When Oxfam published a tweet on inequalityin Britain on 6 June, it was only saying what thousands of local voluntary and community groups have been thinking for some time.
The Oxfam message was blunt and direct, but it chimed with the reality that is being experienced in communities across the country. It said that ‘Lifting the lid on austerity Britain reveals a perfect storm – and it’s forcing more and more people into poverty’.
It referred to zero hours contracts, high prices, benefit cuts, unemployment and child care costs. Actually, it could have produced a much longer list of the hardship and pain being felt in many neighbourhoods and families.
Oxfam was acting in accordance with a long tradition of British charities. Without charities and wider civil society being prepared to speak out and campaign, our society would be the poorer and major social change would never have occurred. Charities, faith groups and civil society organisations must always be ready to champion the impoverished and the marginalised; ready to speak up for those without a voice; and to challenge orthodoxy and contemporary public policy if this is the cause of hardship.
Oxfam is a large, internationally respected charity. It is important that its example is followed by other large national charities, and especially by small community based voluntary organisations. Groups that are rooted in their communities know better than most what is happening locally and what needs to be done to ameliorate local social problems, and they are best placed to produce evidence to support any case, which they have justification to make. It is also important that these smaller local organisations feel able to speak up and to campaign, and have the capacity and support where necessary to do so. Critically, they must not be intimidated, and resist any pressure not to speak out by public sector funders. And where such pressure seems overbearing, they should know that capacity and support can come from effective local infrastructure groups such as councils for voluntary service.
Now is the time for the community sector to demand
a seat at the tables that matter within localities
Local authorities, and in particular politicians and other bodies such as the police and NHS, should actively encourage local community and voluntary organisations to provide a voice for their members, beneficiaries and communities. They also need, in turn, to encourage and support their members, beneficiaries and communities to speak for themselves. Empowerment is essential.
The local and national representative bodies for charities, and the wider voluntary and community sector must be strong and argue against any government or legal challenge to the charity sector’s voice. Thankfully, the major national sector bodies are doing so in response to the legal challenge to Oxfam. In my view, they have to turn the volume up higher because the charity voice has to be heard even more loudly between now and next year’s general election. And local groups must follow suit, even if this creates a tension with local public sector funders.
The charity, voluntary and community sectors should be involved in local strategic planning and decision making. And yet, too many local authorities have dismantled the architecture of local strategic partnerships which provided some formal involvement, albeit often at the margins of total public sector spend and activity. Now is the time for the sector to demand a seat at the tables that matter within localities. At the same time, however, they have to protect and honour their individual missions and independence. Being involved does not have to mean becoming Trappists, nor endorsers of decisions with which one disagrees.
Many charities will wish to go further. I believe very strongly that the charity, voluntary and community sector, along with a wider coalition of civil society organisations such as faith groups and trade unions, must challenge not just immediate social and economic problems, and the policies that create them, but to be prepared to challenge the underlying structural and philosophical causes.