Social Cohesion and Community during Periods of Change

Lord Bird Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I really like the idea of speaking in this debate about community. I will start with a model that I invented and applied in a city—a town, actually, because it does not have a cathedral—in 2018. I had a conference in this town with the Big Issue and a number of other people, and we went and did something which we called an MCM, a “mercenary community model”. It was completely mercenary: there was nothing about love, kindness or community; it was all about mercenary concerns.

What did we do? We went to this town, which was stricken at the time because it had run into problems—I think the local government had been bankrupt or almost bankrupt. We chose the town randomly. We called the conference, got the biggest employer and other people to pay for part of the conference, and we did something mercenary. One of the things we did was contact some estate agents who had buy-to-lets—I think one had 150 of them. Every month, he had to cut the grass or pay someone to do it, and he had to do all sorts of other things: repair fences, fix windows and all that. We went to him and said, “We’re going to get you to buy the services from a local housing association who are trying to expand the number of their tenants who work”. I do not know whether noble Lords know but, on average, a housing association will have 70% of its tenants unemployed or economically inactive. This housing association wanted to expand its grass services and repair services and to take on staff from the people who were its tenants. Brilliant—we put somebody who had a social mission with somebody who wanted to look good. And, let us be honest: if anybody really needs to be looking good today, it is an estate agent.

We went to the local NHS. I do not know whether they all have this, but this one had this person—it is normally a doctor—who was responsible for social relationships in the community. We said to them, “You know what? There’s a bakery that employs largely women who have had many disasters in life: they’ve married the wrong guy, been beaten and thrown out, all sorts of things like that. They may have drink or drug problems”. This was a social bakery. We said to the NHS, “Wouldn’t it be a good thing if you bought your bread from them?” So it did: it bought nine thousand loaves a month. We did a number of things like that. I am sorry: this may sound as though I am making a joke—I am a devout ex-Catholic, so maybe I am allowed to say this —but I did not go there and say, “Isn’t it lovely”, and, “Let’s be nice to each other”; I kept looking for ways in which I could award people what I called a “social echo”.

What happened when Covid came was that we had managed to stitch together a community. I even produced a magazine for it, which I called Darning Street—sewing together the community. When Covid came, we had managed to do this, we had already laid the ground and done the work for old people who were on the edge of society, so to speak, and needed food. We knew who was in the community, and it all started from a mercenary desire to get people together and look good. I really believe in the power of getting people to look good. If Rio Tinto-Zinc wants to come and give me £5 million to spend for the benefit of the most disfranchised people in Britain, I am going to make them look good. That is how I got my money. I got the money to start the Big Issue from a large multinational company called the Body Shop. I went into business to make it look good, that is where I am.

I want some more grown-up thinking. I want to see Social Echo reformed. The problem with Social Echo, the reason it fell to pieces, was because it was all based on personalities, and if you change a few personalities, you fall to pieces. I have come just to give noble Lords an optimistic view of how we could rebuild communities if we started looking at who is in the community and what business functions in the community. Rather than a situation where you knock on someone’s door because you want to get a few bob from them to build something or other, what we really need is to find a way for people to trade with each other and by trading with each other, transform the community and build a better community.