A last speech as leader - love where you live...

Today marks my last Council Meeting as Group Leader in Bradford - here are my last words in that role:

"Unless something odd happens, this will be my last speech from this chair. And I think speaking about pride in Bradford is a good topic to close on.

We’re going to vote for this motion but I’ve a few concerns – not with the spirit of the motion or what it proposes but rather that the focus on enforcement puts a bit of a dampener on the idea of civic pride.

My philosophy – for the avoidance of doubt, Lord Mayor, it’s called conservatism – tells me that we should approach making society better, not by grand theories of human perfection, but by looking out our front door and fixing what we can see from that doorstep.

If there’s a stone fallen off a wall, pick it up and put it back. Don’t wait for someone else to do it.

If there’s a piece of litter. Pick it up. Put it in a bin.

If there’s someone who needs a lift, give them a lift

And if what needs fixing is beyond your power don’t shrug and move on but ask whether you and your neighbours – together – can fix it.

And smile. Have fun.

Most people here – and lots of people in Bradford – understand exactly how neighbourliness and loving the place you live really make a difference. And this motion points at some of that love – I do also think love is a better word than pride too.

The problem is that too many people don’t. They’re the ones who drop the litter, do the fly-tipping, graffiti the walls, vandalise the bus stops, spit in the street, park on the pavement, ignore the yellow lines, push to the front of the queue, complain when they don’t get what they demand, place the blame for problems on other people.

The enforcement we spend so much time on is because of these people.

It’s also because too many people walk on by. Telling themselves that the Council, the police or just someone else will do something.

They’re very quick to tell us that the place is a dump but not so quick to try and make it better.

There’s an American organisation called the Knight Foundation who ran a programme called “Soul of the Community” studying what they called “community attachment” – let me read you a quote from the lead researcher, Katherine Loflin:

“…from 2008-2010, we received responses from 43,000 people in 26 communities across the US, in cities large and small. What we saw were findings, year after year, that for many seemed counter-intuitive—even radical at times. We not only found out that resident attachment was related to solid economic outcomes for places, but that the things that most drove people to love where they live were not the local economy or even their personal civic engagement in the place (as one might expect), but the “softer sides” of place.”

Making a place better – making Bradford better – doesn’t start with a strategy for the city, it starts with making your and my neighbourhood - just a few streets - better places to live. Where parties happen, where children play, where life is lived with a smile. Things that the Project for Public Spaces calls “lighter, cheaper, quicker”. Not grand festivals or great events but galas, playgrounds, impromptu games of cricket and even a snowball fight.

In Denholme, when the road was blocked in the snow, dozens of people helped out. Some with pick-ups and 4x4s, some just by bringing out cups of tea to stranded motorists, and lots by clearing snow, by just being part of a community.

This is what community pride is about – community attachment. Love. And we need it every day not just when it snows."

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"So we...may of our love create our earth and see that it is good" - Conservatism and the pursuit of love

Roger Scruton quoted here;

“My view is that the most important thing for conservatives is to be in alliance with each other, not to have witch hunts over small points of doctrine, not to identify heresies and persecute them and so on.

I think that, in the end, there is something that unites all conservatives, which is that they are pursuing something they love. My view is that the Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on. And what makes us conservatives is the desire to protect those things, and we’re up against people who want to destroy them, and it’s very simple.”

I absolutely endorse this view. I have said many times that the central force in conservatism is that we care - love as Scruton puts it - about the place we are sufficiently to want to protect and preserve its essence. I always get back to this poem:

GOD gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Belovèd over all;
That, as He watched Creation’s birth,
So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
And see that it is good.

Here Kipling sets out his view that, while we should (and do) love all the earth and all mankind, our deepest love and care is reserved for that special place and those special institutions that make our world so fine and grand. And we believe that this love results in strange and good things - or as Giovanni Guareschi put it:

"...I want you to understand that, in the Little World between the river and the mountains, many things can happen that cannot happen anywhere else. Here, the deep, eternal breathing of the river freshens the air, for both the living and the dead, and even the dogs, have souls."

Guareschi described a world where a priest and a communist could co-operate - when they weren't berating each other - because the place, the 'little world', was more important that their beliefs and ideologies. This is again central to conservatism - that love is more important than the words in a book supposed to guide us.

I've always felt that, stripped of our public ideology, we are all essentially conservative. We are suspicious of change. We respect heritage and tradition - to the point of inventing new heritage and new tradition. And we regard the institutions of our culture as matters above business, religion or politics. And in the end it's about our place and about what people really want:

Wherever you go in the world you'll find people who hold as important such things as family, neighbourliness, independence, duty and effort. That you should work hard, contribute, look out for the neighbours, bring up your family as honest, self-reliant and care for those less fortunate.

And these are conservative values, the building blocks of community. None of them are about government, large or small. None of them see society as greater than the sum of its individual parts. And none of them are predicated on knowing better what is good for your neighbour. I know that, compared to changing the economic system or destroying the capitalist state, this is all pretty boring but it's what most folk want.

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If you can't be in the place you love, love the place you're in!

This weekend is Cullingworth's scarecrow festival. Not that this is important to you. Or maybe it is, perhaps you 'get' (as Mr Cameron would say) that place matters and how invented tradition is one of the soft things about a place that makes it magic.

And our attachment to a place matters more than you think. It's not simply some sort of pride or defencive reaction to folk who criticise, we're talking about real attachment here - about love:

We not only found out that resident attachment was related to solid economic outcomes for places, but that the things that most drove people to love where they live were not the local economy or even their personal civic engagement in the place (as one might expect), but the “softer sides” of place.

So what is that "softer side of place"?

It appears that what people most want out of a neighborhood is a place that is attractive, engaging, friendly, and welcoming. In every place, every year of the study, these factors were found to be the three most important to tying people to place. Why does this matter? As mentioned above, communities where people love where they live do better economically. The best-loved places were doing better in a measureable way.

This isn't about grand civic marketing campaigns replete with logos, embassies in New York and well-resourced teams of regenerators extolling the virtues of a place. Nor is it that grumpy "you can't criticise, you don't live here, that's our job" attitude we see from defensive residents of struggling cities. We're talking about a desire to love the place we're in - and when we love something it's an active emotion, it drives us to do things. To do the placemaking equivalent of buying our place chocolate and flowers or taking it to the movies.

That's what scarecrow festivals, duck races and reinvented traditions are about. It's us - the people who love a place - showing our love by doing things to make that place smile:

Love of place is great equalizer and mobilizer. In all my years of doing community practice, I’ve never seen a more powerful model for moving communities forward and enabling places to optimize who they are instead of trying to be someplace else. It is this message that frees people to love their place, and hearing that their love of place is a powerful resource is not something many residents (or their leaders) have properly recognized and leveraged. That’s why I think I often see tearful reactions in my audiences and hear heartfelt stories of personal relationship with a place after my talks. The message of attachment—that the softer sides of place matter—resonates deeply.

So, if you want regeneration - even if you're parachuted in from afar to deliver it - you have to fall in love, to remember those words that Steven Stills wrote:

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with
You gotta love the one you're with

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A Bradford Valentine's Day....

... Valentinus was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius the Goth [Claudius II]. Since he was caught marrying Christian couples and aiding any Christians who were being persecuted under Emperor Claudius in Rome [when helping them was considered a crime], Valentinus was arrested and imprisoned. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner -- until Valentinus made a strategic error: he tried to convert the Emperor -- whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn't do it, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate [circa 269].

So died the patron of bee-keepers and, as we know so well, the inspiration for so many naff (and anonymous) greeting cards – St Valentine, patron of young lovers.

So today, in the spirit of such Christian virtue I am queueing at the little flower kiosk outside the Kirkgate Centre in Bradford. In my hand I am clutching three small bunches of tulips – conscious of the dilemma of Valentine’s Day. If you fail to buy flowers your name is mud, you are lower than the slimiest of slithering creatures but when you splash out on a grand bunch you’re told how this is an extravagance since florists inflate their prices to cash in on England’s lovelorn male populace.

Before me in the queue loiter an assortment of slightly nervous looking young Asian men – carefully ordering fine bunches of expensive flowers. Bunches enhanced with glitter, sprays of coloured sticks and curious golden shapes made from bent wire. St Valentine may have been a Christian martyr but it’s pretty clear that Bradford’s Muslim youth have embraced his festival with gusto!

And like so much about our culture that was Christian but is now secular, St Valentine’s Day – now most often said without the ‘saint’ part – has celebrated its divorce from the church by growing in importance.  It’s a time when we celebrate love in all its forms – from the simple, honest sexual attraction that might be encouraging those Asian lads I saw queueing today, to remembering how love changes from that passionate immediacy to the point where imagining being without that lover is impossible.

Again I find myself reminded – by the simple acts of Bradford’s young Asians – that they’re part of our culture now. We say they don’t integrate and we are wrong – watching those young men today told me that our indulgent, once Christian, festival of love means just the same to them as it does to young white men in our City. And for that matter to this greying blogger.

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