Raising the sails for when the wind comes

I was pleased to deliver the Annual Quaker Salter Lecture this weekend.

The theme I took were words from Fritz Schumacher. He said, a generation ago, that: “I certainly never feel discouraged. I can’t myself raise the winds that might blow us or this ship into a better world. But I can at least put up the sail so that when the winds comes, I can catch it.”

We have, on the best evidence, now around three years, no more, to prevent more than a two degree global rise in temperature over time. The longer we delay, the faster the cuts need to become – the greenhouse gases that are forcing temperature rises stick around longer than we do. Beyond this, if we want to level off at no more than two degrees, then we have a choice.  We can grow the economy, or we can cut emissions and try and do so rapidly. It is increasingly clear that we can’t do both.

So, the big economic choices of today are for an economy of prevention, a great transition to low carbon living within limits, or one of adaptation, a great disruption of coping, survival and loss.

We hide behind the idea that it might not happen. But whether we acknowledge it or not … or trust that it will fade away, I sense that there is a spirit of great sorrow on the edge of our every conversation about the future.

There are so many imaginative and hopeful enterprises and initiatives for a better tomorrow. These are the sails being raised. But in the name of hope, we have to face down uncertainty and sorrow, no less than we have to challenge apathy.

Our integrity

In July 2010, Andrew Lansley, then Health Secretary, launched his reform plans for the NHS with the ambition to ‘create the largest and most vibrant social enterprise sector in the world’.

This was his politics cloaked in our words.

It is far more interesting to have Government talk your language than not, such as championing social enterprise over the last decade, but there are risks too. We recently put down a constructive challenge to the emerging array of ‘co-operative councils’, mainly on the political left, arguing that they needed to have practical and measurable criteria for action if they were going to use our name.

Over the last few days, I been gently challenging Central Government on its use of the term ‘mutual’ to describe its joint venture public services that are being spun out. Having said the same thing, along with others, behind the scenes, we are now reiterating this in public – in a statement to the Independent and in a comment piece today in the Guardian. My comments have naturally been in my role at Co-operatives UK, rather than in any advisory capacity, past or present to Government.

There is a lot of good work being done by the Cabinet Office and Treasury for co-ops, mutuals and social enterprise, so this is not about ideology, but it is about integrity.

The potential mutual in this case is the Behavioural Insight Team. With around ten staff, as I understand it, this is a small offshoot of the Cabinet Office. Led by an outstanding policy academic, David Halpern, it was formed soon after the 2010 General Election and dubbed the Nudge Unit after a book of that name by US academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

Its mandate was to find smarter ways for government agencies to get the public onside. Regulation? Well, maybe persuasion could work instead. New public services? Try testing them first. Consumer action? Perhaps, but why not start the other way round, by making inertia work for you?

There couldn’t be a better team to start with, in terms of testing, from an understanding of how staff will feel, a new model of privatisation that Francis Maude has championed, where services are privatised but where Government retains a stake, that it can sell if the business thrives. I wish them well.

Now, this could conceivably end up as a mutual, but for the joint venture with a private investor to be spun as a mutual by the government on the BBC was to get this plain wrong. The Government spokesperson said “It’s great news that the world-renowned ‘nudge’ unit is spinning out from central government. As a mutual they will combine the benefits of private sector experience and investment with the innovation and commitment from staff leadership.”

It’s positive for sure to have minority employee shares of companies, but it is not a mutual. If Government was committed to using its stake to see the enterprise passed over to staff, with majority ownership, that would be one thing. But there is no sign that this is how it will pan out.

This is something that genuine mutuals, whether health businesses such as Benenden or insurance mutuals, are clear about. Mutuals are member-owned. It is our collective work over time, proving the success of the model, that gives it the public trust and reputation it now has.

Our words are inspiring in their heritage and vision of social organisation – mutual, co-operative, friendly societies. Their authenticity is worth championing.

A care economy

It is in the nature of us as people to care… and at times not to care.

There is a care economy out there. Many of the most important and fulfilling parts of our lives – such as parenting, neighbourliness and favours – are about care, even if they are not conventionally classed as economic activity.

When people are motivated by a need which inspires care, whether unpaid or paid, such as a care worker or nursing, there can be a richness in the motivation, because it is needs driven and sustaining of people and society.

When it comes to organisations, care is bit more of a slot machine.

The welfare state, in particular, plays a vital role in peoples’ lives. It can be a life saver, a safety net or a transformer. As one person explained to a friend of mine, Richard Simmons from the University of Stirling – “There are things that, if I didn’t experience them here at the day centre, I wouldn’t have ever done them in my life. Before, I never got out. I was a right scaredy-cat. Now, I’ve tried so many different things, I think “Yes, I can do it”. So that’s what it’s done for me’

But the welfare state can also lose a caring touch in random acts of thoughtlessness, pervasive bureaucracy or the demeaning nature of being assessed as in need. Talk to any parent over the years who has had to get one of their children ‘statemented’.

The language that is used to describe and plan care services mirror that confusion.

Richard, who I mentioned above, was doing research on people who use social care services. He wanted to explore the different ‘labels’ they have – citizen, consumer, client, customer, user, member of the public – all labels with slightly different connotations.

He showed the list of terms to one person and asked ‘How do you think the service providers see you?’ The man looked genuinely confused, and then replied ‘They just call me John’

The words that professionals use to talk about health and social care today, including that great ugly noun, personalisation, are no more than bits of Lego. Terms can be assembled, fit together and sound good, but they don’t capture the fundamentals of care. They don’t answer the question ‘why care?’.

At root we need to understand care as about meeting human needs and creating human dignity.

This needs to be good work. Fritjof Capra puts this as ‘we can’t be empowered by work that destroys the environment around us or creates systems of inequality. No matter how our work is organised, it cannot fully empower us unless we believe in its purpose’.

This is not how the care system, or the wider economy, works.

• In paid work, people are often being rewarded in terms of money and status when they are behaving destructively.

• Those who care at home or in the family that are unpaid suffer low status, poor conditions and often stress and personal costs.

• The burden of this work continues to fall disproportionately on women, whether they are out of or in the labour market.

• The entry of venture capital into the care of children and vulnerable people shapes the culture of providers towards an instrumental model of care, where service is means to an end in the form of a return on capital.

The co-operative model is now well-known and, thanks to the efforts of pioneers in the field, is increasingly looked to as an alternative, potentially better approach.

A co-operative is a business, owned by its members and there for no reason other than to serve their needs.

If the language is confusing, then yes, we can say that co-operatives are a form of social enterprise – something that is run commercially but with people in mind. What is distinct about co-ops is that the people in mind are not passive beneficiaries. They have a say. They have responsibility.

The Foster Care Co-operative, for example, gives a voice to foster carers. It can match pay and good working conditions, though not exceed them, but it adds a precious commodity – dignity.

The challenges of running a business focused on health and care, particularly in the context of local authority financing, are well known. The most impressive examples I know are long-standing health co-operatives and mutuals that in fact pre-date the NHS, such as Simplyhealth and Benenden, which has recently opened its services to all.

But when you talk to co-operatives like this, they stress that what makes the real difference is values and culture.

We are surprisingly unreflective as a nation about the institutions that serve us, surprisingly complacent about turning the care of vulnerable people into a market. To create an economy that cares for people in need, we should take a better road – the path to co-operation.

The way to change banking is to change your bank

So, the deal between Lloyds and the Co-operative Bank is off.

It held the prospect of being a game changer in banking, simply by extending the branch network for the Co-operative Bank across a far wider reach across the country. In addition to 630 branches, over four million customers would have come across, the result, ultimately, of a decision by the regulator that Lloyds, for taking the shilling of the state, needed to sell some of its branches, to limit its sway.

This was always a huge financial deal, with high risks for the co-operative sector balanced out by a long-term view of the benefits of being in retail banking at a scale on which the Co-operative Bank could be a competitor that could help shape good practice and make returns for members. It is to the credit of the Co-operative Group that it explored it, was up for it, and that it had the business nous now to step away. The concerns, which were around regulatory requirements, capital backing, payback periods, are real. No one wants to bet the bank when it comes to the largest co-operative business in the country.

We will now have a TSB, we expect, as the branches are floated off separately. But can this be anything like a Trustee Savings Bank – something with its own proud record of ethical action?

The story of savings banks, begins in 1798, when Henry Duncan became minister of Ruthwell, a small village on the edge of the Solway Firth in South West Scotland. Professor Johnston Birchall, who has a book out next week on customer owned banks worldwide, has charted Duncan’s early efforts.

Duncan set out trying to improve the lot of his desperately poor parishioners, buying flax for women to spin in their cottages, employing men to turn his land into a model farm or to work on the roads, reviving a local friendly society and importing grain at wholesale prices. In 1810 he then decided to set up a parish bank. Local landowners backed him as they liked the idea of getting people off parish poor relief through their own savings.

Duncan had the right skills, as he had spent three years working in a bank in Liverpool before becoming a minister. The idea, says Birchall, was simple. People could open a savings account with just six pence. The business model was easy to copy and within five years of the first bank opening, there were savings banks throughout the United Kingdom, then spreading around the world.

As Johnston Birchall says, though, “unfortunately, they had a flaw; they were not really owned by anyone, but administered as trusts by whoever could get their hands on them.” The co-operative and mutual model in turn offered a remedy, through membership and board election.

There is one authentic savings bank left, the Airdrie Savings Bank in Scotland, but the big question for the new bank is whether it will operate with an ounce of the motivation that inspired Henry Duncan.

For now, the best way to change banking, as the move your money campaign suggests, is to change your bank. Four million customers won’t have that as an automatic option now, but whether to the Co-operative Bank, building society or the credit unions that offer it, the offer to switch is still on the table.

Having and being – thoughts after the death of Margaret Thatcher

“What we think, we become. My father always said that…” was something that Margaret Thatcher said and signed up to. Given the influence of her ideas on political and economic life, it seems right, on her death, to consider what we think and who we are.

Her idea that society is simply the sum of individuals was clumsily put and widely and probably unfairly pilloried, but it is a prompt to think about something fundamental, which is the extent to which we act alone or act together. Martin Buber, last century, characterised this as looking to the ‘I’ or the ‘we’.

Eric Fromm, who wrote The Sane Society in 1955 – a powerful case for co-operative economic democracy, builds on this distinction between individual and society by looking at what we have and who we are. His ideas on ‘having’ and ‘being’ are set out in a short interview before he died.

In conversation with Pat Conaty, Robin Murray and John Restakis – colleagues and associates in our work at Co-operatives UK – prompted by this, it becomes clear that if value rests in what you have, rather than who you are or what you are part of, then sharing and co-operation can be seen as a threat to the identity of the haver. In contrast, if value rests in who you are, then there is a wider sense of identity and meaning that comes from sharing, and from collective affiliation. Hence the importance of the experience of co-operation, at home and work, and of festivals and dance, of common meals, of working together on a common task. This is widely affirmed in all the great work of recent years on ‘well’ being – where co-operation and social reciprocity is the outstanding predictor of happiness.

This is the real sense of society as something not just natural, rather than artificial, but also adaptable rather than fixed. The society that we are part of, or rather the multiple communities that we affiliate or adhere to, are not given but made and remade by what we think and how we act. With co-operative and mutual models of enterprise, we are doing just that – by sustaining, exploring and affirming models of ownership, investment, work and reward that find a better balance.

If it is possible to think about both the ‘I’ and the ‘we’, we can become more fully human and more fulfilled in how we live.

Save the the Bell Inn

Local regulars and the world of music is rallying to save the Bell Inn pub in Bath.

Raising community shares to fund the buyout, the aim is to continue to run it as a much loved pub, now on a co-operative basis.

We have been advising them on how to put together the share issue. So far the team has the support of Robert Plant, Michael Eavis, Peter Gabriel, Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), Portishead, The Stranglers, Baka Beyond, The Wurzels, Midge Ure, Clare Teal, Eddie Martin, The Vaccines, Radio Banska, Gabrielle Aplin, The Darkness and more.

There is a piece in the Financial Times today on the rise of community shares with some of the work we have been doing with Locality and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It quotes me saying that you have to be prepared for the downside risk of losing money if you do invest – the old co-operative principle of responsibility – so there has to be a proper business that can be sustained, with all the loyalty consumer co-ops bring. The upsides are that you become a member of something you can love.

The share offer is open only until Wednesday – the share prospectus is here

This image, which says it all, is from http://www.perryharris.com/

Where real power lies

A guest blog from co-operative entrepreneur and writer, Bill Pardy

The world appears full of intolerance. Civility appears a thing of the past, a little used or understood concept in a world of wants and consumerism.

This intolerance is evident in the struggles and wars that have grown pervasive. In the developed world, it is most apparent in the disparaging commentary, the belligerent and bigoted responses and the use of malicious, hurtful even racist language.

In Canada this was prevalent in the media coverage pertaining to the recent hunger strike by Attawapiskat’s Chief Theresa Spence. It was evident in the response to the protest by Marlene Giersdorf in Prince Edward Island because her employment benefits had been withdrawn.

The commentary and especially the individual related comments gave one pause for thought. The vitriol espoused by most responding to media articles made one wonder if civility is alive at all.

Canada used to be one of the most respected nations in the world for its caring, socially supportive and peaceful nature. Today in the world it is seen in a different light and the Maple Leaf has lost much of its luster.

Canadians are no longer peacekeepers, international policy has become provocative and support for the UN, despite its inequities, is non-existent. This government mimics the intolerance that encompasses the globe, because they think it is pragmatic and gives them advantage. They have no vision, much less one of the more enlightened supportive society of former leaders that made Canada a shining light in the world.

The root of the world’s intolerance, and our own, can fundamentally be found in the growing gap between those that have and those without. It has surpassed tolerable levels in many countries, and as a result, intolerance abounds.

This intolerance manifests itself in different ways; through religious persecution, political unrest, economic repression or gender subjugation. The tone appears disparaging on one side while on the other it is focused on anger and rage.

There is always someone to blame, usually those disadvantaged, whether it is the marginalized, impoverished, elderly or youth. A Japanese cabinet minister attributed all the blame of his country’s woes to the elderly suggesting that they should “just hurry up and die”.

In many countries now the blame is on the unemployed, especially the young unemployed; the solution is to slash benefits and support, thereby, forcing migration.

Some suggest, as with the aboriginals in Canada, that everyone must be integrated, which means they should conform.

There appears to be little appreciation for the fact that the world has changed dramatically in the past few decades with growing disparities, which has increased unemployment and resultant marginalization.

Forgotten are the foundations that facilitated the progress of the developed world encompassed in the concept of caring societies, expansion of opportunity (not just money) and the sharing of the vast resources that still exist in the world.

Respect has been trampled by those in a hurry to have all the money and all the power. The business and political elites emulate the authoritarianism of those countries least developed; not the democratic basis of those most developed.

People are mere needy clients, but necessary for their vote to win re-election and more power.

How can ordinary people have respect with such an attitude prevalent among those who govern?

There is hope which is stored in the huge, mostly silent, majority. They quietly watch and perhaps puzzle at this bizarre behaviour. Perhaps they are comfortable, maybe afraid, or at present, unable to contemplate their role in changing this mixed up world. As the disparities within society envelopes more of them and as intolerance expands, one hopes they will be stirred, impassioned and stimulated to action.

It is only then that some balance will be brought back to society and adequate controls placed on politicians and bureaucrats alike. Then policies and rules can be re-instated to contain financial and business entities who have run amuck, even stealing from those who they are supposed to serve.

Real power always lies with the masses. What’s required is a quiet revolution led by the grass roots that would remind those who would intimidate, belittle and control where real power lies.