Being a student, I am lucky enough to have very flexible working hours, and I’ve put these to good use this autumn helping with Brian Paddick’s campaign to become the first Lib Dem Mayor of London.
Something I’ve noticed with creeping inevitability about the campaign is the similarities between myself and the other people turning up on Fridays – the vast majority of whom are male and pale like me.
This is symptomatic of a wider problem with volunteer organisations in general, and cuts to the heart of a political philosophical gulf between us and the tories: volunteers are people in a position to volunteer.
While conservatives were perfectly at home with the opinionated, tweeded philanthropists of the nineteenth century carving their personal beliefs on the only welfare system around – charity – it rightly incensed Liberals that the vulnerable and the poor could be denied society’s aid because the busybody holding the purse strings thought sex outside of marriage was a sin. This is the Big Society – volunteer run services – and it we have a long tradition of opposing it.
The fight that we fought to take the tweeded opinions out of welfare – by inventing and building the welfare state following the 1906 Liberal Landslide – was hard fought and a victory well won, and it is imperative that this coalition doesn’t undo that work*.
However, this market failure is a wider problem in the economic meritocracy in general – highlighted by unpaid internships, where people obtain valuable work experience by working for less than minimum wage (sorry, “volunteering.”)
It is also illustrated in hard up, volunteer run organisations like the Lib Dems – how many of our MPs are millionaires? Is that because they were able to fund their campaigns to the eyeballs and win, unlike the rest of our volunteer candidates? How many of our candidates were selected because they had the time (and money) to attend countless action days or even volunteer in the campaign office on Fridays?
It is, though, of far greater significance that this market failure also runs rampant over the rest of the economy. It is absolutely imperative that we protect the state delivery (or at least state commissioning with very strict compliance rules,) of public services so that the tweeded opinions don’t come out of the woodwork again, once the floodlights of democracy are removed from service delivery.
We must also come up with a solution to the internships problem, or risk pouring our meritocracy down the drain and reverting to a class-based society. This is also, incidentally, the philosophical basis for insisting that Free Schools adhere to national standards, like the national curriculum – to stop the vital provision of free education falling into the hands of someone who would abuse it by imposing on it their own personal view on truth.
If we are to create and sustain a society where people aren’t enslaved by their poverty, we need to do something about volunteers like me. I’m not sure what the solution is; clearly we can’t and shouldn’t ban volunteering, and destroy the many vital and good organisations that keep our country a safer and happier place, as well as unjustifiably tread on freedom’s well-squashed toes. I’m not sure what the answer is, but we mustn’t lose sight of this question – it challenges our very Liberalism.
* Note: I’m not saying I, or you, buy the Guardian‘s shrill rhetoric on “the cuts,” but I believe that it is widely held by charities and other apolitical organisations that this government is absolutely destroying disability benefits in this country (on the pretext that the tabloids think some disabled people are faking it) and we can’t and shouldn’t ignore that, or dismiss it as spin.
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The market failure is in Dynastic Capitalism, because people don’t start off equally, because in each new generation some receive billions in inheritance while others receive nothing.
Every UK-born UK ciizen ought to receive £10,000 UK Universal Inheritance on their 25th birthday. That would be Popular or Democratic Capitalism. Iintroduce it gradually, fiinanced by reform of Inheritance Tax, and give hope for a fairer country in the future, hopefully with an increasing amount as the years go by..
It is time people started seeing how things could be different from “Dynastic Capitalism as we know it”..
I am incensed, appauled and outraged by this article. I think you are completely misinformed and I think it is a gross disortion of the truth to imply that all tweed wearers are in favour of throwing disabled people onto bonfires. As a tweed wearer myself, I can say that as kindling the disabled tend to produce a lot of smoke and a smell not unlike a fried breakfast: they are much better deployed as insulation and draft-excluders for my trumble-down mansion, which leaves temperatures at a much more even level than open fires, produces much less of a smell (until they need replacing).
Not all tweed wearers are monsters, and plenty, like myself, have progressive views on these things.
@Dane so, just about enough to pay off half their student debt? And 9 years after people are consigned to the scrapheap by our two tier education system in which 40% fail to reach the (ever rising) minimum standard of 5 A*-Cs including English and Maths? I’m not sure that’s workable in the specific way you’ve put it. It also costs a good tenth of an NHS a year – which is a lot of money for a seemingly random giveaway.
@Toby my apologies, I got carried away with a figure of speech. I bear no real ill-will to the tweeded.
I think that to put volunteers in context, there is a wide range of them just as there is in society as a whole. Some are ideologically on the right but many are on the left.
As far as the Big Society is concerned I take the view that if it succeeds in generating more volunteers then that is likely to be a good thing. Because a volunteer is more likely to be a true believer in what he is doing, rather than a paid professional who in some cases is simply making a living has no love for the work they are doing.
However there are pluses and minuses in all this. Sometimes volunteers are simply cheap labour, sometimes they do not have the resources to do the job as well as it could be done (the Liberal Democrats are an example of that), sometimes such organisations have to accept funding from sources that might compromise their mission. Sometimes the volunteers may simply not exist as we have seen with the library closures.
The proponents of the Big Society say that it is not about cuts. The cuts are to do with the budget deficit reduction strategy and this is a separate issue. My objection to the big society is the lack of democracy, which is the problem with Free Schools and Academies and that is what Liberals should be objecting to.
Joe Jordan,
Will Hutton, Chair of the Work Foundation, suggested last January a Citizens Grant of £50,000 for every 21 year old – admittedly rather illiberally restricted as to use – financed by a capital gains tax on all homes when they are sold. That is not comparing like with like.
Nor is comparing Universal Inheritance with the running costs of the NHS, as you do. These come out of annual income.
The comparison should be with inherited wealth – the capital assets transferred from each generation to the next. Much of this is currently received in each new generation entirely free of tax, due to the scandalously unlimited but often not well known exemptions from Inheritance Tax for lifetime gifts and agricultural, business and shareholding assets.
The average wealth of every adult and child in the UK is of the order of £100,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. The proposed UK Universal Inheritance could be financed by a 10 per cent tax on all capital giving and bequeathing (40 per cent for capital giving to non-UK tax payers), except between partners, spouses and cohabiting siblings, deductible from a new progressive tax on total lifetime receipts of unearned inherited capital, including the Universal Inheritance amount, starting at the same rate.
You have to start gradually. It cannot be an instant solution, but only part of a longer term solution. So that no one year group loses out by too much, UK Universal Inheritance should be introduced at £2,000 for all UK-born UK citizens reaching 25 in 2012 up to £10,000 in 2016 and hopefully more thereafter – ideally up to three times the lowest annual tuition fees by 2020. It is of course not only those who have tuition fees to repay who would benefit.
“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea breakers
And sitting by desolate streams
World losers and world forsakers
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems”.
(Arthur O’Shaughnessy)
What kind of meritocracy is it when some inherit billions and others inherit nothing?
The real market failure is Dynastic Capitalism as we know it.
@Dane:
OK you can set the amount higher, fine, although again that costs even more. And a capital gains tax on house sales sounds like it would make house prices even higher as people hold out for more, to pay for the tax (although I’m loath to disagree with an economics professor on that matter, so I will accept the point for now!)
In terms of comparing like with like, what what?! Are you saying that a one off payment to a million people every year is a one off payment for the government? No. just no.
@Geoff:
I think you are unfair to suggest that “professionals” are less likely to be committed to the cause – people do often choose their career based on what they believe, especially if you can get paid for doing it! It’s true that there are some people in all industries in it for the money (this is capitalism’s way of making sure these industries actually happen, and is a good thing) but if you’re looking for someone who believes that libraries are awesome, I’d go ask the people behind the desk at your local one.
*wait what, not what what.
very good article Joe. The Market failure is that the market isnt free, and it isnt free because netiwehr the Tories notr Labour want it to be free. Labour see the market as a series of vested interests(which it is) incompetition to each other, and Lbaours view is that there guys(the Unions) are the group in the makret they will side with, even if that damages wider society and economy.
The Tories essentially like the current market system because theya re at the top of it, and feel it must be free and therefore doenst need to be ammended.
Liberals have always believed the market to be unfree, creatingt the welfare state was deisgned to provide a safety net and a minimum from which people could advance. Labour have endorsed the welfare state but unfortunatelty not done anything about social mobility, partly because they believe those who acjieve socil mobility will vote tory.
Lib Dems and Liberal Tories have always tried to make equality of opportunity key, from Beveridge creating the newest incarnation of the welfare state, to Tory eductaion secretray RAB Butler creating free secondary school eductaion.
There is a major problem now though, which is that labour and some sections of the Lib Dems have lost their radicalism, their ambition in relation to welfare.
When Beveridge created the welfare state, he said he wanted to abolish the five great evils, ignorance, squalor, idleness, hunger and disease. Thats a huge and radical ambition, not yet completely achieved, the Lib Dems must be prepared on welfare to be radical, to act as though there are no sacred cows, just as tghey must, in the other area of ouyr party’s tradition, be prpeared to ensure that there are no scared cows in the marketplace, that the market is opened to all, and the most innovatove and efficient survive.
This has not been happening for decades in industries such as finacnial services.
those twin areas represnet the lib dem tradition, we must be radical in both areas.
So the volunteers are mostly male and pale, because they are the people in a position to volunteer? Really the women in your age group never have as much free time as the men? I suspect there are other reasons why they are not volunteering which you should look into.
(This possibly applies to the “non-pale” too, although as I understand it, holders of UK citizenship living in London are still as a majority “pale” – although it may still be disproportionate in your team).
Joe Jordan,
I was opposing – not supporting – the idea of using capital gains tax on houses – which would be a very bad idea. I quite agree with you about the effect.
By comparing like with like, I meant comparing the fortunes people inherit – on which they should pay tax according to lifetime total receipts so that others can inherit who otherwise would not – with the zero amounts that the latter currently inherit. .
I am talking about introducing an Asset Welfare State to supplement the Income Welfare State. In order to create genuinely greater equality of opportunity and more of a meritocracy in a capitalist economy you have to tackle inequalities of inherited wealth, as above.
Having a bit of a financial cushion is helpful in life – and makes volunteering easier.
“Just no” to what?
Joe – one historical point. It’s a huge stereotyping exercise to lump all the 19th century philanthropists together as people who thought charity was the only answer. Many stepped in because there was no chance of anyone else doing so, and many had sensible ideas about empowering people to help themselves, individually or collectively.
I’ve seen a lot of the theory of the Big Society and the impact of actual government measures working until recently in a local authority on relations with the voluntary sector. The attempt to reduce the deficit speedily and setting this higher than anything else as a priority has led to deep cuts in voluntary sector funding and to a narrower attitude in local and national government to new ideas from the voluntary sector: they may be able to get help if they fit predetermined statutory priorities. Yes, the VCS may win some new contracts (though not as many as the private sector), but this may just mean being tied to delivering exactly what the local authority wants slightly cheaper than the local authority did, and many VCS organisations who win such contracts may deliver without using volunteers at all. Volunteering numbers have dropped over the last few years and there is no sign of this trend being reversed. I do think the BIg Society is a good Liberal idea at root and I do think Cameron was sincere about it, but it’s becoming little more than code for outsourcing. See my blog post in http://sibathehat.blogspot.com on the Big Society
I am an ardent supported of Land Value Tax (the pro’s and con’s are well aired)….
As far as ‘volunteerin’ goes it should only ever be “as well as” and not “instead of”….(My problem with Cameron’s “Big Society” is that it is, too often, the latter). However, a major drawback with ‘volunteering’ is the “Chief and Indian” syndrome; too many volunteers see themselves as ‘organisers’.
Great article Joe, though I’d pick you up on a couple of details
There are other factors “male and pale” bit of the Friday volunteers as Richard Swales suggest. I think when volunteering people cleave to their own “type”. It’s not that people from other ethnic communities, and women, do not volunteer – they certainly do. But they tend to do so with other members of their ethnic group or gender – though at least with the Friday volunteers there is a reasonable diversity of age (from what I have seen! This observation has its own implications, of course.
beware generalisations about 19th century history, as Simon points out. There were some very interesting (Liberal led) developments of municipal welfare (or equivalent) before the 1908 government
The point about historical generalisations goes on the David’s comment. Histroically Liberals favoured the free market as the best way of undermining the landed interests. In fact rigging markets always leads to a group of vested interests who tend to control the act of rigging, rather than the original supposed beneficiaries.
I’m not in favour of the big society, People volunteering to do good deeds is great. But when ever anyone tries to explain what the big society a refers to you get this muddle of ideas from all over the shop. It’s a buzz phrase and that’s all it is. When ever Cameron mentions it I suspect it may have something to do with not paying people to do the jobs they are trained for and hobbits or something.
volunteers are people in a position to volunteer.
By this argument, most volunteers should be unemployed. After all, they have more time on their hands than anyone else.
They are certainly in a better position to work in campaign offices on Fridays.
Joe – the majority of volunteers in the office may be white males, but they’re working on a campaign (for the London Assembly) where the vast majority of our candidates are female, and where minority candidates are also healthily represented. How does that equate to a lack of interest amongst non-white males in political volunteering/involvement ?
I do agree with your point about money and success in politics, though. For example – you will get nowhere on the London Assembly list unless you’re prepared to spend approx £4,000 merely on leaflets and a single mailing to party members. The party is rightly working to ensure we have better gender and ethnicity-based representation. A willingness to tackle the ‘class’ issue in our representation is much less evident, and a selection process which requires spending thousands to have even a half chance of getting onto the London Asasembly does not bode well for this changing.
Steve: the way you word your comments about the London selections is interesting because it implies that the only money a candidate spends on a selection is their own. Myself, I’d be happy with rules that allow large sums to be spent – as long as they also encourage candidates to be good fundraisers, e.g. by having a cap on the maximum individual donation. I don’t think it’s a surprise that we so often select people who then turn out to be bad or uninterested in fundraising when the ethos (and, to an extent, the rules) of selection is so anti-fundraising.
I should add that some of the GLA team this time are fantastic fundraisers. But I’ll cliam them as exceptions that prove the rule 🙂
Mark – I wasn’t implying that candidates only spend their own money, so apologies if it read that way.
However – in a discussion of ‘class’, it’s true that not only are people from more privileged backgrounds likely to have direct access to funds themselves, but they are also much more likely to know other people of means who can fund them too. So I’m not sure that a system of using other people’s money would necessarily change the profile of those involved with the party that much. Is it a surprise that we have a public school-educated Oxbridge ‘elite’ at the top of our party ?
I agree largely with the point you make about fundraising, but I believe your emphasis here is too narrow. I would argue that we don’t let our candidates actually CAMPAIGN in selections – of which fundraising is only a part. We need candidates with good campaigning instincts and ideas, yet we completely straight-jacket them with rules in the selection process so that everyone has the same pitifully few outlets to show their stuff. With only one piece of literature allowed for all candidates in a selection, for example, the only real differentiatior is quality of layout and access to funds (i.e. the ability to do slicker glossier leaflets, to post rather than hand-deliver, to mail all voters rather than a selection). So our current rules actually DO favour those who can get their hands on funds one way or another, albeit within the context of a very limited process full stop. Fundraising is just one aspect of being a good rounded campaigner, and in my view should never be the main focus of who or how we select. Some also draw a correlation between gender and fundraising as well (not a view I support personally).
Finally – we need credible candidates standing for election with a range of skills. Very often it’s more the candidate’s job to be an appealing, inspirational and motivating figure for members, in the knowledge that that is likely to lead to greater fundraising, than it is to necessarily be the one rattling the tin directly themselves. Paradoxically – the more likely we are to win an election, the larger the organisation we understandably have around it, and therefore the more likely we are to have other people taking the lead in fundraising. The importance of the candidate to directly run fundraising themselves arguably increases as our likelihood of winning the seat they’re going for decreases, because the ‘team’ become much smaller and the workload therefore much more concentrated. Just like candidates in less successful areas end up doing a lot more of the workload full stop – literature, delivery etc -than those in target seats do. And let’s not forget that fundraising is a means to the end of securing more votes, more volunteers and more support – and not an end in itself. We could put forward realms of candidates with privileged acquaintainces and the ability to shake money out of trees, but that’s of only limited use if they can’t inspire and motivate voters and volunteers and connect with the electorate. We need to be selecting rounded candidates that reflect the broad range of campaigning skills required, including but not predominantly fundraising. And who reflect society itself as well, including class. We shouldn’t strive to be the political wing of Foxtons estate agents.
Basically you have to enthuse people. Stay in the EU? Join the Euro? I don’t think so! Until we leave the EU, the LibDem party is branded with it. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/8964332/If-the-euro-is-saved-then-Britain-should-quit-the-EU-and-say-good-riddance.html (sent to me via the Liberal Party members network).
Dane Clouston…. Posted 19th December 2011 at 2:16 pm …………..Basically you have to enthuse people. Stay in the EU? Join the Euro? I don’t think so! Until we leave the EU, the LibDem party is branded with it…….
Enthuse people? Which people? Those who believe we should leave Europe already have a home; it’s called the Tory party (and the right of that party to be more specific) I am pleased to be ‘branded with it: I am, or rather was, a LibDem.The current disasterous state of the party is not because we stuck to our core beliefs but because we abandoned them.
The ‘Good Riddance’ article takes us to our past not our future. ….” over centuries this country has made her living (and endured much of her dying) around the world”…19th Century speak.
Talk of Asian/US markets are great but what will we sell them? We manufacture little that they cannot make cheaper than us; that’s the reason that, although our exports to e.g. China have increased, our imports have increased by far more and the trade inbalance has widened.
In march 2011 our “export gap” was £19.8bn with China, £3.2bn with India, and £1.8bn with both Russia and Brazil. If you have a ‘magic wand’ to create a ‘turnaround scenario’ please share it…..
increased.Chinese/;e
‘. There is every prospect of being able to negotiate favoured access, not least because we are their largest export market.
More fundamentally,
Steve: I agree about teamwork’s importance. Good candidates build teams who fundraise, campaign and more. Selection rules should put those skills to the test.
“jason”
A lot more people want to leave the EU than just the right wing of the Conservative Party.
Take this – from the ComRes opinion poll for The Independent on Sunday, Dec 11: “The Euro crisis provides an ideal opportunity for Britain to leave the EU altogether: Agree: 52%; Disagree: 26%; Don’t know: 22%. Conservative voters (58%) are more likely than Labour (45%) or Lib Dem voters (48%) to agree.”
LibDems and other EU-fanatics delude themselves when they label “right wing” all those who want the UK to leave the EU. What about the 48 per cent of LibDem voters who want to leave. How long are they going to remain LibDem voters?
Dane (may I call you Dane)…
Considering the constant barrage of anti-European rhetotic from most of the media one could well believe that there are NO positives in belonging to the EU. Strange then that almost all our continental neighbours don’t have the same phobia.
As for the ‘poll’…If, after days of “Rule Britania” and “British Bulldog” headlines following Cameron’s “veto”, only half of those polled wanted to withdraw I take that as a positive. Those who want to leave the EU usually complain about EU regulations and the CAP and yet seem to support a ‘Swiss approach’ to the EU; perhaps they should examine the Swiss farming subsidy and the fact that it adheres to almost all EU regulations.
That aside please explain what our sudden surge of exports into Asia/ US will consist of?
“jason”
Yes, but only a quarter wanted to stay in, and another quarter didn’t know. Not really a basis for LibDem popularity!
Our balance of payments will adjust because we have our own currency.
Whatever the positives in belonging to the Euro, most of us would prefer to rule ourselves from Westminster instead of being ruled by a lot of overpaid, under taxed bureaucrats in Brussels who cannot see that they are in the process of ruining the rest of us. .The Euro now to us is as the Gold Standard to the 1930’s. Dangerously deflationary. It was cynically wicked or madness to create a currency before you have a country, and most of us do not want a country called Europe. Liberals saw that. LibDems did not.
Dane, I can think of a few other policies that me might drop or change if opinion polls are our sole guide. Have you ever wondered why so many people volunteer their spare time for a political party? It’s because of values and beliefs. For a lot of Lib Dems, including me, belief in the basic rightness of the EU, for all its flaws is fundamental. It’s one of the reasons why so much of my spare time and cash goes into the party. If most of the country don’t agree, then we need to keep fighting. And I’m not taking political advice from the Telegraph, which wants to destroy much e;lse that I believe in, and would like theLIb Dems to be wiped out entirely. This is what real politics is about.
Matthew,
I very well understand why people volunteer their time for a political party, having done so myself.
You seem to have a sort of quasi religious belief in the” basic rightness of the EU”. I see it as a thoroughly flawed and undemocratic organisation.
I went into politics in the 1960’s in Newbury because I wanted to make ours a fairer country in a cooperative international context – not to merge our country with the whole of Europe, .
I want to get rid of Dynastic Capitalism in this country – first, for others to follow – by introducing Universal Inheritance for all UK-born UK citizens at 25. The EU would see that as discrimination against citizens of other European countries. There is a need, in countries as elsewhere, for an evolutionary diversity rather than uniformity..
One more comment as this thread goes wildly off topic. My belief in the EU as being basically a sound idea rests on the assumption that we are too interconnected for the medium sized and small nations that make up Europe to go it alone. There are hundreds of examples of where the EU has made our lives better. Indeed most Eurosceptics don’t want to abolish it, merely free-ride off it. I don’t accept that it is undemocratic either. It is governed, more than anything else, by the heads of state, democratically elected; its constitution has been ratified at every stage by democratic legislatures. Of course if you take part in a wider pooling of sovereignty you have to accept restrictions – such as those that the US constitution imposes on its member states. The current balance in the EU may be wrong. Many of its policies may be flawed. But leaving it would be barmy.
Matthew
The fact that countries are interconnected, as they are, is not a reason for merging into one bureaucratic country called the United States of Europe. There must be a place for countries independent of huge blocs.
The USA is not a good example of the internal empathy necessary to make a country fairer. Nor would be the United States of Europe .The UK could be, and could lead the world – as it did with parliamentary democracy, privatisation and council house sales, for example – in spreading more widely in each generation the private ownership of wealth .
To come back to the topic, that is what I see as being part of a Big, or Good, Society. The introduction of Liberal Democratic Capitalism instead of traditional conservative Dynastic Capitalism, which is an outdated hangover from Feudalism totally incompatible with greater equality of opportunity in a fairer country.