Labour's
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CITIZENSHIP AND THE RESPONSIBLE SOCIETY |
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Defining citizenship My constituent’s wisdom chimes strongly with a significant, yet simple, theme in political philosophy: that of citizenship. A leading contribution to post-war debate was Professor T H Marshall’s 1949 lecture on citizenship. In a key passage, he stated:
‘Citizenship is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed.’
Marshall formulated his ideas in the post-war years when the first ever majority Labour Government was expanding the practical realities of citizenship through its construction of the modern welfare state. He distinguished three elements of citizenship: civil, political and social.
21st century citizens Today, citizenship remains a crucial and provocative concept for a range of modern questions. Exactly 60 years on from Professor Marshall’s lecture, we see a nation very different from that of the early post-war period. In contrast to unity and solidarity, partly forged out of the battles against Hitler, there is today more individualism, more diversity in our population in the wake of substantial immigration. There is also a decline in those institutions that created solidarity, whether large industries such as coalmines, steelworks and factories, or church and mass political parties. So there is less shared interest and less shared history. And globalisation weakens ties between company and community, when shareholder interests point in different geographical directions. These factors challenge the reality of citizenship and therefore make it more important to foster.
This raises a central issue for a democracy: what are the fundamental rights and responsibilities of citizens? The question of the balance between these two is the key test. Often, the debate is approached narrowly – too narrowly. Depending on political persuasion, the emphasis is placed solely on responsibility or rights. British politics has been weakened by the Left’s almost exclusive focus on rights, at least in recent decades (in contrast to a more traditional and equal emphasis on duty, whether as a member of the friendly society, the union or the co-op), and also by the Right’s equally narrow emphasis on duty, turning its back on an earlier ‘one nation’ tradition.
It is therefore the issue of rights and responsibilities – the balance between them, and the implications for the state and other institutions – that offers one of the most fruitful ways of advancing debate. To focus on either one without the other is crass, too narrow, merely partisan and, in practical terms, leads up a policy cul-de-sac. But a focus on both rights and responsibilities provides a useful entrée into, and a moral foundation stone for, some of the key policy questions that Britain faces today. These include employment, child maintenance, health care and family. It also provides a template for defining and evaluating outcomes.
Individual responsibility
The concept of citizenship not only raises important
issues about social rights and responsibilities. We also need to
recognise that citizens may also be the leaders of powerful
organisations in both the public and private sectors. Talk of
responsibility is sometimes used as a stick to threaten the poor,
but responsibility also focuses attention on some of the most
powerful in the land. Citizens retain responsibilities in all walks
of life, as friends, neighbours, community leaders, politicians,
bankers or business leaders.
The responsible nation should be one that fosters a
strong sense of responsibility in the country as a whole, whether in
government itself, the private sector, communities, families or
individuals. It recognises that we grow stronger if we respect
mutual rights and responsibilities and if there is a strong
egalitarian ethic that cherishes, but also holds to account, each
and every citizen.
Britain at its best manifests many of these
characteristics. The National Health Service, par excellence, is
based on this ethic and understanding. Daily life in our cities,
towns and villages witness numerous examples of responsibility. The
service provided by hundreds of thousands of citizens in their role
as councillors, school governors and volunteers is a testament to
this strong ethic in practice. Many companies have both corporate
social responsibility and employment policies that recognise
work-family issues.
Moreover, there is a huge silent majority of families
where parents quietly bring up their children so well, a
responsibility that no longer ends when the child is 15 or 16 but
lasts so much longer. Millions of others, the so-called informal
carers, provide service to those with disabilities and serious
frailty, such as dementia, simply through love and a strong sense of
duty. Given the strength of the demographic tide, with so many more
citizens living into their 80s and 90s, there is certainly more care
provided by the modern family than ever before in history. So much
for the absurdity of the charge that we are a ‘broken Britain’.
But there is another side to the balance sheet.
There is so much more we need to do to promote a sense of
responsibility in our society and our economy. Here we consider two
very different examples: the first concerns those children, often
brought up in the most casual way, who then create a climate of fear
and anxiety in their communities. Our second example concerns the
opposite end of the economic spectrum, the irresponsibility of
powerful financial organisations that almost brought this country to
its knees. A revolution in family life
There is always the danger of being sanguine about
the past when it comes to families and children, looking for that
golden age that never existed. There are, however, serious
questions about the welfare of some children and the consequent
impact of dysfunctional families on communities. A revolution
affecting family life in Britain has created a diversity of family
forms and it is not a bloodless revolution.
There are too many children being brought up in
families which are uncaring and chaotic, where there is no father
figure. Indeed there are some families where men, casual boyfriend
figures, pass through families and sometimes abuse children. As
recent grim cases remind us, children are more likely to be murdered
in these family circumstances than by strangers. There are also
many more children who are the victims of family breakdown, the
often unseen victims of mothers and fathers at war with one
another. This is an inconvenient truth about the social revolution
that has engulfed many families.
Some of these children will face harmful impacts on
their socialisation, their educational attainment and consequently
their future life chances. Labour has done much, from the Sure
Start initiative to better financial support. However, there is a
need for some fresh thinking. First, we must emphasise that the
frontline of defence against insecure childhoods must be the
promotion of the strong family. How do we achieve this? And how do
we ensure that social and benefit programmes nurture and support,
rather than discourage, responsible parents? Second, we must ensure
that public expenditure is used to most effect, pooling portions of
departmental budgets in pursuit of agreed priorities, such as
promoting parental responsibility and cutting crime, raising fitness
levels and tackling obesity Spending money effectively requires a
strong focus on objectives, not dull allegiance to Whitehall
configuration.
The grimmer consequences of our difficulty in facing
these questions is seen in too many communities. Significant
numbers of young people, mainly boys but sometimes girls, are
attracted to gangs, others recruited against their will. Some find
greater friendship and self-esteem under their hoods, in the gang,
than in family or school. When I first heard it, the term ‘feral
children’ offended me, but with so many children, some very young,
out late at night, in bad company and often carrying knives, who
have no sense of responsibility to the wider community – far from it
– there is prevalent in too many of our communities a social disease
that we must recognise.
The consequence for the wider neighbourhood is often
a sense of unease at best and fear at worst, in the streets and in
some shopping centres. But there is also a strong and heartfelt
sense of anger. One honest constituent said ‘we need to reclaim the
streets’. He is right. While some liberal commentators decry the
growth of a surveillance society and recite with horror the growing
number of CCTVs, many of our constituents demand more protection,
more CCTVs and therefore, of course, more liberty for themselves and
their families to come and go in peace, free from gangs spitting and
shouting, intimidating and mugging. I have heard the experience of
the victims of assault – the verbal abuse of elderly folk, the fear
of going out after dark or of the knife to the throat. I have heard
enough of this to be exasperated by the narrow and perverse
propaganda about ‘liberty’ that affects public debate. We need a
more holistic approach to liberty and freedom, one that recognises
that extreme antisocial behaviour can make communities far from free
for the majority. The current banking crisis
Let us consider a very different example of the need
to build responsibility into our nation. It has been precipitated
by the current banking crisis, which for years to come will have a
devastating impact on public spending and therefore the development
of public policy. This presents a more general challenge to the
party. A key building block for New Labour was the need to be clear about ends (values) while being tough-minded about means and mechanisms. So we were critical of a welfare state that had become too dominated by vested interests, including those of employees and professionals. We were intolerant of inertia, poor quality and bad performance. We therefore challenged key institutions, such as unions, councils and schools. Rightly so.
And we were also right in recognising the strength, enterprise and innovation that the market and competition deliver. We abandoned the old Clause IV. But rather than subject the market to the same objective scrutiny that we brought to bear on other institutions, we were at best uncritical, at worst rather awestruck, sometimes craven.
The most obvious example now is that of financial services and banks, but I do not believe it is the only one. In some business sectors there was poor delivery on research and development, a lack of willingness to take skills seriously. We tended to treat these issues with kid gloves. And we went through a phase where we rather assumed that, faced with a difficult issue in public policy (such as welfare reform), we simply had to call in the right businessman/woman to sort it out.
That confidence, always in truth a blind spot, has crumbled away with the financial crisis. There has been a fundamental failure to regulate effectively and to apply the same rigour to the banking system that we have applied to other institutions. Now the question is how to refashion financial services. And here we hit a block that must be overcome. Notwithstanding the extraordinary financial sums that have been pumped into the banking sector, and also colossal public anger, we still see a sector reluctant to admit responsibility or offer an apology, stubborn in its opposition to change. It seems determined to maintain bonuses and hell-bent on restoring a sector more or less as it was pre-crunch.
Restructuring the system A key test for the government in the months before the election, therefore, is to face down this narrow self-interest, for the sake of the wider public interest, and to structure a banking system that meets the needs of the whole British economy, not least manufacturing, large and small businesses alike and the day-to-day requirements of citizens who need a banking system they can trust – as deposit holders, savers and mortgagors.
Some clear guidelines have emerged from debate. The first is to draw a distinction between banks that serve practical and easily-understood purposes, for companies and citizens, and those that seek to play in global financial casinos. The former must be regulated scrupulously and be subject to state guarantees. The latter must be the sole responsibility of their shareholders and never again that of the world’s taxpayers.
Second, we require diverse forms of ownership and, in achieving this, Britain must draw on a rich tradition of mutuality and cooperation. In the 1980s and 1990s, the building societies, established largely in the 19th century to enable ordinary citizens to access decent housing, became victims of privatisation mania, the lure of quick profit over principle. For a period, the new banks pursued profitability and lavish bonuses. In contempt of the cautious ways of the mutuals (lending against savings held) they entered global financial markets with all the enthusiasm and carelessness of the 18 year old entering a bar legally for the first time. And for a period, it seemed they could do no wrong.
We now know, all too well, the end of that particular story. Abbey, the first building society to demutualise, with an ambition to become a great British bank, is now owned by Santander, the Spanish company who also own Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley. Others were swallowed up by larger British banks, now in serious trouble. Northern Rock, once a proud north-east England mutual, is now nationalised. The fortunes of these former building societies were intimately linked to the more general bankers’ folly which the public is now, all too expensively, having to sort out. A proud heritage, prudent finance and integrity: all trashed in just a few months.
So one of the new dividing lines in British politics should be between those who wish to see a financial system that largely resembles the one before the crash, and a progressive alternative based on sensible and responsible banking structures and a strong role for mutuals. One powerful move would be the remutualisation of Northern Rock – a good signal to the north-east of England, a clear message that lessons have been learned and that Labour fully backs the renaissance of cooperation and mutuality.
In an era where ties of obligations – and therefore a sense of citizenship – have been undermined, we cannot take for granted a common ethic that underpins and enriches society and economy. Social trends threaten children and global economic developments threaten corporate responsibility. The task for Labour, always a party with a strong morality, is to re-establish values that still command public respect through a citizenship that recognises both rights and responsibilities. |
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