chief officers, that is the trade union society, the poor and the single parents, the immigrant families, and representation. This presents considerable problems. You would be the unskilled working class labour force. And that means a consid- making a very dangerous precedent for the political leadership of the erable weakening of the base here. Now, it's not a question of re- council to reach past the normal trade union representation and to creating the base because there's no prospect of the skilled crafts try and undermine them. Therefore, we just have to keep plugging moving back into London at all. It's a question of building on this on. new sort of alliance that is there, which is very similar in a sense to the sort of alliance that backed George McGovern in 1972 against Most welfare services are experienced by their clients in a way which is Richard Nixon. often distant and humiliating, and accountability and user-control is a What that means I think is, you have to re-create the mass base not call frequently made on the left. by hoping that we can go back to the days of the 1950s, with the huge One approach to this problem of 'statism' is for progressive left skilled trade union influence within the Labour Party, but accept the authorities to adopt community development policies, codes of 'open fact that the industrial skilled working class never did have a major- government' and participation policies.
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