Perhaps I’m too cynical or just insufficiently pragmatic but I urge caution in our response to government rhetoric on the Big Society, at least until we see more detail.
Matthew Taylor says the RSA could be called the think tank for the Big Society so closely are the visions aligned. So could Community Links and, I suspect, a lot of other organisations. This might signal an opportunity or it might be a warning. Few can dissemble from the warm words but is it really possible in practise to please so many people?
Thus far we’re promised some old ideas rebranded Big Society – the social investment bank for example , some reworked – the social action day was consumer tested last year and rejected , some relatively small new ones – funding the training (though not the employment) of community organisers for instance and, today, four Economy Size Societies in the Eden Valley, Windsor , Sutton and Liverpool. Worthy initiatives perhaps but scarcely amounting yet to a brave new vision. The more ambitious iterations of the Big Society are less clear and more worrying – Andrew Lansley claimed the label for his NHS reforms as did Michael Gove for independent schools.
Here my concern is less about the producer interests of the organisations on this patch – third sector agencies and social enterprises may well grow the business, but much more about the best interests of our service users, particularly the most excluded. Some of the services on which the most vulnerable are most dependent are clearly threatened and could, under the cover of the Big Society, diminish significantly over the next couple of years. Not necessarily but very possibly.
Arriving for work at Community Links in Canning Town this morning I passed a long queue of people waiting for advice or practical support in this, one of the UKs most disadvantaged communities. The questions I ask of every government programme are the same today as everyday. “How does it meet their needs? How does it tackle poverty, not just money but poverty of opportunity, and what more could be done?” I’m not sure that what I know about the Big Society, or what its leading minister, Francis Maude, had to say about it last week, helps me with the answers.
Criticism at this stage is of course just as empty as wide eyed enthusiasm. It simply isn’t yet time for the jury to return. We could however be thinking more about the criteria for judgement, the basis on which we might appraise the Big Society , challenge it, build it. Our Chain Reaction network has begun this work with a statement of principles sketching our vision of the good society, outlining the principles that might underpin that vision and suggesting the expectations, for ourselves and for government that might flow from this analysis. We put forward this vision, these values and these expectations for ourselves and for government as a set of principles that might guide the judgements that we make and the work that we do.
We share it as a work in progress and invite others to contribute.
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