Active Citizenship

Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bannside, and to congratulate him on it. When it comes to active citizenship, few can surpass the noble Lord’s record in Northern Ireland as co-founder of the DUP, as First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and as a past Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. I am sure the noble Lord will be relieved to hear that he and I would not share precisely similar theological convictions on every matter, but I am sure that we do share a conviction that the Gospel speaks powerfully into the organising of human society, and the noble Lord has demonstrated that with his customary energy, persuasiveness and passion today. I know that the whole House looks forward to hearing his voice more frequently in the future.

To pray in this House each day for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is to attend to the ordering of human society as the place in which individuals and communities find their full potential, work for justice and experience the life abundant which the Gospel promises. This debate is an opportunity to ask what is the soil in which trust and the building of relationships can grow, what is the place of government in enabling civil society to flourish—a concept which is, of course, essentially organic and not official—what is the nature of the transfer of power from the centre to the local that is required for this, and how can government both national and local contribute to active citizenship, which is essentially an untidy, non-conformist and often passionate concept.

The Economic and Social Research Council’s report on faith-based voluntary action observed in 2006:

“It is accepted that individuals are more likely to get involved and act collectively when they have something in common. They may, for instance, live in the same area or have similar interests, or be motivated by shared identities, values and beliefs”.

It is clear that one of the most important motivators for civic and social participation is religious conviction. That is why at the opening of the new quinquennium of the General Synod of the Church of England next week the first major debate will be about the big society and about the contribution of the Church of England, with partners from other Christian denominations, other faiths and wider civil society, to making the big society work.

I shall be privileged to lead that debate and I am delighted to do so, because my home city of Leicester provides so many examples of the priceless work of active citizens. The FareShare project sponsored by my diocese distributes food from supermarkets which has come near to the ending of its shelf life. Through a network of 20 projects in the city and the county, some 2,000 people receive regular donations of high-quality food which would otherwise be thrown away. These are people—the homeless, single-parent families, asylum seekers, the mentally frail and confused—for whom the experience of hunger is not unfamiliar. The St Philip’s Centre in Leicester has worked for five years to develop relations between people of different faith communities in one of the most diverse cities in Britain. This is the hard labour of building dialogue groups, of developing meaningful interactions and trust between very different communities, which led to a strong show of solidarity against the English Defence League in its recent disruptive visit to the city.

Those who engage in civil society know that the capacity of citizens’ groups to develop their members’ skills, to mobilise volunteers, to provide staff and venues and to reach the most socially excluded groups requires committed resources beyond the fragile short-termism of the grant-making culture. They know also that such groups require good governance, excellent leadership and sufficient and appropriate infrastructure to enable outcomes to be sustained.

For that reason, it will be important for the House to hear from the Minister about this Government’s commitment to the strong intermediate institutions which a strong civil society requires. Not all such institutions will follow government policy slavishly. If the intermediate institutions required for the strengthening of civil society include the churches, the universities and the trade unions_, can Her Majesty’s Government really be sanguine about a strong civil society which may require the strengthening of such intermediate bodies over which the Government should not and could not seek to exercise final control?

Secondly, much has been made of the recruitment of many community organisers as part of the big society vision. More than 20 years ago, I attended a training course in the United States designed to enable potential organisers to understand the techniques and principles of organising established by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was clear that organising is about enabling local communities to find the muscle and the potential to confront powerful institutions which may control their lives and to secure a shift of power towards the local. How is that to be done by community organisers who are government-sponsored and may find themselves accountable to government policies and programmes?

Thirdly, if the Government’s consultation document, Supporting a Stronger Civil Society, leads to a higher expectation of the ability of corporate social responsibility, employer-supported volunteering, pro-bono work and business mentoring to underpin the voluntary sector, how will we avoid a more uneven distribution of social capital and the possibility of the big society becoming a postcode lottery in which areas with strong existing social bonds benefit the most?

It is upon the answer to that question that so much of the church’s enthusiasm for the big society will depend.