Such approaches – and the fact that Americans vote for many more of their public officials than in Britain – allow individuals to reconnect with the notion of government – there is a much closer identification with local government in many areas. This civic spirit or connectedness is also seen in areas of life well beyond government. Freedland explains that 82 per cent of Americans belong to at least one association or group. Germany stands at 67 per cent, and Britain at only 54 per cent. Americans get involved in an incredible range of community groups, sometimes simply to pursue a hobby, but often to carry out functions that in other countries are carried out by government – or are simply not done at all. Perhaps the most graphic example of this is that 73 per cent of American households give to charity, compared to only 29 per cent in the UK – and they give at much higher rates in the USA.
This is not to say for one moment that everything about American society is perfect. I find it obscene, for example, that in a society of such enormous wealth, millions of people live in constant fear of illness or accident because they cannot afford basic medical insurance. Yet I still admire the get-up-and-go energy which I saw in America in the early eighties, and which exists there today. We have that spirit in the best of our entrepreneurs in Britain, but if Britain is to prosper in the century ahead, we need to foster more of that energy, enterprise and drive, and we need to apply it to the sections of our community where it is most needed. We have huge inventiveness in our country – but we seem far less able to make it work.
There are reasons for this. It is often said that the Americans lack a sense of irony, which may be true, but British irony seems – in the booms and slumps of the last twenty years – to have turned in on itself, and what we have in its place is cynicism. Cynicism, disillusionment, and a belief that people who try to change things are misguided zealots, that too much damage has been done in the past for our country to have a future.
There is also a very British fear of failure which dogs the efforts of individuals and communities to work together for the common good. It originates, I believe, in a combination of British reserve – a fear of losing face in front of our peers – and the market-driven culture of the eighties. We are over-eager to set people up and then knock them down. I am pleased to live in a thriving market economy, but less pleased that we are living in a market culture, in which value means the same as money. In the voluntary sector, people are valued in terms of the time they give over to a project and the skills they can bring to it. I want to live in a society where the idea that a person’s worth is related to what they do for their community, not how much money or purchasing power they have, is a core value.
To bring this about, there has to be a turnaround in our thinking. For community initiative to flourish – whether in tackling crime or homelessness, or in providing opportunities for youth – people need the room to experiment, to innovate, to take risks and to make mistakes. There needs to be a new culture of community and self-reliance, in which individuals feel confident enough to take a stand for or against the issues that matter to them, and to band together to make changes, to challenge government when they need to, and to know that their voices will be heard.
Examples of individuals and groups effecting real change on their communities are much vaunted in the press, but mainly because they are rarities. On a problem estate in northern England, parents organized a rota to ensure that all schoolchildren were safely escorted home in the dark winter months. In London, older West Indian men are recruited by schools to befriend boys from their community who lack the influence of a father figure in their lives. On the island of Eigg, off the coast of the Scottish West Highlands, crofters kicked back against a string of controversial landowners and abortive attempts to secure the tide to the land, creating their own trust, bidding for ownership and achieving this in 1997. I don’t wish to understate the bravery and determination of the people responsible for these initiatives, but I want to see a society where these things are not news, but the fabric of daily life. That’s a true democracy.
This kind of local activity outside the economy is absolutely essential for making society function, just as the work parents and communities do to bring up children is vital to all of us. The author of Future Shock, Alvin Toffler, used to ask senior executives what it would cost them in cash terms if none of their employees had ever been toilet-trained. The truth is, business depends on parents, and parents depend on active communities.
Let’s get some brains together, along with community leaders and voluntary workers, and think creatively about ways in which we can foster a civic society, in which everyone feels they have a part to play. For example, in an age when more and more school-leavers are going into tertiary education, why do universities only look at A level results when selecting candidates? There could be a points system for community action and voluntary work, which they could take into account alongside academic achievements.
I am also in favour of a JFK-style Peace Corps, to involve young people in a range of community projects. I have no interest in using this as a threat over the unemployed. A person’s benefits should stay the same whether they joined Charles Kennedy’s Peace Corps or not, but if employers were encouraged to recruit within the ranks of this corps – or if points earned counted towards academic qualifications or student loans – then unemployed young people would have a clear incentive to get involved.
People’s ‘outside’ activities should be encouraged wherever possible. If a low-paid mechanic spends his weekends teaching underprivileged kids to play football, he could accrue credits, which in turn entitle him to have his roof repaired by another volunteer. With people living longer than before, retired people, who often have more experience and patience than their younger counterparts, are an under-utilized resource. Their involvement in the community could be exchanged for similar credits, or even for credits which they could pass on to their working children or grandchildren, so, in return for helping a neighbour’s child with her schoolwork, an elderly person could be entitled to weekly lifts to and from the shops. They wouldn’t have to rely on charity or hand-outs, they would earn the lifts themselves.
The idea of using time as a kind of money has proved popular on a global scale. Time exchange schemes are especially successful in the USA and Japan. In Washington DC, 300 residents of a problem housing estate performed 79,000 hours of voluntary work in 1997. By working, each person earned a fictional currency – time dollars – which could be exchanged with other residents for services they needed. The name of the currency illustrates the principle of the idea perfectly – in this case value has got nothing to do with money, it’s about the time a person is prepared to give over to helping others. In New York state, one college allows its students to pay off their student loans in time hours – that is, by doing voluntary work in their local community.
‘Let us give generously, in the two currencies of time and money,’ said Tony Blair in March 2000, but he hasn’t understood the implications of this. The point is that we can all see around us the enormous amount of tasks that need doing, even if the government doesn’t consider that doing them constitutes a ‘job’. Society apparently cannot afford to pay with money for all the old people who need help, the schools who need volunteers, the neighbourhood watchers and the youth leaders. We spend much time in politics worrying about scarce resources and cutting budgets, and assuming there isn’t enough to provide for what we need. Yet all around us there are enormous untapped resources, of which older people – with their wealth of knowledge and experience – are only one. The old and the young, in particular, both wish to make a contribution, and we need to find ways of using these forgotten resources and directing them at society’s intractable problems. We should encourage people to earn time credits through time banks, and then recognize them, for example by letting people buy recycled computers with it, as they do in the USA.
There are other kinds of exchange schemes all over the world which help people buy the basic necessities of life in local currencies. In Ithaca,