David Cameron launched, or re-launched, his Big Society policy today. It pledges, as the name suggests, a new involvement of communities, culture of volunteerism, an age of utopian living, in which we all help, support and care for each other instead of relying on the state. A wonderful thought, but at its base, a lie. The Big Society is little more than a nice name for the impending great abandonment.
Conservative ideology about the size of the state is well known. Thatcher rolled back the state in the 80’s in an attempt to reduce the responsibility government had towards its citizens. Now, under the auspices of deficit reduction, Cameron is aiming to go even further. In just a couple of months a new education policy of ‘free schools’ has taken the place of Labour’s policy to rebuild and renew secondary education. The Building Schools for the Future programme aimed to do what it said on the tin, rebuild shattered, derelict schools which were falling down around pupils struggling to learn. This scheme was halted with the onset of the coalition government. The new Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, announced that the scheme would be scrapped. Let’s be clear, the scheme was the biggest ever school buildings investment programme announced by a government, and promised to make every one of the 3500 secondary schools in the country fit for teachers to teach in, and pupils to learn in. It aimed to rid England of the crumbling schools which were the signature of the last Conservative government. That is what the Secretary of State was stopping (once he could get the list right). Instead, he would spend that money, as well as money from the free school meals budget, on the introduction of the new free schools and academies policy. At best, it is a shameless introduction of the private sector into the state education system, and at worst, the dismantling of state education as we know it.
Next for the shopping block, the NHS. Andrew Lansley has announced “The biggest shakeup of the NHS since its inception”. I don’t know if it was just me, but this statement filled me with terror, maybe the same terror the Prime Minister feels at the prospect of sending his children into the state schooling system, poor kiddie Cameroons, having to learn like normal people. I have posted an earlier blog (below) on the NHS white paper introduced by the new Secretary of State for Health. In the same short evaluation has above about schools, I can sum up the changes in a sentence. At best, shocking introductions of the private sector into the public health sector, at worst, the break up and privatisation of the NHS.
In Liverpool Cameron has announced how he sees the future of the public sector. The Big Society, as I have long warned friends, should not be batted away or ignored as a gimmick. This is serious. As a Labour member and supporter, I am all for the idea of greater community action, more involvement of local people in local services. Much as state retrenchment is the ideology of those on the right, so greater social cohesion and sense of community is of my own social democratic views. But beware, this is not BSF, and it is not what it says on the tin.
The Big Society is little more than a relabeling of Thatcher’s “Rolling back the frontiers of the state”. It is, at its core, and abandonment of local services, people, charities. A friend of mine, also a Labour supporter, has worked tirelessly as a volunteer for years in her local community. She welcomes any attempt by government for more funding and responsibility locally. But she laments this new policy. It is, unfortunately, asking local services to fill the hole left by conservative retrenchment with less funding. All under the guise of furthering the brilliant volunteers, dedicated local service providers and sense of community already alive around us, this government is hiding its true ambition, small state, reduced responsibility, centralised government.
As per, we have seen uncomfortable Liberal Democrat faces, yet they remain next to gleeful conservatives grins. It, once again, falls to the Labour party in opposition, to defend the most vulnerable, protect the poor, and guard the defenceless. Clegg has proved himself to be the wolf in sheep’s clothing any suspected him to be, the Conservative’s take the role of the woodcutter wielding the axe, while the vulnerable Little Red Riding hood, the public, remains blissfully unaware if just how damaging this new alliance will prove to be.
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