Mike Stevenson

I remember Gordon Brown, our new Prime Minister, as a gangling teenager slouched against a playground wall. It was during the early to mid-sixties, we were both pupils at Kirkcaldy High School and yet our paths rarely crossed. We belonged to different cultures within the school – I, desperate for an escape to freedom and he, looking forward to a seamless university entry. I was seduced by my then status as a small town rock star– albeit at the lowest level of celebrity imaginable. He had his sights set on a more lofty aspiration.That he achieved it is a credit to him and to all that was good about the Scottish system of education at that time. That my progress depended on being out of school, shows that there are different routes to take – each in its own way legitimate. But more of that later.Called into the Headmaster’s study, a few weeks shy of my fifteenth birthday I was asked in no uncertain terms to leave the school. I could have transferred to a junior secondary school, but my hatred of institutional education was by then so deeply entrenched that a complete break was too good to miss. My heart positively leapt with joy.I hadn’t yet studied for my O-levels, but I didn’t care. The future stretched out before me like a freshly laid carpet. Little did I know then, I would be fitting carpets in Watford just one year later. What I do remember from that dismissal meeting is a pejorative reference by the headmaster to industry, it was he said patronisingly, “the most likely destination for a boy of your abilities”. Interesting that the driving force of our economy at that time was such an ideal fit for a so-called waster like me. Perhaps that explains why our manufacturing base has been reduced to the small corner in our economy it represents today.I actually did go on stints within manufacturing – in steel, biscuit and wine production before picking up a brickie’s hod and fixing it firmly to my shoulder. While Gordon was revising his maths I was being taught some valuable life lessons, especially about the values of teamwork. You quickly learn that in some settings one person’s tardiness can spell physical danger for another. Communication down the line has to be timely, to the point and precise. Letting a wheelbarrow drop from the fifth floor of a building in Covent Garden, just two words screeched at volume sufficed and probably averted a fatality. It was my attempt to fix this concrete encrusted barrow to the hook of a hoist when it slipped from my grasp – a heart stopping moment and one of many to come at work. What a pity that office culture, so often dominated by petty politics and irrelevant rivalries does not nurture such unequivocal communication.While Gordon was coasting through his education, I lost my way for a few years and found myself on the streets of London and yes, I own up to over indulging in drugs. In fact they very nearly killed me. If a youngster asks me about drugs, I can provide a very compelling and graphic case against the over consumption of chemicals.Now back to Gordon and me.As I drifted from job to job, city to city, and, for a while, from bench to bench Gordon excelled at school and then at university. Different paths traveled yet we both arrived at our respective destinations as a result of hard work and grim determination. And yes, we were also both guided by our own personal moral compass.As a child in Pakistan (my father worked as a teacher there for three years) I saw real grinding poverty – the kind of poverty that strips people of even the most basic of human necessities. This made an enormous impact on my view of the world. What I also saw was a real sense of entrepreneurialism –there were vendors on very inch of every street – shoe-shiners, snake charmers and the ubiquitous beggar, often sans limbs. That’s why my definition of poverty has always been at odds with many of my peers and why I took to busking in my teens rather than sign on. While windows, cars and houses need cleaned, shoes need polished and people have to scour the Yellow pages to source even the most basic of household services, we are still a step away from real poverty.What we have is a poverty of thought and aspiration. Our culture seems to excel at driving out of us that sense of get up and go. That gets exorcised from us at an early age. Yet, it is that energy and that distractedness that are often the very signs shown in our classrooms by those children, who like me, are bored beyond belief in a that setting. In other cultures, they may well be visionaries shaping their country’s destiny. Here they fall into the unfortunately labeled NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Surely it is not beyond our guile as a nation to find the tools to work with disengaged youngsters. It is to our shame that in this country we have so many. We have found ways of easing the pain of low-income as we have ways of treating illness. Where we are not so adept is in prevention.I know what it’s like to be considered a lost cause. Too much of a loose cannon to thrive at Kirkcaldy High School, I drifted away from the line. I don’t blame the teachers. The classroom simply didn’t suit me and that’s it. For that same reason I could never fit into a party system of politics – too much like a straitjacket to me. See what I’m getting at here?By driving ourselves into silos – whether they are political parties or needlessly compartmentalised structures at work we say to free thinkers “Not here mate.” Lets face it, we don’t just have disengaged people at school – they are all around us.In Beirut a few months ago, I didn’t hear anyone say they are not interested in politics – they know that it is politics in Lebanon, in its neighbouring countries and in the west that impacts on every facet of their lives – sometimes with devastating impact.That we have so many people disaffected by politics is not just a shame it is anti-democratic. Just look at the turnouts in recent elections, under or just teetering over 50%.Gordon Brown is right to establish rebuilding trust in government as a priority. I applaud him for it but there is a way to go. First, the language of politics needs to change. Let’s have some exciting dialogue in parliament and between parliament and the voters (and non-voters). Let’s paint a picture of what Britain might look in the future. What we need is some spark and imagination. People want to feel they are living in a country with an exciting future that rewards positivism and progress.The trouble is that our government only has two tools to ignite change – tax and penalty. Capture the imagination and people do respond. Yet, too many politicians continue to talk in a language and style that we already know alienates people from the democratic process. Where is the sense in that? Iceland (scoring highest in the European happiness index), Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Holland all seem able to engage in adult discussions about local and global issues without the rancour that we have to endure. Why are these countries not our inspiration?If you listen to almost every politician (Boris Johnson, George Galloway and Dennis Skinner excepted) they use words selected from the same box of clichés. It is a language borne of fear not strength of conviction– fear of standing out from the crowd, fear of breaking with tradition and fear of being a free spirit in a world that commands uniformity.Now here’s a thing. Since leaving school I have been able to catch up on my education – at Newbattle Abbey in 1972, Napier College from 1979 to 1981 and Glasgow Caledonian in 1992.But, how could I have caught up on the experiences and lessons learned from my earlier life? No how matter how tough it seemed at the time, that period of my life is of incalculable value to me. My clients seem surprised at how I seem able to capture so easily the essence of what they do and how. Most of that is from a life lived to the full not just gleaned from books. Don’t get me wrong, I am a voracious reader and just as inspired by great literature as any keen reader. It’s simply that books add fantastic value to experience – they cannot replace it.That’s why we need our parliament and our institutions to reflect more widely the range of experiences and strengths in our community. Let’s have some creative politics – let’s unleash some groundbreaking ideas for some age-old challenges.In ten years we can they say to our children: “NEETs? Oh, that’s history.”Gordon Brown and I have certainly trodden different paths since our days at Kirkcaldy High School – he is Prime Minister and a consummate politician and I, well I suppose I am lateral thinker and an ideas man.Ne’er the twain shall ever meet. Is there a lesson there?

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