“Today places like Lewisham have one critical resource – their people: their cleverness, ingenuity, aspirations, motivations, imagination and creativity.” Creative Lewisham Report Charles Landry
which as far as I can see is the only reference in it to someone who might be called a 'thought leader' - read up on his current shtik here. But if you go back along his time line, you find that in the bright confident dawn of New Labour he was working away with Geoff Mulgan at the quintessential New Labour think tank Demos, writing books such as "Themes and Issues" and "The Other Invisible Hand" - yours for only 40p + postage and packaging via Amazon.
Geoff Mulgan went on to become Tony Blair's Director or Policy at No 10, and much else great and good since. My own attitude towards New Labour's various brilliant ideas, however, was formed by finding an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea of 'Timebanks' in a book of the moment, Professor Anthony Giddens' "The Third Way", published 1998. I'd already come across the idea being touted by someone involved in the residents' association of which I was chair in Peckham, who was disappointed that I didn't rise to the challenge of operating a system based on an Access database for recording various transactions between my neighbours.
Timebanks are quite appealing at first sight - they are a system in which members exchange time doing things where they have different capacities, with everyone's time spent earning an equal value 'time dollar' which can then be used to pay for an hour of someone else's time when they do something for you that you might want. As such, they are very egalitarian, and I can accept might help reinforce a sense of community where this level of equality is accepted. But don't just take my word for it, when you can access the Lewisham Time Bank Development Strategy 2009 - 2012 here. Here for example is how it is explained on page 14
From which it might seem that those fuddy-duddy old economists have since seen the light - but perhaps not on the evidence of the studies cited here. In fact, the problems with Timedollars are obvious; practically, you could ask 'why not just use cash?' - in other words, in what way is using Timedollars better than simple market mechanisms - which have served humanity for several millennia. Theoretically the objections are two fold; first, it requires far more administration than market mechanisms, and second, it encapsulates a rule that everybody's time is worth the same amount. Economists will immediately, and correctly predict, that this will lead to surpluses and imbalances, requiring some kind of rationing. In the case of Timebanks, there will probably be an over supply of people offering to walk dogs for their neighbours, while the time of people able to come round and fix PCs will be limited.Dr Edgar Cahn, civil rights lawyer and activist, devised the time banking system (then called ‘time dollars’ or ‘service credits’), whilst at the London School of Economics in London in the 1980s. One hour equals one time credit may not have seemed rocket science, but his ideas were to prove revolutionary - even though economists at the time argued vigorously about whether this new community currency based on time could actually grow social capital and revive the ‘core’ economy of family, neighbourhood and community.
For the same reason, its mechanisms provide no incentive for anyone to develop their skills; the time of someone who can mow a lawn in half an hour will be rewarded the same as some who takes two. I'm not saying this is the be-all and end-all of how society should be organised, but within the sort of community groups where this might work, it would surely be better to have people just volunteering anyway - in the spirit of Paul's letter to the Corinthians
which is precisely what Timebanks require. As such, they are not a sensible part of a strategy for regeneration operating within a commercial market based economy such as ours.[love/charity] is not self-seeking ... it keeps no record.
And yet, they have this continuing role in Lewisham's policies - just Google Lewisham LSP Time Banks, see all the links which come up, and boggle at the hours spent in meetings talking about this. What a waste.
The third New Labour ghost is the system of directly elected Mayors. Lewisham was one of three London Boroughs to adopt this very New Labour policy at the outset, but since then only one more, Tower Hamlets, on the initiative of George Galloway's Respect Party has followed suit - and against the wishes of all major parties. This doesn't feel like the ringing endorsement of history for the idea of directly elected London Borough Mayors, but neither is it so obviously misguided; no one ha much interest in deciding the matter one way or the other.
The overall impression, however, is of a council that was fired up with new ideas in the dawn of New Labour, but has never really been able to move on from them.