Manchesterism means putting place and people first, and that needs to be put into practice at a national level by building new institutions to support communities to own local assets and ensuring there’s continual funding for community groups and activities.
We have already seen how Andy Burnham’s experience in Greater Manchester is informing possible directions for his soon-to-be government. Mathew Lawrence’s The Productive State, for example, takes public control of Manchester’s bus network, then applies the same principles to utilities providing life’s essentials. A political culture in Greater Manchester of ‘doing things differently’ is being reflected in a nascent devolution and decentralisation agenda promising to shift power out of Westminster.
Yet beyond buses and political culture, we hear less about how Andy Burnham put place and people first in Greater Manchester – by sharing power with communities themselves. Here’s what he did, what we might learn from it, and where gaps need to be filled.
A state that cares
GM Live Well is a sign of the kind of state Burnham wants to see. Described by Burnham as a ‘movement and model’, Live Well seeks to coordinate local services by taking a person-centred and community-led approach. This ensures the community sector is invested in, there is a workforce able to tailor support around individuals, and that there are hubs in communities for everyday support. For example, Fur Clemt – Wigan’s local dialect for ‘very hungry’ – is a family-run organisation tackling food waste and food poverty, as well as running a whole host of other activities out of a large community space. Live Well has financially backed Fur Clemt, recognising it is a trusted local organisation that is well-placed to reach people furthest from the labour market, and find creative ways to help them build the skills and confidence
that they need.
It demonstrates a new ethos for a state that cares about people and stands with, not against, community organisations and citizens. This is a practical radicalism where the state supports and trusts community organisations, built on genuine collaboration.
There is real power in this trusting, community-minded ethos. I saw it for myself at the Live Well Festival in Manchester on the day Josh Simons announced he was standing down as MP for Makerfield to make way for Burnham. In the surroundings of Fairfield Social Club there wasn’t just music and dancing. Just like Live Well put trust in the hands of people who run community organisations, the festival handed those people the microphone to provide stories of hope.
Though Burnham could not be there, the celebration went on because trust had been put in grassroots organisations who could keep the momentum going. What could have just been a programme was instead a movement where people and organisations felt bigger than themselves, where ordinary people were welcomed into a way of doing politics and policy that you often do not see in Westminster.
There was joy, fight, and energy in that room that can only be felt when people are trusted and respected. Politics has struggled to evoke these feelings, so it would be wise to translate the spirit of Live Well into a ‘people and place first’ national policy agenda. It would mean that Live Well would no longer be the exception or the exemplar best practice. Rather it would be the movement that inspired a government that recognised that the people, spaces, organisations
and activity that make it possible for people to come together are essential and should be part and parcel of what government at all levels supports.
People in control
What would that look like in practice? Fundamentally, Manchesterism is about a redistribution of power. Burnham is right to trace many of our national ills to a combination of deindustrialisation, privatisation, and the stripping back of local government. When the pits, factories, and fisheries closed we saw the pubs and clubs they sustained close down too, whilst austerity saw central
government pull resources away from local government, and further away still from the people – with the most deprived places hit the hardest by cuts.
Public control of utilities and devolution are part of, but not the whole answer. As Burnham said in Manchester there needs to be “power at ground level to make a real difference”, like it has in the past through the Rochdale pioneers. Greater public control should also mean greater community control.
Community-owned spaces like Stretford Public Hall in Manchester show what can be done when communities have control over the spaces that matter to them. They provide a home for groups and activity that build connected, confident communities where people are in control, through opening up a welcoming, accessible space – a symbol of local pride in the community – that is full of committed people who value relationships. Community ownership must be central to a redistribution of power, as should community-controlled funding that supports the groups and activity that use these spaces.
This is democratisation from the bottom-up. If the closure of community centres, boarded up shops on high streets, and pubs sitting empty have come to symbolise a democratic decay, their rejuvenation can show things are changing for the better.
As Andy Burnham sets out his programme for government, including on devolution and a restoration of public control, a people and place first approach can ensure his project puts trust in communities, just as he did in Greater Manchester. This should be done by creating new institutions to support civic life, for example by ensuring more land, buildings and community spaces are under community control and to ensure there is a perpetual endowment that funds essential community groups and activity.
These steps will support people to build communities that are connected, capable and in control. It would be a project that puts people and place first now and for generations to come.
---
Josh is Senior Campaigns and Public Affairs Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation where he leads on political strategy on the labour market and communities.
All blog posts represent the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of Mainstream.
