The Rowntree Foundation's recent exercise in identifying contemporary social evils throws up a combination of the usual suspects: poverty, ignorance, injustice; and some new candidates: religion as both problem and solution, new addictions and social breakdown.
Some presented as 'new' are old enemies with different names – Charles Dickens would have recognised many of them. So would Arthur Morrison whose Child of the Jago published in 1896 described the lives of child criminals in Shoreditch complete with poverty, alcohol abuse, exploitation, murder and a code of honour unrecognisable to the authorities. Social evils seem to have persistent qualities but remain undefeated partly because of their ability to mutate to fit contemporary circumstances.
Those who care about social evils largely agree on the range but give greater or lesser emphasis to individual evils according perhaps to their own prejudices or experiences. Underlying all of them, it seems to me, is a common thread: a lack of thoughtfulness about our common humanity, a want of kindness and respect for each other.
It is a failure to acknowledge the humanity of others that allows the social evil of people-trafficking to thrive, that allows men to prostitute women and others to pay to abuse them, that allows dealers to sell drugs they would not use themselves or give their children, and that lets violent, selfish and abusive people create havoc in peaceable neighbourhoods. On the grand and on the local scale people turn away from looking into the eyes of others and recognising needs and rights like their own.
Kindness, respect and thoughtfulness
Kindness, respect and thoughtfulness are what we lack but they are difficult words to use. Kindness is derided as wet liberal stuff. Respect has been hijacked and turned into a form of militaristic compulsion. Thoughtfulness is criticised as failure to act in this culture of doing 'what works' and applying patches willy-nilly.
But kindness, thoughtfulness and respect are not easy at all. It is very difficult to be kind to an angry and violent child who has had no experience of affection and who challenges every boundary. It takes thoughtfulness and real courage to live in a rehabilitative community with sex-offenders, befriending them and helping them control their impulses. And, as for respect, even the most damaged or challenging fellow human among us needs it but does not necessarily earn it in advance; sometimes it takes the offer of a respect overdraft to encourage someone to open an account in which paying in is understood to be as important as taking out.
Is the voluntary sector special?
Voluntary sector organisations (charities and social businesses) already work in exactly this territory, caring for and about the uncared for and unlovable. They provide services to people in need, sometimes using donated money from trusts or public collections, and sometimes under contract to local and national government. But so do public and profit-making businesses. Indeed it can be argued, and is, that private or public bodies can provide such services at least as well or even better.
The simple provision of practical help is important, but not sufficient, to combat social evils. The way in which help is given is critical in ensuring that people retain dignity and autonomy and go on to live and control their own lives. Charity should always be humble; it should never humiliate. The expression 'as cold as charity' is not much used anymore but might easily make a reappearance if merely efficient service delivery replaces kindness and respect for the recipient and thoughtfulness about how best to enable them to move on.
More than mere efficiency
So truly to combat social evils charities must remember and exemplify the values and distinctions to which they lay claim. It would be wrong to argue that these qualities are exclusively found in voluntary organisations but it is essential that they always manifest them. Otherwise they might as well simply run themselves as businesses. Too frequently in the battle to sustain themselves, charities become so focused on their mission that they forget the people the mission is intended to serve.
Driven by funders and contractors they think in terms of units delivered and efficiency gains instead of lives improved and changed. It is not entirely their fault; but if the values and qualities that make for real change are to survive, all of us, including those who contribute financially, need to remind ourselves that short term fixes look good in reports but may create greater problems in the longer term.
As well as resolving the immediate consequences of social evils in a way that enables real change, charities must also maintain the capacity to reveal and campaign about them. Joseph Rowntree, who told his trustees to address the underlying causes of poverty and injustice, might not be surprised to return and see that poverty still exists but would surely be puzzled that arguments about the rightness of addressing causes persist.
There is a false dichotomy between cheerful binding up of society's wounds and addressing the reasons for them. It is exploited by mischief-makers and those who would like the poor to be less poor but not at the expense of the rich, and who are thus opponents of greater equality. If charities do not speak of reasons and advocate for serious change, they are fighting poverty and injustice with one hand tied behind their backs.
Of course the combination of immediate help and campaigning for change is not and will not be the task of all the UK's 160,000-plus charities. It is a mistake to treat this enormous and multi-talented sector as a homogenous unit. Some charities are best at providing direct help in a decent way: large and small they leave it to others to make a noise and address systemic change.
But others use what they uncover in their work to campaign for real change. Collectively charities can fight social evils by speaking truth to power and by modelling the respect for fellow humans that is the true enemy of evil.
Fiona Ellis was, until March 2009,
Director of the Northern Rock Foundation.
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
