Building a culture of participation

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Jon Bright (London, OK): involve launched their pamphlet 'Participation Nation' yesterday at a panel event with Matthew Taylor, Shaun Bayley and Hazel Blears. It was nice to hear someone from Labour reaffirm a commitment to localism and participation after so many strong statements by the Conservatives on this. Stella Creasy's pamphlet itself hits all the right notes - public participation not just for breathing legitimacy back into politics, but because the public has skills and knowledge that politicians can't access. Hazel Blears set out a strong case, and made some knowing asides about how not everyone in government was convinced about participation as she was. Both her and Matthew Taylor were critical of this year's citizens juries for not going far enough. They needed to have bite, she said.

But Shaun Bayley sounded some notes of caution. In the community he comes from, he said, there is no culture of participation or power - people are managed, and see government as something that is done to them, rather than something that they participate in. He seemed to feel that he was talking to a room of people that didn't understand him and probably weren't interested in engaging with him.

I think I feel a similar uneasiness to Shaun about things like citizens juries - they seem slightly disconnected from the reality of how people understand the government today. Citizens juries are 'one off' showpiece events, 'given' to a public who have no recent history or culture of meaningful participation in politics. They are not even particularly strong offers - at the moment they are done in secret, with a vague promise to listen - and they are being released into a climate of public distrust which is extremely inhospitable to their success. Of course they could be given more power, but they still require, if you like, the public to put all their trust in the politicians - to engage in an unfamiliar process on a one-off basis, believing the promise of being actually listened to. It's not that surprising that people are a bit sceptical about the merits of these procedures - they feel like trying to ice a cake that hasn't been baked yet.

Genuine, sustained devolution of power to local councils would be a different matter (as Susan Williams and Laurie Waller argue in the pamphlet). This would be an open, long lasting process, which would involve the government surrendering some real powers - for example the ability to raise and spend tax revenue. There would be unpredictable consequences. There would, of course, be bad decisions made by local populations. But there would also be the beginnings of a meaningful culture of participation and local democracy in this country - if something like that could be constructed, the citizens juries and all the rest might actually be able to thrive.

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