What’s in a slogan?

By Diana Smith

“Big society” is like apple pie. It sounds like a great idea to most people. But it’s interesting that the Conservatives are adopting this idea. It demonstrates the political shift to the left since the 1980s.

“Big society” is a neat all purpose slogan. It distances Cameron from Mrs Thatcher’s infamous suggestion that “there is no such thing as society”. It attacks the “Aunt Sally” set up by the Conservatives of the “Big State”, and it is sets itself up as the answer to the imagined problem of “Broken Britain”. Proponents of the “Big Society” also entertain the hope that it is the magic wand needed to reduce public spending.

So as a piece of PR David Cameron’s “Big Society” is very clever, and it does contain within it the germ of a genuinely good idea. As someone who has been involved in community building for the last 30 years, first as a grassroots activist and later as a Labour Party member, I can say that a big society is very desirable. It is also a great deal harder to create than perhaps the Conservative Party currently imagines.

I was born into a one nation compassionate Conservative family so I know community conservatism can be a generous force for good. But community building is a matter for the whole community. It takes all of us genuinely wanting to work together. How can we achieve this?

There are two barriers to the “Big Society”. There is envy, something that has been actively stoked up by the big media stories of the last year, and there is the desire to cling tight to what we have, something made stronger by the uncertainty of the recession. If we are to create a big society we need to transcend these barriers. And the essential spirit it will need from all of us is generosity.

For the Conservative Party to win this election they have to perform an impossible balancing act. They must appeal to people who have a lot and want to keep it. They must also appeal to people who value a more generous and equal society. This balance between “Big Money” and the “Big Society” has to last just long enough to get past polling day, after which they can fall off to one side or another.

If we want a big society, we can create one, but it takes rather more than lip service to the idea that “we are all in this together”. It takes a “future fair for all”.

Cartoon: The Guardian