Groundwork Conference - Birmingham
A transcript of an unscripted address
21 January 2002
A few months ago before I went into media purdah I was a guest on the Jimmy Young show. I was surprised to discover the number of people that listened to the Jimmy Young show and had a huge number of e-mails and letters afterwards and one person wrote in to draw my attention to the music that Jimmy Young played. Apparently before the interview he played the song Faith by George Michael and after the interview played You Sexy Thing ! Now when you get to be a Bishop frankly you take the compliments where you can !
I do want to thank you for inviting me to participate in this conference. I've been here since this morning, right from the first session with Michael Heseltine. I've interrupted my study leave to be here because I felt the conference could would aid my own study which is specifically, 'Jesus and the earth, re-reading the gospels with an environmental awareness'. I'd like to draw attention to one book that I've already read which sums up so much of what we have heard today. Alistair Macintosh's 'Soil and Soul' I would list it now as one of the top ten books that has influenced my thinking. 'Soil and Soul' is by a Scottish academic who from his experiences in the Hebrides weaves together theology, spirituality, economics, ecology in a book which has profound importance to the agenda that we've shared today.
I'm also very glad that last year we had a presentation to the House of Bishops of the work of Groundwork and this means that every Bishop in the Church of England is aware of your work, which means that you can pick up the phone, ask to see your Bishop and talk to him about the church in your area becoming a partner. Although there is a story about a Bishop who when he got to his first staff meeting called everybody together and said, 'Gentlemen' - I'm afraid there weren't at that stage any women in the senior staff meeting, 'we've got to bring this diocese into the 19 th century' and one of the Archdeacons said, 'My lord, my lord, you mean the 21 st century.' 'Mr. Archdeacon, one century at a time please!'
But anyway the Church of England is coming into the 21 st century and to be serious about it, if you are looking for partners then I know the church is there in every community - suburban, urban and rural and also leading the way in understanding community engagement. The real divide in our society is not between the urban and the rural. The urban and rural share many experiences of deprivation. The real division in our society is between the urban/rural and suburbia where the decision makers live and the resources are concentrated. This book that I refer to, Soil and Soul, starts with an evocative poem - 'Child go break off from the herd, go beyond the lowlands, leave the valley of the shed antlers the elders are sick, it is your time now.' He goes on to quote another poem from Adrian Ridge - 'My heart is moved by all I cannot save, so much has been destroyed, I have to cast my lot with those who age after age perversely with no extraordinary power reconstitute the world'.
My own involvement is a journey of somebody who was imposed on the community to being invited by a community to help them shape their own future. When I was first canvassed to become chair of New Deal for Communities I discovered that the local residents were incensed. They were told that New Deal for Communities put the community in the driving seat, so who was this being parachuted in to become chair of their board? I understood the antagonism. I went to meet with the local community members to ask them whether they wanted me to be involved in the regeneration process with them. I shall never forget one particular meeting in a pub with 12 residents and within metres of where we were sitting there had been rapes, murders, arson attacks, muggings. One old lady told a story of how she had been walking down the street in broad daylight and two young men with an empty supermarket trolley rammed her repeatedly. 'They were probably smack-heads' she said. She rose in her chair as she told us that she had said to them, 'I'm not afraid of you, you're bullies and cowards. I've got so much anger inside of me I could floor the both of you'. She then crumpled in her chair and said to me, 'Bishop will you help us?'
I hesitate to tell you that story because I don't want to demonise young people because frankly they are victims as much as that old lady was a victim. But that story said something to me about the tenacity of people to stay in communities, of their commitment to make a community work, to make it a better place to live and a better place to work.
I think one of the most revealing things that Michael Heseltine said this morning was that the most exciting political experience that he ever had was walking the streets of Toxteth. What can we do to get those of us who are decision makers to walk the streets and to have our views formed by the experiences of the people? I think that's what Michael Heseltine was telling us. Well if it's true of him it is most certainly true of me that some of the most profound experiences that I've had in the last 3-years since being Bishop of Liverpool have been in the company of the people of Kensington. They've been some of the most rowdy public meetings that we've ever had. One man in particular comes with a mega-phone to make himself heard!
But don't tell me that people aren't interested in local democracy. They may not turn out for political elections but at our AGM over 400 people turned out, because when it comes to the place that you live people are concerned and they're committed.
But I was very diffident about being there from outside and I've said publicly in Kensington that I'll continue doing it so long as people want me to be there, because the regeneration, the renewal that happens has got to be bottom-up and not top-down, because if it's top-down it is people playing god with other people's lives. 'Community' is a mantra that people chant too easily and I don't think, as I hope I'll explain in a moment, we fully understand the depth and the reality of truly community led regeneration.
What has happened in deprived areas mirrors eco system. If you take an ingredient out, take the soil out for example, then that system will evolve in a very different and detrimental way, and what we have in some of our neighbourhoods is the nutrients are missing and it does require an external agency at the invitation and with the co-operation of the local community, to plough back in those vital nutrients.
But local people are extremely suspicious of external agents and Richard Best is absolutely right to say that it takes 2-years to build up some sort of confidence. The first meeting that I went to as an observer of the board, we spent two and a half hours on the minutes because there was so much distrust around it and it's great that NDC is a 10-year programme. But, those of you involved in it will know that you've only got to miss your targets in one year and you're penalised and the money goes and the local community turns on you, why did you let this money go?
We need to be much, much more flexible. I underline what's been said, but one member of the community sent me this advice given to Franklin D Roosevelt when he started his own New Deal for Community Programme - 'Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers, the greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.'
We have to work hard to overcome the suspicion that there is in the community against outside agencies. Listen to the language that we use. The words regeneration and renewal are spiritual words. They are natural words, they are organic words, they describe organic processes. If you read that book 'Soil and Soul' you'll see these words coming out time and time again but if you read the literature and listen to the pundits in the regeneration industry it is peppered with different sorts of words like these - 'triggers', 'levers', 'quick hits', 'pressing buttons', 'levering in', 'outcomes', 'products'. This is mechanical language. More often than not it is used by the people with the power. The people who award the grants, charities or government, the people who hold the communities accountable for how they will spend the money. Here is a tension both philosophically and practically.
The natural words tell us that environments are complex, that eco systems are finely balanced. The process, and we've heard this time and again today, the processes take time and have their seasons. A mechanical model encourages the belief that by, and you've heard these phrases as well as I have, by hitting a particular button you can get a quick win or a quick hit and there is the tension, the organic language versus the mechanical language. But, it's not just the problem of language. It affects people's very lives because the people using the mechanical language want all the outcomes within a particular delivery plan and scale and people who are living the community, living the community know that it doesn't happen like that. After all, if it takes time to plant a seed and grow a flower, how much longer will it take to plant the seed of a community that has fallen into the ground and died to rise again to flourish and to blossom.
In August I wrote an article for The Guardian. It was about trying to find a new way of spending the New Deal money and European money. How could we spend that money through the community rather than on the community? In other words, how could you use that money and that power to irrigate communities rather than artificially showering them? Again, if you look at the natural world, a flash flood can destroy the environment and sometimes we come along to communities and we flash flood them, or sometimes we will pay people outside the community to come in and do work for and to the community. We have got to find new ways of using that money and spending it through communities so that we revitalise the local economy, to which the government is committed. It's one of four hallmarks of neighbourhood renewal, to revive the local economy.
We've got to be able, I think, to use the tax and benefits system creatively. After all, we use the tax system, sweeteners, to encourage property companies to go into a deprived area and to develop it. Why can we not have the courage to use the tax and benefit system and invest in the people who live there? There were two outcomes or should I say fruits of the, of this article in The Guardian. The first is, that the ideas are now being taken seriously by Lord Falconer and his civil servants and also by the Policy Unit in No. 10. In Liverpool there's a wonderful phrase, if you're pleased with something you say you're 'made-up'. A bit difficult to understand that phrase when you first get to Liverpool ! But I was made-up when I discovered that The Guardian article was being studied by the citizens panels in the community. The daughter of one of the panel members had sent it to her from University. This was then photocopied and then it went round all the citizens panels. After I discovered this we held a seminar and over fifty people turned up on a Friday evening at 6 o'clock for this seminar on ideas from the community about using the tax and benefits system in a different way, in a creative way.
Now on my study leave I'm very privileged to be cloistered in the University of Oxford. The first lecture I went to the tutor arrived I think with about ten handouts because he expected no more than ten people to come to his lecture. Yet over fifty people in a deprived community came to this seminar on the tax and benefits system. Two-thirds of them women and many young ones at that . I sent round this sheet and I said listen, you may not want to do this but I would love you to put your name and address down and then in brackets after your name put the number of hours you spent on local community work last week. Because, I said, when I get to Lord Falconer I'd like to show him who it is that came to this seminar, where these ideas have come from. I kid you not, they wrote down 10-hours, 12-hours, 30-hours, 40-hours and one community member had added up that in the previous months she had spent time at 171 meetings and when I told that to a senior person in Whitehall the person said, but that's a full working year ! I said, it is, and these meetings were on average three/four hours.
But my friends is it not extraordinary that if a middle-class person goes into a regenerating community as a non-resident day tripper we'll be prepared to pay them anything up to £50,000 a year, but if local people stay in their regenerating community with all the pressures, we pay them nothing, nothing whatsoever.
Somebody said on the panel this is to do with justice. It most certainly is to do with justice and I think that I was at the same meeting that Matthew was at, where the person said that he'd been in this room and there were ten people there, professional regenerators. I worked out that they were probably together in that room, half a million pounds a year and they said the one person in the room who was being paid nothing was the community member, who was actually doing the work. In this seminar the people of Kensington said, what we offer is this - commitment, life experience, local knowledge, the skills of survival and the ideas for solving problems.
Now I believe that we have to recognise that in a way that is not being fully recognised at the moment justice requires us to rethink the tax and benefits system to see whether or not we can use that to stimulate and engage local involvement. When I arrived in Kensington I discovered very quickly the amount of burn-out there was amongst local community members and again that's been highlighted and research done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to show that local community members are often between a rock and a hard place. The regenerators, well we leave, we go back to wherever we live but the community members they stay and they get knocked up at 11o'clock/midnight with a rumour that their street is about to be demolished. We have got to find a way of sustaining the community involvement and not leading to the burn-out and disillusionment that is already happening in some places.
Very briefly I want to share with you some of the ingredients, the nutrients, that the Kensington, felt would be good for ploughing back into their community. I've shared these ideas both with the Policy Unit and with Lord Falconer. One person suggested community release - why aren't employees released by their employers for a range of approved community work like school governership or membership of citizens panels or maybe a board member of Groundwork Trust locally, and the company, the firm, could be remunerated in exactly the same way as is done for jury service. Why can't that happen? Why can't it?
Another idea - Community Involvement Agency. I was slightly dubious about this because the acronym spells CIA ! but the Community Involvement Agency would oversee payments of allowances to the firms and to individuals for recognised and authorised community work.
A community swipe-card they proposed, so that you could clock in and clock out of attendance at approved community meetings so that the points could then be redeemed either for the use by a group or even an individual and vouchers given so that that money could be spent actually in the local community.
'What about a community involvement certificate ?' somebody said. We do all of this work, we serve on the board of NDC, but we've nothing to show for it at the end. Why cannot this be accredited and certificated in some way so that it leads to other employment?
What about youth agents ? Setting aside 16 to 25-year olds. They'd be recruited, paid, certificated, supervised and encouraged to engage other young people in purposeful activity within a community?
Parenting. What about enabling parents to double child benefit in the first year of the first child for any parent that would voluntarily take part in effective parenting education?
'What about community consultants ?' they said. Local people paid for local community work for a limited period and in a tax and benefit penalty free manner for a limited period? Because one of the vulnerabilities in the community is that as soon as you start earning a certain amount of money you're then taken off benefit and getting back onto benefit is an extra risk and a precarious business.
I conclude. Nature tells us that we need to plough the nutrients back into the soil. The people are the nutrients, our local communities. If we do not do this - and I say this as a diabetic - our cities will soon suffer from urban diabetes. That is, politicians will show people around the prestigious projects in the centre of cities and then on the outskirts other communities will be left to atrophy. We have got to open up the valves so that the blood flows through the whole of the body.
I end with a picture because ultimately these are spiritual and moral issues. I know politicians are a little nervous about talking of morality but perhaps somebody who belongs to the church may be permitted to. For a long time I've dreamt that one day a rich benefactor might say to me and my wife, come I'll take you on a cruise. Imagine one day somebody says to you, come on this cruise. You get down to the Pier Head in Liverpool and there is the latest Cunard liner, the QM2, at this moment under construction. Within a couple of days you're sailing in the sun and this is wonderful. You ask how many people are aboard this ship and you're told a thousand and there you are on 'A' deck, the most fantastic suite. You have the range of choice of all the bars and the amazing restaurants on this liner and as you tuck into your wonderful meal and have your endless drinks. You reflect on the fact that they're a thousand people on this ship. You say to your host, well it's strange you know because there doesn't seem to be a thousand people up here and he says, 'No, no, no, up here this is the top two hundred.' 'Oh, where are the others', you say? 'Well the other eight hundred they're in the hold of the ship.' 'Well what have they got?' 'Bread and water, some of it stagnant.'
Is that fanciful? Sadly no, because on this planet, this space ship earth, 20% of us are on 'A' deck, 80% are somewhere else. In the name of justice, Groundwork, you've got to carry on for many more years to come.