Bridging bureaucracy and activism: Challenges of activist state-work in the 1980s Greater London Council

An emerging literature on ‘new municipalism’ has identified attempts not only to transform local state functions respond the urban crises of neoliberal austerity, but also structure and practices itself, embedding democratic processes into government. This article utilises historical experience left’ within Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 1986 explore internal dynamics transformation in a context municipal activism. It situates GLC’s progressive policy responses early 1980s more quotidian project remaking, which activists worked in-and-against established political cultures state. The new left’s transformative, rather than simply instrumental, approach – rooted politics social movements challenges straightforward dichotomies between society. frames these nascent municipalist characteristics with theoretical argument based an autonomist-Marxist account as form relations, one that emphasises how capitalist pivot contradictions labour. reading directs attention ‘prosaic’ labour officials, thus considers politicised officials GLC, whose activity blurred boundaries activism professional practical involved such forms ‘activist state-work’– working bureaucratic legal limits, experimenting organisational forms, negotiating contested workplace subjectivities reveal boundary-bridging statehood highlight potentially transformative governance. unstable tightrope-walk constraint agency at nexus state-work contributes thinking about reshaping conduct