SalfordOnline
Your local community website
Articles
Big questions on the Big Society
Reproduced with permission of Stuart Winton from his blog on Planet Politics It's probably not a good idea to think too much about Dave Cameron's Big Society, if only because even brainy journalists can't seem to work it all out. For example, a right-leaning commentator in today's Scotland on Sunday thinks it's a left wing con, while a left-leaning commentator in today's Sunday Herald thinks it's a right wing plot. First to Gerald Warner's neo-Marxist conspiracy theory. He concludes: Big Society is a supposedly voluntarist enterprise fuelled by state money, a pretend local initiative directed by central government and a spuriously Conservative idea rooted in Frankfurt School Marxism. As an example he cites the following: There will eventually be a "neighbourhood army" of 5,000 full-time community organisers: if the gentry from Common Purpose are not in with the bricks they must have lost the entryist skills with which they are credited. No wonder leftist commentators are beginning to say that Big Society should not be dismissed with knee-jerk contempt as a Tory irrelevance, but should be given a chance. However, across at the Sunday Herald Ian Bell - who I suspect qualifies as a "leftist commentator" - says: ...self-reliance and charity are not enough. They don’t answer when the old, sick and vulnerable are at stake. They don’t help the poorest communities. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is tricky if you’re on your uppers. The Victorians – enterprising, self-reliant, greatly given to good works and local initiatives – discovered these things the hard way. Their social failures, those monumental atrocities, gave rise to precisely the sort of government that causes Cameron such offence. Victorian individualism never did provide enough schools or hospitals, housing or public services, to keep pace with the needs of the people, those ingrates. Thus Bell thinks the Big Society will all end in tears, even assuming it ever gains a foothold: So Cameron lays claim to another of his party’s grand old traditions: the refusal to learn. His zippy Big Society is Victorian liberalism coated in the fairy dust of wishful thinking. Back to the future, yet again. Of course, these contrasting views on the Big Society in today's Sundays merely reflect elements of the wider debate, perhaps succinctly summed up by a sceptical David Davis, who described the idea as a "Blairite dressing", and said: The corollary of the big society is the smaller state. If you talk about the small state, people think you're Attila the Hun. If you talk about the Big Society, people think you're Mother Teresa. Thus the left is unhappy, the right is sceptical, while no one but Dave seems to know precisely what it all means. So perhaps Gerald Warner is right when he says that a stubborn Dave missed his chance to bin the "cringe-making" Big Society when the coalition deal was being thrashed out.
Due to problems with spam only SalfordOnline members can now leave comments. Becoming a member of SalfordOnline only takes a minute, just hit the red Join Us button at the top right hand side of the page to create your Personal account. |
