Schumacher and the Big Society – did Jonathon Porritt let Cameron off the hook?

 
Many thanks to Jonathon Porritt for his excellent piece on Radio 4 exploring the relationship between the ideas of EF Schumacher and the Tory’s Big Society (Archive on 4, Monday 27th June, 3pm). The newly released recordings of Schumacher at Findhorn provided some wonderful new insights into the wit and playfulness of this leading thinker. Revisiting Small is Beautiful showed how little has changed since the early 1970s and how much of EF Schumacher’s prophectic warnings have turned out to be right.  Bringing in contrasting views added to the picture. What seemed extreme to Mrs Thatcher in the 80s, is now, sadly, proving to be all too real. Allowing Wilfred Beckerman so much airtime was also good for balance, but to leave uncontested his assertion that air-quality has improved without making mention of CO2 concentrations, seemed to miss a trick.
 
But surely Schumacher’s biggest objection to the Big Society would have been in the idea of transferring so much responsibility to the private sector. Jonathon Porritt seemed to pull his punches here. Schumacher asserted that being successful is easy, when you have only one measure, profit, and only one stakeholder to serve, the owner/shareholder. Schumacher pointed out, with his legendary clarity, how such a single focus is entirely inappropriate to the needs of social institutions, where the drive for profit can be incompatible with the needs of a range of different stakeholders, as the example of Southern Cross and others is proving. And, while much work of the public sector has already been contracted to voluntary organisations, with some brilliant results, will it really work to ask people to provide the same services for nothing, when, exactly as Schumacher predicted, the current system allows the already rich to suck up more and more untaxed wealth, while the rest of us struggle to get by? Yes, there may be aspects of the Big Society that Schumacher would have approved, but, while profit and greed continue to be central to Tory thinking, I suspect his razor-sharp mind would have exposed the Big Society for the sham that it is. You can join in this discussion on our Linked in group.