Martin Sime images a world where third sector dreams come true
Imagine a world turned on its head.
This would be a place where people power would make all the difference. Rights-based and self-directed approaches would require service providers to sit up and take notice because service users would drive change. The public sector would be commissioned to do things that communities want; politicians would be there to carry out our wishes. And a digitised democracy would empower the have-nots and keep everyone on their toes.
Of course, we would revise taxation so that producers and retailers would meet the full costs, including to the environment, of their products and services.The hundreds employed by DWP to defeat tax avoidance would swap roles with the thousands who track benefit fraud. Workforce pay and economic strategy would be redesigned with a central purpose to reduce inequality; the search for unsustainable growth would be consigned to history.
We would create our own version of the big society with trade unions, faith groups, students and others helping to win the argument on the doorstep and driving social change on the back of public support
Martin Sime
Of course, voluntary organisations would have secure long-term funding to deliver their work, although public support and voluntary income would still be important, especially since donations to unpopular causes would enjoy bigger tax breaks. Together with government, our sector’s mission would be to help people help themselves and each other. Mutual aid would be cherished and nurtured; markets in care would be a thing of the past; what communities accomplished for themselves would inspire us all.
The natural default position of our sector would be to work together and with others on our many shared aims. We would create our own version of the big society with trade unions, faith groups, students and others helping to win the argument on the doorstep and driving social change on the back of public support. Any politician or government with their plan for how we can help them would be met with scorn and derision. The parent/child relationship between government and the sector would be decisively reversed.
In our brave new world community planning would be effective – it is always going to struggle in this one. There would no longer be a need for local government to try to reconcile their democratic and workforce responsibilities - they simply can’t do both. People would make their own decisions about how best to do the things they need and the role of the state would be to support them.
Cloud cuckoo land? Of course it is! But then if you can’t dream the impossible in the third sector where else can you imagine a better world? Bad things happen to voluntary organisation all too often. It seems to me that we can be too comfortable in our perennial role as victims and underdogs. We need to believe that change is possible.
Nowadays everyone really is coming round to the view that big-state solutions to our many problems are both unaffordable and inappropriate. Voluntary organisations which mobilise people and communities and enable them to take more responsibility for themselves are much more valuable than whisky or oil. They are the bedrock on which a sustainable society can be built.
That’s an awesome responsibility. But that’s also why an upside-down world is not quite as fanciful as it first seems.
I hope those of you who make it along to the SECC this week, enjoy the Gathering.
Martin Sime is chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations
