Back in 2008 Barack Obama made community organising famous, although that didn’t help anybody understand what it was. First of all the bad news: it’s definitely left-wing. The community organising approach does however have important lessons for political campaigning more generally – in particular in putting issues at the heart of our activity.
Community organising was founded by a man called Saul Alinsky in the 1930s in deprived parts of Chicago. Its purpose is to advance a fairly classic left-wing agenda: to secure greater resources from local government for housing, health and education in poorer areas and, to a lesser extent, to apply pressure on local businesses. It is based around what Alinsky called “people’s organisations.” These bring together the full range of social associations in a community – churches, sports clubs, social clubs, trade unions and so on. Yes, very big society.
In terms of approach the orgnisation will identify a problem, on which most people in an area will largely be agreed. Then they will identify a solution, which will be the “issue.” Not everyone will agree on this. This will create controversy and the basis for a campaign. A target organisation or leading individual is then campaigned against – and the community organisation will win support from other stakeholders to isolate the target, encouraging them to compromise or meet the organisation’s demands.
Alinsky’s books are an enjoyable read. He was a genuinely creative campaigner: his idea of a sit-in was en-masse on the toilets of Chicago airport, and his 13 rules contain good campaigning tips. He was also little given to posturing: he utterly loathed the nihilism of Sixties radicalism.
Community organising is not political campaigning. The organiser is a facilitator, not a figure-head like a candidate. There are also not the common values, or tribal attitudes, that keep parties together. Community organisations constantly need something clear and distinctive to fight for – the organisation has to be issues-based to maintain unity amongst the diverse groups.
Alinsky, with typical honest unscrupulousness, said that a community organisation should always have a “fight in the bank,” a pretext kept back for creating a conflict when one was needed to motivate supporters or demonstrate the organisation’s power. A wider philosophical point lay behind this. Alinksy believed that conflict was at the heart of democratic society.
Conservatives should be wary of the divisive elements of all this but the notion that elections are a choice is crucial to campaigning – and defining a choice depends on campaigning on issues, relentlessly. This is obvious but needs repeating. The public is disillusioned, uninterested in the tribal traditions of politics, sceptical of the ability of politicians to get results. Political parties need to constantly be presenting campaigns – problems, targets and solutions to the electorate. In both local and national elections this will require candidates to have a full arsenal of local issues.
Most campaigners will claim they are issues focused, but in my experience we wait for issues, occasionally go and find them. We should instead be creating them, through Freedom of Information requests, questions to Councils and so on. Candidates need to be personally associated with issues, and the other side clearly demonstrated as obstructionist. If you are tired of hearing “you are all the same” on the doorstep it is probably time to spend some time thinking about what exactly makes you different today right here, right now.
Related posts:
- Big Society: Mission-driven altruism in the areas that need it most
- The Big Society will be a Trojan horse for Labour unless Conservatives step-up
- Should CCHQ take some lessons on transparency from the government?
- Where are the centrist Conservatives? They need to make their voices heard
- Making the Conservatives into a movement
RT @PlatformTen: New blogpost: @JamesWorron starts a week of campaign lessons with community organising http://t.co/z9eD9KTU
I don’t understand why James says community organising is or, perhaps, has to be Left-wing?
I agree, Tim, I don’t think it is. Perhaps it would be fair to say that the deliberate organisation of it has roots in the left, but the right has always known that strong communities make for healthy societies, and obviously an organic, natural evolution of such things is more sustainable than those imposed from outside/above.
I also don’t think that the ‘divisive’ point noted by James is necessarily a fair one. True, putting people in boxes and saying ‘X is for you, and Y is for you, and Z is for you’ isn’t very Conservative, nor is it very binding; but I think that making sure we address all parts of a society is a good thing.
“@JamesWorron: I bet you never expected me to praise community organising, well here I go: http://t.co/jCkqn5nG” > Thought there are caveats
Tim,
Good question. I suppose the answer is that it is historically left-wing and still is in current practice: it largely driven by securing access to public money for particular groups. The American right, in particular the Tea Party seem to have used similar techniques for mobilising people.
I would say that if you do organise a community, for any political purpose, one of the things that will gain most traction is securing more public resources – if everyone does this the state will grow.
The challenge then is to be able to make an offer as compelling as “free money” is for a community. Which might be easier said than done.
RT @PlatformTen: New blogpost: Lessons for Conservatives from community organising http://t.co/ZvCkpYg4
Excellent article, James. Perhaps our conversation at the Party Conference a couple of years ago had something to do with your interest in Community Organising! I agree with what Tim (Montgomerie) implies, viz. that Community Organising doesn’t have to be (or isn’t) ‘left wing’.
In fact, I think that once conservatives get over the shock of some of the Alinsky terminology (action, reaction, conflict, power, etc.) they may find it helpful and agreeable. I think one should also look at Community Organising as it has developed and is practised by the main exponents of the craft in the UK – Citizens UK and London Citizens. A brief survey of the issues that they (that is, their member communities) have identified, it is quite clear that none seeks a large allocation of public funds for particular groups. A significant principle of Community Organising is respecting subsidiarity, and recognising the role that community groups (like churches, residents associations, schools etc.) can play in society. It is, as you say, ‘very Big Society’.
My own experience is that many people on the Left, once involved in Community Organising, come to see that the ever deeper involvement of the state is not the answer they once supposed it to be. A fair number of big campaigns (e.g. on the ‘Living Wage’, Street Safety, and most recently Olympic Jobs) got well underway and were already successful a long time before politicians became interested or any public money was expended. Some of the most vocal early supporters of Community Organising in London were, after all, businesses (in particular the banks) and Boris Johnson — hardly habitual denizens of the Left.
If we on the Right wish to show that we are concerned about the poor, about people who are struggling, about the peace and prosperity of local communities, in short, about social justice, then Community Organising might well be an important way of doing that. Otherwise, we shall do nothing to change the balance of power between the bloated state on the one hand and its individuals clients on the other. Regarding one of the points in your reply to Tim, I actually think that if Community Organising really took off, then the State would shrink, not grow. And that, of course, is as it should be.
We should discuss this further sometime!
Thanks for this article James, it’s exciting to see community organising discussed across the political spectrum. Just to add to the two Tim’s I’d offer the experience of the organisation I work for which is called the Contextual Theology Centre (CTC). We use many of the lessons of community organising to help churches engage more deeply in their local communities. In our experience the issues on which our network of Churches want to organise around cut right across the political spectrum. In the Church that I go to for example, the techniques of organising have helped the Church build a zone of shops which are safehavens for young people across a gang boundary on the hackney road. It seems to me that’s hardly particularly lefty! If you look at the Labour Party at the moment and the work they’ve got Arnie Graf doing, it’s exactly the right time for the other political parties to also take seriously the community organising methodology if they don’t want to suffer the same fate as the Republicans who got utterly blown away by Obama’s ground campaigning.