Cameron’s “Big Society” launches to mixed reception

What is the Big Society?

David Cameron has launched his “big society” drive to empower individuals, and local action groups to take greater responsibility for their community services.

The prime minister laid out his plans saying that groups should be able to run post offices, libraries, transport services and shape housing projects.

Four parts of the UK – Liverpool; Eden Valley, Cumbria; Windsor and Maidenhead – are become what the prime minister called “vanguard communities” by piloting the project on a small scale.

The initiatives being championed include the buy-out of a rural pub, efforts to keep local museums open and a scheme to speed up local internet access.

These schemes and others in the future would represent “the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street” according to Cameron who remains enthusiastic about the scheme’s prospects despite suggestions from his detractors that the scheme is woolly, unworkable or simply naïve.

Criticism of the Big Society

Cameron’s political opponents argue that the “big society” project, despite its rhetoric of volunteering and community action, is simply a smokescreen to cloud the public from the coalition government’s real intention – painful funding cuts to public services.

Commenting on the launch of David Cameron’s ‘big society’, Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, the UK’s largest public service union, said:

“Cameron’s “big society” should be renamed the “big cop out.” Make no mistake this plan is all about saving money. And it will cost even more jobs and lead to more service cuts.

“The Government is simply washing its hands of providing decent public services and using volunteers as a cut-price alternative. We don’t want jumble sales to provide incubators for babies, we shouldn’t have volunteers taking over our libraries or museums and where are all these people with time on their hands, going to come from? Are we going to pay an army of newly unemployed to help run services?

So should we be optimistic about the prospects of big society to replace the past decade of Labour’s big government? Or is Cameron simply pulling the wool over all our eyes?

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