The Big Society as Shock Doctrine: Risk, Disruption, Corporate Reengineering (and BS)

Following the announcement of the contract to deliver the Community Organisers programme the BS takes another twist

Marilyn Taylor's book on public policy in the community is something I always turn to, for good sense about policy and there are lots of choice words in the book about power and the way ideology tends to lead policy

Two things briefly on Marilyn Taylor's book - one is the phrase she uses early on about whether an actual policy is a 'window of opportunity or window dressing' rang a bell for me - the perenial concern. Are we being conned again? Secondly her simple threefold categorisation of the options we have as practitioners - to be optimistic, pessimistic or pragmatic

I tend to go with pragmatism but ...

The thing is that these three things are a process; a bit like bereavement -denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

Well something for sure is dying - but some of the steps in the royal road to principlled pragmatism are in danger of being short circuited judging by some of the discourse in our sector

Paulo Freire talked about three forms of thinking: magical thinking aka we are all in it together; naive thinking aka there are some opportunities to make it work and critical thinking nuff sed

Clearly the VCS does not like winner takes all
Three recent musings are interesting:
1) Julian Dobson's post on respublica

2) Toby Blume's blog

3) And a bit further back in time CEO of Esmee Fairbairn's opinion piece

In different ways we can discern a pattern in each of the three; it will be painful but fast forward the pragmatism and good things can still happen

I'm not so sure; it may well be that we're crossing a rubicon - something is being lost that can't be wished back again - not all change is good

Julian thinks we need to trust society to find solutions to its own problems but society, even if we leave it as vague as that, civil society ain't gonna move on this agenda without proportionate investment from the state, i.e. thru our money as taxpayers money recycled back again to ourselves, those of us who don't avoid our taxes offshore that is.

The wholesale swallowing of small state ideology is worrying.

I speak as no particular fan of the central or local state, but the idea that the increasing numbers of poorer people (poverty is going up) can simultaneously sort things like running their own services and running libraries is dangerous nonsense - and this is the sharp end of the logic that flows from such thinking - be careful what you wish for

The desire to 'rescue the big society' is laudable by generating 'ideas' and 'our society' is a wonderful resource; but it also seems to be partially ducking out of the battle for these same ideas.

What exactly are we talking about?

Is it ideas that can ameliorate the effects of disporortionate cuts or ideas to ensure an elected government doesn't run away with the idea that even though there's plenty of money for bailing out the banks, its old fashioned to expect the same consideration be extended to its most needy citizens. Do you really want to be supporting what is in effect a welfare state for the (super) rich?

Toby sees BS as a risky thing and notes the government's desire to 'disrupt' the 'vested interests' of the sector. But his analysis stops short of what might be considered unacceptable risk of the kind written about by Naomi Kline in her recent book - the shock doctrine whereas having been willing to give the benefit of the doubt for some period I'm more inclined to be less sanguine about the risk and disruption.

Is the community organisers programme really 'the best shot we've had for many years'? The scale of the cuts to the public and VCS would appear to make it impossible to say such things with any confidence - fig leaf and cuts, would be the more common analysis

With regard to 'community development' as a 'close relative to community organising' - Office for Civil Society have stated they are not prepared to have the debate about the two things - CD and CO - even though there are reckoned to be 20,000 CD workers (DCLG CD Challenge), x4 as many as CO's.

Why not bring CD together? Because it is ideologically problematic - CD has a commitment to social justice and collective action; community organising has done great things but it is often highly formulaic which may suit control freaks but not resonate with the messiness of communities as they really exist (jury is still out for me on that one)

Finally Dawn Austwick, as a funder, wants to stay in the game - she advises that we need to 'hold our nerve, play clever and long' (and swallow the cuts uncritically?)

It is very true that there are new solutions out there, fantastic that Dawn meets' passionate and clever people doing interesting things across the UK' but... but ... if the VCS and public sector is going to be as mashed up as we know it will be, that really won't count for much - as a funder the medicine that might need to be proscribed is for campaigning not back door privatisation which is where community ownership could easily end up.

So of course we'll all be pragmatic and working hard, goes without saying. Government knows working class communities will seek to look after their own, to the point of sinking further into poverty themselves

But let's be clearer about the times we are living in and what it means to our sector - big society rapidly becoming a shock doctrine. That might not have been what it set out to be, but the road to hell...

It is now increasingly looking like a deliberately intended and disproportionate trauma, a calculated risk only in that those who are most vulnerable are most at risk.

I had thought the community empowerment era had often failed but there are degrees of failure

Big Society is a form of corporate reenegineering - some of the charity brands are cheerleading this, 'bring it on' they in effect cry, 'we welcome the opportunity'. But there is no amount of wishful thinking and strategic repositioning that is going to deliver the bs.

To do BS you need: time, money, goodwill, a complete absence of govt ideology and a unified VCS sector - all 4 of those things are in severe deficit and you know what they say about deficit deniers...