Atkison, D. (1994) - The Common Sense of Community. Demos, London.

The Common Sense of Community
Dick Atkinson
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Acknowledgements
The ideas and suggestions contained in this book have been developed slowly as a result of practical experience and many conversations over a thirty year period. As a consequence I am indebted to many people. Some of these live in Balsall Heath. They include Anita Halliday, Val Hart, Steve Ball, Ted Wright, Wally Rose, Pat Preistman, Tapshum Patni, Sheila Dunn, Kay Brazier, Raja Amin and Yoseph Qamar. Others come from elsewhere in Birmingham, for example, Chris Wadhams, Ian Cuthbert, Pat Conaty, Ian Morrison, Jim Amos, Pat Robinson, Tim Brighouse, Chris Jones and John Newing. Yet others come from across the UK and abroad. They include John Rennie, Melanie Phillips, Peter Brinson, Anthony Coombs MP, Alan Howarth MP, Frank Field MP, Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown, Amitai Etzioni and others too numerous to mention. These people are responsible for the best of the books ideas which are expressed more coherently as a result of excellent editorial comment by Charles Grant of the Economist. The mistakes and inconsistencies which remain are mine.
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Contents
Introduction The Importance of Self-Reliance The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society Rebuilding From the Bottom Up Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government A New Paradigm The Third Millennium Bibliography
1 4 8 13 31 41 49 51
Introduction
The term community is on many lips today. Across Britain people are worrying as never before about the state of their streets and communities. There is a feeling that they have been weakened not only by market forces and technological change but also by the policies of successive governments. Many, including politicians of both left and right, are concerned about the lack of sufficiently robust local institutions close at hand for most citizens. Many also fear that the corollary of weak communities is that our belief in common values and our sense of responsibility for each other has atrophied. While most citizens see these issues in very practical ways, for example in relation to litter-free and safe streets, good schools and a sense of neighbourhood, their concerns have been matched by the work of a new school of philosophers and political theorists. For nearly 20 years the communitarians have been developing a body of theory and policies that show how even in the most economically advanced and atomised societies, communities can be strengthened and citizens encouraged to take a greater responsibility for their own lives and for the quality of the society in which they live. On the other side of the Atlantic theoretical arguments which call into question an overly narrow liberalism have been developed by Michael Sandel, Alastair MacIntyre, Robert Bellah and Michael Walzer, while the practical political implications have been developed by Amitai Etzioni, William Galston and MaryAnn Glendon. Together these now represent a formidable body of
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analysis and argument, whose implications have yet to be fully appreciated by any of the British political parties. This book aims to bridge these two strands the one about everyday life, and the other about political theory by suggesting some practical guidelines for strengthening communities and neighbourhoods as we approach the third millennium. It would be wrong to despair or panic; if we look carefully it is not hard to see the signs of revitalisation taking place even in the most depressed cities. And whenever anyone seeks to take a snapshot of voluntary activity, whether in an inner city housing estate or a Home Counties town (as in Richard Hoggarts recent study of Farnham), they uncover a remarkably complex, vibrant life of mutual help and civic activity. This document identifies some of the good practices and urges a series of proposals which would result in more confident and coherent communities. It argues in a series of steps, showing how families can be given a greater degree of security and strength, and suggesting how the various institutions of school, housing, policing and public spaces can work in tandem. It shows how, in place of the old model of a local authority as a monopolist of power, we can build networks and clusters of institutions collaborating groups of self-governing institutions that can help communities cohere, and give them fresh purpose and pride. Above all it aims to show the common sense of community and its practical relevance to solving everyday problems of city life. Birminghams history encapsulates the challenge. In the 1790s, Matthew Boultons Birmingham-based company harnessed and sold the power of steam to Britain and the world, thus creating the basis for the industrial revolution. In the 1890s, the rapidly expanding industrial town of Birmingham was granted the status of City by Queen Victoria, and Joseph Chamberlain encouraged the building of sewers, schools, colleges and the Town Hall. Today, in the 1990s, this pioneering era has long gone, and with it many of the old certainties of life, which gave coherence and purpose to neighbourhoods and communities. Only relics of the industrial past remain; decayed buildings and outmoded institutions and attitudes which clutter the environmental and social landscape.
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Introduction
Although, as we shall see, many local initiatives are beginning to put in place the institutions appropriate for a post-industrial city, it has taken some time for policy-makers to get the problem clearly into focus. A decade ago, commentators identified the inner areas of the major cities as the source of the problem. Then, it became clear that the municipally designed outer ring estate also housed an array of intractable ills. Today, it is possible to argue that the problem is endemic to urban life, associated not only with economic decline but also with fear of violence and the social indifference. This book seeks to go a step further, setting out the principles and practices which can serve to solve the problem and give people the confidence to enter a new millennium with the same energy and commitment which motivated the pioneers of the industrial past.
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The Importance of Self-Reliance
Community development Exactly 20 years ago Erich Schumacher published his classic book, Small is Beautiful (1974). His central message has not dated:
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. Nothing becomes truly ones own except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice. Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you help him a little bit for a very short while; teach him the art of fishing, and he can help himself for all his life. On a higher level: supply him with fishing tackle; this will cost you a good deal of money, and the result remains doubtful; but even if fruitful, the mans continuing livelihood will still be dependent upon you for replacements. But teach him to make his own fishing tackle and you have helped him to become not only selfsupporting, but also self-reliant and independent
Attempts to help neighbourhoods, whether in the Third World or the urban neighbourhoods of the industrialised world will fail, however well funded, if they do not directly involve those they are designed to assist. The point is a simple, common sense one. Yet, the recent history of urban policy in the UK has been based on almost contrary principles. Much of the structure of the modern state has been shaped
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by a steady nationalisation of power. Instead of local or regional health services we have a national health service. Instead of local agencies with some discretion over welfare we have national, standardised systems that find it easier to distribute resources than to provide the means for self-reliance. And, increasingly, instead of local government we have agencies working under contract for Whitehall. Meanwhile at local level, town halls have tended to seek to monopolise their remaining power rather than to share it. Much the same is true of the multitude of schemes specifically directed to the cities. Successive waves of urban initiatives, Urban Aid, Inner City Partnership, City Challenge even Integrated Regional offices and Single Regeneration Budgets and City Pride, have all made crucial mistakes. First they have been primarily aimed at inner city areas. They have not recognised that it is the very nature and organisation of urban life which has become the problem. Second, while the aid has helped to finance various new projects, it has not resulted in mainstream budgets being used in fresh ways. Third, hardware and buildings have been emphasised at the expense of the softer foundations of community. Indeed the hardware has often destroyed the software as when new roads have sliced through neighbourhoods. Finally, while schemes have often given lip service to consultation with local people their views have not been seriously taken into account. While many useful things have been done for people, much less has been done with or by them. People have rarely been enabled to participate. These errors would be more understandable if there was evidence that the principles of self-reliance do not work and if the top-down approach had visibly solved the problems of cities. But this has not been the case. Instead it sometimes seems as if initiatives have multiplied in inverse proportion to their effectiveness. Yet in other areas of life, self-reliance has become a basic principle. Far from being a utopian, soft option, it has come to be seen as a far more effective way of organising peoples energies and their capacity to act as problem solvers than over-dependence on the wisdom and knowledge of civil servants and elected officials.
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Self-reliance and the modern business organisation
To see this, one need look no further than the modern business. In recent years much has been made of the importation of business practices into government and charity. But few policy-makers have quite grasped just how much the principle of self-reliance has become central to modern business, exercised at every level of the modern business organisation, not just at its apex. In his important books, The Age of Unreason and The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy describes the industrial business as being shaped like a pyramid, with manual workers at the base of the pyramid, receiving and obeying instructions from a remote head office at the apex of the pyramid. Once, the educated elite who staff head office might have been thrusting and entrepreneurial in spirit and attitude. Over time, however, they became complacent, immune to change, and rule bound. Compared with their modern equivalents in Japan and America, they became uncompetitive, and faced closure, unless they were prepared to undergo dramatic change in form, style and attitude. From being shaped like a pyramid, those organisations which underwent this change have come to resemble a maypole, with a slim, charismatic head office. The new senior managers devolve much of the day to day decision taking process to semi-autonomous units who thus hold the different ribbons of the maypole. Those who hold these ribbons have a similar stake and say in the enterprise as those at the apex. The modern firm which makes this essential but painful change is characterised by key features: It has undone the cumbersome rules and regulations of its previously large head office. It has written innovation into its new modus operandi. It employs fresh, visionary, senior managers and often deploys these out to a carefully redesigned factory floor in order to lead small, semi or fully autonomous teams of enthusiastic staff. It expects these teams to take the initiative and tell head office how to resource them rather than awaiting orders.
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In place of the once dependent, uneducated workforce, it employs fewer, but educated, skilled, self-motivating people who work with not for senior managers. It believes in workers control, except that the modern worker works by brain as well as by hand and is, in part, a manager. Because the customer is seen as sovereign, great efforts are made to achieve a consistently high quality product and method of production. The maypole is bound by a common set of values, ideas which motivate all who associate together within the company. And within each part of the company the aim is to foster self-reliance, autonomy and responsibility. The distinction between the pyramid and maypole like organisation is pictured in Fig 1. Clearly many businesses do not live up to this ideal. Many remain hierarchical and slow to adapt and most maintain tight central control over some parameters particularly finance. But the ideal remains no less important for that, with obvious implications for other areas of social life.
Figure 1
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The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society
At first only private enterprises were forced by competition to move from model A to B. By contrast public organisations were slow to follow suit, protected by their monopolies and insulated from customer and community dissatisfaction. They could afford to remain complacent, ineffective and ignore the needs of their dependent customers. Gradually, however, governments have been forced to realise that they cannot allow this situation to prevail. The shift to new forms of government has been taking place across the world for some time. Many countries in Europe already have complex arrangements mixing government purchase of services and their provision by smaller voluntary bodies, often associated with the church. New Zealand and Australia have also seen radical experiments in government. In Reinventing Government, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler have synthesised some of these experiences. They show how the pyramid-like, collectivist governments of the industrial age came to both steer and row. That is, they tried to set aims and goals for people and agencies to follow and to run the agencies to realise their aims. In coming to perform both tasks they not only left the productive potential of most people out of their equation, but also failed to perform either task very well. To be effective, both Central and Local Government have learned that they must slough off the agencies and services which they have attempted to provide for people and instead enable independent initiative to flourish. Such initiative can take the form of either private
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enterprise or publicly funded but self-governing agencies, such as executive agencies, hospitals, housing associations and schools. Delegating the rowing function to autonomous, non-governmental agencies does not entail privatisation. It merely means giving the initiative and finances for the provision of government approved services to those self-governing agencies which have the incentive to deliver a good product to the specifications which government lays down. Government may delegate the task of rowing, but it must choose which services are required and to what quality, and it must then raise taxes to pay for them. It cant delegate the task of governance. This is the special, irreducible, task of government. It must set the style and shape of its country or town. Once freed from the task of rowing, a slimmer, higherminded government can concentrate on the job which only it can do, that of reflecting, coordinating and steering the hopes, aspirations and priorities of self-reliant citizens and self-governing private and public agencies. Charity, responsibility and value Sometimes policies such as these are justified solely in instrumental terms as cheaper, more efficient solutions to the delivery of particular services. But self-reliance is directionless unless provided with a goal to aim for. On its own, it is a loose cannon able to fire only in random directions. An overarching set of values is needed which makes sense of it. Values give it point and purpose. For St Paul, charity was the basic value from which all human relations were constructed and which suffused and breathed life into home, work, neighbourhood and church. However, this traditional concept of charity suffered in the wake of the industrial revolution. Although the 19th century saw a great flowering of charity and self-help organisations in schooling, retailing and health, the horrors of the dark satanic mill and mine ultimately encouraged people to call on the state to take on the main responsibilities for welfare and care. A more democratic culture came to see charity as at best inefficient and parochial and, at worst, as demeaning to the recipient. Local and central government came to influence most areas of social life until little stood between the individual and the state. Charity and a sense of responsibility became peripheral concepts.
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The unintended destructive potential of this change was not at first apparent. Yet, gradually, it caused the state to take on from church, family and neighbour the responsibility for the care of others and absolved them from the need to take control of their lives. Although the vital functions of values and self-reliance have been diminished in modern neighbourhoods the human impulses to voluntary and charitable action have remained strong. Even in a predominantly secular culture there is still a strong base of moral motivations, a desire to be connected and contribute that is not captured by much of the language of modern policy whether that of consumers or of rights. If it means nothing else, charity today can encompass that sense of being part of a larger whole, which brings in its wake compassion, responsibility and mutuality, the basic ethical foundations of any community.
The building blocks of self-reliance
Self-reliance starts at home, and the basic building block of community for most people is the family, in all its forms. Every parent wants the very best for their child, even if they do not know how to go about helping it to maximise its life chances and even if the home circumstances are such that they receive little or no support from relatives or neighbours. Moreover it is around families that many of the building blocks of community are formed: networks of child-minders, voluntary nurseries and playgroups, and the active engagement of an older generation in care for the young in such settings as scouts, guides, supplementary schools, and leisure activities. The second building block is a sense of place. For many decades this seemed to be in retreat because of a more mobile, disconnected culture. But in recent years most evidence suggests that mobility has been in decline. When people do move it is usually within a two to three mile radius. Various factors are tending to root people more in a post-industrial economy. Dual-earner couples (now nearly two-thirds of all households) find it harder to move, as do those suffering from negative equity. New technologies make it easier to find a better balance between work and home. And there is clear evidence of mounting
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concern for the quality of the local environment, focused on everything from high streets to air quality. There are many institutions that give expression to this sense of place. Most areas have a residents association. They are more successful when they have the muscle to achieve modest improvements, say, in street lighting or in gaining a pedestrian crossing on a dangerous road. Some residents associations have developed into neighbourhood watch schemes. There are also few towns which do not have a number of youth and sports clubs. Like play groups, adventure playgrounds, urban farms and advice bureaux, these take time, skill and finance. Most towns can boast of one or two significant voluntary agencies which give expression to this sense of place. Birmingham has several. One of the oldest is the Birmingham Settlement which has made a long term and significant contribution to the social and economic stability and growth of the Newtown area. The St Peters Urban Village building in Saltley once housed a large teacher training college. It is now crammed with local enterprises and devolved sections of city departments and is managed by a local trust which bought the college and runs it as a kind of mini-town hall for the area an interesting reversal of the voluntary sectors traditional subservience to the local authority. Another example is St Pauls Community Project which grew up in the Balsall Heath area of the city. It runs a charitable secondary school, nursery centre, farm, enterprise and community center and acts as the village hall, village green and focal point for the surrounding neighbourhood. It is significant for three reasons: First, it is the size of many local authority institutions, yet is an independent charity which is governed by parents and other residents. The pride which comes from ownership is tangible. Second, its school takes rejects from the large local authority schools. Without St Pauls they would roam the streets, take no GCSEs and graduate only with a certificate in failure. At St Pauls, they not only take GCSEs but, in 1993, outperformed all but 6 out of the citys 70 secondary schools in the GCSE league tables. Third, St Pauls has only been able to thrive by linking with all the other agencies, residents and religious associations in the neighbourhood.
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These links gave rise to a neighbourhood forum which has helped the whole area to lift itself from the bottom up in a dramatic and compelling way. Five neighbouring urban villages are doing likewise. As we shall see their implications for a new social order are significant. The Settlement, St Peters and St Pauls are Development Trusts. These Trusts are an interesting new way of helping local people to gain a greater control over their own lives. A growing number are now scattered in most urban areas of the country. They are self-governing, locally managed agencies which normally have charitable and limited company status. They have a number of basic principles in common: They are concerned with the long term regeneration of their area with its economy, its environment, its facilities and services and the spirit of its community. They seek to be financially self-sufficient and independent. They aim to create assets in the community and make a profit to be reinvested in the community. They are community based and accountable. They are working in partnerships between the community, voluntary, private and public sectors. Because they respond to local needs no two development trusts are alike. And, because they recognise that to regenerate a community means adopting a comprehensive approach they are involved in a wide range of activities. However, even significant ventures like these, let alone the many smaller voluntary ones, face a huge uphill battle. Most are beset by constant financial or staffing crises. They rely on small donations, voluntary and transient help, have little guaranteed money, no status and virtually none of the authority which could give them leverage over decision-makers. The following argument suggests how these types of organisation, working in tandem with other public bodies that understand their needs, could form the basis for stronger, more confident and more selfreliant communities.
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Rebuilding From the Bottom Up
The family For decades sociologists have argued that the unfolding logic of modern industrial society implies that the traditional family is in terminal decline and that the role of childrearing will be increasingly undertaken by the welfare state in an echo of Platos Republic. They have a point. The extended family of industrial society two parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts as well as children has gradually vanished. First, advances in medical care, family planning and the emancipation of women shrank the family to two parents and a small number of children. More recently, liberal divorce laws and contemporary attitudes have shrunk the two parent family to a single parent for a rapidly growing minority, a majority in some neighbourhoods. As peoples rights have grown they have gained access to a far wider range of choices than in the past. Medicine, the law, the welfare state have all seen to that. The exercise of these rights has caused the family to become weaker. As James Q. Wilson has written: In the 1960s and 1970s books were written advocating alternative families and open marriages.A couple could choose to have a trial marriage, a regular marriage but without the obligation of sexual fidelity, or a revocable marriage with an easy exit provided by no-fault divorce. A woman could choose to have a child out of wedlock and to raise it alone. Marriage was but one of several options by which men and women could manage their intimate needs, an option that ought to be carefully negotiated in
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order to preserve the rights of each contracting party. The family, in this view, was no longer the corner stone of human life, it was one of several relationships from which individuals could choose so as to maximise their personal goals. The welfare state has supported this shrinking family by ensuring that it receives the financial help it needs to survive. This generosity is justified in the language of choice and social justice. But we now know that this individualistic standpoint is not necessarily beneficial from the young childs point of view or from that of the wellbeing of society as a whole. These needs require parents and others to exercise restraint, to limit their choices and the range of their goals. There is a need to balance the pursuit of individual goals within the context of the childs need for stability, continuity and the material support which comes from a wage earner and the role model of two loving adults. As Sebastian Kraemer of the Tavistock Clinic has pointed out there is impressive systematic research showing how profoundly the relationship between infants and their mothers and fathers can influence the childs later social and intellectual skills and we now know that those who have had good attachments to their parents have a far greater chance of passing on this good fortune to their children. The child not only needs such support in their pre-school and school years but also when they become young parents themselves. How can this support be provided? To start with, by acknowledging the problem, suggested Professor Halsey. He ruffled liberal feathers in 1993 by saying that the situation has arisen in which the father is not so much absent but never arrives. Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the American communitarian movement argues in his important books, The Spirit of Community and The Parenting Deficit, for a number of measures to emphasise the responsibilities of parents, not their rights. He suggests that fathers and mothers concerned with making it and consumerism and preoccupied with personal advancement, who come home too late and too tired to attend to the needs of their children, cant discharge their most elementary duty to their children and their fellow citizens There are no labour
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saving techniques, and shortcuts in this area produce woefully deficient human beings, to their detriment and ours. The problem is particularly acute in Britain. Not only do we have the highest proportion of households with a lone parent in the EU, we also have (alongside Ireland) the highest proportion of fathers working over 50 hours a week, with obvious implications in terms of their ability to share parenting roles. Etzioni points out that the weight of sociological and psychological evidence suggests that on average two-parent families are better able to discharge their child-rearing duties, if only because there are more hands and voices. Therefore, a variety of means should be deployed to support the family. He recommends that divorce should not be banned or condemned, but it should be discouraged. Easy divorces for parents are not in the interests of children, the community, or the adults involved. He points out that there are ways to encourage young people to enter marriage more responsibly, help sustain and enrich these marriages For example, fast food and a fast lifestyle may have their attractions, but the family gathering round the meal table should be advocated. Etzioni talks about economic incentives which favour marriage. For example, the marriage of those on welfare should be welcomed rather than penalized Given the forbearance of trades unions and employers, it is possible for millions of parents to work at home. Other arrangements can be made to ensure that care comes from home and not an institution Such arrangements could include educational and economic credits for parents who are prepared to stay at home during their childs formative years. The list of incentives needs to be long and powerful if the trend of decades is to be halted. However, Etzionis main concern is not with incentives or punishment, but with the need for a change of heart: people need to enter marriage more responsibly and be more committed to making it work The long term goal must be to bring up children who are better able to form lasting relationships and participate actively in the life of their community. Only then can we reduce the false choice between keeping parents together in unhappy marriages
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and allowing them to break up: both options which guarantee unhappiness for the child. If the family can be strengthened by direct means, what other public agencies can be reorganised to support it indirectly?
The school as a hub of community
In the past schools have often acted as crucial hubs of community. In the future, and in societies that are ever more centred around learning, this role will become even more important. The Conservatives reforms have helped transform the organisation of schools from being pyramid-like to being more maypole-like and self-governing. Other educational institutions had always been more independent. Universities have traditionally been self-governing non-government agencies, funded by the University Grants Committee. More recently polytechnics and colleges have also become self-governing (and had their status enhanced). Few now argue against the decision. However, the debate about whether schools should also become self-governing still rages. It is as well to recall that the old Town Hall (LEA) public monopoly system of providing schools for the community entailed the separation of ownership, finance and control from practical delivery at the chalk face. The LEA financed and controlled the system as well as employing the teachers. Teachers only had influence over day to day delivery in the classroom. Yet, because they were managing all schools, the LEA administrator did not know what the budget of any one school was. Neither did the schools and teachers. They had no chance to target their resources to meet their particular needs. Worse still, parents had no say at all unless they were affluent enough to be able to choose to opt out of the state system altogether and send their child to a private school. In 1988 the government introduced legislation which enabled all schools to become semi-autonomous. It also gave them the right to choose full self-governing status (GM). Local management (LM) entails the delegation of most of the budget and control of schools from the LEA to the head, teachers and their governing body. At its inception LM as well as GM was fiercely opposed by Town Halls and
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their LEAs irrespective of which party was in control. This was understandable, because the power base and degree of accountability of both councillors and officers were at stake. However, many schools have come to appreciate the development. Partial autonomy began to bring the previously separate functions of finance, management, control and delivery together under the roof of each individual school. Pride and standards began to rise so encouraging the LEAs to accept LM while opposing GM. At first, this was understandable for, in 1988, when legislation first created LM and GM schools, the distinction between them was clear and stark. GM schools immediately received 100% of their budgets direct from Whitehall, while LM ones received only 6070%, the remainder being held by the local authority to run their administration. The subsequent 6 years have seen this wide gap narrow. Now, LM schools get at least 90% of their budget, while many get over 95%. Soon it will be hardly possible to distinguish the two forms of school.
Community education
Community education is often seen as being primarily about opening school buildings in the evenings and weekends for Scout groups, wedding receptions or adult courses. Others say that a school cant be a community school unless it has a pre-school worker or home-school link officer. Both these definitions are useful, but they dont get to the heart of the matter. For they see community education as a bolt-on extra to the real 9 am4 pm task of education and school life. The wisest definition of community education goes much further. It places it at the very core of the education process, not just for schoolchildren but for everyone from the 5 year old to the 80 year old who has an interest in learning. No school can function well, excite teachers and pupils unless the whole school and its curriculum becomes an extension of the life of the neighbourhood which itself gains a sense of ownership and pride in its school. For decades community educators have tried to capture what Henry Morris meant when he said that the best school lies athwart its
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community and provides it with a mirror which reflects its identity and a dynamo for assisting with its development. There have been many valiant attempts to achieve this aim and some exceptional successes. However, most have encountered difficulties because hitherto state schools have not belonged to their neighbourhood. They have been in it but not a part of it. Independence from the Town Hall transforms this situation. The old LEA schools were dependent on and accountable to the LEA. It controlled them via a committee of perhaps 20 councillors who were, by definition, interested in politics, city wide and national issues. They did not always recognize the individual educational needs of each particular school. The new self-governing state school has at least 15 governors. They are elected and co-opted from amongst the schools parents and neighbourhood. In the case of a town where there are, say 100 schools, those schools will in future be represented by 1,500 local people who each have the interest of their particular school at heart. This simple fact should help each school become more accountable to its neighbourhood. It should ensure that the neighbourhood controls the school through these governors and their head. Although the government did not necessarily intend to create a situation in which every school could become a community or neighbourhood school it has none the less done so. Not only is the new situation educationally beneficial because it closes the gap between home and school and makes each the extension of the other, it is also potentially much more democratic 20 councillors versus 1,500 active citizens is no contest. Further, it helps to take party politics out of the government of each school and replace it with the real concerns of the catchment area and its parent customers.
Clusters of neighbourhood schools
Devolving budgets to schools enables them to target resources to the precise needs of each classroom. The danger of the skilled, teaching heads attention being diverted by the new tasks of administration,
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budget control and development, is avoided by the creation of a quite new post to assist with planning and development. In the old days, when schools were dependent on the Town Hall for all their needs, they did not look sideways at each other for practical support and the development of ideas. Now that they are self-governing, they can do so. They are beginning to form natural clusters in both geographically defined areas or neighbourhoods and in terms of their special interests. While a large secondary school can afford its own new administrative post, smaller primaries cant. But they can pool their resources. Ten schools, say, need only find 2,000 each to produce a cluster facilitator, or administration officer. In The Mosaic of Learning, David Hargreaves spells the point out. My own new book, Radical Urban Solutions, makes similar points. Both show that while individual schools can be driven by their own development plan they can at the same time form a cluster development plan and establish fresh forms of support and new resources. (See Fig 2.)
Figure 2 A cluster development plan
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Just as the new facilitator post can come from a pooled budget, so can other posts and initiatives. The point applies to the way external contracts for suppliers of oil for heating and food for catering can be agreed. It can extend to cover cost-effective caretaking, grounds maintenance, painting and decorating, printing and other facilities. The cluster of neighbouring schools might also come to share teachers, and the shared facilitator might help them to develop a pool of supply teachers in areas such as music, games, language and science. Clusters can also link together on communications networks (as is already happening with several Education 2000 experiments), linking these in turn to local business and community organisations. Teachers can be difficult to recruit. Now that schools are to play a greater part in the training of teachers they might develop a sophisticated teacher training and probation induction package. This might include the conversion of a row of derelict houses, with the help of the local housing association, which can then provide sheltered and subsidised accommodation in the first difficult probationary year. This could lead to a cluster development and marketing portfolio which appeals to colleges and universities for their students to come to teach in the neighbourhood, enjoy their own sheltered accommodation for a year or make use of their own nursery if they wish to return to the profession after starting a family. The shared non-teacher and teacher-support network for clusters of neighbouring schools might be called a Community Education Enterprise Centre (CEEC). If the budget for the CEEC was just 2% of the total budget of each of the 10 schools (9 primary, 1 secondary) this could equal 12,000 times 9 plus 40,000 148,000. This is the equivalent of 10 staff. Given that the non-teacher element of the Centre would be trading with each schools maintenance budget, the trading capacity of this team could be considerable. A cluster of 10 schools in Oxford are pooling part of their separate budgets and undertaking various joint initiatives. In Birmingham there are similar clusters in several neighbourhoods of the city. While none have moved as far down the road as they could, the journey has begun. Compass (CfBT), one of the major suppliers of Ofsted inspections, is
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providing two clusters of schools with the finance to employ their own cluster facilitator over a two year period to pioneer developments. Soon, most schools may be in one or more clusters and the new facilitator role will be accepted as a matter of essential routine.
The Family Centre
Different schools within clusters and whole clusters will specialise in different areas. They will become magnets attracting enthusiastic like minds and interests. But there is the prospect of at least one school in each cluster becoming a Family Centre. The pre-school teacher can be the vital link between the floundering mother and father and others in the community who can help. The school, cluster of schools and CEEC should build on existing networks of child minders, playgroups and nurseries. Toy, book and resource libraries can show the parent how to talk to and care for their child. Other parents can offer support as well as ideas and suggestions for everything from healthy diet to the best means of controlling difficult behaviour. The school, like the doctors surgery or health centre, is the obvious meeting point for young parents they go there frequently. Indeed, there is every reason for the surgery and centre to be integrated within the school to form a Family Centre. The more prepared the young child becomes in its pre-school years, the more the school can make rapid progress when the child starts its formal school life. In return, the more the child is able to progress at school, the more the parent is able to cope and make progress at home. So, it is possible to envisage the nursery and primary school as being not just a provider of education to young children but also a centre for the whole family. Ideally, the nursery and primary school should combine the functions of education with those of social and health care, advice and training in parenting and employment skills. It should help children to learn early about the realities and responsibilities of adult life. The pre-school teacher and colleagues are not so much acting in loco parentis as in loco grandparentis. In Birmingham and elsewhere, Chris Dunkley, Peter Simpson, Tim Brighouse, Eric
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Midwinter, John Rennie and a whole school of community educators have pioneered such developments. From a rather different background too, Penelope Leach has also recently made interesting suggestions for family centres. To facilitate this, each nursery and primary school needs a suite of rooms in which the roles of priest, teacher, social worker, doctor and policeman can intertwine. Indeed, the family centre could become a kind of informal college of life-long learning for the entire area. Imagine for a moment that the cluster of schools is interlinked via telecommunications networks to a range of educational programmes and specialist teaching centres able to complement the teacher in the classroom; then suppose that the schools are linked via cable to every home in the neighbourhood and to the local college which has outposted adult training centres in each of the schools-as-family centres. What Harold Wilson achieved with the help of TV in the 1960s in launching the Open University could be multiplied by the power of the computer and the cable. Today, it is entirely possible to use a cluster of schools both on a conventional 9.003.30 basis and, more efficiently, to deploy their resources around the clock in a cradle to grave, open access college in which the entire neighbourhood is enrolled. Far from being organised by a remote pyramid on which they were once dependent, or on an uncoordinated set of competing individual agencies, selfgoverning schools are coming to resemble Handys maypole. (See Fig 3.) Every school is a moral community. It teaches personal, social and moral education not just in one or two lessons a week, but through the way it is organised, conducts and disciplines itself every moment of each day. The kind of school advocated here necessarily sharpens and clarifies the informal messages it gives to children and adults. It shows them that their worlds of family and school complement and reinforce each other. The self-governing community school and its neighbouring cluster are ideally suited to perform this function. Just as the role of the church and extended family have diminished, so the role of the school must enlarge to fill the gap, becoming the main centre of support for the family and the neighbourhood.
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Figure 3
House and home
The house in which the young child lives and is nurtured by its parents is significant, more so even than the school. Yet the government legislation which enabled local council houses to be bought by their tenants was at first opposed by city officers and politicians of all colours. They wanted to go on controlling and managing them. However, as with the local management of schools, the move proved to be so popular that most councils have changed their mind and now approve of it. Today, it is easy to spot those houses which are privately owned. At the same time as enabling individual families to own their own houses, the government also reduced council house building to a minimum. It increased the amount of money available to housing associations to build houses in place of councils. It also forced the sale of empty plots
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of land to both associations and to private builders. This has not only enabled the use of otherwise derelict plots of land, it has also replaced a monopoly supplier with a host of independent ones. The policy is not perfect. Some housing associations have become so large that they risk becoming over-bureaucratic and insensitive to local need. But others serve only a limited geographical area and have developed a range of tenant services and a management style which fosters good neighbourliness and a sense of belonging. Some make great efforts to welcome their tenants to the neighbourhoods of the city in which their houses are located. They provide them with information and advice about the local services and schools which are available. They involve them in the process of management and the provision of security. They even offer a range of adult training courses and jobs which brighten the street with such things as hanging baskets. Some would argue that the development of the housing cooperative movement is of even greater value to local people in encouraging a shared sense of ownership and involvement. By the same logic, the idea of the Housing Action Trust, which takes responsibility from the Town Hall to run an entire estate, then hands it to the tenants, is a radical and imaginative step. The net outcome is the rapid extension of home ownership. In place of uniform, drab, remotely managed, stateprovided houses, has arisen a combination of privately-owned houses and a range of locally managed ones. In turn, of course, this has persuaded most Town Halls to become rather more imaginative in the way they manage those many houses still left under their control.
Place; street and park
After the home, it is the street and local park with which children identify. If beliefs give a personal identity, place gives a bounded geographical and physical sense of belonging. In practice, of course, the identity and belonging cant be easily separated. In real life, they blend and each childs innocent Jerusalem lies within a short radius of home. However, in practice the street which, a generation ago, could be played in safely is now dominated by the passing car and a fear of the
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unseen stranger. Too many public spaces are uncared for and the corner pocket park is a confused space. What looked pretty on the architects map belongs to no one and is thus untended, a sight for the accumulation of rubbish and a hiding place for the petty criminal. Many parkkeepers, and the other guardians of public space, have also disappeared. Many parks have lost the sense of confidence and care they had in the past. The majority have boarded up buildings, endemic vandalism and litter. Once, many Town Halls lovingly looked after parks and open spaces, but now few have either the energy or the resources to do more than stop them declining further. Regrettably, the implicit message given to todays child is that nobody bothers, and that shared public spaces cannot compete with the attractions of the video or TV. Since the modern town is too large to be administered centrally in every respect it may be that the neighbourhood would be better at caring for street, park and place if it had a greater degree of ownership and the tools and resources to act. In some places parks are being handed over to community trusts, and being given the freedom to develop in very different ways, linking parks to learning, healthcare or the arts. These ideas are rich with potential. But they are still strongly resisted by most local authorities.
Police and the neighbourhood
As society has become more fractured, crime rates have soared, particularly those for petty crimes vandalism, theft of and from cars, robbery from the person and the house. Crime Concern estimates that crime now costs 20 billion per year. Although there is now some evidence that the rise has halted, and may even be in reverse, the debilitating fear of crime, the cost of which is incalculable, has risen even more rapidly than actual crime. It is now no longer felt possible to allow children to play far from home. The proportion of children who are allowed to walk to school has fallen from 7 in 10 to 3 in 10 in a decade. Children and women feel afraid to walk the street in the evening. Windows and doors have long been bolted. Insurance companies and investors have virtually deserted some areas.
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Most crimes are committed by young men. The peak age for offending is 18, although many start at 10 or even younger. These criminals have breached the thin blue line. In a vain attempt to cope, some police forces are now agreeing a list of offences to which they will no longer respond. There is little the police can do when the young criminal is under the age. Not much more can be achieved when the offender is just over the age. Months after committing and being apprehended for the offence, the resultant paper work and court appearance often leads only to: Dont do it again. Translated in the mind of the young offenders, this means: Feel free. There is nothing that we can or will do to stop you. Poor schools and houses, uncared for streets and confused open spaces dont help. They offer a hiding place and foster low expectations and a disregard for property and person. As Alice Coleman of Kings College has shown, a range of simple physical changes to the environment can have dramatic benefits. She suggests reclaiming confused public spaces and giving them to individual families, reducing the number of shared entries and common walkways. Burglaries in Westminster have been cut by 55% by adopting such measures. But, the longer term solution rests not with either architect or police but with the family and the neighbourhood. First, only when the infants temper tantrum goes unchecked or receives an erratic, inconsistent, response does the young child learn to instantly gratify its unchannelled desires regardless of others, assuming that anything goes. Thus are the seeds sown of a careless disregard for others. Hard pressed parents now need help to teach character in the home. As discussed, their efforts need to be reinforced at school and in the family centre. Second, neighbours need to acquire the courage of their conviction that it is wrong for children to destroy property, steal, or abuse adults. The neighbourhood watch schemes have achieved lift-off. Remarkably, there are now over one million members and 10,000 schemes in the Midlands and over 100,000 schemes in the UK. Those who emphasised the unqualified rights of the individual were at first afraid that these might cause some people to pry. They hesitated to
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mount the video cameras in shopping centres which identified the killers of James Bulger because they smacked of big brother. They were nervous at the prospect of vigilantes. These hesitations about rights have begun to evaporate when measured against the responsibilities which parents and neighbours have for children and each other. They increasingly look after each others property and take note of what their children are doing. The efforts of the St Pauls project and others to Build a Better Village of Balsall Health so raised residents expectations and confidence that over 500 people decided to stand on their street corners to eliminate the street prostitution, kerb crawlers and pimps who had blighted the image of their area and held back progress. In addition to solving one problem, others were also resolved. The figures for drug abuse, car theft, burglary and truancy also came down. Residents began to talk of being able to leave their car and front door unlocked. Today, they claim with some justification to have one of the most developed neighbourhood watch schemes in the country. Moving from the need to eliminate the negative, these residents have begun to accentuate the positive. They wish to give a face-lift to their local park, employ a parkkeeper or sports coach, implement a traffic management scheme to slow speeding traffic and take ownership of and maintain a range of confused open spaces. The list is endless, as lifted by the experience of success, large sections of the population have become engaged in an extensive community service programme. Elsewhere in the country other neighbourhoods and councils are also trying to rethink local policing. Some are paying for additional neighbourhood police, as in Sedgefield. Wandsworth has suggested a special tax to pay for improved local policing under the local authority. Some 60 Councils are now investigating possibilities like these. However, like the teacher who views the helpful presence of the parent in the classroom with anxiety, each of these developments have been met with suspicion by the professional police, who cling to their monopoly. But if such schemes can reinvigorate the local communitys sense of responsibility for order there is surely a case for encouraging the police to recognise their value and work in partnership with them.
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Work and the economy
The move from the pyramid to the maypole type of organisation is transforming a growing number of private sector businesses. While many still see their role simply in terms of profit maximisation others are seeking a richer set of connections to their communities. They recognise that an involved employee is also a keen and productive one, and that it is important to pay attention to other stakeholders not just shareholders, but also suppliers, customers and the surrounding community. Once, Robert Owen, who built model villages in the early 1800s and the Cadbury family, who built Bournville in the early 1900s, were exceptions. Today it is not just Business in the Community and Anita Roddick who flourish, but also Virgin, Shell, Microsoft, Apple and a growing range of companies whose directors under-stand that the ethical approach isnt just socially and environmentally beneficial, but also good business. Many firms, ranging from TSB and Grand Metropolitan in the UK to Bosch in Germany and Fiat in Italy have independent foundations, and here some newcomers, like Nissan in Sunderland, Toyota in Derbyshire and DUSCOs in Nottingham have become involved in their local communities to help cultivate a good local reputation. And firms such as Allied Dunbar, Kingfisher and Whitbread have extensive employee involvement schemes. Although there is still much to be done the fading industrial centres of several cities have been greatly improved by the enlightened combination of public and private money. Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and other town centres have become models of enterprise and culture compared to a few years ago. Yet, there remain problems. By contrast with countries like the USA or Germany we still lack sufficiently powerful businesses at the city or neighbourhood level. Despite moves to decentralisation, British industry is one of the most centralised in the world, as is British banking. There is also a great danger that progress in city centres is undermined by the fading neighbourhoods which surround the centres which lack education, confidence and which cost so much to police. This was the experience of Detroit where glittering city centre projects were surrounded by some of the most depressed neighbourhoods in the USA.
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But the biggest problem concerns one of the negative consequences of dramatic changes in technology and organisation in the private sector that have left few unskilled manual jobs. In his books, Charles Handy has argued with great clarity that if we are not vigilant, this world could be inherited by a new elite, while an increasing number, who have no work, despair. The social divide could become a chasm. On the other hand, the very forces that have sharply reduced the number of stable jobs for male breadwinners are also creating the context for new beginnings. First, the combination of better teachers and more flexible technologies should make it much easier to produce well educated, employable, young people, and to top up their skills throughout life, whether at home or in the workplace or college. Second, the enterprise culture is giving rise to a range of smaller businesses, many of them neighbourhood specific. It is also causing partners to share jobs or undertake part-time ones and to work from home. Thus mobility is curtailed and neighbourhood strengthened. Third, imaginative schemes can solve two problems at once. By creating relatively unskilled jobs for unemployed young and old people it is possible not only to carry out environmental improvements but also to repopulate the empty spaces like parks and railway stations thus giving people a greater sense of security and place. Further, the third sector now includes rather more than the unpaid volunteer who hands out soup to the homeless. It is being dramatically increased by the addition of schools, houses and carers in the community. Until very recently the third sector held little influence, less money and few real jobs. Now it is growing so rapidly that few recognise the consequences either for it or for the role of the private and public sectors which must adjust to take account of it. Far-reaching schemes are possible. As a result of bold thinking Pat Conaty and others from the Birmingham Settlement are building on previous successes with local economic institutions such as credit unions to develop a Community Bank able to support small businesses in the community through difficult times. Ian Morrison, Director of the Council for Voluntary Service in Birmingham, recently calculated that the third sector budget in that
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city has a combined annual turnover of 55,000,000, a sizeable business and that for every 1 of public money it created 3 from elsewhere. It employs thousands of people. But, these calculations did not include either schools or houses. As it becomes confident in its new role, the third sector will become a major player alongside the public and private ones. It could use its new found strength to create a variety of significant jobs in neighbourhoods and be a major resource for any national scheme of voluntary service to communities. Indeed, if the public sector could find as imaginative a way of relating to the third sector in urban neighbourhoods as it has with the private sector in city centres, then even more could be achieved today than Robert Owen and the Cadbury family achieved in the past.
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Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government
Refashioning the Urban Village How could revitalised communities be given an outward expression? How can the many urban villages from which each town is built, be excavated from beneath the accumulated concrete jungle and exert their identity upon the physical, social and economic geography of tomorrow? The following suggestions form only a brief introductory answer which might begin to name and assert the sense of place and identity of each neighbourhood or urban village. As the charity Common Ground has shown, urban villages need boundaries, clear entry and exit points. There is sense in making these obvious and distinctive, like postal district signs so that residents and visitors can know when they are being welcomed within these boundaries or invited to return upon leaving. They also need a central focal point. It does not matter whether the centre is identified by shops, a library, a school or community centre as long as it is clear to residents where this centre is, and as long as it has the right atmosphere, either because of its architecture or the quality of the services which it offers or both. Perhaps a distinctive flag, crest or shield might help to give identity to both the entry gateways and the central features of the village. At Christmas, Diwali, carnival time or during some other local celebration, both gateways and central features might be enhanced by festive decorations, perhaps prepared by schools, or religious organisations, residents groups or other voluntary organisations. The content
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and style of the celebrations will, of course, differ according to the particular community. But, whatever their content, they are important occasions and the more people that take part in the planning and execution of them the better. Such occasions can represent the strength of the community in a variety of forms including sport, art and business as well as being purely social or religious events. They can serve to highlight calendar festivals and mark the natural passing of the seasons which urban life otherwise obscures. A building which functions as a village hall and meeting place and the open space which represents the village green or some kind of arena are important, not only to host celebrations but to serve the needs of different interest groups. Community notice boards and community newspapers can advertise events and spread local news and information, providing the village with its own voice while also helping to promote local businesses and schools. A supplement to the newspaper might form a welcome package for those moving into the area and introduce them to the local amenities and their neighbours. Buildings and developments which affect the life of the village often do not take enough account of its particular identity or of the wishes of residents. It would be profitable to build and develop in ways which highlight that identity rather than inhibit, depress or destroy it. The style and proportions of buildings, the materials used and the location of facilities are all crucial to the creation of harmony in a neighbourhood as well as a sense of history, continuity and belonging. Nothing is ever perfect or complete. Different villages might come to assert one or other mix of the attributes outlined above, but few will have the possibility of being purpose designed and built as is the case with Poundsbury. This village is being constructed on farmland on the edge of the small town of Dorchester. The idea was conceived by Prince Charles with the help of the architect Leon Krier. They hope that the new village will eventually comprise some 2,000 homes housing a population of 8,000. A key feature of Poundsbury is that both detached and terraced houses, shops and offices and workshops will knit closely together so that a simple 10 minute walk along its cobbled streets will enable the resident to reach any part of the village. At the heart of the
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first phase of the building is a square which will be surrounded by shops and offices. The square will also contain a market hall, which will also house a cafe and meeting room. Alongside the hall a familiar, 80 feet tall, church-like tower will be visible from all corners of the village. The village could become the envy of many city dwellers. Although its idealised top-down conception may fit uneasily with the real people who come to live there, it may be easier for existing neighbourhoods to capture the atmosphere and calm reassurance of village life. The bottom-up Prince Charles of many an urban village is its Church, residents group, Housing Association, Development Trust, school and cluster of schools. These can become its strength and the engine which drives its development. It is not just the teacher, housing manager and voluntary sector professional who must be at the service of their clients and customers in this way, but also the doctor, architect, accountant, indeed every professional whose energy is needed in the rebuilding of communities. The professional who consults, participates and is employed by local people becomes an appreciated part of the neighbourhood rather than a feared visitor from a different and more powerful one.
Refashioning democracy
The democratic system is supposed to enable people to freely choose their representatives and government. Yet, at most elections, the resident is confronted by 2 or 3 candidates chosen by the big parties and others who have no hope of election. The active, but diminishing, core of each party is always re-elected. Often, only the beginners and second raters are placed in unwinnable contests. If you live in a politically safe area you have no choice and if you are in an unwinnable area you can choose only between learners and failures. Although there are notable exceptions, almost by definition, politicians are principally concerned with gaining and keeping power in order to implement their policies from the top down. Often, they are not interested in, or suited to, wielding direct influence within the neighbourhood or helping it to build itself up from ground level. Even
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those who see the point of such action often cannot spare the time to undertake it. As a result political parties do not do justice to the rich variety of practical circumstances which define real life and many in each urban village are in effect disenfranchised. The point can be illustrated in Fig 4. Only the activists within the circles A and B, within the wider community, C, are represented. The unwritten agenda of the wider community, D, is unseen by either party. This is perhaps why less than a third of the electorate vote in local elections. This means that Councillors directly represent only around 15% of the electorate. The remaining 85% are effectively disenfranchised. Their experience of local democracy is like a plausible confidence trick. It offers the illusion, but not the substance of choice and influence. The more self-reliant people and neighbourhoods become and the more the pyramids of both private and public institutions have been transformed into self-governing maypoles, the more voters have become alienated from politicians. While others have changed, the political process remains unreformed. Until recently it was unquestioningly
Figure 4 Political Parties and the community
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supposed that the politically motivated councillor and MP should attempt to control central bureaucracies in order to supply uniform services to fractured and dependent neighbourhoods. Suited to the pyramids of the industrial world, the political party has become detached from the thrust of a better educated, better informed, more confident citizen. Neither the representative politician nor the resident has yet been schooled in the needs of a post-industrial form of participatory democracy. Before the credibility gap between the politician and the public becomes unbridgeable, it is important to clarify new roles.
The urban village and the active citizen
It is not sufficient to devolve finances and managerial control out to schools and community agencies. Parts of the political process itself must also be devolved. The emergent self-governing urban village needs its own non-party political voice and a degree of control over its own affairs. Parish Councils have a legal existence. Those rural villages which have retained these interesting forms of local democracy elect their own parish councillors to represent their own very local concerns. The Parish Council is able to levy a precept on the rate of one or two pence in the pound, which can give the parish councillors a useful income to spend as they and their constituents see fit. Most employ their own professional parish clerk who services and acts for the parish and its parish councillors. Many people might respond far more positively to their own urban neighbourhood council or forum than to their party political councilor because they would see the immediate and positive results of their representations. Because most City Council wards encompass at least three natural neighbourhoods, in place of 13 local councillors who must also relate to the whole city, there might emerge three sets of say, 15 neighbourhood forum representatives. Such neighbourhood representatives would tend to be non-party political to ensure that they represent all local people and keep their purely local focus. They could either be elected on a street by street basis or be a mixture of
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elected representatives and people co-opted from local agencies such as schools, housing associations and development trusts. The neighbourhood officer could be funded either by a small precept on the rate, or, as with the schools cluster officer, by pooling a part of the budget of the major local self-governing agencies. Some will wonder where so many active citizens might spring from. Perhaps most people would rather remain dependent upon the remote Town Hall than employ their own neighbourhood officer and try to shape the development of their own area. There are several reasons for doubting this. First, any time a franchise has been extended, sceptics argued that it wont work and that ordinary people cant cope with the extra responsibility. Yet, when finally trusted with that responsibility, most people invariably rise to the occasion and we are left to wonder: why did we wait so long before doing this? Second, it is relevant to point to the 10,000 strong population of the urban village of Balsall Heath in which St Pauls is based. St Pauls alone operates with 50 volunteers who staff its various management boards. Some 6 residents groups are attended by some 200 people every month. The 6 schools governing bodies meet termly and have various working committees. So they increase the number of active citizens by a factor of 6 times 15. If those who attend their Church, Temple and Mosque councils or who patrol their street corners are included, the number of active citizens goes over the 1,000 mark. So to elect say, 20 of these to represent the area doesnt seem to be expecting too much. Yet, there is nothing unique about Balsall Heath. Third, people often do not take a mere talking shop seriously. They want to achieve things and not just enter into idle debate. So, the importance of the neighbourhood council rests in its ability to employ an officer, relate to the various local self-governing agencies and make a serious contribution to the development of the area. One reason why the people of Balsall Heath leap at the chance to improve their area is because of their regard for their childrens future. Fourth and finally, the involvement of so many people can and should be dignified by the local cluster of schools, their family centre
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and the local college by engaging them in certificated Citizen Awareness courses. Indeed, with the help of cable and home computers, such a course could bring to life the open access college in which the whole community is enrolled and make the neighbourhood election an important annual occasion. Modern versions of the Greek city state in which all who wish to participate can do so are no longer so fanciful, particularly when decisions are being made on subjects where first hand experience is so important.
The social entrepreneur and the new Town Hall
The neighbourhood officers role might first be to help people to gain the confidence to formulate and express shared goals. Second, it could be to help them to press these goals upon the city authorities and to ensure that they are acted upon. However, third, and more important, it should be possible for the forum to achieve many of its aims on its own with little more than passing reference to the town centre. With the help of its schools, their CEEC, housing associations and community development trusts, the neighbourhood forum would help to stimulate the social, economic and environmental development of the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood officer is, in effect, a social entrepreneur. Just as the private economic sector depends on risk-taking, visionary people to construct new companies, products, services and wealth, so the third sector needs social entrepreneurs. The role, once less vital, used perhaps to be fulfilled by the village priest or the head of the village school. Today, a new breed of determined professional is needed who is employed by the active citizens of the neighbourhood forum to bind together and empower the fractured community. Although it is novel to the urban scene, the active citizens neighbourhood forum, their entrepreneurial officer and those local voluntary and non-government institutions which relate and are accountable to them do not comprise an additional layer of government, which further complicates the organisation of the democratic process. Rather, they take the place of significant parts of the previously over-intrusive city machine. As a consequence, the Town Hall can concentrate its
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efforts less on trying to run everything and thus failing to do anything well, but on enabling and resourcing others to achieve excellence. Because so many of the tasks once undertaken by the Town Hall can readily and more effectively be discharged within each village it is necessary to reduce its size and change the way it is organized. Most of the Town Halls departments can be slimmed down or merged in order to meet new functions. Old style departments were organized in terms of specialist professional functions education, social services, housing etc as well as in pyramid-like hierarchies. This suited the needs of city wide planning, but it was of little benefit to neighbourhoods which recognize different boundaries and needs. It follows that a fresh, community sensitive, city department is needed which cuts across the citys old bureaucratic specialisms and planning areas. This new department must regard neighbourhoods as the basic building blocks from which towns are constructed. Instead of being organized segmentally and hierarchically this department would, therefore, subtend an array of sub-departments, one for each neighbourhood or cluster of neighbourhoods. These neighbourhood sub-departments would marshal and deploy the levers of local government to the service and enhance the growth points of each area. Indeed, many towns have developed neighbourhood offices in recent years, though not always in response to a clear neighbourhood voice. Because the aim of this new department is to boost the confidence of the individual, see to it that others assist the developing child and take part in the revitalisation of neighbourhoods it could be called the Neighbourhood Enterprise Department (NED). Once these new departments are devolved out to area offices in each neighbourhood they, in effect, become its new mini Town Hall. The mini Town Hall would be the citys devolved top-down lever with which the bottom-up neighbourhood forum would liaise. It might be based in an extension of one of the villages schools and become one of its focal features. These proposals are not fanciful. Hillingdon and Kent have merged several departments to create a new community oriented one. Tower Hamlets has devolved most of its
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services. Braintree District council has already implemented many of Osborne and Gaeblers suggestions and John Stewart and Michael Clark at Birmingham University have written extensively about British examples of good practice. Recently, the DoE has challenged Manchester, Birmingham and London to become Cities of Pride. It has asked them to define what they might look like in the years after the new millennium. The winds of change are blowing. As the dust which it stirs settles, it is possible to see what might replace the old pyramid like Town Hall. (Fig 5) City governments are now multi-billion pound, complex, organisations. They are impossibly larger than the ones with which Joseph Chamberlain could identify. It is not possible for voluntary councillors to manage such a modern organisation efficiently. It needs time, devotion, confidence and an acquired expertise otherwise the existing departments of full-time professional officers will follow their own course. High caliber, part-time or full-time city councillors are needed to steer a fresh course if these departments are to be refashioned and bent to the will of the community. It makes sense to pay the chairs of committees just as MPs are paid. Further, it makes sense to pay the Lord Mayor of each town. Instead of being largely ceremonial, the role of Lord Mayor should become more like that of the towns president. The office holder should be directly elected not chosen by existing councillors on a political ticket. These reforms represent no more of an attack upon local government than John Harvey Jones attempts to save fading businesses signify an attack upon them. On the contrary, they could rescue the political process from decades of inertia and popular resentment and herald a new era of acceptance, appreciation and vigorous growth. It is easy for defenders of the status quo to forget that the existing form of Town Hall and Whitehall democracy has already undergone many profound changes. Just two centuries ago, Tom Paine and others fought for the rights of man. In this century women had to chain themselves to the railings and staff the munitions factories in the first World War to gain the vote. Full adult suffrage only came after the second world war.
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Figure 5
Democracy has evolved and must continue to keep pace with the times. Much of what has happened in recent years could be built upon rather than scrapped in an attempt to return to the past. The array of quangos and trusts have been rightly criticised as unaccountable to their local communities. But reconceived to embed them in the area they serve, with clear lines of accountability and clear rights for local communities to remove those that dont perform, new self-governing agencies have the potential to be much more responsive and entrepreneurial than when they were locked into the monopoly of local government.
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A New Paradigm
Authority and responsibility Although many of the signposts for revitalised communities have now been identified they remain distinct and separate.What will bind them together? The industrial pyramid worked only because those at its apex could rely on a passive, uninformed and unconfident citizenry. The maypole will only work if all individuals are prepared to carry responsibility, undertake duties and fulfil obligations to one another. There are different forms of authority. Some tear human relations apart. The best kinds act as the glue which voluntarily bind people together. The scientific discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries and the technology needed to implement them relied on objective,rational legal authority and not on subjective, traditional, authority. The great German sociologist Max Weber defined this rational authority as the lynch pin which held the modern bureaucratic pyramid together. It laid waste to all previous forms of non-rational, subjective, authority. He wrote that bureaucracy revolutionises with technical means from without. It first changes the material and social orders and through them the people by changing the conditions of adaptation It furthers the development of rational matter-of-factness and the personality type of the professional expert. Both private enterprise and public monopolies flourished under this form of authority for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. It kept the
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administration of public services untainted by the influence of bribery and corruption. It provided security from unemployment, during old age. It provided stability a basic sense of fairness and equality It provided jobs. And it delivered the basic, no frills, one-size-fits-all services people needed and expected: roads, railways, sewers, schools In the first part of the 20th century, it seemed to both Max Weber and those who administered it that this system was invulnerable. However, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that this form of authority could only prevail as long as the industrialist and planner who ran the pyramid-like bureaucracies had enough information to take reasonable decisions which those at the bottom of the pyramid could not query or improve upon; as long as people worked with their hands and not their brains; as long as there were mass, undiscriminating markets; as long as people had similar needs; as long as the rational Western nations were not rivalled by Japan and, even more profoundly, as long as the subjective part of the human personality could be ignored without doing so much damage to the quality of life that objection would result. In stark contrast, the private and public enterprise of the last decades of the 20th century are glued together by a different form of authority. It depends on the subjective vision and charisma of enlightened leaders who develop tradition to suit new circumstances. It depends on their vision being shared and voluntarily reinforced by all who work within the agency and those who relate to it though what is commonly called a mission statement. It depends on a set of individual choices which interlock because they are guided by this subjective mission. Rational calculation is still employed in private and public agencies. But it is placed within the context of a shared, common vision and communal care. Business in the Community typifies this attitude. But, it is to be found even more overtly in the caring organisations which now thrive within the third sector. Their goals and missions are subjective and value laden, not rational. They are concerned with process and participation, the ownership and pride which comes from shared values. This subjective, voluntary, form of authority is the life blood of the family, neighbourhood and the community of street and place. It provides
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A New Paradigm
the child with stability and continuity, belief and identity the springboards from which individuality, choice and reason can leap in later life.
Rights, responsibilities and values
The rational pyramid of the modern state gives people rights to free schooling, health care, housing and the vote. It gives no place to the equally vital qualities of care, responsibility and value. Indeed, it has denied them. Consequently, the pyramid has been built on unstable ground. People feel other ties and obligations as strongly as any objective contract. These ties flow from the love of the mother for the child and the duty of the father to protect and care for mother and child. Experience tells that these obligations need to be witnessed by significant others, upheld and enshrined by the wider community in customs and traditions which make it easier for parents to avoid those distractions which divert the eye from the needs of their child. These witnesses, customs and traditions have of course become woven into elaborate rituals which make sense in terms of the cultures and world religions. They mark the gates which people pass through at times of birth, youth, maturity and marriage, work and death. They celebrate the many seasonal and religious events through which life is ordered and given purpose. It is within this subjective culture that the logic of duty and obligation resides. This logic gives meaning to the natural bond between mother and child and generates both the responsibility to act towards others with charity and love and the confidence to develop tradition to suit new circumstance. As Dr Nazim proclaimed in Birminghams central mosque: Control of destiny is lost if morality is shirked, sentiments which have been eroded by the Wests search for an objective and purely material reason. The pendulum has swung so far from subjective authority and obligation towards reason authority and rights that their interdependence has been fractured and serious damage has been caused. But it is not sufficient simply to swing the pendulum back to find a new equilibrium. Instead we need to move forward to find a new framework, which combines the wisdom of maturity with the capacity for change.
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Every new generation rebels against some of what it sees as the conservative traditions of its parents, before discovering both how important it is not to reject all the wisdom and maturity of the past, and that the wheel of responsibility has to be reinvented in some form. Today however, whilst many young people are individualistic and rights conscious there is also much evidence that they have a powerful sense of responsibility for the environment into which their children will be born which their industrial forefathers did little to protect. When entered into deliberately, responsibilities can be exercised with greater effect than when they are simply and unthinkingly inherited. The challenge for those who already appreciate the need for stronger communities is to show how a greater sense of belonging is relevant and attractive rather than being a nostalgic return to a past which means little to young people today. In todays less deferential society, authority has to be continually won, justified and remade. It cannot be assumed. If the maypole is to work, then people will need to appreciate and voluntarily accept their responsibilities in each of the areas that communities depend on: To support families for the sake of the child and the wellbeing of the next generation, and to take part in common provision of childcare. To play an active part in their childs schooling, not just by helping with reading at home but by becoming a school governor and helping with the self-management of the school. To be a caring neighbour and a Good Samaritan to others in the neighbourhood, to pay taxes and make charitable donations to community associations. To act as juror and take part in the trial of alleged offences, to become a magistrate, to serve on the neighbourhood forum or become a councilor and play an active role in the political process. To play a part in the care of the street, to assist with the recovery of a sense of place. To give as well as to take, to plough back as well as to reap, to be a steward of both land and culture.
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A New Paradigm
To rediscover and uphold the best of enduring values and find new ways of celebrating them The acceptance of responsibility, duty and obligation used to be symbolically reinforced by maturing young people and adults through the swearing of oaths making binding promises of faithfulness, loyalty and so on. The point is too easily derided in todays mass, rational, society. Few could see the point of making a binding promise to a remote bureaucracy. They would far rather exploit it and exercise their rights. However, the significance of making promises or verbal bonds in the home and neighbourhood where the child is born can be grasped and honoured. The modern, decentralised, town creates neighbourhoods within which such responsibilities can make sense. Lord Michael Young and Professor Halsey have recently suggested ways in which parents who do not attend church can affirm their binding responsibilities to their children before relatives and friends. Schools are increasingly developing home/school agreements which both parents and teachers sign. The tenancy agreements between tenant and housing association or housing department could be similarly dignified. Perhaps it is time to spell out in a tangible way a variety of socially vital obligations which have been taken for granted and abused. Similarly, much as a modern business has a mission statement, each neighbourhood and town might be asked to develop, enshrine and celebrate these commitments in a way which it feels appropriate to its distinct circumstances. Partly because of the organisational and theoretical baggage which the political parties have inherited from their industrial past, they have found it difficult to address the questions posed by the active citizens sense of responsibility. For answers require an uncluttered fresh attitude and spirit, says Etzioni. Regardless of what the habitually conflicting politicians have argued, the real, common sense, choice is not between the welfare state and privatization, more or less government. For we can now recall that: In the past there were other structures in society which carried part of the social load on their own communities, families and individuals. It is time to rediscover them and create a new welfare system
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An Urban Academy
In 1794, Matthew Boulton and his astonishing band of friends walked to each others houses by the light of the moon and held the discussions which Erasmus Darwin described with such awe. They called themselves the Lunar Society. Where are todays equivalent innovators? Where is their modern Lunar Society which is so precisely at the cutting edge of tomorrow that neither they nor others quite recognize how far reaching their ideas and action will be? Neither the old or the once-new red brick universities, nor the seminaries of the great faiths, let alone the political parties, seem any longer able to read the signposts or to be at the center of intellectual gravity. It may be that clusters of schools, family centres, neighbourhood or village forums and new actors like the cluster development officer and the neighbourhood officer are the harbingers of new thought and action. Indeed, we noted the possibility of them forming open access Community Colleges which enrolled entire neighbourhoods. Yet more is required. For as the public and private sectors change to take the new third sector into full account and partnership, a series of quite new roles are implied. These include: The responsible, active, citizen. Once subdued, unskilled and unconfident through dependence upon the logic of the pyramid, most people are being asked to play a new, active, independent role. The responsible professional. Just as the private sector is adjusting to the demand of the customer, so must the previously sacrosanct professional expert. The professional cant plan, cant teach, design, heal or police the street without their customer playing an active part in the process. The professional needs to unlearn old habits and the temptation to defensively resist the intrusion of the customer into previously sacred areas of expertise. The social entrepreneur. Just as business does not work without the visionary, risk taking entrepreneur, so the third sector will not prosper without a new role being played
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which results in the creation of voluntary associations and valued, socially responsible jobs. The socially responsible economic entrepreneur and business must play their part in conjunction with their new social counterpart. The enabling politician and political party. Used to operating within the pyramid, the new politicians need new skills and attitudes if they are to work the maypole with skill and sensitivity and help the State learn to conduct an orchestra of self-reliant individual players. These five actors need an Urban Academy to help them to learn and practice their new skills together. This learning process will need to be a hands on or doing one in which the students learn through developing good practice in real life situations. Such Academies need a physical base, but their most important work would not be between four walls but rather through bringing together teams of people from different backgrounds to tackle common problems. The obvious location for the Academy is in one or more of the neighbourhoods community colleges with funding drawn from public, private and voluntary agencies which need their personnel to be at the cutting edge of new ideas and practices. The Open University was conceived as a new model of teaching for people in work and later life. The Urban Academy is a rather different model of action research that links together the experience and reflections of practitioners, observers and analysts in the service not of pure knowledge but rather of the ends of the community. Once again, the relevant signposts are in place. Common Purpose acts as the training catalyst which brings together leading people from different walks of life and helps them to find common ground. It is already actively engaged in 23 towns and cities across Britain, and is now branching out into continental Europe. It is training the movers and shakers who will build the Britain of tomorrow in their region. The many development trusts, voluntary organisations, the more energetic of the polytechnics-turned-universities, the Foundations, and
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institutions like the Centre for Citizenship Development in Cambridge, which is a focal point for the new debate about communitarianism, all have a common potential which could be realized through the joint development of an academy and in Birmingham a small group of people from the private, public and third sectors are working towards this end.
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The Third Millennium
Two scenarios face the nation as the third millennium approaches. One is a further weakening of the institutions which mediate between the individual and society, and further fragmentation and disconnection of people from each other. In this scenario political parties will probably continue to be irrelevant to the aspirations of ordinary people or the needs of the towns and neighbourhoods of post-industrial society in which they live. The second scenario is more positive, involving a strengthening of community in all its forms. The aim of this book has been to set out some of its elements at the level of the neighbourhood. It starts with the family and the places where people live and where, despite the confusion and the pace of change, they still find much of their security and identity. It builds outwards from the family, the home and the school. Based on clear principles of responsibility and reciprocity, and an undogmatic openness about which types of institutional organisation will provide the best solutions, it draws on a wide body of thought from all shades of opinion from across the world that is grappling with parallel issues how to behave and think morally in a post-industrial world, how to organise, how to link political policy with grassroot concerns about the home and the street. This book has set out some of the implications of this positive alternative for communities how schools, family centres and development trusts could work together in a new framework of clearly defined
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neighbourhoods with new forms of participatory democracy. It has shown how, once released from the task of rowing, government can concentrate on the essential strategic and visionary task of steering. Much has to be done at national level to complement the new spirit of community. New avenues could be opened to enable young people to serve others and contribute to their community either as part of secondary schooling or afterwards. Imaginative schemes are being considered for mobilising peoples moral commitment to help solve problems in the delivery of healthcare and education. In the USA for example, the simple example of teaching thousands of people how to do emergency cardiac treatment in Seattle, and the mobilising of large numbers of college graduates to help with teaching, have shown the practicality of well-conceived communitarian ideas. The prospect of the millennium celebrations offers a great opportunity for giving these neighbourhood level experiments added weight. So far most of the talk has been about the construction of grand new buildings, the modern equivalent of the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower, as well as festivals, fireworks and street parties. But a great national celebration could also help focus attention on the social innovators. The Millennium Fund could be used, alongside private and public funds, to give new community organisations, development trusts, neighbourhood forums and urban academies, the chance to be at the centre of the planning process in each locality, linking the celebrations to their own initiatives. The politicians and parties which can demonstrate that they both recognise the nature of the problems facing modern urban life and how to articulate practical solutions will receive widespread acclaim from all those unsung practitioners who are already hard at work rebuilding the torn fabric of social life. If they can tap into this energy of experience, experiment and ideas, and tangibly back the third sector and the social entrepreneur by providing enabling government, they would find that they were not just capturing the decade. They would be setting the agenda for the start of the next millennium. Not just a once in a lifetime chance, not even one which comes once in a hundred years. This chance is an extra ordinary one. Who will take it?
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Bibliography
Ashdown, Paddy Beyond Westminster (Simon and Schuster) Atkinson, Dick Radical Alternative, Orthodox Consensus (Heinemann) Atkinson, Dick Radical Urban Solutions (Cassell) Etzioni, Amitai The Spirit of Community (Crown) Etzioni, Amitai The Parenting Deficit (Demos) Handy, Charles The Empty Raincoat (Hutchinson) Handy, Charles The Age of Unreason (Hutchinson) Hargreaves, David The Mosaic of Learning (Demos) Hargreaves, David and Hopkins, David The Empowered School (Cassell)
Holmes, Gerard The Idiot Teacher (Spokesman) Holman, Bob A New Deal for Social Welfare (Lion Publishing) Osborne and Gaebler Reinventing Government (Addison Wesley and Penguin) Ree, Harry Henry Morris: Educator Extraordinary (Peter Owen) Schumacher, Erich Small is Beautiful (Abacus) Tam, Henry Public Service (Longmans) Weber, Max Economy and Society (Bedminster Press) Wilson, James The Moral Sense (Free Press) Willetts, David Civic Conservatism (The Social Market Foundation).
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Atkison, D. (1994) - The Common Sense of Community. Demos, London.

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The Common Sense of Community

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The Common Sense of Community

The Importance of Self-Reliance

The Importance of Self-Reliance

The Common Sense of Community

Self-reliance and the modern business organisation

The Importance of Self-Reliance

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society

The Common Sense of Community

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

Figure 2 A cluster development plan

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

House and home

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Work and the economy

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government

The Common Sense of Community

Figure 4 Political Parties and the community

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government

The Common Sense of Community

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government

The Common Sense of Community

The Common Sense of Community

The Common Sense of Community

The Common Sense of Community

The Common Sense of Community

The Third Millennium

The Common Sense of Community

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