Politicians wrestle at a very practical level with how to engage with the public and they have done so for decades.
The public engagement debate has been around for many years but has been given new impetus by falling turnout at elections and by alarming levels of cynicism about elected politicians and Parliament itself, which anyone who engages with the public at a political level will come across. This is not universal by any means but it is evident.
However, as political commentators frequently point out, when asked, many more people have a favourable opinion of their own MP than they have of politicians in general. Having worked for two very popular, very hardworking campaigning MPs I have direct experience of engaging with the electorate.
Just as an example, in Tottenham prior to the 1997 election a major issue arose with tenants concerned about water safety on the canal bank adjacent to their estate, which had a large population of young children. I organised several meetings with the tenants, involving local councillors, representatives of British Waterways and the police, as well as Bernie Grant MP. The end result was improved fencing and stronger gates between the estate and the canal bank. This process also showed the council tenants that Bernie Grant was on thier side and wiling and able to support them.
Informal coffee mornings, meet your MP events, in all areas of the constituency and more formal site visits and public meetings on national policy issues are tried and tested ways through which MPs can and do make themselves accessible to their constituents. I know because I organised scores of these, often in partnership with local community groups, local churches, campaigning groups, neighbourhood watch and also the Queen’s Theatre, over the eight years when I ran former Labour MP John Cryer’s campaigns.
The point of these events was to have a two way conversation: to hear what people thought about their area and listen to the solutions they had to suggest. At the same time, informing them of the avenues of influence available to them and explain the role of their Members of Parliament as a conduit between the constituency, Parliament and Government.
We also made a point of keeping in touch with people afterwards, so that they knew they could call on John and his staff for help or advice or to invite him to be involved in other events that they were holding. On a number of occasions we held informal events to allow local people to meet directly with and talk to government ministers, including David Blunkett prior to the 2005 election, when he and John Cryer talked with nearly 100 local people in Elm Park about crime and disorder. In that audience were many people who had previously had little opportunity to 'talk to power', reachig beyond the vocal and organised sections of the community.
This way, and through the vast amounts of constituency casework we dealt with, the views of the community could be fed into the national political debate through Parliament. Parliament can and should be at the centre of national debate, not sidelined. Likewise, being an MP is much more than some kind of ‘super councillor’ or a figurehead role in fundraising camapigns.
I learned from all that experience as a Labour candidate in Colchester and visited and spoke at schools about citizenship and the importance of idealism and activism in achieving political goals.
My current role involves advising volunteers on how they can lobby and influence Parliament, through presentations on Parliament and the legislative process. If people don’t know how the law is made and what are the key influencing points they have few opportunities to make their voices heard.
For the last few weeks, I have been presented workshops across the country on local government and its forthcoming new responsibilities for patient and public involvement in health to volunteers working to influence their local health services.
Three things strike me very strongly: the first is the deep desire of these volunteers to play an active role in improving health services in their area, the second is that they have had to really fight hard to be taken seriously by health service professionals and finally they are nervous of the involvement of local government in public engagement in health because they fear it will be politicised. This seems to derive from their suspicion that councillors, and by implication politicians in general are only interested in the public and their concerns when they want to get elected.
Having worked with local councillors in Walthamstow for the last 17 years, I can say I have seen many examples of excellent community work from some councillors throughout that time, much of it unsung and unadvertised. Likewise good MP, can bring people together in partnership without seeking to dominate or control what they do.
What is new in this participation debate is the plethora of academic organisations dedicated to public engagement and involvement, active citizenship and growing mountain of theory dedicated to this subject, together with examples of one-off projects. Disappointingly there is very little about this works at a practical level, consistently and systematically and over time. This is particularly the case in health as the House of Commons Health select Committee commented in its report on patient and public involvement:that there are "a plethora of organisations" concerned with involvement and the number of organisations has been increasing. They said this is a source of real confusion, particularly as there is no common agreement about what public involvement offers peole and how this leads to service improvement, greater accountability or combatting cynicism.
Public engagement and public participation is hard work, particularly if one seeks to go beyond the already organised, already vocal minority and tries to engage with the marginalised and the hard to reach. What is clear to me from my own political activity and involvement with trade unions is that the best route to recruiting and organising people is to pit forward a firm set of beliefs, an ideology, and offer people a route to power and the chance to exercise control over outcomes on thier own terms and in their own interests.
