Try: feminised politics, proximity, ecology and community. As we turn off ‘post-truth’ politics, face-to-face meeting, listening and community-building supported by safe technologies are some of the salves for human-scale democracy. While New Zealand is facing a national election, it’s worth considering other forms of democracy, namely engaged local politics, currently being called municipalism in Europe.

Jump to Barcelona in June — where 700 people from 180 countries converged in inaugural Fearless Cities summit on municipalism — organised by the current political movement, Barcelona En Comu.

If you’re not one for party politics, municipalism is attractive — it’s about designing a process of involving all citizens in the self-organising of their communities, towns or cities, not so much about creating new policies and group think from the top down. My interests: developing self-empowered societies, commons-building and in art processes that develop communities. After registering and paying 20 Euros online, I found myself connected to and hosted by the Corbella family who — mother, sister, son, father are all involved in the movement of people-driven democracy.

The summit was hugely powerful — not only connecting us to a major international network but giving visibility to residents, activists and councillors who have been elected from the ground up — from Europe and North America, Middle East and Africa, all encouraging us to continue work with people to eliminate fear that divides citizens. All the summit sessions can be found at You Tube here.

I attended sessions on non-state institutions, on sanctuary cities and on municipalism in towns and rural areas, thinking always, how might New Zealand might relate to this new movement?

Try these recurring themes from the summit:

1. Feminised politics. The new municipalisism is radicalising the process of representation and it is female-led. It will grow from those experienced in listening to their communities. Barcelona City Councillor, Laura Perez Castaño suggested that no matter how we look at it, women’s needs are different to men’s. Issues such as mobility and working hours are different for women and our political positions different. New Zealand knows about historic suffrage; and we should start to recognise the new community-driven leaders who are women.

2. Proximity is a key asset when it comes to municipalism. Having access to all the members of our small communities allows for genuine engagement. We talk about New Zealand’s ‘2 degrees’ social geography and this is powerful. The traditional elite have used proximity in recent times and it can be just as easily employed. Recommended reading: Joan Subirats on Proximity (included here the book Cities in the 21st Century).

3. Ecology and people are connected. Legendary Indian activist Vandana Shiva spoke about forests self-organising and that the natural state for people too is also to self-organise within their urban ecosystems. To quote US activist Debbie Bookchin, “We can’t address ecological problems without resolving our addiction to domination and hierarchy.” We know this in New Zealand: the mauri of the land is connected to the mauri of the people. That means the people and land stay well together.

4. As community organisers, don’t rely on the mainstream media to reach your people or reflect your community. Organising at community level is the way to connect where you are dealing with people at a personal level. It’s time consuming -get used to it. Barcelona En Comu was largely ignored by the TV and newspapers until the election. Trust your community networks and not the media.

Leading European examples

Barcelona En Comu started out as movement of self-organising groups and Barcelona’s Mayor Ada Colau is one of the more public faces of it. Back in 2014 she was part of organisation, Platform for Mortgage Victims, working to stop people being evicted from their homes by banks.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau at #FearlessCities

Connecting with other groups, the Platform members became more politically active when they realised that it wasn’t just about tackling banks — that public institutions had to change too. Running for Barcelona Council, initially under the banner Guanyem Barcelona (We will win Barcelona) they didn’t meet in secret or in members’ sitting rooms. They held meetings in the squares, in the streets, and in all neighborhoods. For more history see this Guardian piece How to win back the city.

Although Barcelona en Comu evolved to become a political party, their connection between the people and political process continues fluidly. Oriol Corbella, one of my young hosts, sent me a message as he was attending a recent meeting in his neighborhood with the elected members of Barcelona En Comu, reporting back after two years in Council. He described how the room was separated into five circles (each circle a subject), with the respective politicians explaining “the goals we had accomplished, the difficulties and the future. There are many difficulties for the ones in government to communicate what they do to the people from the party.” But intention is there.

Participatory democracy is fast-shaping the operations of other local governments over Europe, and it may be that smaller towns are easier to manage than cities. At the session Municipalism in towns and rural areas I learned that in the UK, in Buckfastleigh, Devon, Pamela Barrett, Mayor of Buckfastleigh, was elected once her community collectively developed 8 new initiatives and Council raised rates by 1 pound a week (equating to an 100% rise) without backlash. Buckfastleigh runs its meetings in football clubs, in parks and the streets, and allows members of the public to contribute in a Roman-style ‘polis’.

In Torrelodones, Spain, Marina Vicen, Councilor for Youth and Education, spoke of how the Council has established a drop in centre to deal with issues immediately — same day if possible.

In Celrá, we heard from Mercè Amich Vidal, Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), Councilor for Youth and Equality at Celrà City Council where their constituency asked them to ring the elderly residents every morning to wish them good morning and will check-in on them personally if they don’t respond. They call this the Bon Dia service.

In Celrá, 10o% of local budget (outside of Council staffing) is allocated participatorily. The town has since been trialing an online app — Celrà participa — which will assist.

Municipalist Councillors from Spain and UK: Marina Vincen, Mercè Amich Vidal, Pamela Barrett

In London, the Right to the City campaign started before the UK general election and has similar principles to municipalism, with a certain pick up especially since the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. Yet it feels as if class and power issues could take a while to be fully shaken from the English psyche — see Caroline Molloy’s damning piece on UK local politics.

Surely it’s possible for those of us in NZ to leave behind the colonial psyche of ‘us’ and ‘them’?

New Zealand community-driven politics?

Our New Zealand local governments are generally approachable. I’ve found Councils responsive and Councillors increasingly open minded. In Wellington I often see our Councillors in community events, football games, coming readily to invited meetings through my varied involvement in several community-driven planning programmes. The organisation I co-direct, Letting Space, for example, has worked with Wellington City, as well as Dunedin City, Masterton District, and Porirua City on a platform for community voice — the Urban Dream Brokerage*, a place for all-comers to suggest good ideas for vacant city spaces.

And in terms of political advocacy the work of New Zealand organisation Action Station has begun to reveal the possibility of crowd-sourcing support for specific causes. It’s work is driven by what people want to see happen and has had huge effect in selected areas.

There are many groups who see themselves as legitimate voices of the land, and thousands of Friends’ groups who inadvertently become the main caretakers for the rivers, streams and wilder habitats of our country. Many of recent our environmental victories have been thanks to our nation of volunteers. Yet these groups are at arms length from politics. We’re just playing in the shallows with what is possible. We need to connect voice and ideas with real politics.

Perhaps we don’t perceive the need for radical transformation in New Zealand like those in bigger cities and countries. Perhaps we don’t perceive we have an issue with corruption or access to power.

And yet we still have major problems — hugely disempowered communities and those whose needs are not being met. We’ve seen the rate of homelessness at world-beating levels, of cities too expensive for average wage earners to live in, increased mental illness, youth suicide at record levels and huge disenfranchisement in society. Many of these problems lie in Central government policies. But some issues can be met in our local towns and cities.

With the majority of the New Zealand population saying they think that traditional parties and politicians don’t care about them, we need to find new ways for people to have a voice.

Political commentator Bryce Edwards suggests:

“The idea of participatory and decentralized ways of doing politics are particularly apt for contemporary New Zealand, because the political system has become the opposite of that — it’s currently very centralized and elite. Few people are involved in the political process, and power is highly concentrated. So, we desperately need to be talking about and trialing ideas like municipalism.

“Municipalism might well be a philosophy and practice tailor-made for contemporary politics in New Zealand…People are increasingly either disenchanted with how politics currently works, or at least highly suspicious about democracy and authorities in general. There is a backlash forming against the status quo of how decision-making occurs, and about who has the power. That means that people are particularly open to new ideas about running society — and so concepts like municipalism have a very good chance of resonating with a wide variety of people. It could indeed resonate with many of those on both left and right, with young and old, and with many different types of communities (rural, provincial, urban, etc).”

The movement toward municipalism in Europe tells us that it is at the local level that we can really address peoples’ needs. Cities and towns have more connection with our daily lives. It is not the direction that New Zealand has been heading with recent attempts at reforms.

What would full municipalism look like in New Zealand? Listening and working collectively requires open-mindedness. It would require people to put aside their cynicism and their egos. Would it be more Āotearoa hui-style politics that we adapt? It needs people who are disempowered being given the platform to speak openly and for those with more resource to listen and finding solutions together, from the ground up.

Could we imagine ourselves like Celrá, where our local Councils fund services that we ourselves have prioritised? Imagine — if it were not just our elderly but also the unwell and fearful being phoned every morning to see how they were. Could we imagine participatory budgeting at a large scale, to decide what we spent our money on?

Imagine regular, official Council meetings in our parks and squares (or vacant sites if the weather is bad) where our communities come to talk about their local needs for, say good local food, or cheaper activities or safer traffic and these were addressed directly by the neighborhood representative? Engaging Maori tikanga would be vital and important- hui are the ideal reference point for the practice of listening hearing each other.

Barcelona en Comu have a step by step guide about how to organise a municipalist driven culture. Is New Zealand is ripe for a truly people-led approach to politics?

For more writing on the Fearless Cities summit, I recommend fellow Wellingtonian Richard Bartlett’s snapshot How a Global Network of #FearlessCities is Making Racist Colonial Nation States Obsolete.

Author Sophie Jerram in Barcelona

*My experience has been in the transformation of space from private to public. We need more spaces to debate and meet in. We’ve witnessed first-hand the submission of hundreds of new ideas for public life. Often all is needed is space and encouragement.  has helped people launch ideas, taught new skills, redistributed resources, connected property owners with creative makers, and moreover given people the chance to practise their ideas in public space free of commercial pressure. I’ve been in Europe talking with the local city of Helsingør about how this ‘radical’ programme handing over spaces to people with ideas could be adapted to Danish life.

*

Photo by BarcelonaEnComu

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We’re usually talking about communities creating commons, often in spite of government.  Thanks to the valuable writing of many contributors to this movement we are bolstered by community action.   The Occupy movement is a case in point. In Wellington, New Zealand, one continuation of the Occupy movement at 17 Tory Street is the result of pure citizen activism: partnerships between rugged individuals and a broad-minded property owner.

My local suburban community in Vogelmorn, Wellington has managed to take ownership of a bowling club with some administrative co-operation from local government, but certainly with no encouragement. Local politicians have lurked around the project watching it emerge, trying to decide if it’s a horse worth backing. They’ve been hedging their bets, but as we get a popular following they begin to make the right noises in public. Generally, our politicians are unreliable on this idea of communities being self-determining and responsible for their own destiny. No doubt it feels threatening to their ideas of representation.

Which is why I did a double take on hearing the Scottish government’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham at the recent Community Land Scotland conference in Edinburgh. She presented the notion that government should be doing ‘what’s best for communities’, and talking in terms of ‘culture change’ required for Scottish people and the local authorities; sounding more like an activist than a senior minister.

Roseanna Cunningham from sophie jerram on Vimeo.

The Scottish Government’s aim is to have 1m acres of land in community hands by 2020. It has established a fund of £10m to assist communities to buy land whether for cities or rural sites. There’s a maximum of £1m per project so groups may have to find supplementary funds after feasibility is established. The Scottish National Party-led government has established community development agencies, enterprise advisory services, supports woodlands groups, crofting and forestry advisories. The Edinburgh conference was awash with groups and more standard legal, accounting and property professionals there to help the community buy-back which is believed to be the surest form of land access for long-term Scottish independence.  It seems that years of imbalance means that access to land alone is not an adequate goal. The benefits of ownership and details on the community right to buy scheme is found on the Government’s website.

One of the more interesting, quieter discussions I heard was around required cultural change. When asked about how Scottish communities were meant to build capacity to manage these large tracts of land, Cunningham described a shift that needs to occur between local government involving communities in planning. And that community capacity can’t be bought in.

“We need to learn by doing – and build up the priceless confidence of the Scottish people.”

After the conference I visited Wanlockhead in Dumfries and Galloway to meet a community who have come together to buy back land around a former mining town. The Wanlockhead Community Trust have an ambition to obtain 14,000 (5665ha) acres from the Duke of Buccleuch’s 900,000 acre Queensberry Estate.

Despite being an hour from Glasgow or 90 mins from Edinburgh, Wanlockhead feels remote. You travel through small winding roads with obscure signage; there is very little in the way of visitor services. But the 200 residents enjoy the peace and quiet. They form a strong, supportive community; “none of us is here for the night life,” quips Community Trust spokesperson Mac Blewer. The Trust is made up of a ‘self-selecting’ group: those working from home and some retirees. It includes recent newcomers to the village such as the Chair, Lincoln Richford, a retired English businessman. I asked him about capacity. How is the community finding its feet to attempt such a big buy back?

“It’s a happy accident that we have people to push the group along. And I don’t have issues about work. I’m freer. People who are working sometimes have to be careful what they say. We’ve got a range of skills – business, finance, communications, campaigns, business negotiation, and people in the village like (Innkeeper) James, who is the centrepoint of the village and connects with people who might not otherwise be engaged.

“But at the moment there are no full-time jobs in the village. There is one game keeper and one shepherdess. If our children are growing up here most will have to leave unless we can find something for them to do. Most of us didn’t know anything about buyouts. We’re in the south (successful buyouts have mostly been in the Northern Isles and Highlands) and we’re dealing with the largest landowner in Scotland. We’ve had to educate ourselves and then inform the village about what it’s about.”

Wanlockhead’s former lead mining tailings

The Wanlockhead Community Trust has run several public meetings and consultations with the village. Reforestation is a top priority. There are 8000 visitors to the museum and facilities are needed for them; toilets for example, and a bunkhouse, also ideal for walkers and mountain bikers. There are also campers in the Mennock pass and the community sees the potential to support this tourism. A ski club is open but lack of land security means development is stalled. “We could create a winter resort centre for the south of Scotland”, says Lincoln. “Skiing and curling used to be a big thing.”

Several members of the Trust recently visited the Isle of Harris to see how community ownership – including new affordable housing – has worked out. On Harris, a recycling centre and several carefully sited wind turbines have generated nine jobs and substantial income for that community. Lincoln is hugely positive “We’ve had guidance all the way. The potential of this is massive. This is a quiet revolution, bringing power to communities.”

Although meetings with the land owner are not frequent, the Duke’s Estate is engaged. “You have to applaud him for being one of the first owners to register his land holdings” (on the digital land registry) says Lincoln. “The question is what he’s prepared to sell. Because just the (former mining) village is not viable. We need to organise the projects and make it sustainable. We’re hoping to do this in an open and friendly way. We don’t want this to be a war”.

Lincoln Richford, Wanlock Community Trust Chair leads the buy-back

Can a revolution be led by government? It can, it seems if it’s resisting oppression from centuries of cultural habits of aristocratic and foreign land owners. Consciousness-raising around the movement has, however, dated back decades. The 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil by John McGrath is largely attributed with bringing about awareness of the systematic alienation of the Scottish people from their land. Based on solid historical research, it was performed in the style of a ceilidh – a festive evening of singing and dancing, and toured around small town halls, inciting a fervour of awareness about the tactics of the ruling class who enrolled support of the church, the law and the military to remove people from their land from mid-18th Century. Drawing a parallel between the Highland Clearances with the extraction of the wealth generated by oil discoveries in the North Sea, its Marxist undertones (and lack of awareness around fossil fuel climate impacts) now seem somewhat anachronistic – but the play is still hugely impactful.

The Cheviot, the Stag and Black Black Oil (2016) at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. Photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

With only 432 people still owning half of Scotland, there is still more work to be done on shifting the feudal culture of Cunningham’s imagined communities. The writing and research of Andy Wightman, a dedicated land reformer has kept the fires burning. Andy is now a Green Party MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament), but is a humble politician. He spent the day at the Land Reform conference quietly taking notes and sending tweets then found time to show some of us the new Scottish Parliament.

By Saturday night, I’m listening to folk musicians who have assembled in the Wanlockhead Inn. The people playing are passionate, unassuming; warm but shy with strangers. A Glaswegian concurs about Scottish confidence. “You can’t have centuries of being told you’re worthless without it going in at some level. It’s like shit; if you throw a lot of it some will stick.”

Over warm beer and ballads, she talks about the consciousness raised since the 2014 independence referendum. “We call it the butterfly revolution”, she says. “Because there are always more of us. You can’t shoot us down. And, tonight, they’ve come from all over – to sing folk music, enjoy each other’s company, and to celebrate. They’re here to support the local community. So I say let’s keep it going, let’s get things moving, let’s take back our life, let’s take back our country – and let’s take back our land.”

I came to Scotland expecting to understand how land reform was being used to empower communities; and to understand the processes of commoning. What I had failed to understand was the scale of the inequality of the existing regime. The legislative process of government is absolutely crucial. Already 75% of people in the the Western Isles are now living on community-owned land. Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s site includes maps and interviews which give a great idea of progress. With another 500,000 acres of land still to go to reach the government’s target, there’s no better time to be a community in search of control of your own fell or dale.

Lead image: Wanlockhead, Dumries & Galloway; community buyback underway. All photos by the author, except as noted.

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New Zealand was the last English-speaking country to be settled in the world, and has become caught up in a narrative around scarcity that started in 19th Century England.

From the country

In New Zealand, January and February represent summer holidays.  Many people head to the coast for life at the country’s huge range of safe beaches.  Others go ‘bush,’ to anywhere remote.   Our family often retreat to a piece of hot dry farmland area in Otago called the Maniototo, (population just under 2000). After our year in a cool climate city, we love the distance from urban life and swimming in rivers and dams. We enjoy being surrounded by historic sheep and beef properties, many settled by Scottish & Irish farmers in the 1870s and still farmed by their descendants.

Right at the foot of the land where we stay is an historic sheep dip.^[1] For the last ten years we’ve known this dip existed; even hungry sheep and cattle have fastidiously avoided the grass around the remnants of the structures, soaked no doubt in DDT and other pesticides. And this summer I discovered its written history.

I’m personally excited about this piece of dry and infertile soil inadvertently poisoned in the name of animal health, because it’s evidence of some collective effort.  The Wedderburn Sheep Dip Association it turns out, was formed in 1894 by 10 farmers and the neighbouring Tavern owner who donated the land.  Farmers would no doubt slake their thirst next door following their group effort.

“Each year, the committee would fix a charge for sheep dipped by each farmer and arrange a timetable for such dipping.”  wrote local resident Pat Shea in his 1980s summary of Wedderburn life, ten years or so after the dip was last used.

To put it in context, in 2016’s rural environment private property is king: tractors and tools are a point of personal pride for farmers and uncommonly shared.  The state of community assets is in decline; the Wedderburn tennis courts and local hall are in bad repair.  Neither is there any ‘right to roam’ on farmland in New Zealand.  The current culture assumes an individualistic approach to land; until we found this booklet the assumption of our Wedderburn friends was that the dip had always ‘belonged’ to the Tavern.  The Tavern as it happens, is still going strong; drinking beer has not yet gone out of fashion.

Local resident Graham Duncan attributes the early Scottish farming immigration to John McKenzie, who, having been a victim of the clearances of the Highlands, came to New Zealand determined to assist less wealthy families. After being part of the Free Church of Scotland movement in Dunedin, he became an MP and passed the 1892 Land Act which made smaller land holding more possible.  We’ll come back to him soon.

The Scots are still strong in the city of Dunedin, but it was the English in the 19th Century who came to dominate the laws of the new colony.   The English immigrants too consisted of a large portion of people who never afforded privately-owned land, and had been affected by the Enclosure movement^[2].  Following the industrial revolution and mechanisation of labour, many disaffected farm workers were creating such unrest that, according to historian Tony Simpson^[3], the businessman Edward Gibbon Wakefield proposed to the British Government a scheme to remove them from England and decrease the British debt incurred after fighting in two wars of the American and French Revolution.  They were to populate New Zealand.

When these new white immigrants arrived in New Zealand they were sold a piece of land (often sight unseen) by the New Zealand company or subsequent owners.  Whether that land had been officially bought or exchanged from its customary Maori tribe is a much bigger story I intend to address in subsequent writing.

With the arrival of these migrants the creation of commons was given to the local municipalities;  town parks and sports fields are relatively common.  But in practice we became a nation of private land owners.  Perhaps so excited about obtaining their own 1/4 acre section, our British forebears and our current population became very attached to individual house and land ownership^[4].

At one level we are spoiled for choice of commons.  Our town belts and national parks (mostly managed through the Department of Conservation) are extensive and are our best ambling spaces. But because of their distance from city centres it is rare for them to be enjoyed on a daily basis.  The culture of the 1970s-1990s I grew up in spent virtually no time in a town park or community hall.  And a sense of regular urban shared space is lacking now for most city children who will often hang out in shopping malls for lack of things to do.

We do however, spend a lot time at the shared beaches.

To the beaches

Our sense of right to these beaches is paramount to New Zealand identity.  This brings us back to MP John Mackenzie, who through the same 1892 Land Act made the notion of the “Queen’s chain” more explicit than any other piece of legislation: he wanted all New Zealanders to be able to fish the rivers, lakes and coasts and to enjoy unrestricted access to forests and mountains.

The common law understanding is that everyone is allowed access to the beaches a metre from the high tide mark.  A challenge to this was made 2004-2010 during fierce debate around The Foreshore and Seabed and Act, which was eventually repealed and confused many citizens around customary rights for Maori.

For now, the common space on our coastline is preserved. (Coastal erosion and rising sea levels may of course decrease much of this over time.)  But just because we can stand on the foreshore of the beaches does not mean access is always easy.. You may need a boat to approach many bays and those with farmland or thick bush behind them often stay untouched.

There are some small beaches that for historical reasons are not subject to the Queen’s Chain.

And when we emerged from the rural hinterland last month we discovered a terrific new development in the commons.  A piece of land adjunct in the middle of the Abel Tasman National Park (Northern South Island) is being sold on the open market. The Park was set up in 1940 and worked around several private properties.

A major crowd funding campaign got underway to keep this piece of land in the public realm, started by two friends over Christmas dinner.  My guess is that New Zealanders are both so repelled by the idea that this could become a millionaires’ mansion site and excited by a collective act of ownership, that it’s become a major good news story this summer.  Now 39 000 individuals contributed $2m toward it.   We’re yet to see how the seller has responded.     It feels like a new chapter in commons-making in New Zealand.  The consciousness has been re-lit on the beaches.

UPDATE

The crowd-funded public bid on the piece of Awaroa coastline was accepted by the vendor on the 23rd of Feburary with the additional support of $350000 from the NZ government.  This government top-up may yet prove to be an issue in terms of management. Currently we are surrounded in the media by feel-good,  amusing commentary about the broader public consciousness that has been raised through this campaign and the every day ‘heroism’ of the campaigners.   This clip shows the campaigners in laconic kiwi drawl as they anticipated the result of their bid, celebrating group effort in a dry kiwi manner.

Footnotes

• ^[1] A dip is a place for animals to be bathed in pesticide to keep their wool and meat from disease.  Twenty-first century management has rendered the dipping process redundant..
• ^[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
• ^[3] Before Hobson, Tony Simpson 2015, Blythswood Press New Zealand
• ^[4] House prices have doubled in the last ten years (as they have in many countries) and have driven home ownership out of reach of the average kiwi wage-earner.

http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/real-estate-house-prices/N

Lead image by Mark Amery. Awaroa beach image by James Barwell

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