Cameron’s Big Society: putting the ‘con’ back in Conservative

By Benjamin Butterworth

Since his election as Conservative Party leader in 2005, David Cameron has employed widely his rhetoric of the ‘Big Society’. Famously reneging on 18 years of Thatcherite government in claiming, “There is such thing as society. It’s just not the same thing as the state” he attempted to give a name to his re-branding of the right-wing.

He laid down a gauntlet for his vision of fairness in the 21st Century; a vision for which he claimed principles of social fairness were now at the Conservative’s core. The devil, however, has been in the detail. And Prime Minister Cameron has offered little more than skin-deep spin and a policy agenda set within the narrow perimeters of an ideologically small state.

The Big Society does, in essence, play on inherent worries by individuals that an over-powering, bureaucratic state could restrict their liberation to pursue social and economic freedoms. Legitimate concerns (all of them) but the issue isn’t in whether we have problems in society, it’s how we go about challenging them. Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ has, to date, lacked any sense of definition or – more importantly – politics. He’s managed to talk about the need for a better democracy, and yet opposed any serious constitutional reform. He argues for greater social equality and reduced economic disparity, whilst failing to tackle the core macroeconomic causes and pursuing a free-market agenda. The entire ‘Big Society philosophy’ is proving to be little more than a series of populist sound-bites created to disguise a stagnant Conservative agenda.

Much of the program spoken about can be scaled back to a desired increase in the role of charities within society. “Charities will be the bedrock”, he tells Conservative conference. What he doesn’t tell them, however, is that charities rely upon government for 40% of their funding, and will be amongst the earliest casualties of the coalition’s rapid cuts project. A tenth of all UK charities have already been forced to slash workers’ pay or, in increasing numbers of situations, lay employees off. Combine this with swelling financial pressures on the individual, and you have a situation not “good” and nurturing for third sector organisations, but worryingly destructive.

Global studies have shown that in times of economic downturn people’s willingness to make charitable donations disperses. The less disposable income someone has, the less likely they are to give it up for charitable causes. For Cameron to argue that in times of austerity – when VAT on everyday goods has been increased, wages are being squeezed and pension programs curtailed – that people should “give more” simply illustrates a lack of understanding for ordinary people’s lives.

However, it’s at the mercy of the left that the principle of a more active, engaged and gregarious society is ignored. It was a failing of the outgoing Labour government to outline only why we need the state to support and help individuals, but not to explain the roles community plays in a unified model of citizenship. Tony Blair began his leadership of the Labour Party, by outlining a vision of ‘social-ism’; viewing community activism and mutual, co-operative endeavor as the substratum to a fairer society. However this wasn’t an agenda sufficiently publicised in government, and so there grew a disconnect between increasing standards in public services, and the role for which communities and individuals had to play in them. The human relationship was lost.

David Cameron has attempted to exploit this void by re-characterising the centre-ground, branding Labour as technocratic and managerial in a backdoor bid to shrink the size of the state. By neglecting to emphasise the role of the public in public services, people are resultantly less likely to recognise the destructive effects in their dismantling.

The challenge faced now is to reveal the Big Society for the ideological smoke-screen it is. Labour must ensure the wheels on this Boris bike well and truly come off, exposing the spin as nothing more than a Cameronite vanity project. To do so, progressives must set out their own agenda; an agenda based on fact, history, and vision: the vision of a co-operative ‘good society’.

Ed Miliband has spoken of this vision since taking over the leadership. He told Andrew Marr, “It’s about the good society. The local institutions like Post Offices and corner shops which hold-up communities and their values.” If the Big Society myth is to be dismantled with credibility, Labour must show commitment from the top to community institutions, illustrating that we recognise the flaws to a market fundamentalist agenda on local high-streets.

But the step forward isn’t in fact so much about renewing, but more nearly re-discovering our tradition of community activism.

David Miliband’s ‘Movement For Change’ serves as a blueprint for achieving this goal. Through the endeavor to forge ourselves in local organisations, campaigning groups and charities we can win back the trust of communities, and begin to affirm our guiding principles in a way people can engage with. It was the very concept of a good society for which Keir Hardie founded the Labour Party, believing that people not markets are the bedrocks of fairness. Radically reforming the democratic wing of our Socialism, to be a bottom up party, based on reciprocity and mutualism not punitive managerialism, can enable the Labour movement to regain the political ground of concord in our society.

Labour is the natural home for what the electorate believes David Cameron’s Big Society to be. If we fail to make clear our position on the role of the third sector and neighborliness in building a good society, we risk looking statist and out-of-touch. In fact, if we fail to combatively overcome the Big Society smoke-screen, the centre-ground will have been redefined against us, and Labour could face a generation out of power.

We need to be the forbearers of community activism. It’s what we do best.