A most important speech: The Big Society

David Cameron yesterday gave what I believe to be one of the most important speeches he has made since becoming Conservative leader. I say this without exaggeration as I really believe the proposals contained, could help transform community renewal up and down our country.

Community activism, is a core part of Conservatism: Strengthening local communities - supporting families, neighbourhood groups, local schools, faith groups and the like, are the best way of rebuilding our broken society. In fact I have written about it HERE.

What the Conservative Leader set out yesterday, was a series of measures to transform the very nature of community activities. These include the following:

• Neighbourhood army of 5,000 full-time, professional community organisers who will be trained with the skills they need to identify local community leaders, bring communities together, help people start their own neighbourhood groups, and give communities the help they need to take control and tackle their problems. This plan is directly based on the successful community organising movement established by Saul Alinsky in the United States and has successfully trained generations of community organisers, including President Obama.
• A Big Society Bank, funded from unclaimed bank assets, which will leverage private sector investment to provide hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance for neighbourhood groups, charities, social enterprises and other non-governmental bodies.
• Neighbourhood grants for the UK’s poorest areas to encourage people to come together to form neighbourhood groups and support social enterprises and charities in these poorest areas.
• Transforming the civil service into a ‘civic service’ by making regular community service a key element in civil servant staff appraisals.
• Launching an annual national ‘Big Society Day’ to celebrate the work of neighbourhood groups and encourage more people to take part in social action projects.
• Providing new funding to support the next generation of social entrepreneurs, and helping successful social enterprises to expand and succeed."
  
  

All these proposals, alongside local devolution, elected police commissioners, parental right to set up their own schools, public service co-operatives and local referenda on key areas such as finance and housing, will do much to put the punch into community power. They mean a shift from Government diktat down to communities.

Potentially, some of the most fundamental shifts of power from Government to society, since Margaret Thatcher devolved economic power from the state to consumers.

You can read Mr Cameron's Speech HERE and read The Big Society Policy Document HERE.

by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com