AGM: localism and economic localisation – the conflicts and the opportunities

Our AGM speaker event early yesterday evening felt to me like a positive oasis of  rational thinking on our beseiged economy (with perhaps just a touch of healthy frustration) amidst a barren desert in which too many have been persuaded, for example, to blame public sector extravagance for the entire global financial crisis…

The event ran successfully on the theme “Big Society vs Big Economics: can we really have localism without decentralising economic power?” Sarah Longlands from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, our guest speaker, talked about the concepts of the social, commercial and public economies and the way that we currently only measure the commercial; the potential conflicts between a local authority-orientated and community-orientated version of localism; the possibility that localism will entail an abdication of government responsibility; the opportunities and shortcomings of local economic partnerships – bringing in CLES’ experience of working with local authorities and communities over the years and using examples from Greater Manchester’s collaborative working and other areas.

Contributions from other participants were vociferous and interesting – from my rough notes some of the more striking points made were:

- the risks involved in handing over a large proportion of local authority services to large and less accountable private sector deliverers

- the last ten years’ growth in corporate welfare looks set to continue

- economic localisation is about redressing the imbalance of power between society and global business, and it is still unclear whether the Big Society agenda will promote or hinder this process

- measurement is crucial: CLES is working on an adaptation of nef’s Local Multiplier to try to identify ways of measuring the social and the public economies as well as the commercial.

- the need for clear and useful communications materials on sustainable economics to share amongst organisations and individuals who can help.

- is it time for a coalition of new economics organisations to promote economics that delivers social and environmental goals? (as Barbara Hayes pointed out, the Greek root of ‘economics’ is ‘Oikos’, which means household…)

- from the experience of Regen WM graduates, working with the regeneration-related students of today is well worth the time to challenge some of the more damaging orthodoxies.

- finally, Rob Weaver’s point that we are perhaps ‘talking too much to ourselves’ was very apt – and one we will bear in mind. Rather than a social justice and regeneration event in West Bromwich, perhaps we should be writing to the executive board of the IMF to give the next LWM presentation…

Doubtless I’ve missed some vital points made and will redress this in a future blog post when we have the full notes ready. But it was a refreshing and useful discussion and plenty of us have some useful contacts to follow up. I love a meeting that results in actually DOING something and am sure this will be one of them.

Our thanks to Sarah for speaking, to everyone who attended and contributed, to our Chair Hannah Worth for, obviously, chairing, and to Midlands Co-operative Society for hosting it in their room at the top of the BMI.

Karen Leach

Coordinator