The problems with decentralization

Writing to the theme of the crisis of western democracy and leadership, Mireille Pouget concludes that the rejection of an independent Scotland in the September 2014 independence referendum was not the end of the story. This has been borne out by events in succeeding days and weeks, and Scotland’s high profile in the current UK-wide election campaign.

I take up here the thread in terms of the challenges increasingly confronting the UK as that five-yearly General Election on May 7 approaches. The Scottish referendum saw an 85% turn-out at a time when political apathy is the norm. Political energy and community interest are being sustained within Scotland, where SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) membership has grown dramatically. This political event is evidently also a community lifelong learning-and-action phenomenon.

A spreading contagion?

Devolution is infectious. Thanks in part to the timing before an unusually tense and unpredictable General Election, it is spreading to all parts of the United Kingdom, at a time when devolution had already become something of a flavour of the month across most parties, and a worry for unitarian nationalists. OTB-like public intellectual David Marquand had already written of Home Rule as a future for each part of the UK as the alternative to complete separation. It became a belated pre-emptive strike to check SNP. Right after the lost referendum however the British Prime Minister tied honouring promises made in the heat of battle to similar rights for a separate English parliament: expedient short-term political agility but short-sighted in terms of consequences.

In Britain as in many other countries, not only European, internal devolution is a lively concern. Turning inward when things get tough, as parties like UKIP (UK) and Front Nationale (France) have done, haunts the ‘European project’ of the EU and is now in turn haunted by internal fragmentation of the nostalgic ‘nation state’ – ‘national state’ in quote-marks. Poor political education entails loss of historical memory. There is little awareness how recent, accidental and arbitrary are many of today’s national boundaries. They are not inalienably God-given; more a saga of political accidents, often expedient and short-sighted. The ‘independence-home-rule-devolution learning project’ has scarcely yet begun.

Coming back to Britain’s politics, living with Coalition is another kind of national political learning event for which there was no preparation. Coalition is common in many countries but exceptional in modern British history with its binary right-left choice. New thinking seemed unnecessary: vote Labour if leftish, Conservative if rightish. Country and people are now struggling to learn other ways of managing. This too demands thinking, choosing, and new learning. 

New prospects, new learning?

The possible so-called loss of Scotland has raised or revived ideas, hopes, and fears. With revived interest in devolution to regions and conurbations as well as to Wales. (Northern Ireland is different: the troubles flicker on, and independent Eire is an inducement to Irish nationalists. Admiration as well as envy has revived interest in regional devolution within England itself, which apparently died when a 2004 referendum in the North-East of England was swamped by apathy. The 2010 UK Administration dissolved the RDAs (Regional Development Authorities) including one for the North-East, but the situation has become more complex and politicised as a new General Election approaches post-Scottish Referendum. The Government recently devolved some powers to Greater Manchester, to encourage economic growth in the North and to blunt hostility to the wealth and economic advantage of Greater London. The ambitions aroused in other cities and regions creates a new learning agenda. With more political parties seen as serious contestants, Britain appears to be stirring from apathy and cynical indifference to politics. The ‘Scottish disease’ – or learning project – may be spreading. There is a new agenda to think OTB and learn for cities and citizens, regions and nation states.

But has this really much to do with learning, by individuals, civil society, cities and regions? Yes; it demands new learning at city-region level as London and Manchester have been discovering. The experience of more powerful Mayors and new Police Commissioners is being examined and has yet to charm as a model for devolution. The politically embattled BBC has launched on a national information and education about the Election that to my memory is without precedent. Its influential morning Today radio programme devoted itself (on March 30 2015) to analysing devolution from different view-points. The North-East appeared to have moved far from the indifference of 2004, the Scottish disease taking hold in a border region far from Westminster and too far from Manchester to see the vaunted Manchester-Leeds ‘high speed 3’ (HS3) rail project as relevant: ‘they just don’t understand the North’ down there’.

Looking beyond Britain

This may all sound rather local and short-term to those outside Britain and not interested in politics. But the issues it raises are common to many countries. The challenge of coming to terms with such changes demands new kinds of learning and engagement to which lifelong and life-wide learning are critical. We might begin by comparing notes on past changes and national crisis: the Quebecois in Canada, Kurds in Eastern Turkey, the break-up of post-War Czechoslovakia, separatisms within Spain, and many others.

It would be great to hear stories from other part of Europe and beyond about what makes devolution an issue. How do people in civil society rather than in power learn and think about it? The Pascal’s Annual Conference in October this year is in Sicily, a region of very distinct identity in a South very different from Italy’s North. In England ‘the North’ is the disadvantaged periphery, in Italy it is the economic powerhouse inclined to secede from the Italy to the South. It has been suggested half-seriously that London should withdraw from the rest of the country as a wealthy separate City State.

A collection of examples of devolution and the kind of LLL that it requires would be rich background to the Sicilian Conference in October. As Mireille Pouget has observed, the Scottish story is far from over; what we might be seeing is more sustained lifelong learning effort as local-regional ‘tribal’ energy displace alienation from community life at the high and remote national level.

Taking action?

As to what might be learned and done about it, here is an example of consensual activism from Geelong, an ambitious provincial city - really a big country town - in Victoria in federal Australia:

The recipe for a Canberra Advocacy delegation from Geelong’s local G21 was described as:

Start with fifteen G21 Board members... allocate two days for them all to travel to Canberra... arrange eighteen meetings, with Ministers and Shadow Ministers... arovide face-to-face briefings on more than 20 projects and important issues for the G21 region... return home exhausted, but pleased that Canberra is better informed about our region’s needs.

The aim was to ensure that the region’s priorities are front-of-mind when key resource and expenditure decisions are being taken federally; success can only be assessed, it was added, over future months and years. However, ‘several of our political leaders remarked that the G21 Board’s visit to Canberra is unique — representing the united voice of five municipalities, business and community organisations. The G21 model is one that other regional areas of Australia envy.’ [This is from the G21 March 2015 e-Newsletter of the Geelong Region Alliance of ‘government, business and community organisations working together to improve people’s lives in the Geelong region’]

Chris Duke 2 April 2015