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emigrate from anywhere. U.S.-born Latinos Red obviously retain cultural characteristics of Joshua B. Freeman the countries that their parents, grandpar- ents, and great-grandparents left behind. Red Metropolis: and the Govern- But as Alba highlights, for many of them, ment of London these characteristics do not define their life by Owen Hatherley chances. Political integration accompanies Repeater Books, 2020, 266 pp. integration into other core institutions, like schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and families. Instead of searching for ethnic-specific Few tourists strolling the of explanations for Latino political behavior, the Thames in London realize that they we should probably focus on the key vari- are going through a carefully constructed ables that pattern politics among whites. showcase for what Owen Hatherley If education and geographic location describes in his new book, Red Metropolis: increasingly pattern the white vote, the the structures and programs put in place same goes for many second- and third- when the political left ran Great Britain’s generation nonwhite Americans. Where largest city. On one end of the procession they live and whether they graduated from sits County Hall, the massive, longtime college are likely more important drivers of home of the London city , until their political decisions than the country the national government eliminated home their grandparents arrived from. rule and sold off the building. At the other The majority-minority hypothesis end is a new City Hall, designed by Norman inspires white backlash, while greater Foster, housing the current incarnation of assimilation diminishes the importance of the London government. In between lies ethnicity in minorities’ political behavior. a series of city-built cultural venues—the This is the worst of all worlds for progres- , National Film Theatre, sives counting on demographic shifts to Queen Elizabeth Hall, , and SPRING 2021 · transform our politics. But it’s consistent National Theatre—and Oxo Tower Wharf, T with our nation’s past: diversification and a mixed-use complex in an old power sta- expansion of the mainstream has occurred tion, developed by a nonprofit

ISSEN before, and it is occurring again. And while with local government backing. Nothing D college attendance rates are growing, the is named after Marx, nor is the architec- increase is slow enough that near-term ture a tip-off to the socialist vision behind elections will feature an electorate in it, but at least in its heyday, the South Bank which roughly four in ten voters are non- announced to the world an alternative to college-educated whites. Progressive capitalist urbanism. policy dreams will remain just that unless In recent years, as Washington swings Democrats reduce losses with these voters between gridlock and reaction, U.S. pro- while winning back the children and grand- gressives have looked to local govern- children of immigrants increasingly drawn ment as an arena for attracting followers, to the Republicans’ message. As Shor has trying out social programs, and improving noted, “The joke is that the GOP is really the lives of constituents. Seattle passed a assembling the multiracial working-class $15 minimum wage law seven years ago, coalition that the left has always dreamed followed the next year by Los Angeles (with of.” Only it’s not funny at all. both laws mandating phased increases), while the federal minimum remains a Jake Rosenfeld is Professor of Sociology at measly $7.25 an hour. The Chicago City Washington University-St. Louis and author Council now has a six-member socialist of You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other caucus. Next year’s election almost cer- Myths of the Modern Economy. tainly will bring a crew of socialists to New York’s City Council as well. But there has not been much systematic thinking, at least in the United States, about the possibilities and limits of

142 municipal progressivism, let alone munic- project anywhere, the Boundary Estate, a ipal socialism. solidly constructed and architecturally dis- Hatherley dives deep into the issue tinguished cluster of buildings just a mile in his lively, opinionated account of what from the . That project the left did when it had control over and others that followed were designed London’s government. It is an eye-opening in-house by the LCC’s Architects’ Depart- story of extraordinary accomplishment. ment and built by its Works Department, a During long stretches since the late publicly owned construction company that nineteenth century, leftists or left-liberal paid union wages and erected schools, alliances have directed the administrative firehouses, and transit facilities as well. structure for London, the Some of the city’s individual boroughs region, or the boroughs within it. With the also built housing, including Battersea, capital city often at odds politically with which used its own workforce to do so. much of the nation—never more so than (In 1913 Battersea elected the first Black now, with the Labour Party in firm control mayor of a London borough, the Progres- of the region but floundering elsewhere— sive John Archer.) During the 1920s, some municipal leftism not only filled a vacuum Labour-led boroughs put up housing in social provision when Conservatives projects modeled on the housing com- ruled nationally; it also served as a model plexes that had arisen in socialist-led for what socialists might do if they won Vienna. Meanwhile, a program of tree control of Parliament. and flower planting was launched in Bermondsey to enliven working-class quarters. Later, in Finsbury, the Soviet Housing and architecture figure large émigré architect Berthold Lubetkin was in Red Metropolis. Hatherley has a long- hired to design the Finsbury Health Centre, R standing interest in the relationship one of London’s great modernist buildings, EVIEWS between politics and the built environment, as well as to create a plan for multiple new evident in his earlier books, including A housing estates. Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain When the Conservatives won control of and Landscapes of : A History the LCC, they abolished the Works Depart- Through Buildings. But more importantly, ment but continued to build public housing from the late 1880s through most of the and government facilities, including the past century, housing has been at the top mammoth County Hall. As Hatherley of the left agenda in London, as working- shows, left-run authorities repeatedly class families, generation after genera- established norms, expectations, and insti- tion, have found it difficult or impossible tutions that survived long into Conserva- to afford decent, sanitary living quarters. tive eras, if usually in diluted form. Though Hatherley’s purpose is ultimately Labour retook control of the LCC in political, he provides a wealth of informa- 1934 and kept it for the next thirty-three tion and insight about design and planning. years. With the party having suffered a (Red Metropolis includes many photo- massive national defeat three years ear- graphs of the buildings under discussion, lier, it provided an opportunity to demon- but readers unfamiliar with London geog- strate that Labour could govern effectively raphy might want to keep Google Earth without giving up its principles. And that it open as they read.) did, in spades. Most importantly, the LCC Hatherley begins with the Progressives, launched a massive program of housing an assortment of liberals, trade unionists, construction. It also revamped parks with and socialists, including George Bernard facilities for working people: pools, gyms, Shaw and Sidney Webb, who prefigured cafés, and athletic fields. And it created the yet to be founded Labour Party. The the modern London transit system, taking alliance ran the elected London County over two private companies that ran the Council from its creation in 1889 until 1907. Underground, which it integrated with Among the LCC’s legacy is what is consid- trolley and bus lines. The design aesthetic ered by some the first municipal housing of the newly created London Transport,

143 seen in station architecture, signage, type- governance. As part of the postwar Labour faces, and posters (as Hatherley notes, a government, he unapologetically defended combination of European modernism and British imperialism. Hatherley, a left-wing English Arts and Crafts), became the writer and critic, seems surprised and a defining look of London, and to some bit embarrassed by how much he admires extent still is. Less well-known was the cre- what Morrison achieved in London, having ation of a free healthcare system for the made good on his slogan “Labour gets city, over a decade before the founding of things done!” the . Livingstone was an entirely different Two outsize figures shaped what left- kettle of fish. The creation of the GLC wing government meant in London during in 1964, which replaced the LCC with a the twentieth century: Herbert Morrison, new, somewhat weaker government that the longtime leader of the LCC, and Ken included large suburban areas, diluted the Livingstone, who headed its two succes- power of the inner-city Labour bases. The sors, the (GLC) Conservatives and Labour traded control and the (GLA). until 1981, when Labour carried the local They could not have been more different. elections one last time (the GLC would be Morrison, the son of a policeman, was abolished five years later). In short order, a a top Labour leader for a quarter cen- coterie of leftists within the party deposed tury, serving as transport minister in a the moderate head of , put- minority Labour-led government before ting Livingstone at the head of the GLC heading the LCC. During and after the and other Marxists of various stripes, such Second World War, he held positions as as John McDonnell, Mike Cooley, Hilary , deputy prime minister, Wainwright, and Sheila Rowbotham, in and . A firm believer in positions of power. top-down , Morrison Hatherley admires much about the fiercely opposed critics on his left and had Livingstone crowd. The “GLC ,” SPRING 2021 · little patience for popular participation in as he calls it, “was gloriously, explicitly, T ISSEN D

Ken Livingstone (second from right) with protesters at the People's March for Jobs in London in 1983 (Hilaria McCarthy//Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

144 anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-impe- pleased. The tabloid press saw this as fur- rialist, anti-sexist; it was celebratory, ther proof that the “” had taken creative and propagandistic. It loved over, while some Black and Asian artists murals, pop music, bright colours and and critics found the cultural program out clothes; it scorned Morrisonian nation- of sync with their communities. alisation and funnelled money into co-ops The Conservative national government and communes. It was also much closer under hated everything to the extra-parliamentary left, and the GLC represented. Frustrated by its con- refused the traditional Labour distinction tinuing popularity and unyielding stance, between the ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ Thatcher, true to her counterrevolutionary left.” During a riot in shortly after beliefs, simply had Parliament abolish the he took office, Livingstone declined to GLC and six other metropolitan councils attend the wedding of Prince Charles and in 1986, leaving London one of the largest Lady Diana so that he could remain on the cities in the world without a democratically “front line.” chosen government. Because London proper had been Individual boroughs continued as depopulating for decades, by 1981 its elected entities, but Thatcher crippled chronic housing crisis had abated. Instead, them as well. When the GLC was created, a high level of unemployment and the loss various boroughs had been combined and of well-paid jobs had become the para- enlarged, which extended some inner-city, mount problem for the London working Labour-oriented boroughs like class and a top priority for the new GLC. and Camden into well-off suburban areas. The council made a giant sign listing the With the tax funds those districts helped number of unemployed Londoners and generate, left-led local placed it on the roof of County Hall, facing undertook what Hatherley characterizes R

Parliament across the Thames. At best, city as “housing programmes of still unrivalled EVIEWS governments the world over have limited humanity, intelligence and originality.” tools for addressing unemployment, with But in a way that will seem very alien to national governments controlling fiscal, American readers, the Thatcher govern- monetary, industrial, and trade policy. The ment and the national governments that GLC rejected the usual urban strategies followed, both Conservative and Labour, for a radical program of popular economic choked such initiatives by imposing caps planning, converting shuttered factories on borough tax rates and spending. It is to the production of socially useful goods as if Washington were to limit the taxes and promoting and neighbor- Chicago could collect and tinker with hood businesses. its budget. Hatherley does not explore the results, The Livingstone-era GLC left nothing but the actual number of jobs created like the physical legacy of the LCC from apparently remained modest. When- Morrison’s time. Nor did its economic ever the GLC did begin moving toward initiatives seem to have much lasting successful programs to fight economic impact (though Hatherley suggests that inequality, the courts or the national gov- they might have been an influence on the ernment stepped in to squash them. Labour program under , Livingstone’s policy of lower with former GLC finance chief McDonnell fares and more public investment brought serving as Corbyn’s shadow chancellor greater ridership to an improved London and most important ally). Rather, Hatherley Transport, before a court case instituted shrewdly observes, what the GLC did do by a Conservative borough shut it down. was lay the basis for “the multicultural Only in the cultural realm did the GLC have capital of the ‘creative industries’ that we pretty much free rein, sponsoring festi- know now.” But that London blossomed vals, arts events, and murals, promoting not under the aegis of the radical left but Black culture, and opening up County Hall of finance capital, unleashed by the so- to everyone from striking miners to skin- called Big Bang of deregulation the same heads and Rastafarians. Not everyone was year that the GLC was abolished.

145 When Labour finally won back national why it occurred. Perhaps, he suggests, power, it did not revive the GLC. Prime Livingstone, already at war with New Minister and dis- Labour over its foreign policy (arguably liked the democratic ethos of the old GLC not the best use of a local leader’s political almost as much as Thatcher had. Instead, capital), did not want to fight Blair and a 1998 referendum established a U.S.-style Brown for the funds that would be needed directly elected , with for Morrison-style projects. But Hatherley relatively few powers and an even weaker gives more weight to the temptation pre- Assembly. When Livingstone launched a sented by the skyrocketing price of city run for mayor, Blair, Chancellor Gordon land, a great deal of which was owned by Brown, and their allies maneuvered to deny the GLA and individual boroughs. By part- him the Labour nomination; he then ran as nering with private interests, with the state an independent and won by a landslide. providing land and the developers capital, With his usual brio, he began his victory housing and infrastructure could be put up, speech, “As I was saying, before I was so in effect, for free. Some boroughs went so rudely interrupted fourteen years ago. . . .” far as to simply sell off council housing or But the second coming of allow private interests to take over man- was nothing like the first. agement and use some of the land for By 2000, London had changed pro- luxury units. Instead of solving the housing foundly. Decades of population growth crisis, such policies exacerbated it, with and the Conservative policy of allowing the government practically conspiring public housing residents to buy their in gentrification. Economic inequality homes, which they could then resell on rose, rather than fell, during Livingstone’s the open market, had created a massive second run. crisis of housing supply and affordability. Hatherley titles his chapter on this At the same time, neoliberal thinking had period “Faust in City Hall,” which on one become dominant not only in the Conser- level says it all. (How Marshall Berman SPRING 2021 · vative Party but in Labour as well. would have loved this book and espe- T With transit policy, Livingstone once cially this chapter title.) But he never again demonstrated a combination of pro- really explains why such a broad range of

ISSEN gressive vision and practicality, introducing Labour politicians fell for the poisoned D a congestion charge on vehicles driving in deal. Perhaps the answer does not lie in the city center to reduce traffic and raise the particularities of London and Great money, dramatically improving bus ser- Britain. New York City, after all, first under vice, and taking over privately operated rail billionaire Michael Bloomberg and then lines and integrating them into London’s under self-proclaimed progressive Bill de transit system. When it came to housing, Blasio, adopted the same policy of giving however, instead of expanding the role of developers the keys to the city in return government, Livingstone diminished it. for the construction of a modest amount Rather than building new housing directly, of housing labeled affordable, which often the London government partnered with proved too expensive for local residents. private developers, allowing them to build The sheer financial, political, and ideolog- market-rate units if they built an equal ical power of big capital appears to have amount of affordable housing. But with cleared the field of all resistance. lax rules, most of what was built was too expensive for the Londoners most in need, and was often shoddy at that. Similarly, In 2008, defeated Living- in return for paltry infrastructure invest- stone in his bid for a third term as Lon- ments, the GLA allowed developers to don mayor. As had happened in the past, transform what was still a low-rise city with Johnson’s Conservative administration office skyscrapers. scuttled a lot of Labour’s policies while Hatherley is scathing in his assess- maintaining and extending its program in ment of this turn in Labour’s London some areas, such as with transit. (At this policies, but unsatisfying in explaining point, Livingstone largely disappears from

146 Hatherley’s narrative. His afterlife was they have done bad things and indifferent not pretty, with a series of blundering and things. But they have done them, and done offensive statements culminating in his them most often in conditions of great claim that Hitler was “supporting hostility. If they could do it, so can we.” before he went mad and ended up killing 6 The United States has its own history of million Jews.”) and social democracy. The current London mayor, Labou- Though not as rich as that in Great Britain, rite , grew up in a council flat. it includes socialist mayors in such cities as As the first Muslim head of the city, he Schenectady, Minneapolis, and Pasadena, represents a belated triumph for the multi- California, during the ; culturalism and antidiscriminatory policies Frank Zeidler, who served in of the old GLC. But his own cautious pro- until 1960, and more recently Bernie gressivism has none of the transformative Sanders in Burlington, Vermont; and city ambitions of either that body or the LCC administrations that aligned themselves before it. with the New Deal, and in some cases Hatherley still believes in the possibili- went beyond it programmatically. Like the ties for municipal socialism, but he does history in Red Metropolis, the American not lay out the case in much depth. The experience suggests both the possibilities program he ends his book with is slight, for progressive local action and the prob- nothing like the detailed plans the London lems, especially the challenge of mounting left once poured forth. Mostly he calls for large-scale efforts with local revenues and a devolution of power from the national the inability to control the wider economic government to metropolitan authori- and political environment. Still, if the crop ties. His one really radical notion is that of municipal socialists emerging in the London should abandon its commitment United States achieves anything like what R to growth (an ideology embraced equally the London socialists did, it will have much EVIEWS by Livingstone and Johnson), recognizing to be proud of. it as “environmentally, geographically and politically disastrous”—a verdict that might Joshua B. Freeman is Professor Emeritus be applied to many other cities around the of History at Queens College and the Grad- world, too. uate Center of the City University of New Throughout Red Metropolis, Hatherley York. His books include Behemoth: The His- grapples with what exactly socialism or tory of the Factory and the Making of the social democracy have meant on a local Modern World and Working-Class New level, and what they should mean. To move York: Life and Labor Since World War II. forward, he sees the need “to bridge the gap” between the LCC and GLC tradi- tions: “the local social democratic state that has improved the lives of millions for The Conservative Court the better, through aggressive, top-down Aryeh Neier transformations of health, housing, leisure and work; and the local social movements Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s that have brought in the unruly energy Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America and the strong democratic commitment by Adam Cohen that the most radical bureaucrats can too Penguin Press, 2020, 448 pp. often forget about.” Just how to do this is a challenge for which Hatherley has no easy answers. In 1963, I started work at the American Civil It is in looking at the past, not the Liberties Union. My assignment was to future, that Hatherley shines, but he rightly establish new affiliates of the organization sees it as a source of inspiration for the in states such as Texas and Oklahoma and present. In London, “more than a century to upgrade the capacity of long-standing of socialist and social democratic govern- state affiliates, such as those in Michigan ments. . . . have done good things, and and Pennsylvania. It was a thrilling time

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