“Hitherto, the well-to-do have
governed this country for their own interest; and I will do them this
credit—they have achieved their object. Now I trust the time is approaching for
those who work and have not. My aim in life is to make life pleasanter for this
great majority”
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of
Joseph Chamberlain, a towering figure in the history of Birmingham politics.
Chamberlain, who was Mayor between 1873 and 1876 before
serving Birmingham as an MP for 38 years, is synonymous with radical programmes
of localism which transformed both the city and its public services and
amenities.
140 years on from the era which shaped the face and heart of
Birmingham, as a Labour Party member it is hard not to feel a synergy of
philosophy with Chamberlain, despite him being a Liberal (fortunately of a
different breed to those currently in government).
We have not the slightest
intention of making profit...We shall get our profit indirectly in the comfort
of the town and in the health of the inhabitants
Chamberlain gave the above statement to a House of Commons
Committee when justifying the Council’s decision to bring Birmingham’s
waterworks under municipal control, an act which began the transformation of a
city in which 50% of the population still relied upon sewage-polluted well
water.
This followed the council’s similar action to purchase
Birmingham’s two leading gas suppliers, after their destructive actions led to
constant disruption and inadequate service (energy companies obviously haven’t
changed that much). The new scheme went on to achieve a considerable profit in
its first year of operation (as opposed to the 100% increase in public funding
which has occurred since the railways were privatised in 1993).
In our current economic and political climate, in which the
Tories have successfully stretched truths around the necessity of austerity and
Labour’s role in the global financial crisis of 2008, I’m not suggesting that
repeating this rhetoric word-for word would boost Miliband’s perceived credibility. But in the week in which he
promised that the next Labour government would devolve £30 billion to local
authorities, it serves as an important reminder of the ability of councils and
other local bodies to offer a credible alternative to wholescale privatisation.
It also represents an ethic which the next Labour government
must restore in the way our NHS is governed. Private firms now run 70% of NHS
contracts, budget cuts mean that children are now missing out on life-changing
services such as speech and language therapy, and whistleblowers at University
College Hospital in London are claiming that private patients are being given
priority over the elderly and emergency cases. Without intervention, you feel
we begin to descend a slippery slope to a destination which is the inverse of
Chamberlain’s ethos.
In short, Labour must follow in Chamberlain’s footsteps in
ensuring that we use the power of communities and municipalities to defend a
way of life that is greater than the bottom line. When Chamberlain spoke about
the great inequality in society, he foresaw it as:
“a problem which some men would
put aside by reference to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the
necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of
property”.
Our mission must be to defend another part of his vision of
society, an enduring shared objective which remains timeless in the fabric of our
party:
“Our object is the elevation of
the poor, of the masses of the people—a levelling up of them by which we shall
do something to remove the excessive inequality in social life”
