A decade as a local government officer, four years as a councillor, many years in the voluntary sector seeking to influence, persuade, cajole councils to take courses of action I, or the organisation I represented, promoted gave me a solid base to understanding how local authorities operate and appropriate ways to put a case for change. More importantly how to secure agreement to and implementation of the proposed change - sometimes.
Welcome to the world of jobsworths, ego trips, insecurity, political expediency, compromise, conflict, demarcation, fear, bravado, cynicism, bureaucracy, interminable paperwork, obfuscation and delay. No, not the Church of England (although you may think the cap fits) but local government in England.
For many involved with faith groups is it any wonder Faith in the City noted forty years ago:
Yet while many members of the Church of England have found it more congenial to express their discipleship by helping individual victims of misfortune or oppression, fewer are willing to rectify injustices in the structures of society. There is a number of reasons for this preference for 'ambulance work'. No-one minds being cast in the role of protector and helper of the weak and powerless: there is no threat here to one's superior position and one's power of free decision. But to be a protagonist of social change may involve challenging those in power and risking the loss of one's own power. Helping a victim or sufferer seldom involves conflict; working for structural change can hardly avoid it. Direct personal assistance to an individual may seem relatively straightforward, uncontroversial and rewarding; involvement in social issues implies choosing between complicated alternatives and accepting compromises which seem remote from any moral position.....We have little tradition of initiating conflict and coping with it creatively. We are not at home in the tough, secular milieu of social and political activism. Paragraph 3.7.
That passage could have been written yesterday. It rings true: a prevailing issue that liberation and progressive theologies face: the reluctance to embrace, indeed downright opposition to, anything that deflects from a perceived role of the church to issue passports to heaven. Yes, an exaggeration. Social justice is way down the pecking order of priorities, particularly at local level. It is outside the comfort zone, it is for some threatening.
For government, centrally and locally, the voluntary sector is a headache. Organisations in the sector are obliged to work within a statutory framework: company law, charity law, employment law etc. The sector is an example of free enterprise, of competition. There is nothing to prevent a voluntary organisation competing with other voluntary bodies. There is no master plan for the sector. As an aside, new churches can spring up competing with existing churches, existing churches may compete with each other for the elusive 'new bums on seats'.
Central government over the years has put its oar in in attempts to achieve order and efficiency within what the government of Tony Blair named theThe Third Sector and by implication engaging it in supporting government policies. The cynics among us perceive this as an attempt to indirectly control the sector through a stick and carrot approach.
In the early 2000's central government was hyper-active. A few titles to give a flavour. The following emanated from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) as an adjunct to the statutory duty placed on local authorities to facilitate the development of community plans for their geographic area:
*Citizen Engagement and Public Services. Why Neighbourhoods Matter.
*Securing better outcomes, developing a new performance framework.
*Vibrant Local Leadership.
*Improving Delivery of Mainstream Services in Deprived Areas - The role of Community Involvement.
The Home Office published:
Working Together: Co-operation between Government and Faith Communities.
We had also The Compact: Funding and Procurement. Code of Good Practice.
The Legal Services Commission introduced: Community Legal Services Partnerships.
Not forgetting Police and Communities Together.
The Local Government Association weighed in with: towards self-governing communities.
All the above impinged directly or indirectly on the voluntary sector and the relationship between voluntary groups and government, particularly at local level.
Under the Conservative administration of David Cameron we had the Big Society. The following is an interesting read, well worth perusing.
In Part 3 I shall consider the Big Society and the stance of the Church of England.
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