Reviews for Local Democracy in Practice: The Role and Working Environment of Councillors in Scotland

The average rating for Local Democracy in Practice: The Role and Working Environment of Councillors in Scotland based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-22 00:00:00 Angela Armonda Matthew Countryman's Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, published in 2006, traced the enfolding struggle of African Americans against legal and economic discrimination from the 1940s through the early 1980s. At the heart of Countryman's account is the shifting allegiance of black activists from civil rights liberalism to Black Power; a pivot unfolding in Philadelphia in the early and middle years of the 1960s which reflected both continuity in the evolving approach of experienced activists and discontinuity in the rising militancy of a new generation. "Despite Philadelphia's invisibility within civil rights historiography," Countryman tells us, "the city was home to one of the most successful campaigns for black civil rights in the nation during the 1940s and 1950s." Turning heavily on elite organization through the NAACP, political advocacy was coupled with legal challenges, based on the 14th and 15th amendments, to discriminatory laws. "It was this constitutionalist stand - that blacks and other racial minorities benefit more from efforts to protect individual rights than from efforts to promote group interests - that came to form the core of civil rights liberalism." While the 1950s non-discrimination victories won stable employment and access to suburban housing for some, the vast majority of the city's black residents remained trapped in deteriorating neighborhoods with inferior public services and worsening employment prospects. Countryman conceptualizes the growing rift between liberals and Philadelphia's rising black nationalists as driven by class: middle class African Americans who had individually benefited from non-discrimination measures, and a working class residentially confined and swollen by new arrivals from the South who were rapidly becoming an underclass. While not self-identifying as black nationalists, Countryman asserts the leaders of the mid-60s working class protests were just that in all but name, due to their rejection of interracial cooperation and emphasis on community based solutions to elevate the group economically and socially. Many of the experiments which arose from this period in Philadelphia proved influential for the War on Poverty programs initiated under President Johnson and carried forward by the Nixon administration. Focused on group advancement through affirmative action, black business development and job training, these programs conceptualized the difficulties of urban blacks as a lack of development in capital and skills and sought to redress the deficiency with active measures. In discussing the rejection of an interracial politics of equal opportunity, Countryman sheds no tears. The rhetoric of equal rights, he asserts, had simply disguised the continued defense of white privilege in Philadelphia's politics and, housing and labor markets. It was therefore "ironic, though not surprising, that black activists' efforts to use race as the explicit basis for political and community organization provided the rationale for the reemergence of an avowedly white racial politics in the city." The stubborn persistence of racism among working class whites across generations, rather than any developments within the Democratic Party or the black community, he suggests, is the real culprit for the unraveling of the New Deal coalition. "In this sense," he continues, "entrenched white support for racialized hierarchies within public institutions like the Philadelphia public schools was as much a cause of urban violence of the late 1960s as black radical activism."

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-22 00:00:00 Brad Phillips This book was not quite what I expected, but I'm not sure what I was expecting. The strength of Up South is that it gives a broad overview of the 1940s-60s civil rights/black power movement in Philadelphia, which was very helpful for me as someone who wanted to learn more about the history of the city I'm living in, especially about the race relations which I knew had been historically tense. The book captures a really interesting narrative from postwar liberalism to early-60s protest, to late-60s radicalism, to 70s electoral politics. Along the way we meet some of the most important players, like Cecil B. Moore, Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization, and Council of Organizations Philadelphia Police Accountability and Responsibility (COPPAR). We learn a bit about their strategies, we learn about the white backlash and Frank Rizzo, and attempts by the system to co-opt and dilute the movement through politics and money. However, the book also lacks in some substantial ways. For one thing, the author is a professor in Michigan, who as far as I know is not from Philadelphia and is not black. This doesn't mean he has nothing valuable to contribute from his research, but it does mean the writing is overly academic and emotionally detached. My other major complaint is that while the book doesn't heat up until about pg. 120 with chapter 4, the conclusion is way too short and very unsatisfying. It's only 1 page, front and back, and only hints at the issues which are crying out to be examined. For example, did the huge protests and deep radicalism of the late 60s really get co-opted into pointless electoral campaigns? How is that possible, and why did it happen? Why wasn't there sustained grassroots pressure to hold the newly-elected black politicans accountable, or if there was, why did it fail? How did the Rizzo Mayorship of the 70s affect the black freedom movement in Philly? In what ways did Rizzo gain greater power in moving from his position as Police Commissioner, and in what ways was he held more accountable as Mayor? More generally, how much did it matter who was in charge of the city government, as far as the movements were concerned? These are just a few questions that I wish had been addressed in the book more substantially, but I think the fact that the book left me wanting to know more actually points to the success of the book in captivating my interest. This wasn't the holistic and movement-centered study that I was looking for, but it helped me clarify my questions on the subject so I recommend it for anyone living in Philadelphia and wanting to know more about the history of their city.