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As with most ideas, especially unquantifiable, abstract ones, this is fairly easy to attack. And boy do they do that. But why? What exactly is this idea that provokes so much hatred and so many colourful words by allegedly educated and intelligent readers of the Left wing press?
The Big Society idea, as I understand it, is more than just about decentralisation, the voluntary sector, spending cuts, shedding the flab from government, axing QUANGOs, cutting red tape and bureaucracy and volunteering. To view it as just 'getting everyone to work for free' is too simplistic, makes for good anti-Tory sloganeering and is completely incorrect.
The argument that the voluntary sector will collapse due to the cuts is complete nonsense. Three quarters of the voluntary sector manage very well without funds from the government, so they won't be affected. As for the 25% that will, shouldn't they be taking a long, hard look at why they're not sustainable without state handouts? And yes, I insist on calling them handouts. Don't they know that the state borrows funds to give to them? I am assuming that the reader knows that the government borrows more than it earns. A third more than it earns. Oh, and the bit it does earn comes from the hated and vilified businessmen, bankers, kebab shop owners, waiters, taxi-drivers, cleaners, shopkeepers, etc.
Then there's the argument that more and more people will be expected to work for free. Actually, no. There's nothing new about that. Volunteers are always in short supply - with or without the cuts. With or without the Tories. With or without unbridled and reckless government spending. With or without the vote-securing-free-baubles-giveaway culture so favoured by Labour.
The best one is that we'd have to run our own post offices, clean our own streets, run our own schools, man our own libraries and police our own streets. Nothing could be further from the truth. One, you don't have to if you don't want to and two the government isn't pulling out of any of these services. Granted, there will be cuts and reductions, but many of us have switched to supermarket's own brand toilet paper and coffee. There will be a shrinkage in many things, until we can buy them with money we actually have.
People love to square up the Big Society against Margaret Thatcher's 'There is no such thing as society' quote, adding to the confusion. Well, for a minute, let's see what Lady Thatcher actually said:
"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and them, also, to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."
Changes the entire context of how the quote is used, doesn't it? I'll bet most people screaming down from the rooftops or commenting under articles in the Guardian didn't know this. Or deliberately chose to remember the one line that suited them. Selective memory or plain ignorance. Just like selective phrases in a religious book justify blowing up a crowded commuter train.
While the Daily Mail-esque hysteria about spending cuts and disbanding officialdom rages on, life has to go on. People need to work, eat, raise their children, take out the trash and pay their TV licence fees. So what of the Big Society then? Well, I for one get it. In my own way of course. I think the Big Society starts with the building block of society - the individual. Me. You. Each one of us.
Lady Thatcher's comment above says it all for me. As a nation, we've grown accustomed to a perverse sense of entitlement which overwhelms our sense of duty and our obligations. Our obligations to our parents, to our families, to our neighbours and our communities. For me the Big Society is about personal responsibility and a sense of personal duty. How am I raising my children? Do I know where they are at any given time? Do I help them with their homework? Do I even know they have homework? Do I sit with them through the night helping them study for their exams? Do I ask them about their day? Do I tell them about mine? Am I instilling good moral values in them? Do I teach them to be able to fend for themselves? Do I teach them that they're not entitled to things they do not earn through their own merits? Do I know who my neighbours are? Do I even care? Do I know more people on the street I live in than people I know back at the office? Do I speak to my parents often? Do my parents know they can count on me? Does my neighbour know they can count on me? Do I offer my seat in a bus or train to someone else? Do I help someone cross the road? Do I look at a given situation and ask myself, 'I wonder if I can help?' Do I even give a monkey's about anyone else except myself? Do I avoid the race to keep up with the Jones's by maxing out my credit cards?
I would answer yes to all those questions. That's MY Big Society. And it costs me nothing. I don't have to give up my job either. Nor do I have to 'go and work for free'. It starts with me. This is how it will be built. From the ground up. One brick at a time.
The Big Society idea should strike at the heart of the general apathy that has resulted from decades of cheap entertainment, failing schools, less than mediocre education, levelling of society - downwards, low or no aspirations and no expectations from our youth. We've cocooned ourselves into our little comfort zones, drip-fed with daily doses of 39p-a-litre cider and Goody-Jordan-Katona. That's just about as far as aspiration extends in today's Britain.
The use of profanity and name-calling in an argument is admission of a lack of belief in your convictions. Which is why the debates I get into with people whose ideology is diametrically opposed to mine tend to be like an argument about Darwin and evolution at Sunday school. A few facepalm moments soon descend into "...but the Tories are nasty..." There have been moments where I have cringed at the apparent lack of common sense among some of the most educated and well-read people I have ever known and I wonder. An unlessoned, unschooled immigrant kid gets it. Why don't you?
Most of the so-called intelligentsia accuse the government (Read: Tories) of being out of touch with normal, everyday folk. So are they. Many of them don't even recognise my description of the fragmented uncaring society we have become. In their hypothetical world, almost exclusively formulated from 'evidence' resulting from anecdotes and armchair economics and sociology, there is no room for tangible, practical ways to deal with a problem. But that is to be expected in a nation where many teachers head straight from university to teaching school to classrooms with no practical life experience whatsoever, where community leaders and politicians play by sound bites rather than the hard, practical, real-world decisions they should be taking in favour of populist rhetoric backed by borrowed money. We're headed nowhere. And fast. The Big Society needs to wrest control from this headless, brainless, nameless regime of rule-books and 'frameworks' and theoretical systems that warp the natural order of human behaviour, relationships and progress turning them into neutralised, complying sheep. Throughout history in moments of crisis, people have demonstrated the best of human nature. And the worst. The question is, what are we going to this time? Should we attack, vilify and maul what seems to be the only sustainable and practical way forward? Or should we pull together, do some work to earn our keep?
I wait for the barrage that will follow this post. But please, if you must, let this be about what YOU think YOUR contribution to the Big Society is going to be. Not the bankers. That’s a different argument altogether. YOU.
I'll talk to anyone who doesn't understand what I have said. I'll explain and I'll explain again. Some will get it. Some won't. Some will be too proud to admit they get it. Some will deny that they ever got it. Some will try to change the argument into something else. I'll lose some people off my friends' list on Facebook, some people will stop following me on Twitter. No matter. Those would be the weakest links.
Well, goodbye!
Well, goodbye!
6 comments:
You make it sound so simple and so right. For the Big Society to work people will have to rethink the way they live. Come to think of it, most religions of the world preach exactly what you think the Big Society stands for. Well done for another excellent post! Always a pleasure to read you Mr Singh!
I agree with a lot of what you say. But for it to work, it requires good will and a positive attitude. And the way it is being rammed down my throat has quite the opposite effect.
You can read my full thoughts here:
http://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/already-tired-of-camerons-bs/
Hi Alex!
Thank you for your comment. I understand what you are saying. I've just read your blog. You do write very well. And quite convincingly, I might add. Your input is very welcome.
Before anything else, I need to touch on one thing: You seem to believe that all conservative (Note the lower case 'c') voters are wealthy. Not true. I'm not. Very far from it actually. The cuts have affected me - I'm doing less than 40% of what I did around the same time a couple of years ago, but I believe they're necessary.
I believe government is too big, too unweildly and too intrusive - a scaling down is required. The private sector essentially pays for the state sector. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens when the state sector becomes larger than the private sector. The state borrows. Excessive state borrowing debases the capital in the economy and the entire nation ends up in hock. Debt is the surest ticket to enslavement. We have no right to spend more than we earn and expect the generations that follow to pay it off. I believe no government should announce ANY spending plan without explaining where the money is going to come from.
In any case, my post was not about apportioning blame: "Ask not what your country... etc" and all that. It was about looking inwards before looking at others.
The trouble with the Big Society message from the Cameron camp is that it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Maybe they're not communicating it well enough. Maybe it sounds all wrong in RP. The 'entitlements' culture I speak of is deeply entrenched and will take a lot of effort to change. The abject apathy that we've become used to as a collective will not go away without drastic action, and I fear that the cuts are nowhere near the kind of jolt we need to change our way of thinking.
The alternatives - defaulting on sovereign debt, higher cost of borrowing rendering the UK more uncompetitive than it already is will wipe our economy out completely within a single parliament. By the time that jolt comes, it will be too late.
Your call to arms to 'overthrow this miserable government' seems to suggest that you know of alternatives to the choices we face today. I'm not convinced there are any. We can't continue to borrow money to support people without requiring them to at least attempt to support themselves.
Part 1
Whatever its origins or true motivations, the concept of The Big Society has triggered a national debate about our communities and the part that we play in them, and for this alone, I am interested.
The other evening an online forum (38 degrees) was asked what voluntary work we took part in and it was heart-warming to see what diverse activities people were engaged in. People were participating in community work that wasn’t just about giving money to charities or working in charity shops, but giving time to local wildlife & conservation groups, running football & athletics clubs, befriending the elderly, reading in schools and running historical groups. To me, this is the Big Society. It has always been here, quietly and not making a fuss, but around us and with us in our Communities.
David Cameron is not clear about what The Big Society is. He has the heritage of the Thatcher years to address and feels the need to show that the Conservatives have a caring side, particularly in these times of austerity. Some outcomes of Big Society, the one that has always been here, could involve further U-turns by the ConDems, as has been seen in the removal of the forest sell-off part of the Public Bodies Bill, and previously with public outcry against the scrapping of the Sports for Schools funding. People uniting online through social media, engaged with issues they feel strongly about, petitioning and campaigning to protect their local communities. This is another part of what the Big Society is to me, and it is exciting and liberating.
Banti - your interpretation of The Big Society is personal responsibility and a sense of duty. For so many, this is inherent in their way of life. It doesn’t need to be said that we engage with our children, our parents or our neighbours. There are sections of our society that include benefit dependent families but there are some people who would rather die than take benefit. Some wealthy individuals/corporations are socially responsible and give back to the societies where their wealth originated; some would rather play the game of avoidance. The individual’s actions are transparent, the corporation’s can be deliberately clouded. For me, they all have a responsibility to society. Brick by brick, as you say. We have always been in debt; borrowing more than we receive, and how much easier would this be to manage if those with the broadest shoulders took a greater financial responsibility. Equally, if you can work, get out there and do it. It brings you back into society; it opens opportunities, it gives you purpose. Generally those who work longer, live longer. I don’t believe that the Big Society will mean “everyone working for free”, because this is unfeasible; the voluntary & charity sector will never replace the state sector. Note the small s.
There are aspects of societal decline that you mention such as binge drinking & cheap television that, for me, began with the greedy “gimme gimme” nation of the Thatcher years. The free market, non regulation of supermarkets & drinking establishments created out of a Conservative philosophy of competition is best and nurtured under Nu-Labour. No connection to the global economy, no excuses, just a British issue. The facts show us that our nation cannot achieve moderation in alcohol consumption and for me it is linked intrinsically to accessibility. It destroys families and has changed the character and freedoms of our towns and cities. If Cameron wanted to be truly paternalistic, then this would be the biggest and most positive issue he could address, but I suspect that, as with the banks, the drinks lobby will prevail.
Part 2
There are many ex Tories like myself who will never trust a Tory leader again, especially a privileged one who has never worked in the real world (PR doesn’t count - I know, I’ve done it), rather like the point you made about teachers going straight from college into schools; these career politicans cannot truly represent us, until they have been one of us. If a less elitist man, who’d shown empathy with the working man through his background and his working life, rallied our country through tough economic times by calling for us to all be in this together and to engage more in our communities, then he would have more credibility. As it is, his words ring hollow.
However, irrespective of all of this, I will continue to play my part in my Big Society, nurturing & nagging my children, taking old folk to their hospital appointments, putting up the corner flags and checking the first aid kit at football and campaigning against cuts and dodgy bankers, because that’s who I am.
Banti. I recommend some further exploration of the UK; explore some Yorkshire villages, walk on Dartmoor, ogle at the Scottish Highlands and Isles, take your family for a bike ride along the Tissington Trail in the Peaks, walk along a Suffolk beach; along the way you’ll find for yourself some different folk and see the overlap between the voluntary/civic & state sector, in places where you might not expect. Shrinking the state doesn’t boost the voluntary sector. There are civic and voluntary activities going on all around, and sometimes they will be engaging in things you might disagree with, but nonetheless they are still part of the Big Society. Our Big Society doesn’t have to be purely about politics; about left or right, or about point scoring or having a greater intellectual argument. It’s about doing your best for those around you and yourself.
I have responded to this comment in a post which you can find here.
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