History repeatedly shows us that when mainstream centrist parties of the right and left consistently fail to convince and empower the electorate we see a spiralling rise in extremist views and in the popularity of those who espouse them. While election turnout has declined every year since the 1940s, people are visibly losing hope in democratic institutions. In turn we see a societal fragmentation and polarisation around single issues such as immigration, racial identity, Europe, gender and the elite. People feel they have no control over their own lives and they want to take it back.
We live in very worrying, very frightening times. These are times which require local government to step up and do what it does best – provide support to communities to put them in the driving seat of local power and decision making.
Professor Philip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur, said in May this year the UK’s societal safety net has been ‘deliberately removed with a harsh and uncaring ethos. Ideological cuts to public services since 2010 have led to tragic consequences. The glue that held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed with £14m people living in poverty’.
So what can we do in local government, the NHS and wider public services to try to glue society back together in our localities? Can a council and its partners influence the social cohesion and empowering of communities that we have lost in recent times?
There are some truly inspiring examples of places where this is happening with strong council leadership such as the City of Preston and the brave new local economic model of keeping it local and building social and community infrastructure. The relentlessly determined and brilliant council leader Matthew Brown and his team have created a great model for to learn so much from.
Chief executives, directors, leaders and cabinets play a critical leadership role in shaping this new relationship with citizens. This is not something that can be delegated to a community development team or one department in the council. It needs to be whole organisation, whole system ownership and requires buy-in both political and managerial.
Gateshead, Cambridgeshire, Wigan, Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge and many more have all tried to develop new relationships with residents, to rebuild social capital and bring a common sense of purpose to their very differing places despite the fact they have been hit by austerity.
We have also seen an unprecedented explosion in the birth of a large number of imaginative grassroots organisations to fill the gaps created by a complete absence of national social policy. Organisations like RECLAIM, identifying and supporting young working class future leaders, plus amazing work being undertaken by Big Local and Power to Change where communities are trusted to make decisions about their own areas.
Rather than have lots of isolated good practice operating separately we need to create a national social movement. At the New Local Network (NLGN) we are working with 70 of the UK’s most progressive councils who want to work together to find practical solutions to the vacuum of public policy and to pass power back to communities through our new Community Paradigm. Our fabulously productive regular Innovation Exchanges share new models of communitisation and best practice.
The civic, the state and the market paradigms have all passed their sell-by date of usefulness and relevance for modern society. The right and left argue about privatisation or nationalisation of services being the best for the country; we argue the case for communitisation as a model where people can really take back control.
Donna Hall CBE is chair of the NLGN