atkison, d. (1994). the common sense of community. demos, london

The Common Sense of CommunityDick Atkinson

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Acknowledgements

The ideas and suggestions contained in this book have been developed

slowly as a result of practical experience and many conversations over

a thirty year period. As a consequence I am indebted to many people.

Some of these live in Balsall Heath. They include Anita Halliday,Val

Hart, Steve Ball, Ted Wright, Wally Rose, Pat Preistman, Tapshum

Patni, Sheila Dunn, Kay Brazier, Raja Amin and Yoseph Qamar.

Others come from elsewhere in Birmingham, for example, Chris

Wadhams, Ian Cuthbert, Pat Conaty, Ian Morrison, Jim Amos, Pat

Robinson, Tim Brighouse, Chris Jones and John Newing.

Yet others come from across the UK and abroad. They include John

Rennie, Melanie Phillips, Peter Brinson, Anthony Coombs MP, Alan

Howarth MP, Frank Field MP, Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown, Amitai Etzioni

and others too numerous to mention.

These people are responsible for the best of the book’s ideas which

are expressed more coherently as a result of excellent editorial com-

ment by Charles Grant of the Economist. The mistakes and inconsis-

tencies which remain are mine.

This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess

Introduction 1

The Importance of Self-Reliance 4

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society 8

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up 13

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government 31

A New Paradigm 41

The Third Millennium 49

Bibliography 51

Contents


The term community is on many lips today. Across Britain people are

worrying as never before about the state of their streets and communi-

ties. There is a feeling that they have been weakened not only by mar-

ket forces and technological change but also by the policies of successive

governments. Many, including politicians of both left and right, are

concerned about the lack of sufficiently robust local institutions close

at hand for most citizens. Many also fear that the corollary of weak

communities is that our belief in common values and our sense of

responsibility for each other has atrophied.

While most citizens see these issues in very practical ways, for exam-

ple in relation to litter-free and safe streets, good schools and a sense of

neighbourhood, their concerns have been matched by the work of a

new school of philosophers and political theorists. For nearly 20 years

the ‘communitarians’ have been developing a body of theory and poli-

cies that show how even in the most economically advanced and atom-

ised societies, communities can be strengthened and citizens encouraged

to take a greater responsibility for their own lives and for the quality of

the society in which they live. On the other side of the Atlantic theoret-

ical arguments which call into question an overly narrow liberalism

have been developed by Michael Sandel, Alastair MacIntyre, Robert

Bellah and Michael Walzer, while the practical political implications

have been developed by Amitai Etzioni, William Galston and Mary-

Ann Glendon. Together these now represent a formidable body of

Demos 1

Introduction


analysis and argument, whose implications have yet to be fully appreci-

ated by any of the British political parties.

This book aims to bridge these two strands – the one about every-

day life, and the other about political theory – by suggesting some

practical guidelines for strengthening communities and neighbour-

hoods as we approach the third millennium.

It would be wrong to despair or panic; if we look carefully it is not hard

to see the signs of revitalisation taking place even in the most depressed

cities. And whenever anyone seeks to take a snapshot of voluntary activ-

ity, whether in an inner city housing estate or a Home Counties town (as

in Richard Hoggart’s recent study of Farnham), they uncover a remark-

ably complex, vibrant life of mutual help and civic activity.

This document identifies some of the good practices and urges a

series of proposals which would result in more confident and coherent

communities. It argues in a series of steps, showing how families can

be given a greater degree of security and strength, and suggesting how

the various institutions of school, housing, policing and public spaces

can work in tandem. It shows how, in place of the old model of a local

authority as a monopolist of power, we can build networks and clusters

of institutions – collaborating groups of self-governing institutions –

that can help communities cohere, and give them fresh purpose and

pride. Above all it aims to show the common sense of community and

its practical relevance to solving everyday problems of city life.

Birmingham’s history encapsulates the challenge. In the 1790s,

Matthew Boulton’s Birmingham-based company harnessed and sold

the power of steam to Britain and the world, thus creating the basis for

the industrial revolution. In the 1890s, the rapidly expanding indus-

trial town of Birmingham was granted the status of City by Queen

Victoria, and Joseph Chamberlain encouraged the building of sewers,

schools, colleges and the Town Hall. Today, in the 1990s, this pioneer-

ing era has long gone, and with it many of the old certainties of life,

which gave coherence and purpose to neighbourhoods and communi-

ties. Only relics of the industrial past remain; decayed buildings and

outmoded institutions and attitudes which clutter the environmental

and social landscape.

2 Demos

The Common Sense of Community


Although, as we shall see, many local initiatives are beginning to put

in place the institutions appropriate for a post-industrial city, it has

taken some time for policy-makers to get the problem clearly into focus.

A decade ago, commentators identified the inner areas of the major

cities as the source of the problem. Then, it became clear that the munic-

ipally designed outer ring estate also housed an array of intractable ills.

Today, it is possible to argue that the problem is endemic to urban life,

associated not only with economic decline but also with fear of vio-

lence and the social indifference.

This book seeks to go a step further, setting out the principles and

practices which can serve to solve the problem and give people the

confidence to enter a new millennium with the same energy and com-

mitment which motivated the pioneers of the industrial past.

Demos 3

Introduction


Community developmentExactly 20 years ago Erich Schumacher published his classic book,

Small is Beautiful (1974). His central message has not dated:

Attempts to help neighbourhoods, whether in the Third World or

the urban neighbourhoods of the industrialised world will fail, how-

ever well funded, if they do not directly involve those they are designed

to assist. The point is a simple, common sense one. Yet, the recent

history of urban policy in the UK has been based on almost contrary

principles. Much of the structure of the modern state has been shaped

4 Demos

The Importance of Self-Reliance

“The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of usefulknowledge. … Nothing becomes truly ‘one’s own’ except onthe basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice. …Give a man afish, as the saying goes, and you help him a little bit for a veryshort while; teach him the art of fishing, and he can helphimself for all his life. On a higher level: supply him withfishing tackle; this will cost you a good deal of money, andthe result remains doubtful; but even if fruitful, the man’scontinuing livelihood will still be dependent upon you forreplacements. But teach him to make his own fishing tackleand you have helped him to become not only self-supporting, but also self-reliant and independent…”


by a steady nationalisation of power. Instead of local or regional health

services we have a national health service. Instead of local agencies

with some discretion over welfare we have national, standardised sys-

tems that find it easier to distribute resources than to provide the

means for self-reliance. And, increasingly, instead of local government

we have agencies working under contract for Whitehall. Meanwhile at

local level, town halls have tended to seek to monopolise their remain-

ing power rather than to share it.

Much the same is true of the multitude of schemes specifically

directed to the cities. Successive waves of urban initiatives, Urban Aid,

Inner City Partnership, City Challenge even Integrated Regional

offices and Single Regeneration Budgets and City Pride, have all made

crucial mistakes. First they have been primarily aimed at inner city

areas. They have not recognised that it is the very nature and organisa-

tion of urban life which has become the problem.

Second, while the aid has helped to finance various new projects,

it has not resulted in mainstream budgets being used in fresh ways.

Third, hardware and buildings have been emphasised at the expense

of the softer foundations of community. Indeed the hardware has

often destroyed the software as when new roads have sliced through

neighbourhoods.

Finally,while schemes have often given lip service to consultation with

local people their views have not been seriously taken into account.

While many useful things have been done ‘for’people, much less has been

done ‘with’ or ‘by’ them. People have rarely been enabled to participate.

These errors would be more understandable if there was evidence

that the principles of self-reliance do not work and if the top-down

approach had visibly solved the problems of cities. But this has not

been the case. Instead it sometimes seems as if initiatives have multi-

plied in inverse proportion to their effectiveness.

Yet in other areas of life, self-reliance has become a basic principle.

Far from being a utopian, ‘soft’ option, it has come to be seen as a far

more effective way of organising people’s energies and their capacity to

act as problem solvers than over-dependence on the wisdom and

knowledge of civil servants and elected officials.

Demos 5



Self-reliance and the modern business organisation

To see this, one need look no further than the modern business. In

recent years much has been made of the importation of business prac-

tices into government and charity. But few policy-makers have quite

grasped just how much the principle of self-reliance has become cen-

tral to modern business, exercised at every level of the modern busi-

ness organisation, not just at its apex. In his important books, The Age

of Unreason and The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy describes the

industrial business as being shaped like a pyramid, with manual work-

ers at the base of the pyramid, receiving and obeying instructions from

a remote head office at the apex of the pyramid. Once, the educated

elite who staff head office might have been thrusting and entrepre-

neurial in spirit and attitude. Over time, however, they became com-

placent, immune to change, and rule bound. Compared with their

modern equivalents in Japan and America, they became uncompeti-

tive, and faced closure, unless they were prepared to undergo dramatic

change in form, style and attitude.

From being shaped like a pyramid, those organisations which

underwent this change have come to resemble a maypole, with a slim,

charismatic head office. The new senior managers devolve much of

the day to day decision taking process to semi-autonomous units who

thus hold the different ribbons of the maypole. Those who hold these

ribbons have a similar stake and say in the enterprise as those at the

apex. The modern firm which makes this essential but painful change

is characterised by key features:

� It has undone the cumbersome rules and regulations of its

previously large head office. It has written innovation into its

new modus operandi.� It employs fresh, visionary, senior managers and often

deploys these out to a carefully redesigned factory floor in

order to lead small, semi or fully autonomous teams of

enthusiastic staff.� It expects these teams to take the initiative and tell head

office how to resource them rather than awaiting orders.

6 Demos



� In place of the once dependent, uneducated workforce, it

employs fewer, but educated, skilled, self-motivating people

who work ‘with’ not ‘for’ senior managers. It believes in

‘workers control’, except that the modern ‘worker’ works by

brain as well as by hand and is, in part, a manager.� Because the customer is seen as sovereign, great efforts are

made to achieve a consistently high quality product and

method of production.

The maypole is bound by a common set of values, ideas which moti-

vate all who associate together within the company. And within each

part of the company the aim is to foster self-reliance, autonomy and

responsibility. The distinction between the pyramid and maypole like

organisation is pictured in Fig 1.

Clearly many businesses do not live up to this ideal. Many remain

hierarchical and slow to adapt and most maintain tight central control

over some parameters – particularly finance. But the ideal remains no

less important for that, with obvious implications for other areas of

social life.

Demos 7


Figure 1


At first only private enterprises were forced by competition to move

from model A to B. By contrast public organisations were slow to fol-

low suit, protected by their monopolies and insulated from customer

and community dissatisfaction. They could afford to remain compla-

cent, ineffective and ignore the needs of their dependent customers.

Gradually, however, governments have been forced to realise that they

cannot allow this situation to prevail.

The shift to new forms of government has been taking place across

the world for some time. Many countries in Europe already have complex

arrangements mixing government purchase of services and their provi-

sion by smaller voluntary bodies, often associated with the church.

New Zealand and Australia have also seen radical experiments in gov-

ernment. In ‘Reinventing Government,’ David Osborne and Ted Gaebler

have synthesised some of these experiences. They show how the pyra-

mid-like, collectivist governments of the industrial age came to both steer

and row. That is, they tried to set aims and goals for people and agencies

to follow and to run the agencies to realise their aims. In coming to per-

form both tasks they not only left the productive potential of most people

out of their equation, but also failed to perform either task very well.

To be effective, both Central and Local Government have learned

that they must slough off the agencies and services which they have

attempted to provide for people and instead enable independent

initiative to flourish. Such initiative can take the form of either private

8 Demos

The Role of Governmentin Industrial and Post-Industrial Society


enterprise or publicly funded but self-governing agencies, such as exec-

utive agencies, hospitals, housing associations and schools. Delegating

the rowing function to autonomous, non-governmental agencies does

not entail ‘privatisation.’ It merely means giving the initiative and

finances for the provision of government approved services to those

self-governing agencies which have the incentive to deliver a good

product to the specifications which government lays down.

Government may delegate the task of rowing,but it must choose which

services are required and to what quality, and it must then raise taxes to

pay for them. It can’t delegate the task of ‘governance’. This is the special,

irreducible, task of government. It must set the style and shape of its coun-

try or town. Once freed from the task of rowing, a slimmer, higher-

minded government can concentrate on the job which only it can do, that

of reflecting, coordinating and steering the hopes, aspirations and priori-

ties of self-reliant citizens and self-governing private and public agencies.

Charity, responsibility and valueSometimes policies such as these are justified solely in instrumental

terms – as cheaper, more efficient solutions to the delivery of particular

services. But self-reliance is directionless unless provided with a goal to

aim for. On its own, it is a loose cannon able to fire only in random

directions.An overarching set of values is needed which makes sense of

it. Values give it point and purpose. For St Paul, charity was the basic

value from which all human relations were constructed and which suf-

fused and breathed life into home, work, neighbourhood and church.

However, this traditional concept of charity suffered in the wake of

the industrial revolution.Although the 19th century saw a great flower-

ing of charity and self-help organisations in schooling, retailing and

health, the horrors of the dark satanic mill and mine ultimately encour-

aged people to call on the state to take on the main responsibilities

for welfare and care. A more democratic culture came to see charity as

at best inefficient and parochial and, at worst, as demeaning to the

recipient. Local and central government came to influence most areas

of social life until little stood between the individual and the state.

Charity and a sense of responsibility became peripheral concepts.

Demos 9

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society


The unintended destructive potential of this change was not at first

apparent.Yet, gradually, it caused the state to take on from church, fam-

ily and neighbour the responsibility for the care of others and absolved

them from the need to take control of their lives.

Although the vital functions of values and self-reliance have been

diminished in modern neighbourhoods the human impulses to volun-

tary and charitable action have remained strong. Even in a predomi-

nantly secular culture there is still a strong base of moral motivations,

a desire to be connected and contribute that is not captured by much

of the language of modern policy – whether that of ‘consumers’ or of

‘rights’. If it means nothing else, charity today can encompass that

sense of being part of a larger whole, which brings in its wake compas-

sion, responsibility and mutuality, the basic ethical foundations of any

community.

The building blocks of self-reliance

Self-reliance starts at home, and the basic building block of commu-

nity for most people is the family, in all its forms. Every parent wants

the very best for their child, even if they do not know how to go about

helping it to maximise its life chances and even if the home circum-

stances are such that they receive little or no support from relatives or

neighbours. Moreover it is around families that many of the building

blocks of community are formed: networks of child-minders, volun-

tary nurseries and playgroups, and the active engagement of an older

generation in care for the young in such settings as scouts, guides,

supplementary schools, and leisure activities.

The second building block is a sense of place. For many decades this

seemed to be in retreat because of a more mobile, disconnected cul-

ture. But in recent years most evidence suggests that mobility has

been in decline. When people do move it is usually within a two to

three mile radius. Various factors are tending to root people more in a

post-industrial economy. Dual-earner couples (now nearly two-thirds

of all households) find it harder to move, as do those suffering from

negative equity. New technologies make it easier to find a better balance

between work and home. And there is clear evidence of mounting

10 Demos



concern for the quality of the local environment, focused on every-

thing from high streets to air quality.

There are many institutions that give expression to this sense of

place. Most areas have a residents’ association. They are more success-

ful when they have the muscle to achieve modest improvements, say,

in street lighting or in gaining a pedestrian crossing on a dangerous

road. Some residents’ associations have developed into neighbourhood

watch schemes. There are also few towns which do not have a number

of youth and sports clubs. Like play groups, adventure playgrounds,

urban farms and advice bureaux, these take time, skill and finance.

Most towns can boast of one or two significant voluntary agencies

which give expression to this sense of place. Birmingham has several.

One of the oldest is the Birmingham Settlement which has made a long

term and significant contribution to the social and economic stability

and growth of the Newtown area. The St Peter’s Urban Village building

in Saltley once housed a large teacher training college. It is now crammed

with local enterprises and devolved sections of city departments and is

managed by a local trust which bought the college and runs it as a kind

of mini-town hall for the area – an interesting reversal of the voluntary

sector’s traditional subservience to the local authority.

Another example is St Paul’s Community Project which grew up in

the Balsall Heath area of the city. It runs a charitable secondary school,

nursery centre, farm, enterprise and community center and acts as the

village hall, village green and focal point for the surrounding neigh-

bourhood. It is significant for three reasons:

First, it is the size of many local authority institutions, yet is an inde-

pendent charity which is governed by parents and other residents. The

pride which comes from ownership is tangible.

Second, its school takes rejects from the large local authority

schools. Without St Paul’s they would roam the streets, take no GCSEs

and graduate only with a certificate in failure. At St Paul’s, they not

only take GCSEs but, in 1993, outperformed all but 6 out of the city’s

70 secondary schools in the GCSE league tables.

Third,St Paul’s has only been able to thrive by linking with all the other

agencies, residents’ and religious associations in the neighbourhood.

Demos 11

The Role of Government in Industrial and Post-Industrial Society


These links gave rise to a neighbourhood forum which has helped the

whole area to lift itself from the ‘bottom up’ in a dramatic and com-

pelling way. Five neighbouring ‘urban villages’ are doing likewise. As we

shall see their implications for a new social order are significant.

The Settlement, St Peter’s and St Paul’s are Development Trusts.

These Trusts are an interesting new way of helping local people to

gain a greater control over their own lives. A growing number are now

scattered in most urban areas of the country. They are self-governing,

locally managed agencies which normally have charitable and limited

company status. They have a number of basic principles in common:

� They are concerned with the long term regeneration of their

area – with its economy, its environment, its facilities and

services and the ‘spirit’ of its community.� They seek to be financially self-sufficient and independent.� They aim to create assets in the community and make a profit

to be reinvested in the community.� They are community based and accountable.� They are working in partnerships between the community,

voluntary, private and public sectors.

Because they respond to local needs no two development trusts

are alike. And, because they recognise that to regenerate a community

means adopting a comprehensive approach they are involved in a wide

range of activities.

However, even significant ventures like these, let alone the many

smaller voluntary ones, face a huge uphill battle. Most are beset by

constant financial or staffing crises. They rely on small donations, vol-

untary and transient help, have little guaranteed money, no status and

virtually none of the authority which could give them leverage over

decision-makers.

The following argument suggests how these types of organisation,

working in tandem with other public bodies that understand their

needs, could form the basis for stronger, more confident and more self-

reliant communities.

12 Demos



The familyFor decades sociologists have argued that the unfolding logic of mod-

ern industrial society implies that the traditional family is in terminal

decline and that the role of childrearing will be increasingly under-

taken by the welfare state in an echo of Plato’s Republic. They have a

point. The extended family of industrial society – two parents, grand-

parents, uncles and aunts as well as children – has gradually vanished.

First, advances in medical care, family planning and the emancipation

of women shrank the family to two parents and a small number of

children. More recently, liberal divorce laws and contemporary atti-

tudes have shrunk the two parent family to a single parent for a rapidly

growing minority, a majority in some neighbourhoods.

As people’s rights have grown they have gained access to a far wider

range of choices than in the past. Medicine, the law, the welfare state

have all seen to that. The exercise of these rights has caused the family to

become weaker. As James Q. Wilson has written: “In the 1960s and

1970s… books were written advocating ‘alternative’ families and ‘open’

marriages.A couple could choose to have a trial marriage, a regular mar-

riage but without the obligation of sexual fidelity, or a revocable mar-

riage with an easy exit provided by no-fault divorce. A woman could

choose to have a child out of wedlock and to raise it alone. Marriage was

but one of several ‘options’ by which men and women could manage

their intimate needs, an option that ought to be carefully negotiated in

Demos 13

Rebuilding From theBottom Up


order to preserve the rights of each contracting party. The family, in this

view, was no longer the corner stone of human life, it was one of several

‘relationships’ from which individuals could choose so as to maximise

their personal goals.”

The welfare state has supported this shrinking family by ensuring

that it receives the financial help it needs to survive. This generosity is

justified in the language of choice and social justice. But we now know

that this individualistic standpoint is not necessarily beneficial from

the young child’s point of view or from that of the wellbeing of society

as a whole. These needs require parents and others to exercise restraint,

to limit their choices and the range of their goals. There is a need to

balance the pursuit of individual goals within the context of the child’s

need for stability, continuity and the material support which comes

from a wage earner and the role model of two loving adults.

As Sebastian Kraemer of the Tavistock Clinic has pointed out ‘there

is impressive systematic research showing how profoundly the rela-

tionship between infants and their mothers and fathers can influence

the child’s later social and intellectual skills … and we now know that

those who have had good attachments to their parents have a far

greater chance of passing on this good fortune to their children….’ The

child not only needs such support in their pre-school and school years

but also when they become young parents themselves. How can this

support be provided?

To start with, by acknowledging the problem, suggested Professor

Halsey. He ruffled liberal feathers in 1993 by saying that ‘the situation

has arisen in which the father is not so much absent but never arrives.’

Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the American communitarian move-

ment argues in his important books, The Spirit of Community and The

Parenting Deficit, for a number of measures to emphasise the responsi-

bilities of parents, not their rights. He suggests that ‘fathers and moth-

ers concerned with ‘making it’ and consumerism and preoccupied with

personal advancement, who come home too late and too tired to attend

to the needs of their children, can’t discharge their most elementary

duty to their children and their fellow citizens… There are no labour

14 Demos



saving techniques, and shortcuts in this area produce woefully defi-

cient human beings, to their detriment and ours.’

The problem is particularly acute in Britain. Not only do we have

the highest proportion of households with a lone parent in the EU, we

also have (alongside Ireland) the highest proportion of fathers work-

ing over 50 hours a week, with obvious implications in terms of their

ability to share parenting roles.

Etzioni points out that ‘the weight of sociological and psychological

evidence suggests that on average two-parent families are better able

to discharge their child-rearing duties, if only because there are more

hands – and voices.’ Therefore, a variety of means should be deployed

to support the family. He recommends that ‘divorce should not be

banned or condemned, but … it should be discouraged. Easy divorces

for parents are not in the interests of children, the community, or …

the adults involved.’ He points out that ‘there are … ways to encourage

young people to enter marriage more responsibly, help sustain and

enrich these marriages…’ For example, fast food and a fast lifestyle

may have their attractions, but the family gathering round the meal

table should be advocated. Etzioni talks about economic incentives

which favour marriage. For example, the ‘marriage of those on welfare

should be welcomed rather than penalized … Given the forbearance of

trades unions and employers, it is possible for millions of parents to

work at home. Other arrangements can be made to ensure that care

comes from home and not an institution…’ Such arrangements could

include ‘educational and economic credits for parents’ who are pre-

pared to stay at home during their child’s formative years.

The list of incentives needs to be long and powerful if the trend of

decades is to be halted. However, Etzioni’s main concern is ‘not with

incentives or punishment, but with the need for a change of heart: peo-

ple need to enter marriage more responsibly and be more committed

to making it work… The long term goal must be to bring up children

who are better able to form lasting relationships and participate

actively in the life of their community.’ Only then can we reduce the

false choice between keeping parents together in unhappy marriages

Demos 15

Rebuilding From the Bottom Up


and allowing them to break up: both options which guarantee unhap-

piness for the child.

If the family can be strengthened by direct means, what other pub-

lic agencies can be reorganised to support it indirectly?

The school as a hub of community

In the past schools have often acted as crucial hubs of community. In

the future, and in societies that are ever more centred around learning,

this role will become even more important. The Conservative’s reforms

have helped transform the organisation of schools from being pyra-

mid-like to being more maypole-like and self-governing. Other educa-

tional institutions had always been more independent. Universities have

traditionally been self-governing non-government agencies, funded by

the University Grants Committee. More recently polytechnics and col-

leges have also become self-governing (and had their status enhanced).

Few now argue against the decision. However, the debate about

whether schools should also become self-governing still rages.

It is as well to recall that the old Town Hall (LEA) public monopoly

system of providing schools for the community entailed the separation

of ownership, finance and control from practical delivery at the chalk

face. The LEA financed and controlled the system as well as employing

the teachers. Teachers only had influence over day to day delivery in

the classroom. Yet, because they were managing all schools, the LEA

administrator did not know what the budget of any one school was.

Neither did the schools and teachers. They had no chance to target

their resources to meet their particular needs. Worse still, parents had

no say at all – unless they were affluent enough to be able to choose to

opt out of the state system altogether and send their child to a private

school.

In 1988 the government introduced legislation which enabled all

schools to become semi-autonomous. It also gave them the right

to choose full self-governing status (GM). Local management (LM)

entails the delegation of most of the budget and control of schools

from the LEA to the head, teachers and their governing body. At its

inception LM as well as GM was fiercely opposed by Town Halls and

16 Demos



their LEAs irrespective of which party was in control. This was under-

standable, because the power base and degree of accountability of both

councillors and officers were at stake.

However, many schools have come to appreciate the development.

Partial autonomy began to bring the previously separate functions of

finance, management, control and delivery together under the roof of

each individual school. Pride and standards began to rise so encourag-

ing the LEAs to accept LM while opposing GM.

At first, this was understandable for, in 1988, when legislation first

created LM and GM schools, the distinction between them was clear

and stark. GM schools immediately received 100% of their budgets

direct from Whitehall, while LM ones received only 60–70%, the

remainder being held by the local authority to run their administra-

tion. The subsequent 6 years have seen this wide gap narrow. Now, LM

schools get at least 90% of their budget, while many get over 95%. Soon

it will be hardly possible to distinguish the two forms of school.

Community education

Community education is often seen as being primarily about opening

school buildings in the evenings and weekends for Scout groups, wed-

ding receptions or adult courses. Others say that a school can’t be a

community school unless it has a pre-school worker or home-school

link officer. Both these definitions are useful, but they don’t get to the

heart of the matter. For they see community education as a bolt-on

extra to the real 9 am–4 pm task of education and school life. The wis-

est definition of community education goes much further. It places it

at the very core of the education process, not just for schoolchildren

but for everyone from the 5 year old to the 80 year old who has an

interest in learning. No school can function well, excite teachers and

pupils unless the whole school and its curriculum becomes an exten-

sion of the life of the neighbourhood which itself gains a sense of own-

ership and pride in its school.

For decades community educators have tried to capture what

Henry Morris meant when he said that the best school ‘lies athwart its

Demos 17



community’ and provides it with a mirror which reflects its identity

and a dynamo for assisting with its development. There have been

many valiant attempts to achieve this aim and some exceptional

successes. However, most have encountered difficulties because hith-

erto state schools have not belonged to their neighbourhood. They

have been in it but not a part of it.

Independence from the Town Hall transforms this situation. The

old LEA schools were dependent on and accountable to the LEA. It

controlled them via a committee of perhaps 20 councillors who were,

by definition, interested in politics, city wide and national issues. They

did not always recognize the individual educational needs of each par-

ticular school.

The new self-governing state school has at least 15 governors. They

are elected and co-opted from amongst the school’s parents and neigh-

bourhood. In the case of a town where there are, say 100 schools, those

schools will in future be represented by 1,500 local people who each

have the interest of their particular school at heart. This simple fact

should help each school become more accountable to its neighbour-

hood. It should ensure that the neighbourhood controls the school

through these governors and their head.

Although the government did not necessarily intend to create a sit-

uation in which every school could become a community or neigh-

bourhood school it has none the less done so. Not only is the new

situation educationally beneficial because it closes the gap between

home and school and makes each the extension of the other, it is also

potentially much more democratic – 20 councillors versus 1,500 active

citizens is no contest. Further, it helps to take party politics out of the

government of each school and replace it with the real concerns of the

catchment area and its parent customers.

Clusters of neighbourhood schools

Devolving budgets to schools enables them to target resources to the

precise needs of each classroom. The danger of the skilled, teaching

head’s attention being diverted by the new tasks of administration,

18 Demos



budget control and development, is avoided by the creation of a quite

new post to assist with planning and development.

In the old days, when schools were dependent on the Town Hall for

all their needs, they did not look sideways at each other for practical

support and the development of ideas. Now that they are self-governing,

they can do so. They are beginning to form natural clusters in both

geographically defined areas or neighbourhoods and in terms of their

special interests.

While a large secondary school can afford its own new administra-

tive post, smaller primaries can’t. But they can pool their resources. Ten

schools, say, need only find £2,000 each to produce a cluster facilitator,

or administration officer. In The Mosaic of Learning, David Hargreaves

spells the point out. My own new book, Radical Urban Solutions, makes

similar points. Both show that while individual schools can be driven

by their own development plan they can at the same time form a cluster

development plan and establish fresh forms of support and new

resources. (See Fig 2.)

Demos 19


Figure 2 A cluster development plan


Just as the new facilitator post can come from a pooled budget,

so can other posts and initiatives. The point applies to the way exter-

nal contracts for suppliers of oil for heating and food for catering can

be agreed. It can extend to cover cost-effective caretaking, grounds

maintenance, painting and decorating, printing and other facilities.

The cluster of neighbouring schools might also come to share teach-

ers, and the shared facilitator might help them to develop a pool of

supply teachers in areas such as music, games, language and science.

Clusters can also link together on communications networks (as is

already happening with several Education 2000 experiments), linking

these in turn to local business and community organisations.

Teachers can be difficult to recruit. Now that schools are to play a

greater part in the training of teachers they might develop a sophisti-

cated teacher training and probation induction package. This might

include the conversion of a row of derelict houses, with the help of the

local housing association, which can then provide sheltered and sub-

sidised accommodation in the first difficult probationary year. This

could lead to a cluster development and marketing portfolio which

appeals to colleges and universities for their students to come to teach

in the neighbourhood, enjoy their own sheltered accommodation for a

year or make use of their own nursery if they wish to return to the pro-

fession after starting a family.

The shared non-teacher and teacher-support network for clusters of

neighbouring schools might be called a Community Education

Enterprise Centre (CEEC). If the budget for the CEEC was just 2% of

the total budget of each of the 10 schools (9 primary, 1 secondary) this

could equal £12,000 times 9 plus £40,000 � £148,000. This is the equiv-

alent of 10 staff. Given that the non-teacher element of the Centre

would be trading with each school’s maintenance budget, the trading

capacity of this team could be considerable.

A cluster of 10 schools in Oxford are pooling part of their separate

budgets and undertaking various joint initiatives. In Birmingham there

are similar clusters in several neighbourhoods of the city. While none

have moved as far down the road as they could, the journey has begun.

Compass (CfBT), one of the major suppliers of Ofsted inspections, is

20 Demos



providing two clusters of schools with the finance to employ their own

cluster facilitator over a two year period to pioneer developments.

Soon, most schools may be in one or more clusters and the new facilita-

tor role will be accepted as a matter of essential routine.

The Family Centre

Different schools within clusters and whole clusters will specialise in

different areas. They will become magnets attracting enthusiastic like

minds and interests. But there is the prospect of at least one school in

each cluster becoming a Family Centre.

The pre-school teacher can be the vital link between the floundering

mother and father and others in the community who can help. The

school, cluster of schools and CEEC should build on existing networks of

child minders, playgroups and nurseries. Toy, book and resource libraries

can show the parent how to talk to and care for their child. Other parents

can offer support as well as ideas and suggestions for everything from

healthy diet to the best means of controlling difficult behaviour.

The school, like the doctor’s surgery or health centre, is the obvious

meeting point for young parents – they go there frequently. Indeed,

there is every reason for the surgery and centre to be integrated within

the school to form a Family Centre. The more prepared the young

child becomes in its pre-school years, the more the school can make

rapid progress when the child starts its formal school life. In return, the

more the child is able to progress at school, the more the parent is able

to cope and make progress at home.

So, it is possible to envisage the nursery and primary school as

being not just a ‘provider’ of education to young children but also a

centre for the whole family. Ideally, the nursery and primary school

should combine the functions of education with those of social and

health care, advice and training in parenting and employment skills. It

should help children to learn early about the realities and responsibili-

ties of adult life. The pre-school teacher and colleagues are not so

much acting in loco parentis as in loco grandparentis. In Birmingham

and elsewhere, Chris Dunkley, Peter Simpson, Tim Brighouse, Eric

Demos 21



Midwinter, John Rennie and a whole school of community educators

have pioneered such developments. From a rather different back-

ground too, Penelope Leach has also recently made interesting sugges-

tions for family centres.

To facilitate this, each nursery and primary school needs a suite of

rooms in which the roles of priest, teacher, social worker, doctor and

policeman can intertwine. Indeed, the family centre could become a

kind of informal college of life-long learning for the entire area.

Imagine for a moment that the cluster of schools is interlinked via

telecommunications networks to a range of educational programmes

and specialist teaching centres able to complement the teacher in the

classroom; then suppose that the schools are linked via cable to every

home in the neighbourhood and to the local college which has out-

posted adult training centres in each of the schools-as-family centres.

What Harold Wilson achieved with the help of TV in the 1960s in

launching the Open University could be multiplied by the power of the

computer and the cable. Today, it is entirely possible to use a cluster of

schools both on a conventional 9.00–3.30 basis and, more efficiently, to

deploy their resources around the clock in a cradle to grave, open access

college in which the entire neighbourhood is enrolled. Far from being

organised by a remote pyramid on which they were once dependent,

or on an uncoordinated set of competing individual agencies, self-

governing schools are coming to resemble Handy’s maypole. (See Fig 3.)

Every school is a moral community. It teaches ‘personal, social and

moral’ education not just in one or two lessons a week, but through the

way it is organised, conducts and disciplines itself every moment of

each day. The kind of school advocated here necessarily sharpens and

clarifies the ‘informal’ messages it gives to children and adults. It shows

them that their worlds of family and school complement and reinforce

each other.

The self-governing community school and its neighbouring cluster

are ideally suited to perform this function. Just as the role of the

church and extended family have diminished, so the role of the school

must enlarge to fill the gap, becoming the main centre of support for

the family and the neighbourhood.

22 Demos



House and home

The house in which the young child lives and is nurtured by its parents

is significant, more so even than the school. Yet the government legis-

lation which enabled local council houses to be bought by their ten-

ants was at first opposed by city officers and politicians of all colours.

They wanted to go on controlling and managing them. However, as

with the local management of schools, the move proved to be so pop-

ular that most councils have changed their mind and now approve of

it. Today, it is easy to spot those houses which are privately owned. At

the same time as enabling individual families to own their own houses,

the government also reduced council house building to a minimum. It

increased the amount of money available to housing associations to

build houses in place of councils. It also forced the sale of empty plots

Demos 23


Figure 3


of land to both associations and to private builders. This has not only

enabled the use of otherwise derelict plots of land, it has also replaced

a monopoly supplier with a host of independent ones.

The policy is not perfect. Some housing associations have become

so large that they risk becoming over-bureaucratic and insensitive to

local need. But others serve only a limited geographical area and have

developed a range of tenant services and a management style which

fosters good neighbourliness and a sense of belonging. Some make great

efforts to welcome their tenants to the neighbourhoods of the city in

which their houses are located. They provide them with information

and advice about the local services and schools which are available.

They involve them in the process of management and the provision of

security. They even offer a range of adult training courses and jobs

which brighten the street with such things as hanging baskets.

Some would argue that the development of the housing cooperative

movement is of even greater value to local people in encouraging a

shared sense of ownership and involvement. By the same logic, the

idea of the Housing Action Trust, which takes responsibility from the

Town Hall to run an entire estate, then hands it to the tenants, is a rad-

ical and imaginative step. The net outcome is the rapid extension of

home ownership. In place of uniform, drab, remotely managed, state-

provided houses, has arisen a combination of privately-owned houses

and a range of locally managed ones. In turn, of course, this has per-

suaded most Town Halls to become rather more imaginative in the

way they manage those many houses still left under their control.

Place; street and park

After the home, it is the street and local park with which children

identify. If beliefs give a personal identity, place gives a bounded

geographical and physical sense of belonging. In practice, of course,

the identity and belonging can’t be easily separated. In real life, they

blend and each child’s innocent Jerusalem lies within a short radius of

home. However, in practice the street which, a generation ago, could be

played in safely is now dominated by the passing car and a fear of the

24 Demos



unseen stranger. Too many public spaces are uncared for and the cor-

ner pocket park is a ‘confused’ space. What looked pretty on the archi-

tect’s map belongs to no one and is thus untended, a sight for the

accumulation of rubbish and a hiding place for the petty criminal.

Many parkkeepers, and the other guardians of public space, have also

disappeared. Many parks have lost the sense of confidence and care they

had in the past. The majority have boarded up buildings, endemic van-

dalism and litter. Once, many Town Halls lovingly looked after parks

and open spaces, but now few have either the energy or the resources to

do more than stop them declining further. Regrettably, the implicit mes-

sage given to today’s child is that nobody bothers, and that shared public

spaces cannot compete with the attractions of the video or TV.

Since the modern town is too large to be administered centrally

in every respect it may be that the neighbourhood would be better at

caring for street, park and place if it had a greater degree of ownership

and the tools and resources to act. In some places parks are being

handed over to community trusts, and being given the freedom to

develop in very different ways, linking parks to learning, healthcare or

the arts. These ideas are rich with potential. But they are still strongly

resisted by most local authorities.

Police and the neighbourhood

As society has become more fractured, crime rates have soared, partic-

ularly those for ‘petty crimes’ – vandalism, theft of and from cars, rob-

bery from the person and the house. Crime Concern estimates that

crime now costs £20 billion per year. Although there is now some

evidence that the rise has halted, and may even be in reverse, the debil-

itating fear of crime, the cost of which is incalculable, has risen even

more rapidly than actual crime. It is now no longer felt possible to

allow children to play far from home. The proportion of children who

are allowed to walk to school has fallen from 7 in 10 to 3 in 10 in a

decade. Children and women feel afraid to walk the street in the

evening.Windows and doors have long been bolted. Insurance compa-

nies and investors have virtually deserted some areas.

Demos 25



Most crimes are committed by young men. The peak age for offend-

ing is 18, although many start at 10 or even younger. These criminals

have breached the ‘thin blue line.’ In a vain attempt to cope, some police

forces are now agreeing a list of offences to which they will no longer

respond. There is little the police can do when the young criminal is

under the age. Not much more can be achieved when the offender is

just over the age. Months after committing and being apprehended

for the offence, the resultant paper work and court appearance often

leads only to: ‘Don’t do it again.’ Translated in the mind of the young

offenders, this means: ‘Feel free. There is nothing that we can or will do

to stop you.’

Poor schools and houses, uncared for streets and confused open

spaces don’t help. They offer a hiding place and foster low expectations

and a disregard for property and person. As Alice Coleman of Kings

College has shown, a range of simple physical changes to the environ-

ment can have dramatic benefits. She suggests reclaiming ‘confused’

public spaces and giving them to individual families, reducing the

number of shared entries and common walkways. Burglaries in West-

minster have been cut by 55% by adopting such measures. But, the

longer term solution rests not with either architect or police but with

the family and the neighbourhood.

First, only when the infant’s temper tantrum goes unchecked or

receives an erratic, inconsistent, response does the young child learn to

instantly gratify its unchannelled desires regardless of others, assum-

ing that ‘anything goes’. Thus are the seeds sown of a careless disregard

for others. Hard pressed parents now need help to teach character in

the home. As discussed, their efforts need to be reinforced at school

and in the family centre.

Second, neighbours need to acquire the courage of their convic-

tion that it is wrong for children to destroy property, steal, or abuse

adults. The neighbourhood watch schemes have achieved lift-off.

Remarkably, there are now over one million members and 10,000

schemes in the Midlands and over 100,000 schemes in the UK. Those

who emphasised the unqualified rights of the individual were at first

afraid that these might cause some people to ‘pry.’ They hesitated to

26 Demos



mount the video cameras in shopping centres which identified the

killers of James Bulger because they smacked of ‘big brother.’ They

were nervous at the prospect of ‘vigilantes.’ These hesitations about

rights have begun to evaporate when measured against the responsi-

bilities which parents and neighbours have for children and each

other. They increasingly look after each other’s property and take note

of what their children are doing.

The efforts of the St Paul’s project and others to ‘Build a Better

Village’ of Balsall Health so raised residents’ expectations and confi-

dence that over 500 people decided to stand on their street corners to

eliminate the street prostitution, kerb crawlers and pimps who had

blighted the image of their area and held back progress. In addition to

solving one problem, others were also resolved. The figures for drug

abuse, car theft, burglary and truancy also came down. Residents

began to talk of being able to leave their car and front door unlocked.

Today, they claim with some justification to have one of the most

developed neighbourhood watch schemes in the country. Moving from

the need to eliminate the negative, these residents have begun to

accentuate the positive. They wish to give a face-lift to their local park,

employ a parkkeeper or sports coach, implement a traffic management

scheme to slow speeding traffic and take ownership of and maintain a

range of confused open spaces. The list is endless, as lifted by the expe-

rience of success, large sections of the population have become

engaged in an extensive ‘community service’ programme.

Elsewhere in the country other neighbourhoods and councils are

also trying to rethink local policing. Some are paying for additional

neighbourhood police, as in Sedgefield. Wandsworth has suggested a

special tax to pay for improved local policing under the local authority.

Some 60 Councils are now investigating possibilities like these. How-

ever, like the teacher who views the helpful presence of the parent in

the classroom with anxiety, each of these developments have been met

with suspicion by the professional police, who cling to their monopoly.

But if such schemes can reinvigorate the local community’s sense of

responsibility for order there is surely a case for encouraging the police

to recognise their value and work in partnership with them.

Demos 27



Work and the economy

The move from the pyramid to the maypole type of organisation is

transforming a growing number of private sector businesses. While

many still see their role simply in terms of profit maximisation others

are seeking a richer set of connections to their communities. They

recognise that an involved employee is also a keen and productive one,

and that it is important to pay attention to other stakeholders – not

just shareholders, but also suppliers, customers and the surrounding

community. Once, Robert Owen, who built model villages in the early

1800s and the Cadbury family, who built Bournville in the early 1900s,

were exceptions. Today it is not just Business in the Community and

Anita Roddick who flourish, but also Virgin, Shell, Microsoft, Apple

and a growing range of companies whose directors under-stand that

the ethical approach isn’t just socially and environmentally beneficial,

but also good business. Many firms, ranging from TSB and Grand

Metropolitan in the UK to Bosch in Germany and Fiat in Italy have

independent foundations, and here some newcomers, like Nissan in

Sunderland, Toyota in Derbyshire and DUSCOs in Nottingham have

become involved in their local communities to help cultivate a good

local reputation. And firms such as Allied Dunbar, Kingfisher and

Whitbread have extensive employee involvement schemes.

Although there is still much to be done the fading industrial centres

of several cities have been greatly improved by the enlightened combi-

nation of public and private money. Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and

other town centres have become models of enterprise and culture

compared to a few years ago. Yet, there remain problems. By contrast

with countries like the USA or Germany we still lack sufficiently

powerful businesses at the city or neighbourhood level. Despite moves

to decentralisation, British industry is one of the most centralised in

the world, as is British banking.

There is also a great danger that progress in city centres is under-

mined by the fading neighbourhoods which surround the centres which

lack education, confidence and which cost so much to police. This was

the experience of Detroit where glittering city centre projects were sur-

rounded by some of the most depressed neighbourhoods in the USA.

28 Demos



But the biggest problem concerns one of the negative consequences

of dramatic changes in technology and organisation in the private sector

that have left few unskilled manual jobs. In his books, Charles Handy has

argued with great clarity that if we are not vigilant, this world could be

inherited by a new elite, while an increasing number, who have no work,

despair. The social divide could become a chasm. On the other hand, the

very forces that have sharply reduced the number of stable jobs for male

breadwinners are also creating the context for new beginnings.

First, the combination of better teachers and more flexible tech-

nologies should make it much easier to produce well educated, employ-

able, young people, and to top up their skills throughout life, whether

at home or in the workplace or college.

Second, the enterprise culture is giving rise to a range of smaller

businesses, many of them neighbourhood specific. It is also causing

partners to share jobs or undertake part-time ones and to work from

home. Thus mobility is curtailed and neighbourhood strengthened.

Third, imaginative schemes can solve two problems at once. By cre-

ating relatively unskilled jobs for unemployed young and old people it

is possible not only to carry out environmental improvements but also

to repopulate the empty spaces – like parks and railway stations – thus

giving people a greater sense of security and place.

Further, the third sector now includes rather more than the unpaid

volunteer who hands out soup to the homeless. It is being dramatically

increased by the addition of schools, houses and carers in the commu-

nity. Until very recently the third sector held little influence, less

money and few real jobs. Now it is growing so rapidly that few recog-

nise the consequences either for it or for the role of the private and

public sectors which must adjust to take account of it.

Far-reaching schemes are possible. As a result of bold thinking Pat

Conaty and others from the Birmingham Settlement are building on

previous successes with local economic institutions such as credit

unions to develop a Community Bank able to support small businesses

in the community through difficult times.

Ian Morrison, Director of the Council for Voluntary Service in

Birmingham, recently calculated that the third sector budget in that

Demos 29



city has a combined annual turnover of £55,000,000, a sizeable busi-

ness and that for every £1 of public money it created £3 from else-

where. It employs thousands of people. But, these calculations did not

include either schools or houses. As it becomes confident in its new

role, the third sector will become a major player alongside the public

and private ones. It could use its new found strength to create a variety

of significant jobs in neighbourhoods and be a major resource for any

national scheme of voluntary service to communities. Indeed, if the

public sector could find as imaginative a way of relating to the third

sector in urban neighbourhoods as it has with the private sector in city

centres, then even more could be achieved today than Robert Owen

and the Cadbury family achieved in the past.

30 Demos



Refashioning the Urban VillageHow could revitalised communities be given an outward expression?

How can the many urban villages from which each town is built, be

excavated from beneath the accumulated concrete jungle and exert

their identity upon the physical, social and economic geography of

tomorrow? The following suggestions form only a brief introductory

answer which might begin to name and assert the sense of place and

identity of each neighbourhood or urban village.

As the charity Common Ground has shown, urban villages need

boundaries, clear entry and exit points. There is sense in making these

obvious and distinctive, like postal district signs so that residents and

visitors can know when they are being ‘welcomed’ within these bound-

aries or invited to return upon leaving. They also need a central focal

point. It does not matter whether the centre is identified by shops, a

library, a school or community centre as long as it is clear to residents

where this centre is, and as long as it has the right atmosphere, either

because of its architecture or the quality of the services which it offers or

both. Perhaps a distinctive flag, crest or shield might help to give identity

to both the entry gateways and the central features of the village.

At Christmas, Diwali, carnival time or during some other local cele-

bration, both gateways and central features might be enhanced by

festive decorations, perhaps prepared by schools, or religious organisa-

tions, residents’ groups or other voluntary organisations. The content

Demos 31

RebuildingNeighbourhood andRefocusing Government


and style of the celebrations will, of course, differ according to the par-

ticular community. But, whatever their content, they are important

occasions and the more people that take part in the planning and exe-

cution of them the better. Such occasions can represent the strength of

the community in a variety of forms including sport, art and business

as well as being purely social or religious events. They can serve to

highlight calendar festivals and mark the natural passing of the sea-

sons which urban life otherwise obscures.

A building which functions as a village hall and meeting place and

the open space which represents the village green or some kind of

arena are important, not only to host celebrations but to serve the needs

of different interest groups. Community notice boards and community

newspapers can advertise events and spread local news and informa-

tion, providing the village with its own voice while also helping to pro-

mote local businesses and schools. A supplement to the newspaper

might form a ‘welcome package’ for those moving into the area and

introduce them to the local amenities and their neighbours.

Buildings and developments which affect the life of the village often

do not take enough account of its particular identity or of the wishes

of residents. It would be profitable to build and develop in ways which

highlight that identity rather than inhibit, depress or destroy it. The

style and proportions of buildings, the materials used and the location

of facilities are all crucial to the creation of harmony in a neighbour-

hood as well as a sense of history, continuity and belonging.

Nothing is ever perfect or complete. Different villages might come to

assert one or other mix of the attributes outlined above, but few will

have the possibility of being purpose designed and built as is the case

with Poundsbury. This village is being constructed on farmland on the

edge of the small town of Dorchester. The idea was conceived by Prince

Charles with the help of the architect Leon Krier. They hope that the

new village will eventually comprise some 2,000 homes housing a pop-

ulation of 8,000.A key feature of Poundsbury is that both detached and

terraced houses, shops and offices and workshops will knit closely

together so that a simple 10 minute walk along its cobbled streets will

enable the resident to reach any part of the village. At the heart of the

32 Demos



first phase of the building is a square which will be surrounded by

shops and offices. The square will also contain a ‘market hall’, which will

also house a cafe and meeting room. Alongside the hall a familiar, 80

feet tall, church-like tower will be visible from all corners of the village.

The village could become the envy of many city dwellers. Although its

idealised top-down conception may fit uneasily with the real people

who come to live there, it may be easier for existing neighbourhoods to

capture the atmosphere and calm reassurance of village life.

The bottom-up Prince Charles of many an urban village is its

Church, residents group, Housing Association, Development Trust,

school and cluster of schools. These can become its strength and the

engine which drives its development. It is not just the teacher, housing

manager and voluntary sector professional who must be at the service

of their ‘clients and customers’ in this way, but also the doctor, archi-

tect, accountant, indeed every professional whose energy is needed in

the rebuilding of communities. The professional who consults, partic-

ipates and is employed by local people becomes an appreciated part of

the neighbourhood rather than a feared visitor from a different and

more powerful one.

Refashioning democracy

The democratic system is supposed to enable people to freely choose

their representatives and government. Yet, at most elections, the resi-

dent is confronted by 2 or 3 candidates chosen by the big parties and

others who have no hope of election. The active, but diminishing, core

of each party is always re-elected. Often, only the beginners and second

raters are placed in unwinnable contests. If you live in a politically safe

area you have no choice and if you are in an unwinnable area you can

choose only between learners and failures.

Although there are notable exceptions, almost by definition, politi-

cians are principally concerned with gaining and keeping power in

order to implement their policies from the top down. Often, they are

not interested in, or suited to, wielding direct influence within the

neighbourhood or helping it to build itself up from ground level. Even

Demos 33

Rebuilding Neighbourhood and Refocusing Government


those who see the point of such action often cannot spare the time to

undertake it. As a result political parties do not do justice to the rich

variety of practical circumstances which define real life and many in

each urban village are in effect disenfranchised. The point can be illus-

trated in Fig 4.

Only the activists within the circles A and B, within the wider com-

munity, C, are represented. The unwritten agenda of the wider com-

munity, D, is unseen by either party. This is perhaps why less than

a third of the electorate vote in local elections. This means that

Councillors directly represent only around 15% of the electorate. The

remaining 85% are effectively disenfranchised. Their experience of

local democracy is like a plausible confidence trick. It offers the illu-

sion, but not the substance of choice and influence.

The more self-reliant people and neighbourhoods become and the

more the pyramids of both private and public institutions have been

transformed into self-governing maypoles, the more voters have become

alienated from politicians. While others have changed, the political

process remains unreformed. Until recently it was unquestioningly

34 Demos


Figure 4 Political Parties and the community


supposed that the politically motivated councillor and MP should

attempt to control central bureaucracies in order to supply uniform

services to fractured and dependent neighbourhoods. Suited to the

pyramids of the industrial world, the political party has become

detached from the thrust of a better educated, better informed, more

confident citizen. Neither the representative politician nor the resident

has yet been schooled in the needs of a post-industrial form of partici-

patory democracy. Before the credibility gap between the politician and

the public becomes unbridgeable, it is important to clarify new roles.

The urban village and the active citizen

It is not sufficient to devolve finances and managerial control out to

schools and community agencies. Parts of the political process itself

must also be devolved. The emergent self-governing urban village

needs its own non-party political voice and a degree of control over its

own affairs.

Parish Councils have a legal existence. Those rural villages which

have retained these interesting forms of local democracy elect their

own parish councillors to represent their own very local concerns. The

Parish Council is able to levy a precept on the rate of one or two pence

in the pound, which can give the parish councillors a useful income to

spend as they and their constituents see fit. Most employ their own

professional parish clerk who services and acts for the parish and its

parish councillors.

Many people might respond far more positively to their own urban

neighbourhood council or forum than to their party political coun-

cilor because they would see the immediate and positive results of

their representations. Because most City Council wards encompass at

least three natural neighbourhoods, in place of 1–3 local councillors

who must also relate to the whole city, there might emerge three sets of

say, 15 neighbourhood forum representatives. Such neighbourhood

representatives would tend to be non-party political to ensure that

they represent all local people and keep their purely local focus. They

could either be elected on a street by street basis or be a mixture of

Demos 35



elected representatives and people co-opted from local agencies such

as schools, housing associations and development trusts. The neigh-

bourhood officer could be funded either by a small precept on the rate,

or, as with the school’s cluster officer, by pooling a part of the budget of

the major local self-governing agencies.

Some will wonder where so many active citizens might spring from.

Perhaps most people would rather remain dependent upon the remote

Town Hall than employ their own neighbourhood officer and try to

shape the development of their own area. There are several reasons for

doubting this.

First, any time a franchise has been extended, sceptics argued that ‘it

won’t work’ and that ‘ordinary people can’t cope with the extra respon-

sibility.’ Yet, when finally trusted with that responsibility, most people

invariably rise to the occasion and we are left to wonder: ‘why did we

wait so long before doing this?’

Second, it is relevant to point to the 10,000 strong population of the

urban village of Balsall Heath in which St Paul’s is based. St Paul’s alone

operates with 50 volunteers who staff its various management boards.

Some 6 residents’ groups are attended by some 200 people every

month. The 6 schools’ governing bodies meet termly and have various

working committees. So they increase the number of active citizens by

a factor of 6 times 15. If those who attend their Church, Temple and

Mosque councils or who patrol their street corners are included, the

number of active citizens goes over the 1,000 mark. So to elect say, 20

of these to represent the area doesn’t seem to be expecting too much.

Yet, there is nothing unique about Balsall Heath.

Third, people often do not take a mere ‘talking shop’ seriously. They

want to achieve things and not just enter into idle debate. So, the

importance of the neighbourhood council rests in its ability to employ

an officer, relate to the various local self-governing agencies and make

a serious contribution to the development of the area. One reason why

the people of Balsall Heath leap at the chance to improve their area is

because of their regard for their children’s future.

Fourth and finally, the involvement of so many people can and

should be dignified by the local cluster of schools, their family centre

36 Demos



and the local college by engaging them in certificated Citizen Aware-

ness courses. Indeed, with the help of cable and home computers, such

a course could bring to life the open access college in which the whole

community is enrolled and make the neighbourhood election an impor-

tant annual occasion. Modern versions of the Greek city state in which

all who wish to participate can do so are no longer so fanciful, particu-

larly when decisions are being made on subjects where first hand

experience is so important.

The social entrepreneur and the new Town Hall

The neighbourhood officer’s role might first be to help people to gain the

confidence to formulate and express shared goals. Second, it could be to

help them to press these goals upon the city authorities and to ensure

that they are acted upon. However, third, and more important, it should

be possible for the forum to achieve many of its aims on its own with lit-

tle more than passing reference to the town centre. With the help of its

schools, their CEEC, housing associations and community development

trusts, the neighbourhood forum would help to stimulate the social,

economic and environmental development of the neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood officer is, in effect, a social entrepreneur. Just as

the private economic sector depends on risk-taking, visionary people

to construct new companies, products, services and wealth, so the

third sector needs social entrepreneurs. The role, once less vital, used

perhaps to be fulfilled by the village priest or the head of the village

school. Today, a new breed of determined professional is needed who

is employed by the active citizens of the neighbourhood forum to bind

together and empower the fractured community.

Although it is novel to the urban scene, the active citizen’s neigh-

bourhood forum, their entrepreneurial officer and those local voluntary

and non-government institutions which relate and are accountable to

them do not comprise an additional layer of government, which

further complicates the organisation of the democratic process. Rather,

they take the place of significant parts of the previously over-intrusive

city machine. As a consequence, the Town Hall can concentrate its

Demos 37



efforts less on trying to run everything and thus failing to do anything

well, but on enabling and resourcing others to achieve excellence.

Because so many of the tasks once undertaken by the Town Hall

can readily and more effectively be discharged within each village it is

necessary to reduce its size and change the way it is organized. Most of

the Town Hall’s departments can be slimmed down or merged in

order to meet new functions.

Old style departments were organized in terms of specialist profes-

sional functions – education, social services, housing etc – as well as in

pyramid-like hierarchies. This suited the needs of city wide planning, but

it was of little benefit to neighbourhoods which recognize different

boundaries and needs. It follows that a fresh, community sensitive, city

department is needed which cuts across the city’s old bureaucratic

specialisms and planning areas. This new department must regard

neighbourhoods as the basic building blocks from which towns are con-

structed. Instead of being organized segmentally and hierarchically this

department would, therefore, subtend an array of sub-departments, one

for each neighbourhood or cluster of neighbourhoods. These neigh-

bourhood sub-departments would marshal and deploy the levers of

local government to the service and enhance the growth points of each

area. Indeed, many towns have developed neighbourhood offices in

recent years, though not always in response to a clear neighbourhood

voice.

Because the aim of this new department is to boost the confidence

of the individual, see to it that others assist the developing child and

take part in the revitalisation of neighbourhoods it could be called

the Neighbourhood Enterprise Department (NED). Once these new

departments are devolved out to area offices in each neighbourhood

they, in effect, become its new mini Town Hall.

The mini Town Hall would be the city’s devolved top-down lever

with which the bottom-up neighbourhood forum would liaise. It

might be based in an extension of one of the village’s schools and

become one of its focal features. These proposals are not fanciful.

Hillingdon and Kent have merged several departments to create a new

community oriented one. Tower Hamlets has devolved most of its

38 Demos



services. Braintree District council has already implemented many of

Osborne and Gaebler’s suggestions and John Stewart and Michael

Clark at Birmingham University have written extensively about British

examples of good practice. Recently, the DoE has challenged

Manchester, Birmingham and London to become ‘Cities of Pride.’ It

has asked them to define what they might look like in the years after

the new millennium. The winds of change are blowing. As the dust

which it stirs settles, it is possible to see what might replace the old

pyramid like Town Hall. (Fig 5)

City governments are now multi-billion pound, complex, organisa-

tions. They are impossibly larger than the ones with which Joseph

Chamberlain could identify. It is not possible for voluntary councillors to

manage such a modern organisation efficiently. It needs time, devotion,

confidence and an acquired expertise – otherwise the existing depart-

ments of full-time professional officers will follow their own course.

High caliber, part-time or full-time city councillors are needed to steer a

fresh course if these departments are to be refashioned and bent to the

will of the community. It makes sense to pay the chairs of committees

just as MPs are paid. Further, it makes sense to pay the Lord Mayor of

each town. Instead of being largely ceremonial, the role of Lord Mayor

should become more like that of the town’s president. The office

holder should be directly elected not chosen by existing councillors on

a political ticket.

These reforms represent no more of an attack upon local govern-

ment than John Harvey Jones’ attempts to save fading businesses sig-

nify an attack upon them. On the contrary, they could rescue the

political process from decades of inertia and popular resentment and

herald a new era of acceptance, appreciation and vigorous growth.

It is easy for defenders of the status quo to forget that the existing

form of Town Hall and Whitehall democracy has already undergone

many profound changes. Just two centuries ago, Tom Paine and others

fought for the rights of man. In this century women had to chain

themselves to the railings and staff the munitions factories in the first

World War to gain the vote. Full adult suffrage only came after the

second world war.

Demos 39



Democracy has evolved and must continue to keep pace with the

times. Much of what has happened in recent years could be built upon

rather than scrapped in an attempt to return to the past. The array of

quangos and trusts have been rightly criticised as unaccountable to

their local communities. But reconceived to embed them in the area

they serve, with clear lines of accountability and clear rights for local

communities to remove those that don’t perform, new self-governing

agencies have the potential to be much more responsive and entrepre-

neurial than when they were locked into the monopoly of local

government.

40 Demos


Figure 5


Authority and responsibilityAlthough many of the signposts for revitalised communities have now

been identified they remain distinct and separate.What will bind them

together?

The industrial pyramid worked only because those at its apex could

rely on a passive, uninformed and unconfident citizenry. The maypole

will only work if all individuals are prepared to carry responsibility,

undertake duties and fulfil obligations to one another.

There are different forms of authority. Some tear human relations

apart. The best kinds act as the glue which voluntarily bind people

together. The scientific discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries and

the technology needed to implement them relied on objective,‘rational

legal’ authority and not on subjective, ‘traditional,’ authority. The great

German sociologist Max Weber defined this rational authority as the

lynch pin which held the modern bureaucratic pyramid together.

It laid waste to all previous forms of non-rational, subjective,

authority. He wrote that ‘bureaucracy revolutionises with technical

means … from without. It first changes the material and social orders

and through them the people by changing the conditions of adapta-

tion… It furthers the development of ‘rational matter-of-factness’ and

the personality type of the professional expert.’

Both private enterprise and public monopolies flourished under this

form of authority for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. It kept the

Demos 41

A New Paradigm


‘administration of public services untainted by the influence of bribery

and corruption.’ It ‘provided security – from unemployment, during

old age. It provided stability … a basic sense of fairness and equality…

It provided jobs. And it delivered the basic, no frills, one-size-fits-all

services people needed and expected: roads, railways, sewers, schools…’

In the first part of the 20th century, it seemed to both Max Weber and

those who administered it that this system was invulnerable.

However, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that this form of

authority could only prevail as long as the industrialist and planner

who ran the pyramid-like bureaucracies had enough information to

take reasonable decisions which those at the bottom of the pyramid

could not query or improve upon; as long as people worked with their

hands and not their brains; as long as there were mass, undiscriminat-

ing markets; as long as people had similar needs; as long as the rational

Western nations were not rivalled by Japan’ and, even more profoundly,

as long as the subjective part of the human personality could be ignored

without doing so much damage to the quality of life that objection

would result.

In stark contrast, the private and public enterprise of the last decades

of the 20th century are glued together by a different form of authority.

It depends on the subjective vision and charisma of enlightened leaders

who develop tradition to suit new circumstances. It depends on their

vision being shared and voluntarily reinforced by all who work within

the agency and those who relate to it though what is commonly called a

‘mission statement.’ It depends on a set of individual choices which

interlock because they are guided by this subjective mission.

Rational calculation is still employed in private and public agencies.

But it is placed within the context of a shared, common vision and com-

munal care. Business in the Community typifies this attitude. But, it is to

be found even more overtly in the caring organisations which now

thrive within the third sector. Their goals and missions are subjective

and value laden, not rational. They are concerned with process and par-

ticipation, the ownership and pride which comes from shared values.

This subjective, voluntary, form of authority is the life blood of the fam-

ily, neighbourhood and the community of street and place. It provides

42 Demos



the child with stability and continuity, belief and identity – the spring-

boards from which individuality, choice and reason can leap in later life.

Rights, responsibilities and values

The rational pyramid of the modern state gives people rights – to free

schooling, health care, housing and the vote. It gives no place to the

equally vital qualities of care, responsibility and value. Indeed, it has

denied them. Consequently, the pyramid has been built on unstable

ground. People feel other ties and obligations as strongly as any objec-

tive contract. These ties flow from the love of the mother for the child

and the duty of the father to protect and care for mother and child.

Experience tells that these obligations need to be witnessed by sig-

nificant others, upheld and enshrined by the wider community in cus-

toms and traditions which make it easier for parents to avoid those

distractions which divert the eye from the needs of their child. These

witnesses, customs and traditions have of course become woven into

elaborate rituals which make sense in terms of the cultures and world

religions. They mark the gates which people pass through at times of

birth, youth, maturity and marriage, work and death. They celebrate

the many seasonal and religious events through which life is ordered

and given purpose. It is within this subjective culture that the logic of

duty and obligation resides. This logic gives meaning to the natural

bond between mother and child and generates both the responsibility

to act towards others with charity and love and the confidence to

develop tradition to suit new circumstance. As Dr Nazim proclaimed

in Birmingham’s central mosque: ‘Control of destiny is lost if morality

is shirked,’ sentiments which have been eroded by the West’s search for

an objective and purely material reason.

The pendulum has swung so far from subjective authority and obli-

gation towards reason authority and rights that their interdependence

has been fractured and serious damage has been caused. But it is not

sufficient simply to swing the pendulum back to find a new equilib-

rium. Instead we need to move forward to find a new framework,

which combines the wisdom of maturity with the capacity for change.

Demos 43

A New Paradigm


Every new generation rebels against some of what it sees as the con-

servative traditions of its parents, before discovering both how impor-

tant it is not to reject all the wisdom and maturity of the past, and that the

wheel of responsibility has to be reinvented in some form. Today how-

ever, whilst many young people are individualistic and rights conscious

there is also much evidence that they have a powerful sense of responsi-

bility for the environment into which their children will be born which

their industrial forefathers did little to protect. When entered into delib-

erately, responsibilities can be exercised with greater effect than when

they are simply and unthinkingly inherited. The challenge for those who

already appreciate the need for stronger communities is to show how a

greater sense of belonging is relevant and attractive rather than being a

nostalgic return to a past which means little to young people today.

In today’s less deferential society, authority has to be continually

won, justified and remade. It cannot be assumed. If the maypole is to

work, then people will need to appreciate and voluntarily accept their

responsibilities in each of the areas that communities depend on:

� To support families for the sake of the child and the

wellbeing of the next generation, and to take part in common

provision of childcare.� To play an active part in their child’s schooling, not just by

helping with reading at home but by becoming a school

governor and helping with the self-management of the school.� To be a caring neighbour and a Good Samaritan to others in

the neighbourhood, to pay taxes and make charitable

donations to community associations.� To act as juror and take part in the trial of alleged offences, to

become a magistrate, to serve on the neighbourhood forum

or become a councilor and play an active role in the political

process.� To play a part in the care of the street, to assist with the

recovery of a sense of place.� To ‘give as well as to take,’ to ‘plough back as well as to reap,’ to

be a steward of both land and culture.

44 Demos



� To rediscover and uphold the best of enduring values and

find new ways of celebrating them

The acceptance of responsibility, duty and obligation used to be

symbolically reinforced by maturing young people and adults through

the swearing of oaths – making binding promises of faithfulness, loy-

alty and so on. The point is too easily derided in today’s mass, rational,

society. Few could see the point of making a binding promise to a

remote bureaucracy. They would far rather exploit it and exercise their

rights. However, the significance of making promises or verbal bonds

in the home and neighbourhood where the child is born can be grasped

and honoured. The modern, decentralised, town creates neighbour-

hoods within which such responsibilities can make sense.

Lord Michael Young and Professor Halsey have recently suggested

ways in which parents who do not attend church can affirm their binding

responsibilities to their children before relatives and friends. Schools are

increasingly developing home/school agreements which both parents

and teachers sign. The tenancy agreements between tenant and housing

association or housing department could be similarly dignified. Perhaps

it is time to spell out in a tangible way a variety of socially vital obliga-

tions which have been taken for granted and abused. Similarly, much as a

modern business has a mission statement, each neighbourhood and

town might be asked to develop, enshrine and celebrate these commit-

ments in a way which it feels appropriate to its distinct circumstances.

Partly because of the organisational and theoretical baggage which

the political parties have inherited from their industrial past, they have

found it difficult to address the questions posed by the active citizen’s

sense of responsibility. For answers require an uncluttered fresh atti-

tude and spirit, says Etzioni. Regardless of what the habitually conflict-

ing politicians have argued, the real, common sense, choice is not

between the welfare state and privatization, more or less government.

For we can now recall that: ‘In the past there were other structures in

society which carried part of the social load on their own – communi-

ties, families and individuals. It is time to rediscover them and create a

new welfare system…’

Demos 45

A New Paradigm


An Urban Academy

In 1794, Matthew Boulton and his astonishing band of friends walked

to each others houses by the light of the moon and held the discus-

sions which Erasmus Darwin described with such awe. They called

themselves the Lunar Society. Where are today’s equivalent innova-

tors? Where is their modern Lunar Society which is so precisely at the

cutting edge of tomorrow that neither they nor others quite recognize

how far reaching their ideas and action will be? Neither the old or the

once-new red brick universities, nor the seminaries of the great faiths,

let alone the political parties, seem any longer able to read the sign-

posts or to be at the center of intellectual gravity.

It may be that clusters of schools, family centres, neighbourhood or

village forums and new actors like the cluster development officer and

the neighbourhood officer are the harbingers of new thought and

action. Indeed, we noted the possibility of them forming open access

Community Colleges which enrolled entire neighbourhoods. Yet more

is required. For as the public and private sectors change to take the new

third sector into full account and partnership, a series of quite new roles

are implied. These include:

� The responsible, active, citizen. Once subdued, unskilled and

unconfident through dependence upon the logic of the

pyramid, most people are being asked to play a new, active,

independent role.� The responsible professional. Just as the private sector is

adjusting to the demand of the customer, so must the

previously sacrosanct professional expert. The professional

can’t plan, can’t teach, design, heal or police the street without

their ‘customer’ playing an active part in the process. The

professional needs to unlearn old habits and the temptation

to defensively resist the ‘intrusion’ of the customer into

previously sacred areas of expertise.� The social entrepreneur. Just as business does not work

without the visionary, risk taking entrepreneur, so the third

sector will not prosper without a new role being played

46 Demos



which results in the creation of voluntary associations and

valued, socially responsible jobs.� The socially responsible economic entrepreneur and business

must play their part in conjunction with their new social

counterpart.� The enabling politician and political party. Used to operating

within the pyramid, the new politicians need new skills and

attitudes if they are to work the maypole with skill and

sensitivity and help the State learn to conduct an orchestra of

self-reliant individual players.

These five actors need an Urban Academy to help them to learn and

practice their new skills together. This learning process will need to be

a ‘hands on’ or ‘doing’ one in which the ‘students’ learn through devel-

oping good practice in real life situations. Such Academies need a

physical base, but their most important work would not be between

four walls but rather through bringing together teams of people from

different backgrounds to tackle common problems.

The obvious location for the Academy is in one or more of the

neighbourhood’s community colleges with funding drawn from pub-

lic, private and voluntary agencies which need their personnel to be

at the cutting edge of new ideas and practices. The Open University

was conceived as a new model of teaching for people in work and

later life. The Urban Academy is a rather different model of action

research that links together the experience and reflections of practi-

tioners, observers and analysts in the service not of pure knowledge

but rather of the ends of the community.

Once again, the relevant signposts are in place. Common Purpose

acts as the training catalyst which brings together leading people from

different walks of life and helps them to find common ground. It is

already actively engaged in 23 towns and cities across Britain, and is

now branching out into continental Europe. It is training the ‘movers

and shakers’ who will build the Britain of tomorrow in their region.

The many development trusts, voluntary organisations, the more ener-

getic of the polytechnics-turned-universities, the Foundations, and

Demos 47

A New Paradigm


institutions like the Centre for Citizenship Development in Cambridge,

which is a focal point for the new debate about communitarianism, all

have a common potential which could be realized through the joint

development of an academy and in Birmingham a small group of

people from the private, public and third sectors are working towards

this end.

48 Demos



Two scenarios face the nation as the third millennium approaches. One

is a further weakening of the institutions which mediate between the

individual and society, and further fragmentation and disconnection of

people from each other. In this scenario political parties will probably

continue to be irrelevant to the aspirations of ordinary people or the

needs of the towns and neighbourhoods of post-industrial society in

which they live.

The second scenario is more positive, involving a strengthening of

community in all its forms. The aim of this book has been to set out

some of its elements at the level of the neighbourhood. It starts with

the family and the places where people live and where, despite the con-

fusion and the pace of change, they still find much of their security

and identity. It builds outwards from the family, the home and the

school. Based on clear principles of responsibility and reciprocity, and

an undogmatic openness about which types of institutional organisa-

tion will provide the best solutions, it draws on a wide body of thought

from all shades of opinion from across the world that is grappling with

parallel issues – how to behave and think morally in a post-industrial

world, how to organise, how to link political policy with grassroot con-

cerns about the home and the street.

This book has set out some of the implications of this positive

alternative for communities – how schools, family centres and develop-

ment trusts could work together in a new framework of clearly defined

Demos 49

The Third Millennium


neighbourhoods with new forms of participatory democracy. It has

shown how, once released from the task of rowing, government can

concentrate on the essential strategic and visionary task of steering.

Much has to be done at national level to complement the new spirit

of community. New avenues could be opened to enable young people to

serve others and contribute to their community either as part of sec-

ondary schooling or afterwards. Imaginative schemes are being consid-

ered for mobilising people’s moral commitment to help solve problems

in the delivery of healthcare and education. In the USA for example, the

simple example of teaching thousands of people how to do emergency

cardiac treatment in Seattle, and the mobilising of large numbers of col-

lege graduates to help with teaching, have shown the practicality of

well-conceived communitarian ideas.

The prospect of the millennium celebrations offers a great opportu-

nity for giving these neighbourhood level experiments added weight.

So far most of the talk has been about the construction of grand new

buildings, the modern equivalent of the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel

Tower, as well as festivals, fireworks and street parties. But a great

national celebration could also help focus attention on the social inno-

vators. The Millennium Fund could be used, alongside private and

public funds, to give new community organisations, development trusts,

neighbourhood forums and urban academies, the chance to be at the

centre of the planning process in each locality, linking the celebrations

to their own initiatives.

The politicians and parties which can demonstrate that they both

recognise the nature of the problems facing modern urban life and

how to articulate practical solutions will receive widespread acclaim

from all those unsung practitioners who are already hard at work

rebuilding the torn fabric of social life. If they can tap into this energy

of experience, experiment and ideas, and tangibly back the third sector

and the social entrepreneur by providing enabling government, they

would find that they were not just capturing the decade. They would

be setting the agenda for the start of the next millennium. Not just a

once in a lifetime chance, not even one which comes once in a hun-

dred years. This chance is an extra ordinary one. Who will take it?

50 Demos



Ashdown, Paddy – Beyond Westminster(Simon and Schuster)

Atkinson, Dick – Radical Alternative,Orthodox Consensus (Heinemann)

Atkinson, Dick – Radical UrbanSolutions (Cassell)

Etzioni, Amitai – The Spirit ofCommunity (Crown)

Etzioni, Amitai – The Parenting Deficit(Demos)

Handy, Charles – The Empty Raincoat(Hutchinson)

Handy, Charles – The Age of Unreason(Hutchinson)

Hargreaves, David – The Mosaic ofLearning (Demos)

Hargreaves, David and Hopkins, DavidThe Empowered School (Cassell)

Holmes, Gerard – The Idiot Teacher(Spokesman)

Holman, Bob – A New Deal for SocialWelfare (Lion Publishing)

Osborne and Gaebler – ReinventingGovernment (Addison Wesley andPenguin)

Ree, Harry – Henry Morris: EducatorExtraordinary (Peter Owen)

Schumacher, Erich – Small is Beautiful(Abacus)

Tam, Henry – Public Service (Longmans)Weber, Max – Economy and Society

(Bedminster Press)Wilson, James – The Moral Sense (Free

Press)Willetts, David – Civic Conservatism

(The Social Market Foundation).

Demos 51

Bibliography


atkison, d. (1994). the common sense of community. demos, london

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