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Does Big Society Foretell the Demise of Confrontational Government?

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Kevin Harris has written a fascinating post about the possibility of the transition to Big Society foretelling the demise of confrontational we/you type government.
I too can see a way in which Big Society foretells the demise of command and control. However I can also see dozens of ways in which it doesn’t.  The recent Marsh Farm decision provides an example.
Government has a long track record of maintaining the status quo while providing the illusion of radical change.  Left/Right, Centralise/Decentralise, National/Local.  They all look like major change, but in fact politicians and civil servants collude to ensure that nothing REALLY happens.  It is  as if the pendulum of change is allowed to swing through an arc of only a very few degrees.
Kevin makes a good point about the nature of  you/me thinking.  A shift to ‘we’ would do no harm at all.  But I am not holding my breathe.  The very nature of democracy means that we elect a ‘you’.
In my mind the real shift needs to from a perspective where government seeks to engage us in the delivery of their agenda to one where it learns to engage itself in the development of our agendas.  A government focussed on enabling citizens in pursuit of their interests rather than recruiting them to do the work of the state.
But I will not hold my breathe for that swing of the pendulum either.
Perhaps it is time we learned to wean ourselves off the teat of the state and learn to make progress without them?

Putting Power in the Hands of Individuals and Communities…

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We agreed that…our government’s purpose is to make two major shifts in our political and national life:

The first is a radical redistribution of power from government to communities and people, to reverse decades of over-centralisation. Almost all our plans involve giving individuals, families and communities more control over their lives – whether that’s through opening new schools, giving locally elected councillors a say over local NHS services or holding local police to account.

Clegg and Cameron’s Letter to MPs of the Coalition Government

At first glance this is a gift for those of us who have advocated the potential of individuals and communities to shape their own destiny.  But I think it shows a lack of understanding about how such processes can work.

Communities and individuals are being offered power to do the work that some aspect of the state had previously done.  They are being pointed at opportunities identified by the powerful where they maybe allowed to play a part.   In the examples cited above to manage schools, health and policing.  Perhaps also to buy the local pub and turn it into a social enterprise or cooperative.  Or to take over an old school or library and turn it into a community asset.

All very laudable at first glance.

But there is no real shift  of power going on here.  Individuals and communities are being invited to play a larger part in delivering the strategies of the powerful.  There seems to be little or no sign of individuals and communities being allowed to set their own development agendas, to build their power to tackle the issues that really impact on their lives.   There is little evidence of real self-determination being encouraged, just more gentle manipulation to ‘good folk’ to do their bit in times of austerity.

And much of this will play well to middle Britain and its obsessions with schooling, policing and the delivery of healthcare.

But how will it play out in some of our poorest communities?  What will the impact of this ‘radical redistribution of power’ be on them?

My best guess is that for many the impact will be detrimental, unless we find a way to really engage them as individuals and communities in working on their agenda rather than on the agenda of the state.  Doing things that will make a real difference in their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

When we tell people how we wish them to participate in transforming their own worlds we can be sure that either:

  • we are not really sincere in our wishes for any such transformation, or
  • while we do wish for a radical transformation we do not understand the processes through which it might be achieved.

Perhaps it is time for Cameron and Clegg to read a little more Paulo Friere to go with their Philip Blond?

There is the world of difference between ‘putting power in the hands of individuals and communities’ and helping people to develop their power to shape their lives.

Why we shouldn’t worry about LEPS

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As someone who remembers the Small Firms Service, Manpower Services Commission, The Training Agency, TECS, Business Links and the establishment of RDAs, I refuse to be overly exercised by the development of Local Economic Partnerships.

We know that they will have significantly reduced budgets.  We know that they will be led by some concoction of ‘private’ and ‘public’ sector with a seasoning of social enterprise for good measure.

We can be relatively sure that they will have considerable bureaucratic overheads – necessary to ensure openness, accountability and probity and that they will tie themselves up in the same debates about economic development policy that have raged with sterility for decades; picking winners, encouraging start-ups, clusters, sectors, creative classes, beautification, yada, yada, yada.

We know that they will be very heavily influenced by professions allied to construction and engineering. Planners, place-makers, architects, developers who can throw big money at making sure they retain the lion’s share of public spending even as the spending pie shrinks.  One just needs to look at the key ‘Partners’of the currentRegeneration and Renewal National Summit to see the evidence.

We can also be sure that they will embrace a strategic, top down approach to economic development that pretends that economic development happens in a bubble that is disconnected from cultural and social development.  No doubt these too will get their own shrivelled strategic bodies.  The paradigm of economic growth as an unmitigated good will hold sway in the strange world of economic development.  Ideas of sustainability and steady state will not be seriously entertained (unless of course they paradoxically provide opportunities for growth).  Visions will be developed by the anointed, and most of us will see the world of economic development at best, ‘through a glass darkly’.

We must choose our engagements with the strategists, and the terms of our engagement very carefully.  We are currently paying the price for allowing our strategies to be far too dependent on continued and unsustainable state funding.  We must make sure that we don’t give the state such power and control over our futures again.  Over-reliance on the state has proven to be just ‘bad strategy’  We must not sell ourselves to the funders while we call ourselves community development workers – unless they fully embrace the principles of community led regeneration – whether they are convenient to the politicians and bureaucrats or not.

Facilitation is unlikely to get a look in.  Whole person approaches will be ignored (economic development will continue to speak to homo econimicus), co-creation is as close as we will get to responsiveness and bottom-up. And let’s be clear, co-creation as conceived by the state is nowhere near responsive and bottom up.  It still asks ‘how do we engage people in the agenda of the state’ and not ‘how do we engage the state in the agendas of the people’.  For me this is the ultimate deceit that lies at the heart of ‘Big Society’ and that needs to be carefully and thoroughly outed.

We can also be sure that those who actually live in the communities and give their time and skills to help make things better will be expected to do so for free as budgets for community development shrink and are increasingly targeted at problems (obesity, crime, drugs etc) that see humans as essentially degenerate instead of at the development of aspiration, hopes and dreams which see people as essentially good and progressive.

So I refuse to be exercised.  LEPs will evolve.  They will be largely ineffective in spite of the fact that they will be stuffed to the ginnels with good, committed, well meaning people.  And in a decade they will evolve again.  The sign-makers, website developers and letterhead printers will rub their hands with glee.

I will put my energies into supporting bottom up, responsive approaches that honour peoples humanity, that build social capital, that value the contributions of all, regardless of sector, ambition or potential.  And I will keep looking for genuinely innovative approaches to the thorny question of progress?

In practice this means helping others to develop initiatives like Bettkultcha, Cultural Conversations, TEDx Leeds etc (we are blessed with a resurgence of such civic endeavour in Leeds) that holds real promise to nurture something very exciting.

But I will also endeavour to provide some contributions of my own.  For me this means trying to develop Progress School and Innovation Lab as places to foster radical personal and organisational transformation.

And just perhaps we might be able to persuade those in authority to trust us, to support us, to help us.

Who knows?