The Big Society

Is there something rather sinister hidden beneath the fluffy Big Society label that the British public find unpalatable? Where does the Big Society initiative originate and what is its' true purpose?

Cameron's Big Society Idea?

The February, 2011 article Cameron relaunches Big Society 'with moral purpose' indicated that sources close to BigDave 'acknowledged that there had been a failure of communication over the Big Society idea which had damaged the Coalition's  ability to sell its key policy in a number of areas'.

I ask: - Has the Government's communication strategy failed to inspire a sceptical public to engage in a truly inspirational Government initiative, or, in the alternative, is there something rather sinister hidden beneath the fluffy Big Society label that the British public find unpalatable?

When talking about local responsibility in his speech speech to the Scottish Party Conference in May 2009 BigDave told his audience

We are not just responsible to those we know and love. We have obligations to those beyond our front door - to our neighbours and in our community. And we know people will only start connecting to the outside world outside their windows once they know that they can make a real difference. When your say to local people 'this is your street, this is your neighbourhood, if you want to make it better we'll help you and we won't stand in your way', they respond by doing just that.

He then tells his audience that

Community is born through common purpose - and we're going to give people the power and control to drive that common purpose.

In his March 2010 Conservative Party Conference speech he announced that

The Big Society is a guiding philosophy - a society where the leading force for progress is social responsibility, not state control. It includes a whole set of unifying approaches - breaking state monopolies, allowing charities, social enterprises and companies to provide public services, making Government more accountable.

Of course this isn't BigDave's idea and neither did it originate within the Conservative Party. The Conservative Home blogsite itself admits that

This plan is directly based on the successful community organising movement established by Saul Alinsky in the United States and has successfully trained generations of community organisers, including President Obama.

Who Was Saul Alinsky?

What the Conservatives don't tell you is that Saul Alinskli was the aspiring destroyer of capitalism whose book Rules for Radicals was dedicated to Lucifer. Alinski believed there was no right or wrong in politics, only what was necessary to seize power. He advocated subversion by infiltration of political parties and institutions, above all by the use of 'community organisers'. You can examine an extract on Tactics from Chapter 7 of Rules for Radicals here.

The Big Society Is Not A New Idea

I have always found it difficult to grasp the concept of the Big Society. When researching the archive of the Urban Forum website I discovered a link to 'Mutual Action, Common Purpose: Empowering the Third Sector'.

Former NULabour Home Secretary, David Blunkett published this document for the Fabian Society in 2008. It sets out a wide range of proposals to support the third sector in the future and it includes recommendations on grants and commissioning, volunteering, and how cooperatives and social enterprises could be used as legal vehicles for the future running of local services such as libraries, community shops and pubs etc. Many of the proposed policies and mechanisms for implementing them, described as the 'third way' under NuLabour have simply been re-branded as the 'Big Society'.

Secret Big Society Awards

On 2nd January, 2011 the Daily Express published an article David Cameron's Secret 'Big Society' Awards in which they drew attention to the fact that

The Government has been quietly giving our Queen's honours-style Big Society Awards every week since November ... The Winners get a letter from David Cameron, a plaque and an invitation to a Downing Street reception later this year.

If the public online comments are a reliable barometer of public opinion the Big Society agenda is likely to attract increasing public resistance. Here are just two examples

The people are starting to realize that every action of Government seems to have one goal: the destruction of Britain, its indigenous people, traditions, religion, morality, economy, housing, education, health, defence, and now transport, as reflected in the damaging new taxes on fuel.

The second commenter writes:

Dave changes the UN-EU term 'Civil Society' into Big Society to conceal Communitarian ideology. Removing rights from individuals and creating rights for groups (collectively known as 'Civil Society') is the central theme of the Communitarian political ideology. Dave doesn't want you to know that he's helping the EU replace individual rights and Democratic law with group rights and communitarian law.

What Is Communitarianism?

Communitarianism is a 'Third Way' compromise between Capitalism and Communism. Communitarianism is not Fascism nor is it Communism, but a synthesis of these opposing ideologies which preceded it. It draws government-business partnerships from Fascism and employs group decision-making from Communism. Communitarianism will resemble a corporate state (Fascism) in which the elite will work under capitalist rules to continue generating wealth while the working class will be controlled by Communist model laws. The Communitarian syntheses incorporates not only elements of Fascism and Communism but also Globalism.

Communitarians believe that attaining a healthy society involved the successful merger of the 3 sectors of society. It requires a merger of the government sector, the private sector (business) and the social sector (which includes the churches). This merger is known also known as "Drucker's 3-legged stool", named after its main proponent, Peter Drucker, who is considered to be the father of modern management. Drucker believed that the only way to persuade the world to accept change is to engage all three sectors of society, working together to effect change.

In Drucker's model the church becomes interconnected with the state and corporate interests - in reality, becoming subservient to these interests.

In the United States one of the main organisations manipulating the Churches into this Communitarian partnership is the Leadership Network. Within the United Kingdom the prime suspect must be the leadership training organisation - Common Purpose.

Let's examine a number of examples of how Common Purpose people slot into 'Drucker's' 3-legged stool' in the context of the Big Society.

Big Society and Common Purpose

In October 2010 the website Philanthropy UK announced that the Community Foundation for Merseyside had produced a report in response  to Prime Minister David Cameron's call for voluntary sector input into the Big Society idea. It was also reported that Professor Phil Redmond CBE, a champion of the area and writer of the Liverpool soap opera Brookside, welcomed the report and said:

Big Society has been around in Liverpool for many years and the people of Liverpool are the definition of Civil Society: co-operating with each other around a common purpose which is to ensure their communities thrive.

Amongst the trustees of the Community Foundation for Merseyside I discovered Rosemary Hawley, Chair of Knowlsey Primary Care NHS Trust, Local Magistrate and Committee Member of Merseyside Common Purpose.

The Community Foundation for Merseyside is reportedly one of the largest charitable grant-makers in Merseyside, having awarded over £39 million of grants to local community groups and voluntary organisations throughout Merseyside in its 11-year history. It is part of the Community Foundation Network UK which claims itself to be Changing Communities - Transforming Society.

What Is A Community Foundation?

According to Matthew Bowcock, Chairman of the Community Foundation UK, community foundations are:

A natural part of the civil infrastructure of a community and a cornerstone of the Big Society.

The Community Foundation network UK website also tells us that

there are 48 community foundations in the UK, covering all of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and most of England.

A search of the Charity Commission website provided a little more information on Community Foundation Network UK. For example, on page 9 of their 2009 accounts we are told that

The principal sources of funding during the year for Community Foundation Network were 'the Office of the Third Sector (Cabinet Office).

In addition the accounts also tell us that Community Foundation Network UK has been

Developing relationships with other Government Departments highlighting the scope for bottom up community led responses to issues, specifically, contributing to government consultations on: Quality of Life; Knives and Gangs, Preventing Violent extremism: Community Empowerment. 

Amongst the Board Members of the Community Foundation Network UK sits Graham Tuttle of the Norfolk Community Foundation. Graham is a 1998 Common Purpose Matrix Graduate. Linkedin tells us that he graduated whilst with Marsh Global Claims Management Company named RECLAIM. In the 'Love Norfolk ..support Norfolk Community Foundation'  event held on 27th October 2009 the welcome address was given by Graham Tuttle whilst the 7:45 pm Question Time slot was Chaired by Simon Delf of Common Purpose.

My next example of Common Purpose involvement in Community Foundations is found by reference to a BBC press office report. It reads:

Atholl Duncan was 'appointed' Head of News & Current Affairs for the BBC in October 2006. He is currently director of the Hibernian Community Foundation and is a member of the advisory board for Common Purpose.

If we examine the Quartet Community Foundation for the West of England we discover  that Deb Appleby was appointed by the Trustees as Chief Executive and took up her position on 12th July 2010. She had been Head of Policy & Performance at Dorset County Council since 2005 and she spent her early career as a chartered accountant before moving on to run Bristol Common Purpose. UK Column researchers have also discovered that Ronnie Brown, the Development Director for Quartet Community Foundation is a Bristol 1996 Common Purpose Matrix Graduate.

David Cameron's launch of the Big Society

When launching the Big Society, in a speech given on 19 July 2010, David Cameron tells listeners that the Big Society is

a bottom-up vision, not a government program dictated from the state to citizens. Big Society is about a cultural change where people “don’t always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for answers to the problems they face but instead feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.

This is as clear an example of the use of aesopian language as I can imagine.  The Big Society is obviously one where the State seeks to cascade its control, via it's networked Common Purpose Graduates, down to every local grassroots organisation in the country. The blurring of the boundaries between the public sector, private sector and the third sector raises fundamental questions surrounding the issues of accountability to the tax paying public and transparency and openness.

I suspect that Council taxpayer money that should have been allocated to run local libraries, leisure centres etc will be re-channelled via the network of Community Foundations to be spent on United Nations Local Agenda 21 projects. 

The Big Society Equals United Nations Agenda 21

GovToday, the UK's online resource for the public sector, has a page dedicated to the Sustainable Communities 2010: Building the Big Society Conference and Exhibition which took place in November 2010. It says

At its most fundamental level, achieving Sustainable Communities is a means of delivering sustainable development for individual places, balancing and integrating the UK's environmental, social and economic goals, placing People at the heart of the agenda. There is now a real opportunity to build Sustainable Communities - regenerating neighbourhoods and communities through a collaborative approach at local level and investing in our low carbon economy by mapping and prioritising the totality of public spending in any given area.

If you Google 'Sustainable' Communities' you will find that it it part of the United Nations Agenda 21 Programme. Evidently, your council tax is being spent by your local council who have been covertly implementing United Nations policies on British soil without either your knowledge or your consent.

Big Society And The Church of England

In a spirited effort to convince a skeptical British public of the positive merits of the Big Society up pops the bearded Satanist leader of the Church of England.

'David Cameron's 'Big Society' can be understood by flicking through the pages of a 400 year old book', the Archbishop of Canterbury says: Big Society? You can find it in the Bible, says Dr. Rowan Williams.

Is this the passage he refers to, I wonder?

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works

-  2 Cor 11:13 - 15.

Further reading: Who in the world wants UN Local Agenda 21, Niki Raapana.