Quality | 2010.04.19
Cameron, beware. Cake baking and sports clubs can't fix inequality
An east London estate offers a potent picture of the Big Society. But there is a big gap in Cameron\'s big idea
The garden is teeming with children, there is a hubbub of chatting around tables in the community centre; the air is filled with the delicious smell of cakes baking and there is Loreen, smiling a greeting to one neighbour and then calling out to a couple of children to be sure to be back in the morning for more baking. This is Rokeby community centre, in one of east London\'s most deprived boroughs, Newham. It\'s a picture-perfect illustration of Cameron\'s big idea, the Big Society. Since the centre opened, crime on the estate has halved; what was once a bleak square for burnt out cars and gangs of kids is now a hub for the community with sports clubs for teenagers, a children\'s playground and a garden. Loreen has drawn in volunteers from neighbouring streets who now help run the centre, devise its programme of activities and keep the place open 12 hours a day, six days a week, for activities such as keep fit, playgroups and cooking classes.
But the organisation behind Rokeby, Community Links , is watching closely – and nervously – as to where David Cameron is going to take his big idea. With 300 staff and 1,000 volunteers, it has 32 years\' experience of trying to make the Big Society work. The delight that community engagement has finally reached the centre of an election campaign – it\'s been a long time in coming – is balanced by a wariness that it is being dangerously oversold. Yesterday, writing in the Observer, Cameron promised the Big Society would "change the world". He was explicit in his Hugo Young lecture last November that he saw the Big Society as a substitute for the state: "In the fight against poverty, inequality, social breakdown and injustice, I want to move from state action to social action."
But what Community Links knows well is that community engagement can never be a substitute for state intervention. Indeed, much of its funding comes from government contracts. More important, the big issue of inequality and poverty in this neighbourhood, cheek by jowl with the prosperity of Canary Wharf, is not something that cake baking and sports clubs can solve. Yes, they can change individual lives and do – which is why politicians of all persuasions have beaten a path to their door in recent years, including Cameron before he became leader – but their inspiration works small scale, person to person. It can never match the impact of well-crafted welfare policy that can affect millions of families.
There are plenty of other aspects of this kind of community activism and delivery of public services which don\'t mesh well with Whitehall imperatives; it\'s long-term work requiring the patient building of relationships, and it\'s not particularly cheap or easily measurable. Loreen\'s warmth doesn\'t fit into tick-box efficiency measures yet is crucial to the centre\'s success. Most important, it is not easy to find funding. Cameron\'s suggestion that he will train an "army" of 5,000 community organisers all capable of raising money for their own salaries has sent a shiver through most community organisations. They already devote significant money for fundraising teams to chase the few philanthropists far-sighted enough to put money into this risky, unpredictable, long-term work. Cameron seems intent on making their job a whole lot more difficult.
But put aside for a moment the considerable concerns about what exactly Cameron is proposing and why. Also put aside the Tory spending cuts in the 80s that left a trail of empty community centres, youth projects and innovative public service initiatives. Presume that those who advocate this agenda so passionately, such as Cameron\'s adviser Steve Hilton , will win out over Conservative sceptics (including those who see it as a swift route to a smaller state), and what are you left with?
Cameron\'s achievement in putting concepts of civic engagement, community participation and mutualism in public services at the centre of his campaign is considerable. He is reviving a powerful strand of one-nation Toryism and articulating a new expression of a Conservative ideal of extending freedom, but with a crucial difference: he has framed it as a collective project. Something achieved with others, rather than despite them. In contrast, New Labour in the last two elections has offered the voter a chance to become "author of their own lives" and it sounded like a lot of lonely choices. Cameron has taken the modern desire for individual agency – having an impact – and reminded us that it is always achieved in co-operation with others.
This is Cameron parking his tanks right in old Labour heartland. Infuriating. But Labour needs to do some soul-searching about why it let these issues drift. Tony Blair was just as fond of them in the run-up to the 1997 election as Cameron is now; Blairite adviser Charles Leadbeater remembers how he wrote Blair a note on the need for "self-government instead of government". The early phase of Sure Start had a strong element of community engagement; early reforms of the NHS involved widespread staff collaboration. But the agenda got sidelined. Leadbeater attributes it to a "narcissism of the centre in which central government was always the solution, always involved in a heroic struggle". It was the era of Blair\'s infamous speech on his struggle to reform public services and the "scars on his back".
The electoral imperative of having demonstrable results fuelled New Labour\'s efficiency drive; the Treasury\'s narrow definition of best value limited efforts to deliver more imaginative services with long-term sustainable outcomes. Meanwhile, areas of high deprivation have continued to absorb huge amounts of public money in benefits, without any appreciable improvement. Cameron is now exploiting all these shortcomings. (Leadbeater – whose projects redesigning public services at his consultancy Participle are quoted by Cameron\'s advisers – is working on how to measure "social value", a concept also included in the Tory manifesto.)
Cameron, beware. In the pressure of government, with constant demands for tangible achievements, this kind of idea gets marginalised. The Big Society has to be done locally and credit stays local; there are no pickings for the Westminster politician, but it still carries risk – the headlines when the community centre offers asbo teenagers sports clubs and trips to theme parks, or when drug addicts are offered aromatherapy.
And finally, the most important piece of the puzzle. Many people involved in this area of policy reference the northern Italian province of Lombardy. A centre-right government works with a plethora of community associations, decentralised education and health services, and devolved budgets in the closest thing to Cameron\'s Big Society. But the key ingredient of Lombardy\'s success is a strong small business economy. And this is the biggest gap in Cameron\'s thinking: his kind of Big Society requires decentralised economic power – not the kind of casino monopoly capitalism his Conservative predecessors unleashed. Without that, the Big Society cannot deliver the shift in power he promises. Having nailed his colours so ostentatiously to this mast, Cameron has set himself a massive challenge – and many of his fiercest opponents will be in his own party.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]cameron-big-society-inequality
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