In the current climate, neighbourhood management teams and knowledge are more at risk than ever.  We’ve been working on new ways of embedding these methods into the mainstream delivery of housing providers supporting greater levels of community empowerment, joining up of services and more efficient use of resources.  Come and hear about it at the South East CiH event ‘New Ways for Social Housing’

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. Saul Alinsky

Over the last few months public debate on the need for increased social action and active citizenship has burgeoned in the UK. A growing consensus is forming around the hope that in the future people will become more engaged, more giving, more willing and able to contribute to collective social life; and on the flip side, less individualistic and less apathetic. The RSAs recent publication, Civic Commons, captures the current mood well when they state;

“Current models for encouraging citizens to participate in civic life are geared around citizens influencing decision making or service delivery, rather than individually or collectively making change themselves. But this needs to change; participation must enable citizens to take action rather than just have conversations” (Norris, E and McLean, S, 2011: 3)

The idea that people should be helped to take action at local levels, to take ownership over local issues and solutions is certainly appealing, and in light of swingeing public sector cuts, perhaps expedient. Yet, even if we can all agree that a big (or good) society is desirable, and that we will only get there by increasing levels of social action and active citizenship, there are still important questions to be answered, or at least asked; what do we mean by social action? What counts as a contribution to community or society? What forms of active citizenship are we legitimising, and which are we marginalising? 

In practice it is well known that there is much wrong with the way that we do participation and how we enable people to act in the UK; spaces for participation are “too few and too exclusive”; an overly top-down culture is still pervasive, stifling innovation and creativity; a number of barriers still exist which dissuade disadvantaged people from getting involved; and, as noted above, participatory fora all too often become talk shops, frustrating people whilst not enabling citizens to take action. However, whilst these issues are clearly important, broadly speaking there is a more systemic problem with how social action and active citizenship are theorised and understood in the UK, let alone put into practice.

Put simply, this is that are our political culture – from Whitehall to the micro-politics of neighbourhood forums – has become far too consensual, shying away from conflict, from mobilising conflicting passions and embracing edgy, radical and disruptive forms of social action and active citizenship. As a result, whether implicitly or explicitly, ‘legitimate’ social action is associated increasingly with self-help or communal forms of entrepreneurialism, charity and philanthropy whilst more radical and potentially transformative forms of action – especially those that seek to address power imbalances – are marginalised.

Indeed, practical experience – backed up by numerous studies –continuously highlights these sorts of shortcomings with how we engage with people; people may be present, but their ability to contribute meaningfully, to shape the debate, to disagree, to fight out an issue from different standpoints, to dissent and even act against vested interests, rather than consent to partner with conventional wisdom and the “rational consensus”, is limited. People’s capacity to be “creative disruptors” in the words of Toby Blume is all too often foreclosed. 

At the national (and also international) level this argument has already been made well by the Belgian and political theorists Chantal Mouffe in her theory of agonism – or the creative capacity of legitimate conflict (i.e. antagonism without the “ant” and the associated violent connotations). As Mouffe puts it;

The belief in the possibility of a universal rational consensus has put democratic thinking on the wrong track. Instead of trying to design the institutions which, through supposedly ‘impartial’ procedures, would reconcile all conflicting interests and values, the task for democratic theorists and politicians should be to envisage the creation of a vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted

But why is conflict, or agonism, so important? Won’t we be opening up a micro-political Pandora’s box? And in any case, have we not moved passed old political ideologies? And isn’t consensus based politics a sign of growing political maturity?

There are at least three main reasons why conflict is so centrally important to our politics, and the health of society more broadly.

1.      A degree of conflict is absolutely necessary to drive innovation and change – and therefore help address pressing social challenges. Our society needs people who are capable of challenging the status quo, mix things up and push the boundaries of received wisdom

2.      At a more structural level conflict is also needed to challenge entrenched power imbalances in society – what Demos have called Britain’s “Power Gap”. This is not to suggest that we need be agitating for an all out Marxian revolution, but – if a more socially just society is our aim – people must be given the space to challenge, and even disrupt, processes and institutions that are no longer working for them; letting people bring about what Edgar Pieterse has termed “radical incrementalism” – meaningful change achieved bit by bit, mile by mile.

3.      Finally, allowing different political imperatives, or ‘hegemonic projects’, to clash, helps reduce apathy and paradoxically reduces the potency of extreme and violent political expressions. This is because by suppressing agonism we give rise to antagonism – a violent politics where the ‘other’ is constituted not as an adversary with whom to engage, but an enemy who must be destroyed. This can be seen in violent street protests and even the rise of the far right.

So how can we begin to start thinking about expanding the boundaries of social action and active citizenship to include agonistic practices? What for that matter does an agonistic public sphere even look like in practice? Perhaps somewhat paradoxically the answer to these questions might lie in the Conservative party’s Big Society.

At first glance the idea of Big Society may seem many miles away from the concept of an agonistic public sphere. After all media coverage of the concept seem to focus far more on very small scale and ‘friendly’ examples of social capital; street parties, car-pooling, community litter-picks – all of which have their place and all of which do contribute to a greater sense of community, but none are examples of a radical politics in practice, nor are they likely to bring about transformational change or address power inequalities. Yet, despite the widespread criticism, much of which is well founded, the Big Society agenda has arguably opened up a set of important debates, and also opportunities to increase citizen’s room for manoeuvre and gain increased grass-roots power.

The Neighbourhood Army initiative is an intriguing case in point here. Indeed, in its principles and methods community organising is markedly different to the consensual politics currently dominant in the UK today and therefore could represent an opportunity to foster a more radically different approach to social action.

Given its history, (namely in Saul Alinsky and the IAF) the idea of training community organisers as part of a nationally set agenda (the Big Society) is a little disarming, but potentially significant. On the face of it, the idea that a centre-right government might whole heartedly embrace community organising – directly sighting as inspiration the contentious, radical and enigmatic champion of the non-socialist left Saul Alinsky – will raise some sceptical eyebrows (in fact it has caused downright anger from many); surely this is political populism, a crude and short-sighted attempt to ride the wave of Obama magic?

But, as Toby Blume noted recently at a conference on the role of community organising in the UK, if David Cameron had intended to do this, it failed. His ideas of community empowerment fell flat at the ballot box and have proved unpopular within his own party. And yet he continues to emphasise this as his main political ambition, his passion. Rather than regress to cynicism then, perhaps we should take the Neighbourhood Army initiative seriously as a genuine opportunity to assert the role of agonism in grass-roots social action and active citizenship. As Jess Steele notes, we need to follow one of Alinsky’s golden rules; we need to make the government play by its own rule book.

Of course this will not be easy. It will require some pretty fundamental shake-ups in how participation and social action is facilitated at local levels. People will have to be given the space to draw up their own agendas, and they will need to be facilitated to “dance with conflict” within participatory spaces (to set agendas) and then helped to engage in legitimate agonistic action; that is to say, passionate action that, in theory, could take on a various number of forms, as long as it is legitimate or non-violent. Rather than trying to shape the debate, or move the arguments of citizens towards a rational consensus, we need people who will open up different options, arguments and perspectives and who can then nurture action organically from people’s debates.

There are also a number of other important questions;

1.       As  Jayne Mills and Sue Robinson question, how do we ensure that community organising is empowering (pushing towards socially just outcomes), and not oppressive (another tool to further entrench inequalities and the status quo)?

2.       What will community organising mean for local authorities? What role can or will they play? Will they be committed enablers, encouraging people to get more politically involved in their local areas? Will they seek to mediate it from a distance, ensuring that it is not used for socially unjust ends? Or will they reject it, and treat it as a threat to their ways of working?

3.       What role do community development practitioners play in all of this?

Social action is about more than helping your neighbour do their shopping, or taking over a library. It is also about mobilising around injustices and forcing through progressive change from the bottom-up, getting involved in creative disruption and holding public and private sector providers to account directly. It is also about generating grass-roots and collective forms of power which enable people to shape their social world. Recognising this and learning how to accept, allow and even embrace this type of conflict and activism will be one of the key challenges of the Big Society.

Joe Penny (Micah Gold Associates)

At last night’s London Civic Forum AGM event which was headlined as ‘MORE POWER TO LONDONERS? GLA PROPOSALS FOR DEVOLUTION IN LONDON’ an audience of the most committed community and voluntary sector leaders, who made it in even on tube strike night, gathered together only to hear of the prospect of more of the same when it comes to how our London government bodies are reacting to the new political landscape of decentralisation and localism.  All we heard from Jules Pipe, Chair of London Councils and Mayor of Hackney, and Jeanette Arnold, Deputy Chair of the GLA was about the great carve up that’s gone on in the last 6 weeks and which powers will go to the GLA and those to London Boroughs.   Presented as a great achievement - negotiations and documents signed in 6 weeks - though so much was missing in the rhetoric.  In a world where these politicians believe almost exclusively in representative democracy, and they think double devolution means from Government to London government and then to boroughs, and where beliefs are held that there is little demand or enthusiasm for greater local involvement (or even decision making), perhaps the event should have been called more honestly ‘More Power to …. err …. me’.    Come on London Government.  Stop giving us the same old excuses about the lack of demand or that many parish council seats are uncontested, or how it takes elected leadership to take the tough decisions about balancing priorities.  Until you give real influence & decisions, people will continue to step sideways when it comes to your engagement mechanisms.  Everywhere we’ve been involved in real local decision making, however disadvantaged the neighbourhood, local people always step up to the plate and positive community ‘side effects’ are too numerous to mention.  The culture of London government needs to change.  

The promise of the coalition government to date is that it realises that it can’t rely on local government to devolve so it is trying to find ways of giving new powers to people and community groups to demand change.   ‘Local communities and organisations will be able to benefit from a massive power shift: taking power from Whitehall and transferring it to local communities.  Reforms to the planning system….the right to buy and the right to bid to run community assets.  These rights will give local community and third sector organisations the opportunity to challenge their local authority where they believe services or facilities would be better run by alternative providers’ (Building a Stronger Civil Society, Office for Civil Society).  Its natural that London government is grappling first with cuts and the changing landscape from above.  If the coalition government gets it right, perhaps in the coming years we are about to witness the biggest real shift in power to communities and community groups in a generation.  London government would be wise to start looking ‘outwards and downwards’ and prepare for the wave of challenge over resources that will soon come from below.

Andrew Laird’s post on the Big Society Network is well worth a read and contributes well to the debate - the real conversation about the Big Society needs to be between Government and communities (not the media) with Government setting the overall direction/philosophy and communities & professionals to define the details according to local need.  very interesting!

We live in remarkable political times not seen in my generation.  In the old days it was either us or them, left or right, a state and society or a form of capitalist individualism.  Now all the lines are blurring, the tectonic plates are shifting, and it will be some months, perhaps years, before we know where they will settle and what that will mean for the sector.  Libdems and Conservatives have joined together in a Coalition government – who would have thought!  And even more remarkably swathes of Labourites are in agreement with the Conservative rank and file – we don’t like, want or believe in this thing you call a Big Society!    (they even agree on the need for public sector cuts – the disagreement on this centres around scale and speed) 

It’s sad that Steve Moore and Paul Twivvy’s Big Society Network Town Hall talks have gotten off to a false start.   If the reports of what happened in Manchester are correct, they were taken over by those angry about public sector cuts and demanding answers about the connection between the Network and the Government.  It’s sad because we might miss out in a once in a generation to be part of a conversation that redefines the role of communities, local government and the state.  It’s sad because old style politics are getting in the way of a real shift forward in something that has been gaining cross party consensus for some time – more localism and involvement of civil society.  It’s understandable because the impact of the impending CSR and savings now being made is real on jobs and organisations.

To those on the left, call it a good society, call it what you like, but you’ve been trying to create it for the last 13 years and well before that.  I wrote in the March 2010 edition New Start before the general election:  Volunteering, neighbourhood arrangements, housing organisations improving neighbourhoods, civic engagement through police panels, citizen’s panels,  forums, associations plus  new and stunning Children’s Centres, academies, and health centres, more community anchor organisations (like the Bromley by Bow Centre, which also became a model for the Healthy Living Centres), community social enterprises, asset owning development trusts – they’re all on the rise – as are the many and varied attempts to improve co-ordination and involvement at area and neighbourhood levels.  Fine, attack those that believe in a smaller state for its own sake.  But, surely you don’t disagree a good state or a more efficient state is a good idea.  The ‘either- or’ of big state or big society is far too simplistic.  The research tells us societies with good state services are better able to support strong civil involvement – the 2 are not mutually exclusive.    We need to address proposed savings in a line by line way fighting for the services and experience that should not be lost to our communities.  ‘you say cut back, we say fight back’ is too old a rallying cry that will only push the left further into unelectable oblivion.  

To those in the coalition, we do need change.  The appetite of public sector partners to seriously think neighbourhood/community/local in a holistic way perhaps by cross subsidising, was always stymied by central targets, budgetary pressures, rules on spending, and vested interests.  We need some kind of ‘duty of subsidiarity’ where properly constituted neighbourhood bodies would have the right to have devolved to them those responsibilities and budgets which are critical to improving their neighbourhood; a duty to deliver neighbourhood arrangements where local authorities would need to be explicit about their approach to neighbourhood working and identify place based budgets; and the legislation to enable staff and communities to take on the delivery of local services (grabbing the funding) shifting the power away from the vested interests that control things now.

It is clear that Greg Clark’s commitment to localism and decentralisation is genuine.  He is quoted in this week’s Local Government Chronicle  ‘I will be clear to local authorities that I would expect them to devolve and empower people and not to pull up the drawbridge and reduce the links to voluntary organisations. …Our commitment is apolitical.  Ultimately I’m a policy wonk.  I don’t care what the local political consequences are.  I think communities can be more vibrant and stronger places if they have more power’.  

Like it or not, we have woken up to a new political reality.  There is a debate going on about what this means and how we can make the most of it.  It is time to engage in this debate.

Published in New Start, September 2010

The Big Society has arrived without an instruction manual in the form of a strategy, floor targets and the work of 18 Policy Action Teams. Instead it arrives as a philosophical framework with broad outcomes to guide policy and action. This is a fundamental cultural shift and we suspect culture change needs to be at the heart our response. 

At Beyond The Usual Suspects conference we co-hosted with the London Empowerment Partnership and The Campaign Company, Phillip Blond in asserting that both Left and Right have made mistakes, suggested that the Big Society is the most radical concept we’ve ever had.  He would say that as part creator of it, though we’ve not seen anything create this much consternation and commentary before.    

Last year, I got recruited through my synagogue that is becoming a founder member of North London Citizens, and recently went on their 2 day community organiser training.  Remarkably, I found myself challenged,  re-educated, inspired, and somewhat rewired.    On joining the Citizens movement I realise that, together, there’s probably little we can’t change should we decide to do it together.  It’s built on the basic building blocks of public relationships and understanding each other’s interests and it recreates the infrastructure between ethnic, religious and community groups in our society that has been sorely missing.  Tellingly, it sees schools and faith groups, unions and housing organisations as its core architecture - in contrast with many attempts at government led regeneration and renewal that was somewhat nervous of faith groups and not always effective in involving these stakeholders.  

Community organising isn’t the only response to the Big Society concept though it certainly has the potential to help create a bigger society to the one we have now at a fraction of the cost of previous ‘top down’ attempts.  It’s a great example of the kind of response we need, though it will challenge the culture of our public and private sectors because though it is non ideological and non partisan, it is organised and is ‘brazenly and persistently political’.  It will be one of the new ways communities hold public services to account presenting a new cultural challenge.

The rise of social enterprise also has the potential to help us create our bigger society and support for their foot soldiers, social entrepreneurs.  As Cliff Prior, the Chief Executive of Unltd said recently, ‘Our job is to reach out and unleash the energy of people that can change their worlds’ and interestingly they tell us that community entrepreneurs disproportionately come from disadvantaged areas and minority groups.  Yet their successful methods of encouraging entrepreneurship fly in the face of public sector approaches to funding the third sector and procurement.  Again, relationship is at the heart, followed by risk seed finance alongside mentoring and support, followed by further finance on production of results.  It’s more of a private sector approach to growth and contrasts sharply with the public sector ideals of equal opportunity and ‘eradication’ of risk through PQQs and ever higher hurdles to jump over.  If co-production is to really take off, again there are cultural challenges the public sector must grapple with in order to make the most of the energy of social entrepreneurs.

Local authorities have been described as the ‘enablers’ of the Big Society though this is clearly a huge challenge. This time there is no blueprint and CLG suggest ministers are averse to giving any direction at all.  Community organising suggests we must develop a new relationship with external pressure groups for mutual benefit, not the usual ‘push away, protect and defend’ culture that has pervaded.  Support for groups to have greater involvement in the  running of public services, or ‘resource grabbing’ as it has been coined, will require fundamental shifts in thinking around procurement and social value measurement. We have heard both Matthew Taylor and Phillip Blond use the word ‘mobilisation’ in the context of the future role of local government.  To us, this would suggest moving engagement from the peripheries of how authorities operate to the very core, with front-line services treating residents as citizens instead of (or at least as well as) service users or consultees. Perhaps yet another fundamental cultural shift crucial to developing the trust required to underpin the co-production necessary to deliver the Big Society.