Hilary Wainwright (Manchester, Red Pepper & TNI): A retiring employee of the Audit Commission was explaining the Brazilian origins of participatory budgeting - an idea included in the latest Local Government White Paper. He was speaking to a meeting of senior local government officials. "Obviously the circumstances are very different," the man from the Audit Commission began to say, "Brazilians had just been struggling against a dictatorship …..well", he ad libbed, "maybe not so different". The remark was greeted with prolonged and sympathetic laughter.
The truth in the comparison is that institutions once described as democratic have been unable to save themselves; in Brazil from a dictatorship, in our case from nearly 30 years of abuse of untrammeled executive power. In Brazil a new constitution helped to stimulate powerful movements from below to invent (at least locally) institutions of participatory democracy that shared power, eg over local budgets, between people and government. In the UK we too need to invent our own forms of genuinely participatory power. The Fellow Citizens petition provides us with a modest opportunity to help this happen. As it says: In a modern state "sovereignty should rest with the people and power should be shared openly and effectively". Socialists should not only sign the petition but build on the groundswell of disaffection with phony participation across our cities, to make the debate about a new constitution an exercise in real sharing of power, prefiguring the kind of constitution we need.
