Your help is needed to defend a civil society

Dear Editor,

We are writing to express our concerns over criticisms of civil society that have been generated by politicians and followed by some commentators in the course of debating 'The Big Society'.

People have said 'there is no such thing' and that 'there is little appetite' for greater citizen involvement in Britain and that 'it cannot be done'. These comments go beyond politics – by criticising in this way, people risk undermining the very notion that civil society could or should play a role in public life.

Instead of attacking civil society, we believe that we should focus on how we can help people to work together and take part in their neighbourhoods.

There is a real public appetite for getting involved – a recent PoliticsHome survey found that the majority of people (55 per cent) would be interested in seeing more community involvement and less state involvement in improving the quality of life in the UK, and only 20 per cent surveyed said they would not have the time to get involved.

Citizens can and should be allowed to be active in their community by participating in local groups to make simple but significant changes in their square mile every week and not just every five years - for example by lobbying to get new pedestrian crossings put in to save children from being killed, by forming neighbourhood watch groups to tackle crime, by deciding the spending priorities of their local council.

Even in relation to more complex challenges, while it can be tough for citizens to run hospitals and schools single-handedly, they can and should - with help from social enterprises as well as the state - have much more of a say and be allowed to deliver and commission aspects of local services where they can and where there is demand.

But the current debate about civil society is about much more than a discussion about the roles of the state and society, and how the latter if it is strong and healthy can be a complement for and not a replacement for the other, helping to lessen the human impact that inevitable cuts in public spending may have on communities. It is also about our interactions with each other and about how we can reverse the decline in active group membership as well as in our local and national democracy.

Regardless of your voting intentions – and we are writing from bipartisan and apolitical perspectives – we believe that it is important to uphold the notion that civil society could and should play a vital role in the nation’s future and will stand together to pool our energies and resources to make this a reality regardless of who is in power in Parliament after 6 May 2010.

Yours faithfully,

Alex Watson – Social Entrepreneur

Alison Rodwell - Social Entrepreneur

Ben Lee – Social Entrepreneur

Daniel Snell and Emily Shenton - Arrival Education

Duncan Cheatle - The Supper Club and ThanksTo.com

Jackie Hill-Wilson - G-ten at Ten Lifestyle Management

Julia Ogilvy - Project Scotland

Katie Ivens - Real Action

Malcolm Scovil – Leap Anywhere

Marcus Booth - Travers Smith

Paul Twivy - Social Entrepreneur

Peter Gardner, Last.fm and LeapAnywhere.com

Rob Owen - St Giles Trust

Simon Jay – Lift Community Trust

Stephen Dawson - Impetus Trust

Steve Moore - Policy Unplugged

Steve Wyler – Development Trusts Association

Tim West - Social Enterprise magazine

Titus Alexander - Novas Scarman Group

Tony Burton – Civic Voice

Tracy Blackwell - Pension Corporation

Yinka Makinda - Social Entrepreneur