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Conference
Report
by
Mary Fee: mary@letslinkuk.org]
Dear Friends
I’m not sure if anyone wrote a report of the LETS
and Timebanks Conference at the Local Economic and Policy
Unit (LEPU) of South Bank University, so here is mine
-from memory - please forgive any details omitted. It
seemed to me a useful, if somewhat tense gathering,
it has to be said mostly of professionals, working either
directly in schemes, or in support roles within Local
Authorities, the DSS etc and of course university Researchers.
Useful because at least we met a few LETS workers including
some from Scotland and Wales, and were able to understand
a little more of where Timebanks are coming from. Letslink
UKmanaged to get two places for Letslink because we
helped to publicise the conference, otherwise most LETS
workers were confined cost-wise to the second day, so
it was not "our" conference, but one we were
“allowed to half attend”. We are looking forward
to running our own conference, and the organiser at
LEPU, Peter North, has pledged his support in
a personal capacity to enable this to happen. Why tense?
Well, there have been recent undercurrents of "mutual
uncertainty" between LETSers and Timebankers, reflected
in a certain awkwardness in the opening session, in
which
David Boyle described Timebanks as taking care
of communities, and LETS as taking care of local economies,
a dichotomy which caused many of those present to wince.
The Fairshares presentation describing the original
network of schemes in Gloucestershire portrayed them
as well-run “mutual” volunteer agencies. The
later Timebanks have been set up under the auspices
of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) working in partnership
with Fairshares, and all are funded, whereas most LETS
schemes run as voluntary bodies, and if funding is involved,
it has tended to be small eg for publicity, or for a
support worker to help develop local LETS schemes.
Theresa Aldridge ably brought us up to date
with the three-year Economic and Social Science Research
Council (ESSRC) - funded project on LETS & Social
Exclusion, which ran from 1997 to 2000, the results
of which have recently been published in book format.
Using initial data provided by LETSlink UK, organisers
from some 330 LETS schemes all over the UK were interviewed
at length in order to discover whether LETS enables
people to enter the employment market, or at least become
less “socially excluded”. The answer to this
rather obscure question seemed to be YES, for some,
but LETS did not have the resources to reach everybody
who might benefit, in some cases simply due to geographical
distance (in other words there was not a LETS scheme
sufficiently nearby), or some of the people who really
needed help felt unable to join a LETS scheme which
looked like it was a support network for people unlike
them; others feared it would cause them trouble over
their benefits.
Richard Douthwaite delivered a challenging talk
on the sustainability of LETS. He identified factors
which tended to come into play over a period of time,
such as people doing a lot of work, including organisers
who pay themselves currency for tasks associated with
running the scheme accumulating more than they were
able to spend (ie extreme positive balances linked with
growing system account deficit – the well-known
black hole effect) and individuals who enthusiastically
used the scheme to obtain services for themselves and
failed to perform sufficient trades to balance their
accounts (ie extreme negative balances), as well as
organiser exhaustion – the “burn-out”
effect. The questions which were left unanswered were
whether organisers had heeded (or indeed received) detailed
advice given out by LETSlink UK and by other organisers
at conferences on these matters, ie whether the “UK
model” of LETS had been operated correctly by these
groups, or whether we as a network of organisers might
be capable of finding ways of communicating with each
other to experiment with and share refinements which
would counter these tendencies and thus develop “good
practice” in the running of LETS schemes.
Ruth Pearson continued with a film presentation
of local economy activities in Argentina (whose economic
crisis has subsequently hit the headlines) where due
to extreme circumstances, new barter-clubs using vouchers
instead of cheques and running weekly trading days exchanging
everything from vegetable produce to second hand goods
and services had suddenly mushroomed into enormous popularity
– an example of the LETS model being adapted successfully
to meet local needs.
John Mills reported on the LETS and BENEFITS
negotiations at Parliamentary level, which had inexplicably
broken down some time during 1999 only for us to hear
the surprise announcement in June 2000 that Time Banks
had received a complete Benefits Disregard. John’s
assessment of the situation was that if we as a network
could assemble a large body of evidence of the good
results for the community which LETS had achieved locally
on a case-by-case basis, we could surely convince the
authorities that LETS is worth supporting and that its
members should not be threatened with the possibility
of loss of Benefits – he was willing to coordinate
this but we have heard recently that he has moved on
to run a local radio station in Liverpool!
Peter North led free-ranging discussion which
covered many topics at random, including Sarah Burn’s
glowing report of the initial progress of Timebanking
under the auspices of the New Economics Foundation and
my own frank report on LETSlink UK’s difficulties
which had currently left us without funding and holding
things together by a thread. LETS organisers, especially
those contemplating setting up new schemes were left
wondering, since LETS has always included the option
of trading in equal time as well as with varying rates,
if there really is a difference which matters apart
from the possibility of gaining funding. Clearly we
have a long way to go in renewing confidence in the
LETS community around the concepts of mutuality and
the integrity of local currency systems.
Conference: July 2001, Report January 2002 by Mary
Fee, Honorary Secretary Letslink UK
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