Celebrating the life and work of Robin Murray

Some people are like yeast. They make other things rise up. Robin was one of them.

Some people are flat. Some people are like yeast. They make other things rise up. Robin was one of them, enlivening in every sense of the word, with charisma, presence, a chuckle on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, exuding joy in life and in other peoples’ voices and lives.

Like yeast too he was relatively invisible – certainly not a household name – even though, through his method and his work, he influenced in profound ways how we eat, how we shop, how we work, how we create and how we handle waste.

I was lucky enough to know Robin Murray first as a rather distant boss in the now ancient days of the GLC, then as a collaborator on many projects, from reimagining tax systems to recycling, to later teaching municipal officials in China, to mapping the world’s social innovation system.

I directly benefited from his enlivening character but also saw his impact on others, his contagious practical optimism.  

At the Young Foundation he sometimes came to just hang out, serving as an in-house therapist as a stream of people would pass by, have a chat, and come away with their cobwebs cleared away, a stronger sense of their way ahead, and confidence that obstacles could be overcome.

This evening I want to say something about his method, and why it matters, and why his work is so worthy of this medal.

When I first worked for him at the GLC he periodically wrote detailed critiques deconstructing what I had done, and reconstructing it in a far better way. These were quite remarkable and involved. Indeed, the first time he took me through one of these lists of improvements, was also the first time I heard the word ‘seventeenthly’. Here I will restrict myself to five points.

1. Dive

First, he liked to dive deep into detail and believed that you should observe, talk, listen, map and then reconstruct until you gain a sense of how a system works. That could be energy in self-build homes, recycling of plastics, distribution of cocoanuts, but always following Bertolt Brecht’s maxim that “truth is in the concrete”.    

I fondly remember walking the streets of Huddersfield 20 years ago mapping waste, piecing together the movements of glass and paper and plastics. Perhaps not entirely glamourous but never dull.

It’s an approach opposite to most of the economics profession who tend to deduce, to make sense of the world from an armchair and secondary sources. But it’s a much healthier approach not least because it means being constantly surprised by the peculiarities of the world at it is.

2. Interrogate

Second, Robin liked to investigate through interrogation, learning by asking questions, as if decoding a fascinating puzzle, and so eliciting that curiosity we all have somewhere inside, the excitement when codes are broken.

That’s one of the reasons why he was such fun to work with. Projects were not linear, but rather voyages with detours, rambles and hikes, and, to mix my metaphors, they were less like linear logic and more a mix of peeling onions, cracking nuts, unravelling knots. Again, that ability to use questions must be part of why he was such a good educator.

3. Embed

Third, everything he did was infused with values and the ability to see in everything not just what it is, but also what it could be, the untapped potential that’s waiting to be emancipated, set free, a distinctive fusing of Quakerism, liberalism and Marxism.

That confidence in potential meant that Robin always believed that people could be competent interpreters and shapers of their world, far more than current conditions could allow, and it was an approach he was able to apply to neighbourhoods, workplaces, indeed whole societies, and that seeking out of latent possibility gave an energy to everything he did, from his work on education in the Seychelles to local government in Britain.

4. Production

Fourth, he was much less interested in distribution than production, in contrast to much of the left who essentially wanted to leave capitalism to make the wealth and then get on with redistributing.

He wanted instead to explore different models of making things, to go upstream rather than downstream: hence the interest in the economic lessons to be learned from Emilio Romagna or Mondragon, the ideas of Deming and Toyota, and later to the circular economy, and he wanted to generalise these to the wider economy so that production could be democratic and egalitarian in spirit not just distribution.  

The question of how to do that should be right at the heart of economic policy at a time the vanguards have pulled further away from the rest, leaving behind stagnant pay and productivity, when democracy has still made so little inroads into the world of work, and when perhaps more than ever we need new organising models for everything from taxi services to care, that empower rather than enslave, one of many reasons why the timing of his departure is so unfortunate.

5. Meaning

Fifth, and finally, he believed that it was not enough to do projects, to be satisfied with interesting pilots. Instead he believed we should always look to their meaning and implications, how they could be part of a large whole.

This ambition to link the micro and macro was always fertile – the macro could be reimagined by drawing on the lessons of a million small experiments, the theme of his work on post-Fordism and later of the Open Book of Social Innovation I worked on with him and Julie Simon. But the micro could also be illuminated and energised by being connected to the electricity of grander goals.  

That was why he so appreciated the work of Carlota Perez and others, their political economy in the grandest sense that situated the financial crisis and its aftermath in a much bigger historical story that showed how as the tectonic plates of economies shift new spaces open for social innovation.

It was why from his work at the GLC to coops, he sought in everything ways to prefigure, to see what in the present could point to a better future, a wholly refashioned trading system; a city without carbon; a circular economy. It’s also probably why he so liked local government – which handily straddled the micro and the macro – even during a period when it was being savagely cut back.

Together these meant a constant iteration between the small and the large, seeing the world in a grain of sand but also seeing a possible world in a small seed too.

And out of these methods, diving, questioning, liberating potential, remaking production and using the small to illuminate and transform the big, he influenced how we eat, how we shop, how we work, how we create and how we handle waste. So why spell these out? Partly to celebrate him but also because everything in his method is what we need now.

At a time of nostalgia, blocked progress, we need that infectious optimism, that sense of latent potential. At a time when politics on many fronts is comfortable with vague slogans we need that attention to the real and the concrete. And, at a time of widespread fatalism, we need that confidence that the world is waiting to be made and remade right here, right now, the spirit which says that if something is wrong, then something must be done and we might as well be the ones to do it.

One of greatest pleasures visiting Robin and Frances was when a conversation would be fuelled by something they had just cooked, a cake, bread or scones, fresh from the oven.

That may be why I associate him with yeast. Some people are flat. Robin made things rise.

First published by Nesta on Wednesday 15th November 2018.