Big Society, the corruption of charities compassion.

Big Society, the corruption of charities compassion.

Something unique occurs in the UK; every year since the Public Records Act 1958 and amended in 1967, there is a system to release government papers to the public unless such exposure world  cause "damage to the country's image, national security or foreign relations" if they were to be released. In addition the Freedom of Information Act 2000, a piece of legislation brought in by the blair administration and much regretted since, aids the disclosure of more recent, none secret, yet redacted details of government policies. The availability of such information throws a weak light on the machinations that take place by those that the people put in charge to run the country and serves to show, in hindsight, the decisions taken are not necessarily taken in the fullness of democratic accountability hence it is why some information is withheld for a period of time. This delay is also to preserve the dubious integrity of those that advise and make decisions in times of conflicting stress.

Each year under the 30 year rule public government papers are released for inspection that contains information on the internal machinations perpetrated in government and public civil service as the back ground to ‘key’ events of a period and decisions taken at the time of those events. It is a unique disclosure process, given the high degree of control sought and exercised by the UK state and possibly a process not available in many other civilised countries under a ‘right to know’. Such release of information generally attracts a short term media attention with limited interest shown by the general public unless it relates to some previous major salacious / political scandal, with other geopolitical aspects that are possibly of interest to modern historians.

Just now papers from 1982 have been released and the two notable samples were mentioned; that of the Falkland’s war and a hidden and secret conservative (cons) policy to dismantle the welfare state! Surprisingly the one that was given the most coverage was the story of the Falkland war, portrayed as a lucky escape from disaster as the thatcher government did not believe that Argentina would carry out an invasion, ignored warning signs that an event was about to take place and militarily the UK was unprepared nor equipped to project a defence over 7k miles away, for equipment and transport was at scratch level. The fact that it did was down to sequestrated assets, coordinated service planning, external help – luck and armed forces personnel determination. The Falklands war saved ‘maggies bacon’ and gave her another unjustified stint in power.

However, the most interesting aspect of the release of papers was the one that laid bare thatcher’s cabinet involvements with the planned dismantling of the public social sector. This very important piece of social deconstruction that has parallels with the cons party even now, gained hardly any real TV or radio media coverage – with exception of a small piece in the Guardian etc and it is this absence of real coverage or discussion that stands out. A plan hatched by thatcher and her chancellor Geoffrey Howe was behind a poisonous groundwork in 1982 to dismantle the welfare state, including compulsory charges for schooling and a massive scaling back of other public services. As shown in the document, "This would of course mean the end of the National Health Service," declared a confidential cabinet memorandum by the Central Policy Review Staff in September 1982, released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule. There was at the time an accusation by the labour party that the cabinet were intent on dismembering huge parts of the social system and a redacted leaked version also proposed introducing education vouchers, ending the state funding of higher education, freezing welfare benefits and an insurance-based health service. An earlier ‘draft’ was more extensive in its aims citing compulsory charges for schooling alongside a "drastic reduction in resources going to the public sector" full-cost university tuition fees and breaking the link that then existed between welfare benefits and prices, privatising the health service; as it also states: "It is therefore worth considering aiming over a period to end the state provision of healthcare for the bulk of the population, so that medical facilities would be privately owned and run, and those seeking healthcare would be required to pay for it.  Those who could not afford to pay would then have their charges met by the state, via some form of rebating or reimbursement." A minor exception might be the long-term institutional care of the "mentally handicapped, elderly" who "clearly could not afford to pay".

Although thatcher later attempted to play down her involvement with the plan, it is clear that she and Howe were in the driving position to enact the outrageous plan even against the slight murmuring and angst within her cabinet to the extent that Lawson intimated that the cabinet at one stage reached the state of a “riot” over her CPRS think tank endeavours.

That the planned social pogrom did not progress was more to the events of the distraction of the war and limited resistance by the ‘wets’. It was an astounding piece of dogmatic ideology built on the long held belief of cons for the true blue but the time was not right.

However come the Credit Crises of 2008 and disregarding the lack of democratic support for the cons that forces a coalition with the liberal party, it presented (as they no doubt see it) a once in a lifetime opportunity to foist the plan onto an unsuspecting public under the fig of the austerity measures that are now wrecking the economic fabric of any likely early recovery and into this scene is injected the poison ideology of 1982.

Looking at the scope of the current public sector cuts and where they are being sliced into, shows the depth of the belief system that the cons have, to reset the role of state society and social expectations – in this context came camerons call for the progress of his Big Society, a loose verbal expression that carried no intelligent cohesive description but left open anyone’s input to flesh out just what he means. One translation may have meant any suitable private provider to take over the finance and running of existing state provision.

The UK is the 5th largest economy in the world with open borders, free unhindered capital movement, and had a social structure that was the mark of a civilised country comparably at ease and peace with itself, it insured a degree of physical comfort for all, albeit it came at an increasing cost, a cost that was being greatly exposed as the economic strength of the UK was allowed to be eroded by unrestrained greed, political incompetence and wilful economic self interested blindness. For hundreds of years there have always been elements of charity work taking place on the UK, charity work undertaken by individual and small self organised arrangements to help those people in a society that are not catered for by the civil structures of government. They have often played an important role in trying to voluntarily fill the gaps often found in every civilisation that has a disproportionate imbalance in the distribution of resources for reasons of indigenous and extraneous factors of authority structural short comings.

Charities are coming under increasing pressure over the past three years with escalating demands on their limited available resources and are being expected to cope with the fall out results of cameron’s big society agenda wrapped in the austerity measures that are designed to eviscerate as much as possible social security spending.  Although invited to visit and examine the result of his handy work no liberal nor any cons member has had the virgina or balls or to see for themselves be just what their policies are doing nor do they put their hand into their own pocket to chip in to a charity of the deserving poor.  On a recent TV discussion with cameron, he was asked why over the past two years there  were more food banks and people attending them; his response was – ‘the reason they were more extensive was because “they (the Government) have allowed them to advertise in job centres” (eh?) and if he understood the plight of the poor to which he said he does (what? from the millionaire) and that his government has taken more people out from the tax threshold (after giving his millionaires a £100k tax break). Just where does this educated rich cretin think, in his own words, “we are all in this together” does the ‘together’ fit? This is cameron’s Big Society, the slow impoverishment of the deserving poor and hard working families some of whom may have lost their main income with the recent high level job losses via the recession to find that society (in the form of this governments, policies) no longer has a care, happy to not see propagated circumstances that forces them to the soup kitchens.

Just to recap what the papers of 1982 reveal; the agenda to radically change the social structure built up since 1948, to withdraw from a whole range of civil support, to privatise as much of the civil systems for private profit, to develop a payment for services culture, to disconnect the state from any involvement in a public expectation of social responsibilities, to foster self determination and individualism with no recourse to any safety net and ultimately (the result will have been) to fracture society into those that have resources and those that have not....

The fact that the plan was nor carried through had more to do with the tortuous nature of the time, with the more important industrial and economic stricture and strife that required adjustment which alone were contentious enough and not for any lack of real drive to force the policies forward. It may have been dangerous to inflate the strong emotive forces that were present and organised at the time however roll forward 25 year, those same forces are no longer in play to the same extent and under the guise of subsequent controlling security legislation and generous PFI, PPI one can see exactly where the conservative values are.

Now came the greatest opportunity to redress the shelved policies and with no democratic mandate what so ever, engineered with the help of the CC and under the mantle of enforced austerity to do what the cons have wanted to do all along.

The disposal of the dispossessed, those that are not ‘one of us’, not voters, not conservatives, do not contribute to society, the benefit scroungers, and as of  the 9^th of January 2013, voting in the new benefits cap to differentiate between the hardworking poorly paid employee, the squeezed middle class and  “skivers and scroungers”. All elements of guiding policy as laid out in the thatcher plan and since the 2010 coalition pact; it shows that the path the cons have travelled is much further than their wishes of 1982, made possible now with the defeat of any public conscience or dissent for the disfranchised and the worry of its own survival.

To show the cons caring side they have swallowed the mantra devised by this PM PR fraudster the idea of a “Big Society” that it can be relied on and will be encourage to take over the roles of as much social provision in charity deeds that it can be pressurised to take for the good of their fellow wo/man while at the same time reducing funds that some charities call upon via local authorities, to carry out their charity deeds. The idea that he can profess to support a big society and at the same time propagate the divisiveness of deserving rich, undeserving poor, workers and shirkers is an abomination.

Charities in the main are formed to uptake supportive actions that are over and above the mean civil deficiencies that are exposed over time and that reside within a social order, such deficiencies that are not generously covered by universal agreement, yet here they are being cohered to shoulder a soon to be unsupportable volume of needs shrugged off by this coalition of out of touch rich toffs that have never done an honest unsupported network normal days work in their lives. It is a corruption to use the values of charity to hide the divisive dogma of a failed economic system that continues to ignore the causes of the current UK decline. How can there continue to be support for charities when they are likely to be seen to be giving aid to the reckless, feckless, homeless, skivers and scroungers?

What will the papers of the next 3 decades reveal of this abysmal pre apocalyptic period, it may come too late to shine a bright light into the dark recesses of this new uncivil society, the corruption of moral standing, the constructed deliberate division being propagated by the unhealthy spin attacking the workless, the lack of cooperative endeavour, the evidential examples that demonstrate that “we are all (not) in this together” and each is to look to their own.

© Renot 2013

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