Morning:
8°c
BUCKHURST Hill does not seem an especially revolutionary place. This prosperous Essex suburb, on an outer limb of the Central line, feels as if it would probably be roused to real anger only by, say, a crackdown on unauthorised patio extensions or a windfall tax on nipple-pink Audis.
But appearances can deceive, and Essex has often led political change in this country. In the 1940s and 50s, its new towns and council estates were the beating heart of Clem Attlee's arterial-road, slum-clearance Britain. In the 1970s, it spawned the working-class shock troops of Thatcherism. And now, Essex is turning back to social democracy.
On Station Way, Buckhurst Hill, there stands a pioneer: a post office branch, earmarked for closure, which has been saved through a subsidy from Essex County Council. Half a dozen more are being rescued the same way (Boris, take note).
Last week, the People's Republic of Essex took another step forward, with the council announcing its own bank to lend money to businesses in difficulties. These moves, though small, are of great potential importance to the way we run Britain.
We are rightly accustomed to viewing central government with suspicion and dislike. To most NHS workers and state-school teachers, just as to most entrepreneurs and businessmen, Whitehall is an intruder and a burden in their lives, a junkie addicted to its yearly fix of stupid, unnecessary Bills and "initiatives". As central control over public services has increased, public confidence in those services has fallen.
Even worse, Whitehall is now - to a degree unprecedented in peacetime - extending its centralised power into our personal lives through a state apparatus of overmighty police, identity cards and databanks of private information on us all (which it then leaves on the 6.14 to Haslemere). The term peacetime is perhaps a relative one, given our Government's criminally lethal behaviour in Iraq, Afghanistan and the "war on terror."
What the Essex initiative reminds us is that there could be other ways to secure the public goods and services which most of us value - without the horrors of the central state.
That's surely old hat now, you may say. Since the economic crisis, we love big government again - and what could be bigger than a £37 billion bank bail-out? But though the bail-out was necessary to stop the banks collapsing (and was something only a national government could do), it is starting to look as if its other aim, to revive the credit market, is failing.
Credit is central to the economic crisis: it began, of course, as a "credit crunch". But most of the banks, bailed out and otherwise, are not passing on recent interest-rate cuts, despite ever-heavier Treasury breathing. Businesses are going under because the banks, bailed out and otherwise, are still choking off the credit on which they depend.
It's not quite the banks' fault: they face potentially conflicting demands, asked both to restore themselves to financial health and to return towards the generous lending which made them unwell in the first place.
Still, it's starting to look as if Gordon should have lent some of that £37 billion directly to threatened businesses, à la Essex, rather than buying so many shares in failed banks. He should be boosting alternative providers - friendly societies and credit unions - that are now helping business people shut out of their usual lenders. It's starting to look as if yet another Whitehall policy is in trouble.
Just as the future of our public services may lie outside Whitehall's grip, so may the future of our economy lie outside the stranglehold of the giant banks.
No mystery in Notting Hill
IN CRIME novels, places are often as important a character as any person: the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes, Rankin's Edinburgh, Chandler's LA. Years ago, in King Solomon's Carpet, Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, made the Tube into a living thing so real that you half-expected the RMT to order the story out on strike. This weekend I enjoyed Rendell's new novel, Portobello (£17.99 plus £8 congestion charge — only joking, Ruth).
One of Rendell's problems is that, unlike the Tube, Notting Hill isn't all that mysterious and dysfunctional any more. She's had to scuzz it up quite a bit. If she were writing a true-to-life story of modern-day W11, she'd have to make it about a banker called Johnny wondering if he could sell the country cottage and still get back what he paid.
You see Damian, I see Damien
ON THE subject of police misjudgments involving people called Damien, do you remember the climactic scene in the horror film The Omen? Gregory Peck is about to kill Damien, son of Satan, and save the world, when the cops burst in and shoot Peck instead. Without in any way comparing our own admirable Damian Green to the Antichrist, British politics is starting to look a bit like that movie. Everyone who crosses Damian (acting Met commissioner Paul Stephenson, the Speaker, and so on) ends up hurt.
The latest casualty is Labour's leader on the London Assembly, Len Duvall, who — in one of the most absurd things I've ever heard — has reported Boris Johnson to City Hall watchdogs for allegedly prejudicing the inquiry. Just what is the point of having an elected police authority if its chair, Johnson, cannot express his concern about a clear abuse of police power?
Reader views (8)
It is a pity that Vanessa's comment is not displayed in an appropriate green.
Len Duvall is merely indulging in student politics, unlike Boris he has never been a member of Parliament so he probably does not understand that people expect to be able to communicate with their MPs in cofidence. He is, however, such a complete apparatchik that a safe seat will eventually be found for him.
Mdj mentions pentacostalists: Evangelical christianinity in Essex is far wider and sometimes much weirder than those fire worshippers; check out The Peculiar People as an extraordinary and almost exclusively Essex cult.
- The Grim Reaper, Deptford, UK, 11/12/2008 15:36
Report abuse
Its also worth remembering that by and large Essex was never taken in by Phoney Tony and never believed that Commissar Brown had abolished boom and bust........if only the rest of the UK hadn't been so gullible!
- Terry Guy, Chelmsford Essex, 09/12/2008 14:21
Report abuse
Its worth remembering that the peasants revolt of 1381, started in Essex, Fobbing, although the leader, Wat Tyler, came from Kent. It was about over-taxation in the main. The actually captured the Tower of London, never be done before or since. Government, beware of Essex Man, he is no new phenomenon
- Dave Morris, Sunderland, 09/12/2008 09:36
Report abuse
Essex is not part of the suburbs!!
On this basis Dover is an offshore part of France.
As for Damien looks like Rodney was right about the dangers associated with this name.
MP's may make laws but they are NOT above the law.
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex, 08/12/2008 21:08
Report abuse
Vanessa - please get your facts right before posting. There is not a single EU law relating to ID cards, HIPS, post offices, arrest warrants in Parliament, DNA databases, nationalisation of banks, illegal wars abroad or even social services mismanagement. These are all home-grown problems which do not exist in other countries, but which UK politicians of a certain ilk like to blame on "foreigners".
- John Buckeridge, Poiters, France, 08/12/2008 15:38
Report abuse
I'm not sure about social democracy, Andrew: what you'll find not far from Buckhurst Hill is a startling concentration of BNP Councillors. I suspect they represent the old-style self-made Londoner you would think of as Essex Man, who started drifting from Labour when it began its generational makeover into the party for hereditary bureaucrats, and Michael Foot described the self-employed as a scourge he wanted to abolish. Thatcherism seemed to serve their individualistic drive for about fifteen years, but lately they've felt shafted by the gaps in security of that lifestyle that really they should have seen coming.
Abrasive though they often are, I don't think racism is their principal driver, more a general sense of insecurity and betrayal. I believe one of these Councillors is Jewish, by the way. Essex is unusual for displaying an aspirational work-hard, spend-hard culture across all classes, frequently linked to pentecostal religion: count the tabernacles on the road to Southend whose congregations are white. It's interesting: a demographic that wouldn't surprise you in the USA. Remember some of the Pilgrim Fathers came from Essex, and I bet they were a pretty stroppy bunch. Across the political spectrum I think a huge reaction is coming against big battalions of any kind: like all social change, it'll have some very rough edges.
- Mdj, Leyton, e10 london, 08/12/2008 15:34
Report abuse
On the reference to Len Duvall, the reporting of Boris is because he owes the MPA a duty not to prejudice or pre-empt an ongoing investigation isn't it? Or does it mean he can decide for the police (without all the information) what the end point of investigations will be?
Oh, and I suppose the use of confidential information (garnered as MPA chair) probably shouldn't be used to make party political points (I hear Boris and Damien are members of the same political party).
- Chris N, Tower Hamlets, London, 08/12/2008 15:22
Report abuse
What is not stated is that this HUGE centralisation of government is because of all the EU DIRECTIVES which this country now has to abide by. When will the media stand up and tell the truth about ID cards, HIPS, closing post offices etc. - all the EU's fault.
- Vanessa, London, 08/12/2008 12:02
Report abuse
