Colin Penter: Radical ideas on civil society, the not-for-profit world and social justice activism: The gap between Government rhetoric about civil society and the reality

Monday, August 8, 2011

The gap between Government rhetoric about civil society and the reality

The UK Cameron Coalition Government has made all sorts of policy statements about the importance of civil society and the NFP sector in contributing to the "Big Society", but the sector is being devastated by funding cuts and the privatization and outsourcing of human services and public services to corporations.

A new report publicized in the UK Independent shows that not for profits and charities are set to lose 3 billion pounds in public funding over the next 5 years.

This comes on top of research by False Economy UK, which used freedom of information requests to show that 2,000 charities in England have suffered funding cuts this year and these cuts represent just a small amount of the agencies facing funding cuts.

The gap between the rhetoric of Governments about the importance of the not- for- profit sector and civil society and the reality has never been starker and should serve as a caution to NFP's here in Australia.

The Independent reports:

"Britain's voluntary organisations face losing almost £3bn in funding over the next five years, according to the first comprehensive report to analyse the coming impact of spending cuts on the public sector.

In a blow to David Cameron's much-trumpeted "Big Society", charities across the UK face the prospect of their funds dropping by £911m a year by 2016, and losing £2.8bn in total over the next five years, according to research by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) published today.

The six-month study, which looked at how cuts to central and local government over the next half decade will hit the voluntary sector, predicts that charities will lose 7.7 per cent of their current public funds by 2016 if government departments pass on their cuts proportionately. Currently, central and local government together contribute at least £11.8bn to charities each year".

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Reflections

"There are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about.. things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight" Phillip Pullman

“NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation. In order make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework, more or less shorn of a political or historical context” Arundhati Roy

"This government does not like campaigning and advocacy organisations, and the removal of the ACNC as an independent regulator simply exposes those organisations to attack". Greg Ogle

" ...the the nation’s nonprofit association leaders have to speak out publicly about the juggernaut of market thinking that has increasingly relegated nonprofits to a category of unexciting, not particularly effective, second-rate responders to the social and economic problems of our country. Those problems are largely the product of our market economy. Hopefully, nonprofits won’t see themselves as having collapsed into the for-profit sector’s bench". Rick Cohen

"It’s no longer sufficient for the nonprofit sector to sidestep critical societal issues of race, campaign finance, climate change, and the fiscal cliff for fear that in speaking out on them they will alienate arenas of political support they need to cultivate and protect. The nonprofit sector has a concrete role to play in telling politicians to get their acts together, to start speaking to the real issues of the day, and to act as if being elected to government means having to engage in the process of governing" Rick Cohen

"We in the sector are constantly exhorted to provide evidence of need and success in order to get funding - but the government is allowed to get away with rolling out a controversial, highly contested model of funding the sector without providing evidence. How hypocritical is that? Well, it won't work. Private-sector models are not the solution to deeply entrenched, long-term social problems.
Deborah Allcock Tyler

" Introducing the different logics of civil society and the market into the same organization can have a negative effect by confusing the bottom line still further, complicating accountability and stimulating mission drift"
Michael Edwards, Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World

The rise of advocacy groups and NGOs has...accompanied the neoliberal turn and increased spectacularly since 1980 or so. The NGOs have in many instances stepped into the vacuum in social provision left by the withdrawal of the state from such activities. This amounts to privatization by NGO. In some instances, this has helped accelerate further state withdrawal from social provision. NGOs thereby function as "Trojan horses for neoliberal globalization."
David Harvey

"The dominant story is of a corporatised, economics-driven sector, where leaders are promoted on their ability to run businesses that happen to be charities"
Lucy Morris

"History knows many periods of dark times in which the public realm has been obscured and the world become so dubious that people have ceased to ask any more of politics than it show due consideration for their vital interests and public liberty"
Hannah Arendt

Just because the non-profit sector needs to improve its performance does not necessarily mean it has to become more business like"
Paul Light

If you make yourself a sheep the wolves will eat you
Benjamin Franklin

"It's clear Australia's third sector development is being hamstrung by its poor relations with state and federal governments, and by the absence of a coherent policy framework."
Mark Lyons

"The history of social justice and social change has been written by social movements. Change does not come from above"
John Falzon

"No lasting change has been successful without large numbers of people acting consciously and collectively around human values of solidarity and social justice, not market values. Markets are great ways to do some things, but not to fashion communities of caring and compassion"
Michael Edwards

Colin Penter: Radical ideas on civil society, the not-for-profit world and social justice activism

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