Exploring Volunteering

This afternoon on the day the Government launched the National Citizen Service, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, was interviewed on Radio 4′s PM programme by broadcaster Eddie Mair.

May be Francis Maude was expecting the same lacklustre questions that Gavin Esler had put to him earlier in the week when Newsnight did its much criticised feature on the Big Society. He obviously hadn’t banked on Eddie Mair. Anyone who’s followed his broadcasting career knows the guy’s not averse to throwing the odd googly question into his interviews. And so it was that we heard the following exchange (hear original here [via an AudioBoo from Alison Charlton]):

Eddie Mair (Radio 4) [42m:52s]: And what volunteering do you do?

Francis Maude (Minister for the Cabinet Office): I do… golly, what do I do? Umm, a whole load of things. I’m involved in my local church. Um, gosh, that’s a really unfair question cold. But actually the point is…

Eddie Mair: I think that given we’re talking about volunteering and how important it is, I thought you might be able to tell me. And not least because in your manifesto it says quote: “Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group.”

Francis Maude: Err, well I’m involved in things in my local community… Well, MPs spend their time involved with voluntary groups, umm…

Eddie Mair: Well that’s part of your job, you get paid for that. What else do you do?

Francis Maude: Well, we do it seven days a week kind of thing, so… Well, I do various things. It’s a great question to err… drop on me err… and if I had time to think about it… my point actually is that people, most people in their lives are doing things that you could define as volunteering with a capital ‘V’ but which are actually just doing things that support their neighbourhoods, support their neighbours, and be a part of… an active citizen, in an active community.

Eddie Mair: Understood, thank you very much for joining us, the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude.

I’m posting it here not just because it was a rare example of an interview that cut through the normally poised narrative and lofty rhetoric that politicians are so used to dishing out. I’m more interested in it because it helps to flush out the real essence of volunteering- even if it did so kind of by accident.

Volunteering is not just about doing things, about actions. If it was it would be very straightforward. Volunteering is about values, it’s how we express who we are as people. It’s more than just the sum of it’s parts. Volunteering’s not just a verb, it’s a noun. On an individual level, it can become part of our identity. On a social level, it can become part of our culture.

This interview caught Francis Maude on the hop because I think it showed that, he at least, has so far only thought about volunteering as a thing you do (or you don’t ). Not as something you are.

If this Government wants to make volunteering front and centre of it’s policy agenda through the Big Society, it’s got to understand that volunteering is empty rhetoric, unless it’s backed up by a genuine and personal belief in the values that make volunteering worth so much. At the same time, it can only work as a policy if the people (us) encouraged to volunteer, believe in the value of the volunteering they do. Not simply go through the motions because it’s part of a universal programme that has to be done.

That said, I thought the most revealing part of the whole interview came right at the end. Francis Maude was noticeably trying to get back into his stride when he said:

…most people in their lives are doing things that you could define as volunteering with a capital ‘V’ but which are actually just doing things that support their neighbourhoods…

This sounded like he was saying that volunteering is really nothing more than neighbourliness. It’s what we all do, in the course of our normal everyday lives. Maybe Maude said this in his attempt to suggest that he actually ‘volunteered’ in as far as he was a good neighbour, an active citizen as an MP seven days a week.

But I think he accidentally put his finger on the confusion that exists in how we value volunteering. Something that the idea of the Big Society has not fully reckoned with up till now.

Unlike any kind of impersonal commodity or transacted service which declines in exchange value the more there is of it; it is the very abundance of volunteering which is its value. It’s because volunteering is something personal we can all do that’s the basis for its value. The trick, though, is that we can only realise that value when it influences who we are, not just what we do.

I was at an event this week at the launch of the Royal College of Psychiatrists report on “Self-harm, Suicide and Risk: Helping People who Self-harm“. The report provided an interesting example of the how the voluntary sector is working with the statutory sector on a growing social problem.

One of the speakers was Joe Ferns, Acting Director of Policy Research and Development at Samaritans. I was struck by how he described the contribution of the over 15,000 volunteers who work supporting callers to Samaritans, and by extension the role of the voluntary sector alongside other public services in support of those at risk of self harm and suicide. He emphasised how it’s the volunteers’ distance from officialdom that enables them to offer the service they do. Samaritans offer a confidential emotional support service which gives callers the opportunity to talk through their concerns and worries through a range of different channels including telephone, email, text and face to face.

Ferns strongly made the case that the fact that it’s volunteers delivering this service makes it distinctive. Volunteers offer callers the opportunity to talk to a person about their life, without having to expose themselves to a wider system that formalised public services can represent. Legal imperatives and institutional practices can make more formalised services less able to offer personal and intimate support in the same way a volunteer led structure can.

Samaritans has greater scope for ensuring callers’ confidentiality is protected precisely because the relationship with callers is more informal. Callers can have the freedom to talk, without fear that what they say may have an unintended repercussion on their lives or on the lives of others close to them. It’s the fact that the people the callers talk to are volunteers that enables this informal, yet structured relationship.

Structured informality

A key part of the recipe here is the structured informality that voluntary organisations can provide. This structured informality comes from the fact that they are led and powered by stakeholders who volunteer their time and commitment. Volunteers offer these organisations like Samaritans the benefits of informality, such as putting the person before the process, along with the advantage of structure, such as being able to offer the support within limits that the service user feels comfortable with.

This idea of structured informality reminds me of why I got interested in volunteering in the first place.

I remember my own naive attempts to befriend and support the homeless guys who hung out drinking at the bus shelter near where I lived as a student. The relationship however personal, chatty and informal it got, I’d say never overcame the feeling of ‘them and us’. There was an invisible barrier that meant we had parallel lives. When I began to volunteer with ATD Fourth World I discovered the power of creating an informal structure for fostering more authentic personal relationships that crossed social divides.

ATD Fourth World is an international organisation that seeks to offer support to families who live at the extreme end of poverty and disadvantage. When I started to volunteer with ATD Fourth World this meant helping with the running of family breaks in a big house in the middle of Surrey called Frimhurst. The breaks were for families, often referred by social services, from around the country who, for multiple reasons, were under all kinds of pressure and disadvantage.

The aim of the breaks was deceptively simple: that everybody had a great time together as a family. As volunteers, our role was to provide some structure to what was a very informal atmosphere during the time the families spent together. We did this through organising the activities that meant the break went smoothly.

At Frimhurst, volunteers and those benefiting from the service, i.e. the families themselves, were able to chat and get to know each other while making a meal together and doing all kinds of other everyday things. Families said that their relationship with the volunteers who ran the breaks was totally different to the relationship they had with all kinds of other professionals they had in their lives, such as social workers, teachers and doctors. The relationship with professionals was often restricted by the demands of formality.

At the same time, the structure meant that relationships with volunteers could begin to overcome the ‘them and us’ invisible barrier that exists when we’re unable to articulate how we’re connected in personal terms. A sign of this often came at the end of the breaks which were typically poignant and tearful occasions, as participants (volunteers and families alike) said their goodbyes and reflected on special and happy times together.

And now looking back on it, I can’t help but feel it returns to the same point Joe Fearns was talking about in relation to Samaritans volunteers. Being a volunteer often means committing to deliver services without any guarantee of the authority that the volunteers on their own can deliver the end ‘product’, such as an enjoyable break or comforting call. We understand that there are times when authority can get in the way of the service. Volunteering’s value comes from its recognition that social change can only come about through working collaboratively with the intended beneficiaries of change.

Paradox of a formalised voluntary sector

If the voluntary sector brings about difference and change through divesting itself of power and authority, how should the sector work with the policy makers, the civil servants and others who are invested with formal authority and power in today’s society?

This lead us to the possible paradox of professionalisation. There are many calls for greater professionalisation in the voluntary sector. Professionalisation means many things (I’ve explored some in a previous post) but it’s clear that it’s often used to include ideas of a more formalised voluntary sector with greater authority. The paradox is that greater professionalistion of this kind, may well undermine rather than consolidate the value of volunteering and voluntary sector if it results in breaking the delicate balance of the sectors unique ingredient of ‘structured informality’.

Volunteers negotiate a social identity

I was recently reading a paper(PDF) by anthropologist Michael Madison Walker about his experiences working in Mozambique and how his identity was perceived in all kinds of different ways, e.g. from priest to development worker to volunteer. He was actually carrying out fieldwork living on a monthly stipend provided by those funding his research.

His experiences reminded me of my own in Guatemala where a volunteered with ATD Fourth World living on a monthly stipend. My identity to those I worked with varied with the context. To the kids who attended the street activities we organised for those not in school, we were “los profes” or “teachers”. To others, we seemed to resemble the religious missionaries common across much of Latin America, while to yet others we were simply ‘gringos’.

It seems to me that part of being a volunteer and this lack of formalised authority, is rooted in this absence of a clear social identity. How many volunteers or people working in volunteer management have difficulty in explaining to others what it is they do? It’s no coincidence. Lack of a clear identity is something that comes with the territory in volunteering. Moreover, lack of a formal social identity is what makes the relationships between volunteers and service users: first, possible, and second, fruitful.

The space between the public and the private

How many resort to saying that they’re a teacher, a nurse or youth worker when asked by acquaintances because it’s too hard to explain what they really do in the time allowed in most social situations? Or worse still, how many take on the universal label of ‘volunteer’ because a straightforward comparison with a more formal identity is just too elusive?

I’m convinced that this lack of a clear social identity for many volunteering roles and the structured informality of volunteer powered services in voluntary organisations are closely linked. In fact, perhaps they’re clues to understanding the essential nature of volunteering. For me, that essence has something to do with the space between our formalised public lives that comes with authority, power and clear social identity; and our private informal lives on the other, that are shot through with the familiar, the intimate and infinitely complex reality of human relationships. Volunteers who bridge the formal and the informal, public and private spheres face this challenge and opportunity of having to continually negotiate their social identity.

This space between our public and private lives is one that’s been blurring increasingly over the 20th century, a process that’s gone into hyperdrive with the advent of the social web in the 21st century. Writers like Jeff Jarvis, Danah Boyd and others are some examples. It’s no surprise therefore there’s increasing interest from all sides in particular social phenomenons like volunteering, that have such a highly developed pedigree of managing to bridge our public and private lives. That’s just one of many insights I think volunteering can offer on the future of our society.

Recently there’s been a lot of chatter about the idea of the ‘Big Society’, some of which has direct implications for how we think about volunteering. Those active in volunteering need to speak up for a clearer understanding about volunteering in the wider ‘Big Society’ debate.

In the Hugo Young lecture last year, David Cameron talked about the Big Society’s aim to empower “individuals, families and communities”. Volunteering is one key route to empowerment, though Cameron argued, too much state involvement in social issues has reduced volunteering:

“As the state continued to expand, it took away from people more and more things that they should and could be doing for themselves, their families and their neighbours. Human kindness, generosity and imagination are steadily being squeezed out by the work of the state. The result is that today, the character of our society – and indeed
the character of some people themselves, as actors in society, is changing…

The Independent Safeguarding Authority was established to stop children coming into contact with dangerous adults, but by forcing responsible adults to go through the rigmarole of a vetting procedure it will actually reduce the amount of care and love in children’s lives as adults will give up volunteering to help children.”

It’s worth highlighting that this argument conflates two dimensions of volunteering that are often used interchangeably, but should be understood separately. Those dimensions are ‘the noun’ (I am a volunteer) and ‘the verb’ (I volunteer). Cameron suggests that volunteering and empowerment can change our character because it goes to the heart of who we are. It’s volunteering as an identity, as a noun. But he also describes volunteering in very practical terms. Volunteering’s a doing word, a verb. For Cameron it’s the ‘rigmarole’ that’s getting in the way of us volunteering.

Is the real objection for Cameron to vetting procedures that they change the way we do volunteering? Or is it that the vetting regime impugns our character unless the state attests otherwise, and robs us of our identity as volunteers? In other words, is Cameron interested in changing volunteering or in how volunteering changes us?

Can a culture of volunteering be created by a ‘Big Society’ policy anyway? Culture is easy for a politician to talk about, but hard to actually instill.

Volunteering might be made easier to do by government policy, but it also requires volunteers to identify with the social action they are taking. That means changing how we see ourselves. Incentivising volunteering or mandating volunteering are really limited to the ˜doing’ bit of volunteering. Policy can’t so readily penetrate how people identify as volunteers. Any successful volunteering campaign will need to reconcile these two aspects of volunteering.

One clear programme coming down the tracks is the National Citizen Service that was trailed in one of David Cameron’s first speeches after becoming party leader of the Conservatives. It’s likely to be a voluntary scheme for 16 year olds to experience volunteering and social action.

But there’s something bigger (pardon the pun) happening here in policy terms for volunteering than just a new set of volunteering programmes. There’s a new front opening up in British politics and the voluntary sector may well find itself in the centre of this new battleground.

Red Tory author Phillip Blond, founder of think tank ResPublica, has been openly influential in much of David Cameron’s thinking about ‘Big Society’. Blond’s agenda is about opening up new ground between the left’s inclination to favour the state and the right’s inclination to favour the market. Instead, Blond argues, there’s a way forward
through to a new politics of group formation and association for social and economic development.

However, by putting volunteering at the heart of the new politics, we’re more clearly seeing how poorly understood volunteering often is in public discourse and where we need more research and analysis. It’s vital that those with first hand experience of volunteering speak up and enrichen this new debate about the ‘Big Society’, so that new policy in this area builds on real practice and incorporates lessons learnt.

This post was originally published in Volunteering Magazine- July/August Issue 2010

In the eighteenth century, the idea of politeness challenged accepted norms of behaviour and laid the basis for a civil society that forms the origins of the culture of volunteering we see in British society today. One of David Cameron’s first actions was to rename the Office of the Third Sector, the Office of Civil Society. What’s in a name? He went as far as saying on the day of the Big Society launch: it’s “no longer to be called ˜the third sector’, from now on: that phrase is to be abolished“.

I’d actually like to sidestep the naming issue because I think the fact it’s an issue at all belies a deeper conceptual difficulty with clearly defining the role of volunteering in today’s society. In this post, I want to argue that looking to the roots of the language and thinking about civil society, helps us to get a better sense of our understanding of volunteering’s place in today’s society in Britain.

This post is based heavily on the discussion as part of the BBC’s In Our Time episode on politeness (from 2004) between Amanda Vickery, Professor of Modern British History at Royal Holloway, University of London; David Wootton, Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York; and John Mullan, Professor in English at University College London.

Roots of civility

Ideas of civility and manners before the eighteenth century had been influenced largely by a courtly model of behaviour. Ethical thinking had influenced ideas of appropriate behaviour since Aristotle‘s ideas on moderation and the ideas of stoicism that believed a person’s behaviour was a better measure of their virtue than their words. Walking the walk, not just talking the talk – put in more current lingo.

Baldassare Castiglione‘s ‘Book of the Courtier’ of 1528, represents the definitive renaissance approach to manners and the link between a person’s behaviour and their virtue. The book’s message was that the formation of the perfect courtier could be expressed in terms of education and learnt behaviour, not just parental lineage. But the notion of decorum was still preoccupied with understanding appropriate behaviour in terms of a person’s place in society based on their gender, age, class, etc.

There were three specific factors that combined to influence the development of politeness as an idea:

• 1688: the Glorious Revolution where the incumbent monarch King James II was overthrown, marked a shift in the power relations between Parliament and the British monarch
• 1689: the Act of Toleration granted freedom of worship to Protestant Nonconformists to who dissented from the Church of England. This drew a line under much of the previous century’s political/religious strife
• 1694: the lapsing of the Licensing Order which effectively ends political censorship unleashing a massive increase in print (significant in this is the founding of Tatler and The Spectator)

These three factors helped create the basis for a new period of free exchange of ideas, opinions and information. It also meant a new way of socialising, where the new freedom to debate created a new sense of public life. The scene was set for politeness to establish a new model of behaviour.

The 3rd Earl

The idea of politeness was accompanied by a specific philosophy that went beyond simple social graces and table manners. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, was a key figure in this new philosophy of politeness taking up the idea of self-consciousness, a word invented by John Locke.

Locke defines the self as “that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends“. His famous idea that the human mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa meant it was passive in many ways, moulded by external factors.

Shaftesbury was eager to demonstrate that there was an internal vitality to the human self, that meant it had a capacity to reflect on itself and change itself. In particular, this change could come about through conversation between people. But there was also an internal conversation whereby human’s could modify and develop themselves.

Origins of volunteering: right here  –>

Shaftesbury was quite hostile to Locke’s assertion that good and evil were remote from the self, being questions of divine law. For Shaftesbury, there is such a thing as intrinsically good acts. Moreover, he argued that human beings have a capacity to recognise these acts of good and respond to them. Human beings are naturally benevolent with a great capacity to love each other, be sympathetic to one another and to respond empathetically to one another.

Politeness is partly about understanding each others feelings. It’s about travelling alongside with one another in conversation. This is an extension of the logic of stoicism: that it’s through how we act and treat each other externally, that points to our inner virtues. What we do, is a reflection of who we are. This is a sentiment buried deep in our sense of the value that volunteering has. It’s not just about the impact that the volunteer can have on its beneficiary and the wider social impact, the value of volunteering is also in terms of the impact of the volunteering on the volunteer themselves, their own character and virtue. It’s something of being ranting on about before – see the post on the ends and means of volunteering.

This idea of politeness is also about the value and importance given to social interaction. Politeness is important because we are polished by contact with others. At this early point in the eighteenth century in Britain there were increasing opportunities to mix socially with others without necessarily knowing each others rank and status. Precisely the same argument is often made to support volunteering, i.e. that volunteering can improve the volunteer through the positive interaction with others in society.

Politeness was important because it facilitated a smooth interaction between people who only 50 years earlier were riven by the English Civil War. There was all kind of social conflict at this time: religious, political and especially between the political parties of the day, the Whigs and the Tories. Jamie Pratt puts this in historical context:

“To understand the role that The Spectator played in these affairs, it must be understood that Tories tended to look down on Whigs as crass, unmannered and unlettered. In this atmosphere it was natural for Whigs to want to prove that they too were educated, cultured and fit material for government… The Spectator was not overtly political, but part of its success was rooted in its natural appeal to the growing power and influence of the Whigs.”

I’d argue that this new thinking about social behaviour provided the basis for what was to develop into civil society, and the much later to become the voluntary sector or third sector. Politeness as an idea provided a theoretical basis for a different mode of association across society that was secular and non-military. Politeness was the belief that it was possible to exchange different opinions without it ending in conflict.

The impetus for martial honour began to be diverted into a new realm of cultural politeness which provided a new way to express your honour socially. It became good manners for gentlemen to leave their sword at the door, before entering all kinds of social occasions. See, for example, how the celebrated Beau Nash led a new informality in manners during the eighteenth century. Demonstrating how cultured you were, through literature, the arts and so on took a new social significance.

In Shaftesbury’s seminal work, ‘Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times‘, his primary principle was ‘harmony’ which he based on a generalised sense or feeling, rather than reason (drawing a line with the Enlightenment). Shaftesbury deduced the virtue of benevolence as indispensable to morality. Just as there’s a sense or feeling for aesthetic beauty, so there’s a sense or feeling for determining the ethical value of actions. It’s a faculty that Shaftesbury described as “moral sense” or conscience. In its essence, it is primarily emotional and non-reflective. As it develops it becomes rationalized through education and practice. In a famous quote from Shaftesbury it’s a moral sense that comes about through ‘amicable collisions’:

“All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings.” – Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times

The Spectator was a new kind of publication that embodied this new sense of politeness. It was published from 1711-12, and founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England. The Spectator was a powerful proponent of this new theory of manners and philosophy of social life. It reinforced the sentiment that solitude was bad because human beings were sociable animals.

Society is what’s good for people because it’s solitude that means people become self-absorbed and can turn to fanaticism and dogmatism. The Spectator pushed the narrower form of politeness as described by Shaftesbury, and made it broader. It came at a time when British society was changing hugely. The Spectator fed the growing numbers of gentry and growth of the upwardly socially mobile. In particular, it represented a new urbanity as many from the country moved to more urban areas. In practical terms, the new freer social association led to the growth in clubs and other social groups:

Our Modern celebrated Clubs are founded upon Eating and Drinking, which are Points wherein most Men agree, and in which the Learned and Illiterate, the Dull and the Airy, the Philosopher and the Buffoon, can all of them bear a Part. The Kit-Cat1 it self is said to have taken its Original from a Mutton-Pye. The Beef-Steak2 and October3 Clubs, are neither of them averse to Eating and Drinking, if we may form a Judgment of them from their respective Titles.

When Men are thus knit together, by Love of Society, not a Spirit of Faction, and do not meet to censure or annoy those that are absent, but to enjoy one another: When they are thus combined for their own Improvement, or for the Good of others, or at least to relax themselves from the Business of the Day, by an innocent and chearful Conversation, there may be something very useful in these little Institutions and Establishments. – Spectator no.9, Saturday March 10 1711 – by Joseph Addison

The Spectator represented a belief that the citizens of the world can be improved. It had a strong reformist agenda. Enjoy life through conversation a life of conversation is equality – not hierarchy as with decorum.

New public and private social spaces

The roots of volunteering are connected with the development of public spaces. They spaces metaphorical and literal invited participation and gave many the practical opportunity to play a part in development of British society.

In the eighteenth century public spaces were developing that took advantage of the more liberal political environment following the Glorious Revolution. Coffeehouses, assembly rooms and parks were amongst the kinds of public spaces bringing people together and opening up new opportunities to socialise in very different ways. The Spectator was written to be read aloud. It imagined itself being read in the coffee house. It was disseminated across the country, taking the urbane “space” with it.

The idea of politeness led to new public spaces opening up were people could socialise. Ironically, it also led to the development of a new more private space. For example, it became more acceptable to read silently and you could properly devote yourself to English literature. For instance, the inclusion and discussion of the work of Milton by Addison in The Spectator gave Milton much more respectability than he had hitherto enjoyed.

This private space took the form of corridors in private houses and the introduction of drawing rooms were you could shut the door and ‘withdraw’ for more privacy. Whereas before all rooms were interconnected and it was impossible to pass from one to the other without disturbing its occupants. The reading in private became more acceptable as it provided the basis for sharing in public, such as around the dinner table or in the coffeehouse. Reading in private helped become part of polite level of general knowledge.

This feels very reminiscent of the debate today in the context of the web. What are good manners in an age when the web is everywhere? When does our use of social media become too self-absorbed? Are we more insular today or more socially aware than ever?

Finally

Towards the end of the eighteenth century this understanding of politeness and manners came under increasing attack. The Romantic idea that it’s vital to be true to who you are, rather than live a life of moderation overwhelmed any sense of harmony and balance. Yet this idea of politeness has left us with the legacy of civil society.

The belief that human beings are naturally benevolent and can freely associate to the benefit of all meant that manners were a very practical and everyday way of making this accent on the ‘good’ and virtuous real. This is the beginnings of free association and creation of clubs and societies were part of this.

The idea of politeness underlined the growing significance of the social and cultural basis for association, relative to the military, religious, economic and political reasons that had existed previously. The ideas of politeness represented a growing consciousness of the importance of new forms of association. The growing value placed on social harmony and association as a way of expressing inner virtue laid the foundations of a more secular approach to what we’d call social action today. Politeness as a philosophy to change society was the beginning of social projects that brought people together, as distinct from the more dominant religious, political or economic projects of the period.

It’s striking to see how in the eighteenth century many thinkers were talking about politeness in terms than find a certain parallels in the debate of the last decades about social capital. The value of politeness is that it was meant to help make greater social interaction possible and more effective. Politeness was a kind of social lubrication that enabled people to discuss and air the great issues of the day in a civil and moderate way, avoiding conflict and war.

Postscript

It’s worth mentioning in passing a direct connection to volunteering in the present that I found coincidently when I was looking into the idea of politeness.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (grandfather of the 3rd Earl I mention above), was a prominent politician during the English Interregnum. He was a founder of the Whig political party and patron of John Locke. The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury mentioned in the post above was the third in a very long line of Anthony Ashley Coopers. The current Earl of Shaftesbury, the 12th in a long line, has recently been in news after a catalogue of misfortune.

However, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper or Lord Shaftesbury as he was later known, was a Tory member of Parliament campaigning for reform on a range of issues including social reform, philanthropy and Christian Zionism. The Shaftesbury Partnership identifies Lord Shaftesbury (7th Earl) as part of its inspiration for the social reform issues it works on.

It’s the Shaftesbury Partnership which is behind the current government’s plan to develop a National Citizen Service (branded The Challenge) for 16 year olds promoting volunteering and social action. Nat Wei (Baron Wei of Shoreditch), the government’s advisor on the Big Society, is an Honorary Founding Partner of the Shaftesbury Partnership. So there’s the connection…