is a grotesque fantasy inspired by leftist subversive Saul Alinsky’ (Alinsky was an American community organiser whose ideas influenced Barak Obama).

What is it then that draws fire from the right as well as the left? Certainly it’s not a concrete political programme. Defining what the Big Society involves is a little like nailing fog to the wall. Perhaps the best way to get to grips with the concept is to see it as an attitude more than a programme. In Mr Cameron’s own words:

"The Big Society is about a huge culture change ... where people, in their everyday lives, in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their workplaces ... don’t always turn to officials, local government or central government for answers to the problems they face ... but instead feel both free and powerful to help themselves and their own communities."

Though imprecise, this is an approach made up of a pre-Thatcherite Conservative tradition going back to Edmund Burke, re-worked as the ‘civic conservatism’ expounded in the 1990s by David Willetts and adding Mr Cameron’s de-toxifying ‘compassionate conservatism’ and a dash of Orange Book free-market liberalism in a nod to the coalition. Oh yes, and Saul Alinsky too!

What these views have in common is they see a small or smaller role for the state. While this is anathema to public-sector trade unions seeking to protect members’ jobs, others on the left are drawing back from knee-jerk negativism. On one level this is because it is hard to be actively against being nicer to the neighbours and contributing more to community life. Beyond that, both Jon Cruddas and Tessa Jowell have each suggested that the Big Society is really a Labour idea with roots in the friendly societies and the co- operative tradition which flourished before the high levels of state intervention that followed World War Two. Similarly, Matthew Taylor of the RSA has noted that ‘people on the centre left have urged Ed Miliband not to allow the Conservatives to have sole ownership of the ideas of the Big Society, but perhaps he could be even bolder and try to make this ground his very own?’

To some extent, the Big Society may be whatever anyone chooses it to be, but there do seem to be some common strands. Lord Wei, the social entrepreneur brought in to develop thinking in the Cabinet Office, describes a process of decentralisation of power, aiming to put citizens at the centre of a partnership which supports them to take more control of their lives. He suggests that requires a different way of thinking about solving problems in government, asking:

• Which sector could lead or partner with government to address problems?

• How to encourage peer-to-peer rather than turning to the centre?

• How can each sector be encouraged to harness citizen power to deliver more for less?

The solutions Lord Wei identifies include increased social action, measured by more participation in communities; community empowerment giving rise to more and more effective community group activity; and service reform to achieve more responsive institutions, leading to improved social policy outcomes. He recognises three key challenges in achieving these goals: lack of time, lack of finance, and the capture of the initiative by existing vested interests.

If at least some of the features described have resonance across the political spectrum it is worth considering how they might be used by adult educators.

From his first speeches as a minister, during Adult Learners’ Week 2010, John Hayes made clear his position that informal and non-formal adult education are tools through which aspirations of the Big Society might be delivered. Following the spending review, this was made an explicit policy goal of government policy in Skills for Sustainable Growth.

Community engagement

 Community engagement has been a role of adult education for generations. There are already voluntary associations largely or wholly independent of the state (such as the U3A, Women’s Institutes and faith groups) running programmes of community-based adult learning.

In the past, R.H. Tawney saw engagement in adult education as an essential pre-requisite to the creation of an active, participative citizenry. More recently the subject was considered by the Inquiry into the future for Lifelong Learning. In its 2009 report, Learning through Life, the Inquiry included a recommendation that:

"A common framework of learning opportunities should be created, aimed at enhancing people’s control over their own lives. An agreed framework for a citizens’ curriculum should be developed, built initially around a set of four capabilities: digital, health, financial and civic, together with employability."

It is certainly possible to see a reformed system of adult community learning focusing on such capabilities while also encouraging progression to more formal academic and vocational pathways.

There is a real tension in Big Society thinking, however – whether of the right or the left – and this is about where and why it balances localism and decentralised, ground-up, initiatives and solutions, on one hand, with a political culture in England that is massively centralised on Whitehall, which is comfortable with systems of entitlements and regulations and wary of ‘postcode lotteries’, on the other.

The Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin is clear where he stands:

"The result of a big, strong society is that it will be administratively untidy. People will come together to do things in different ways in different places."

But for Mr Letwin’s untidiness to develop, the state (whether local or national) needs to be serious about letting go and relinquishing powers. Also, people in neighbourhoods or communities of interest need to have the capacity, education and skills to take up any opportunities presented. At present it is hard to be confident that there is widespread appetite for change and there is a nagging fear that greater untidiness may result in widening injustice as the least privileged communities are left further behind those with more affluent, articulate and time-rich populations.

There are, of course, many positive examples of how informal and formal adult learning can empower communities, and there need to be more, but these can go only so far before running up against a larger roadblock. This is to do with the lack of a real consensus, even within political parties, about what services are best determined and delivered by different tiers of local government, which by voluntary associations, by market forces or by the UK government.

Without greater agreement, it is difficult to see how new models of delivering public services through mutuals, co-ops, charities and social enterprises will emerge on any scale. The problems of increasing voluntarism at a time when the infrastructure for social action is at risk of collapse have been mentioned and, as long as the economy is weak, philanthropism will be hard-pressed to fill the gap. Proposals to use funds from dormant bank accounts to establish a ‘Big Society Bank’ are encouraging and the development of ‘social investment bonds’ to overcome the problem of capital funding for community enterprise is genuinely creative – but there is a concern that the government may be attempting to do too much too quickly.

That said, the period ahead may stimulate whole new forms of adult education in response to social and economic conditions. In the words of the cultural commentator and adult educator Raymond Williams, people turn to learning at such times to understand change, to adapt to it and, importantly, to shape it. What remains certain is that adults are going to have to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and build new shared understandings for the period ahead.

Alastair Thomson is NIACE’s Principal Policy and Advocacy Officer