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By Dr Catherine Walker, Head of Sector Trends, Evidence, Analysis & Metrics (STEAM), Directory of Social Change
2011 feels like it was the year of BS – in many forms. Certainly the Big Society agenda loomed large in the last 12 months, manifesting itself in all manner of initiatives, some promising, some ridiculous. It’s not that the Government has got this Big Society thing all wrong - in fact there is an awful lot that’s right about it, but yet it still feels frustratingly far away from achieving what it could.
The aims of Big Society are laudable – “to create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a Big Society that will ‘take away power from politicians and give it back to the people’”; or as we at DSC might say, it’s: “about getting individuals to take responsibility for themselves, each other and their communities.”
All well and good in a world of mass democracy where people want to be seen and treated as individuals with the power to affect their own lives rather than a nanny state where nobody is trusted to know what is good for them.
However 2011 was a year of continuing financial crisis in the UK that was even worse for our nearest neighbours in Europe. It was also a year of unprecedented rioting and the upsurge of the Occupy Movement – an international protest primarily directed against economic and social inequality. We should not make any real linkages between these two but both phenomena spoke in different ways to a deep malaise in our society. A deep unease about inequality, about the widening gap between the haves and the have nots – in Occupy parlance: the 1% and the 99%.
What of 2012 then? We are still in economic crisis, with low growth and rising unemployment, homelessness and poverty in the wider economy and a raft of austerity cuts hitting the voluntary and community sector particularly hard – those ostensibly charged with helping to bring about the new Big Society.
And the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement could do little to reassure us that it would end anytime soon. However, all should not be seen as doom and gloom. As some commentators have pointed out, historically times of crisis can also be catalysts for change.
Michael Edwards, the writer and activist, said recently that there are two sets of conditions which act as catalysts for a flourishing civil society: one is mass protests in the face of ‘outright oppression and the violation of human rights’; and the second, widespread economic security (http://www.opendemocracy.net/michael-edwards/what-can-‘big-society’-learn-from-history). Clearly in the UK right now we appear to have precious little economic security and increased levels of mass protests – although parts of Europe appear closer to the tipping point of real civil unrest.
If it continues and evolves in 2012, the Occupy movement could provoke a profound rethink of not just our society but our economic and political systems in the process. But is it a symptom or an agent of change? Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, seems to be challenging David Cameron’s Government over the very nature of capitalism. Is this a reflection of popular pressure, or just a bit of political footwork? Either way, it certainly seems different from New Labour’s previously ‘relaxed’ attitude to wealth and the free market in the Blair years.
There are other fundamentals in our system which need addressing if Big Society is to succeed. One of these is the increasing acknowledgement that positive psychology, optimism, well-being and happiness are important factors in a healthy society and form a good basis for Big Society.
Still, only this month the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index highlighted yet again that economic growth and GDP are not the be all and end all economists and politicians once thought they were for a nation’s wellbeing. Lower growth can lead to greater happiness. A rethink of what really matters to people is in order.
And as the Charities Aid Foundation’s groundbreaking World Giving Index, now finds:
“Happy nations are more likely to give than wealthy nations: The link between the giving of money and happiness is stronger (a coefficient of 0.69) than the link between the giving of money and the GDP of a nation (0.58).” Download pdf [external link].
The launch of the second part of the national consultation on the Office for National Statistics’s well-being measures in October underlines the Government’s continued push in this direction. Cameron’s Big Society Government has ambitions and interests in this area, showing that there is a hope of this agenda transcending traditional Left and Right political boundaries, but they seem to suffer from a cynical reception and poor implementation.
The idea of cooperation is key too – relationships built on reciprocal trust, on foundations of believing that others will honour their commitments, on believing the best in others. Cooperation not competition is the basis of a happy and productive society. We need to realign our thinking to be more optimistic and promote a more ethical and moral approach to society and each other.
In a world where we are daily faced with bleak warnings of the biting cuts and austerity measures to come, of continued low growth and concomitant societal ills and a charity landscape forever blighted, it might do us good to look on the bright side. Not in a Pollyanna, muddling along, kind of way, as some seem determined to see it; but in a positive, proactive, deeply thought-through attempt to see better, do better, and be better.
As Roosevelt said, in his inaugural address in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. There, that’s better!