Pat Conaty:

“What we need to aim for is not only public-social partnerships but also commons-university partnerships moving to concepts of communiversity. During the late 1970s and up to 1985 before Reagonomics secured a strangle hold on thinking, there were something akin to ‘communiversity partnerships’ then co-developing the paradigm shifting ideas of Ivan Illich and Schumacher and these hubs were linked to Alternative Technology Networks. In the USA I was in the 1970s a member of the Union of Radical Political Economists and when I came to England in 1978 involved with several of these networks that actually helped found NEF in 1987. Robin Murray was very involved with these Technology networks both through Sussex University and when working in the early 1980s as the lead economist with the Leader of the Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone. However 1989 as a turning point snuffed out this connectivity to the academies.

BALTA in Canada is somewhat of a lone voice seeking to do this university and social economy partnership building and making some headway in western Canada but we have nothing like this in the UK at present. The New Economy Coalition in the USA is working on some similar ideas through their student organising efforts and. Also the ongoing fight at Manchester University by undergraduates and graduates to get heterodox teachers onto the faculty of the Economics Department is similar to the battle by French students to advance post-autistic economics in French universities beginning with the University of Paris in 2000.

It is the practical and applied links beyond the universities or in their city-regions that can help us secure traction beyond ivory towers and make the connections to local government and trade unions and the civil society partner.”