The local elections might be off the headlines, but news keeps coming in about the vibrancy of the new localism

Sheffield city centre

We’re bringing some more super-localism stories about the local elections on May 6th - doing a service to the Flatpack and “indies” movement (we covered the first wave of these in our Editorial last week).

Reporting on a ‘Civic Revival’, in sheffield and cornwall

We have covered Sheffield a lot in the DA - particularly their successful civic uprising around the summary removal of trees from the city’s streets by the local council. According to Civic Revival, this was a factor on May 6th:

A notable outcome included the citizen-called referendum on council governance in Sheffield, which won its bid to change to a more traditional committee structure, from a leader-led approach, as Sheffield City Council itself went to no overall party control, and the former leader lost his seat.

65% of voters expressed a desire for the new committee structure - approximately 89k votes for change, against 48k for not change. The grassroots It's Our City campaign triggered the referendum after gaining over 26,000 signatures from local people.

This was in response to the Council’s handling of the street tree dispute, which raised questions about accountability and oversight.

As we mentioned in our Editorial last week, and reinforced by the Civic Revival post, we have a basic information problem with covering the rise of creative, non-party “independents” localism in the parishes and towns of these islands - partly due to the “news deserts” created by the shrinkage of local press. (Something our deliberations on an Alternative Media System is dwelling on).

CR promise to update their account, if can you inform them about your local situation (contact here). They already have an excellent news page, which teems with items familiar to those who know the “Flatpack” approach to local democracy.

We received a news story about one of the CR successes mentioned, Maker-with-Raime Parish Council (in Cornwall). Their independents group INFORM (standing for ‘Independents for Rame and Maker’ - we love the energy in many of these independents’ parties names) took over the Parish, targeting the negativity and can’t-do attitude of the incumbents. Through adroit use of social media, and with advice and guidance from Flatpack Democracy, INFORM managed a turn-out of 67% - considerably higher than the 39% average for Cornwall.

Newham’s elections bring a “permanent citizens’ assembly”

There’s been much praise for Preston again since May 6th, whose citizens reelected the Labour councillors who have been responsible for their now world-famous “Model” for community wealth-building. (You can hear the practical wisdom of their leader, Matthew Brown, in this Novara Media interview). But it’s not the only place where Labour politicians have been paying close attention to the bottom-up demands of community power.

The London borough of Newham had a “governance referendum” - about whether the area should have a directly elected mayor leading change, or whether the Mayor should be appointed by a “committee” system. In Sheffield, it went the committee way, but in Newham the mayoral option was voted for. What’s fascinating is that the person benefitting, current Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz, has been an avid supporter of participatory government. From her victory speech:

Making sure the Council listens to people is my top priority, that is why I have established neighbourhood citizen assemblies to give people more voice to shape their local community and have a role in local decision-making. I have introduced the largest participatory budget making programme anywhere in the country, and the UK’s first permanent Citizen Assembly.

In a long read from New Local, which notes that the permanent Citizens Assembly will kick off this September, they report that:

the first topic has not yet been selected – appropriately it is up to Newham residents to choose between topics that include health inequalities, a ‘new deal’ for young people, and seizing the potential of technology. After they have come up with recommendations on one topic the group will continue indefinitely refreshing members so nobody serves twice. [If you’re a Newham resident, you can register for the CA here.]  

The New Local piece collates some other recent town-and-city-oriented citizen assemblies: “They’ve been national – on the future of social care; or on climate change assemblies in Scotland. There have been regional exercises on how Bristol can recover from Covid-19; whether assisted dying should be allowed in Jersey; how to help people have a healthier relationship with alcohol in the Wirral. And there have been hyper-local initiatives –like Test Valley’s assembly on the regeneration of the area around a local bus station.”

Yet as the piece notes towards the end, these initiatives can only be a remedy for popular cynicism about politics and government if their recommendations are actually enacted in policy.

In A/UK, we keep our eye on a wider field of democratic innovation and localist experiment, which citizens’ assemblies are a part of. We’re testing the concept of the CAN (citizen action network) against the inherited structures of local democracy or social enterprise.

But there’s no doubt that there is a turn to localities as a locus for change - networked to each other and the world ideally, in a cosmo-local way.