AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 105

6. PARTNERSHIP AND THE PROFESSIONALISATION OF THE
LICENSING PROCESS
Ever since the end of the Cold War (1989-91), there’s been a trend toward
partnership between large companies – toward joint ventures, strategic
alliances, shared R&D. As early as 1989, the top US management gurus
Gary Hamel, Yves Doz and CK Prahalad told US corporations: ‘Collaborate
with your competitors – and win’. That same year, in his airport self-help
bestseller The seven habits of highly effective people, another management
guru, Stephen Covey, devoted a whole chapter to his gospel of Win/Win.
Thirty years later, and particularly after the tensions that erupted, in 2018,
over the Tokyo arrest of Carlos Ghosn and the alliance between car giants
Renault and Nissan, it’s wise to interrogate the frothier, more feelgood aspects
of partnership.
With partnership around the licensing process, a breezy, ‘spread the love’
philosophy is unrealistic, and wrong. Around licensing, conflicting interests
exist, and cannot be denied.
Yet there’s also a new, very real development to consider. Even before
the Brexit referendum of 2016, there emerged a widely noted lurch toward
adversarial conduct and language in British public life: not only in social media,
but in politics generally. Of course, in a democracy, a fierce clash of ideas, and
the freedom to express them, are always healthy. But problems can surface
if different sides of an argument are unprepared to listen to each other, and
sometimes unprepared even to concede any legitimacy to views different from
their own.
Between now and 2030, informal events can neither afford a revival of
past, unnecessarily entrenched attitudes toward licensing, nor a collapse into
the ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ echo chambers that are coming
to dominate discourse today. A cold eye toward partnership in the licensing
process certainly makes sense; but so, too, does a grown-up and professional
desire to make it work.
In a 2018 survey of senior councillors and officers in English local
government, the Local Government Information Unit found that 79 per cent of
its 111 respondents held that formal ways of partnership – what, since around
the turn of this century, the government has termed partnership working – to be
an essential means of supporting a successful night-time economy. Similarly,
Britain’s Institute of Licensing has an annual award that recognises the historical
contribution, to licensing, made by partnership working.
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Gangs at events also need thinking about – but in a sober manner. For a
long time now, a tiny minority of musical artists has had to count a still tinier
criminal element as being among their followers. Yet the police’s National
Intelligence and Operations Unit already exists to guard against developments
such as this actually leading to trouble. For the planning of nearly all UK festivals
and large-scale music events, the Unit contributes problem profiles, and acts as
a clearing-house for intelligence. It has brought about significant cuts in crime
and disorder at large events.
Britain needs rounded, concrete measures to protect people at informal
events — measures based on research, foresight and insight. A rush to
conclusions, and yet more impediments to the licensing process, won’t cut it.