Jon Cruddas IPPR speech – ‘Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand’

Jon Cruddas was speaking at Coin Street today to launch the IPPR interim report on The Condition of Britain. It’s likely to be a key part of Labour’s policy review. Here’s what he said:

Thank you Coin Street for hosting us today.

The Condition of Britain programme is important to our country.

It is important to the policy review I am leading.

It is important to Labour’s One Nation politics.

And it is also to me personally.

So I’d like to thank the IPPR for your great work, especially Kayte who is leading the programme.
And Nick and Graeme for your commitment and support.

It’s good to see everyone here, and  Kamran, Glenn, Debbie and Mick who will share their knowledge.

I just want to make three points to start.

When Ed Miliband asked me to run Labour’s policy review I wanted to get a sense of our country.

In 2010 Labour had suffered one of the worst defeats in our history.

We needed to reconnect with the people of Britain.

Politics has been too remote from people’s lives for too long.

And we can only hope to help change our country for the better, if we understand what is happening to our country right now.

Thomas Carlyle first asked what he called “the Condition of England Question” at the beginning of our industrial revolution.

His target was the inhumanity of the new industrial system: the impact of the factory, the workhouse, and the threat of social breakdown on the condition of the people.

Why, he wrote, are our politicians not asking about the condition of the people?

Carlyle started a national debate which gave rise to the ideal of One Nation.

Today we are leaving behind that industrial system and entering a new period in our history.

Ed Miliband has established One Nation Labour.

We both agreed that we needed a new inquiry about the condition of the people of Britain?

What are their hopes and fears and the pressures they face?

How have their lives changed over the last 30 years?

Our country has gone through huge changes.

We need to take stock.

To see what challenges we face.

To see what is possible.

So that we can rebuild our common life together.

My second point is about power.

Carlyle asked the big questions the politicians of his day avoided.

What does it mean to be human?

What is a virtuous life?

How should we live together?

When I was growing up one of the heroes in my family was Archbishop Oscar Romero.

He asked these questions.

He believed that people had to be in charge of their own struggle for freedom.

You cannot make people free by doing things for them.

You cannot just hope the people at the top give power to people.

You have to help people to take power and responsibility for themselves.

It is central to my vision of politics and Ed Miliband’s vision of our country that we should help people to become powerful and capable individuals.

Glenn’s organisation Marsh Farm Outreach has a statement of values which sums it.

‘Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand’

Our work in Labour’s policy review follows this basic belief.

People become free and capable to live in their own unique ways when they have the power and responsibility to take control of their lives.

Not having things done to them.

My third point is that changing how we treat people means changing politics.

Fundamentally.

Not doing to or for people but doing with them.

Helping people to help themselves.

Being local by default.

In the difficult times ahead we will not have extra money to spend.

Our biggest resource will be the ingenuity of the people of Britain: their aspiration to work hard for themselves and their families and their willingness to value their communities.

Ed Miliband’s One Nation is a response to our post crash world and the new period we are entering.

It is a politics of national renewal

A politics of trust and goodwill.

A society of give and take.

A government devolving power and responsibility to people and places.

And public services which invest in prevention not wasting money for our failure to do so.

We should keep in mind Richard Tawney’s judgment of Labour following its disastrous defeat in 1931.

It courted the voters ‘with hopes of cheaply won benefits, and if it did not despise them, sometimes addressed them as though it did. It demanded too little and offered too much.

What would it take for every neighbourhood in Britain to thrive?

Let me suggest a One Nation answer:

Power –  people connecting and organising together

Community – a sense of identity and belonging.

And hope –  in the future .

And hope most of all.