It’s written in print: the Big Society has become the “big society”.
David Cameron has responded to criticism of his flagship agenda by downgrading it from a proper noun to a compound adjective. He makes no attempt to define “big society”;
rather, Cameron suggests that the term is descriptive of the impulses he hopes to encourage. He writes in today’s Observer:
‘Take a trip with me to Balsall Heath in Birmingham and I’ll show you a place once depressingly known as a sink estate but now a genuinely desirable place to live. Why the transformation? Because even in a tough neighbourhood, the seeds of a stronger society were there and residents boldly decided they’d had enough and drove out the crime. People have the compassion, flexibility and local knowledge to help their neighbours and communities. Our approach will not merely enable them to build a stronger society, it will actively help them to do so. So, the big society doesn’t apply to one area of policy, but many. For example, if neighbours want to take over the running of a post office, park or playground, we will help them. If a charity or a faith group want to set up a great new school in the state sector, we’ll let them. And if someone wants to help out with children, we will sweep away the criminal record checks and health and safety laws that stop them.’
Emphasising practical examples is an intriguing way to recast the communications battle, but the article is more interesting in what it omits. Cameron ignores the public’s very obvious and consistent demand for government, especially at a local level. Councils are taking advantage of this, cutting services to cause the maximum inconvenience for the communities they represent. Bus services are disrupted; libraries and crèches face closure.
Councils make these choices, preferring to protect executive pay and middle management, the costs of which grew by more than 20 percent between 2006 and 2009. Cameron denies central government a leading role, arguing that the big society is a ‘revolt against the top-down’ guidance and interference. Certainly it does, but how else can errant if not yet militant local councils be bent to the cause? Eric Pickles and his department will have to become more active, and ignore the irony that to decentralise you must centralise first.
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