Balsall Heath was busily preparing last week for a visit from the judges of
the Britain in Bloom contest. The mainly ethnic minority residents of the
inner-city suburb of Birmingham were tidying their hanging baskets and
pruning tubs of roses.
It is hard to imagine that until recently these red brick terraces were the
centre of the Midlands’ largest red light district, beset by pimps,
prostitution and social breakdown. What rescued it? Not the police or other
agencies of the state – but people who decided to take a moral stand.
“There were 450 prostitutes working here along with their pimps and assorted
ne’er-do-wells,” recalled Dick Atkinson, a former sociology lecturer who
became chief executive of the pioneering Balsall Heath Forum, a community
action group. “We arranged for residents to stand on 20 or 30 street
corners. They would just stare at kerb crawlers.
“The police said, ‘You are going to cause trouble. Go home.’ But the vice
squad were doing nothing to stem the problem. We did it our way, from the
bottom up. It took three or four years and the problem was solved.”
The forum went on to tackle other apparently intractable issues: schooling,
the environment, the lack of opportunities for women. They closed the pub
that used to be the centre of the vice trade and turned it into a training
centre for women. “The place that used to sell women now empowers them,”
Atkinson said.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, knows all about Balsall Heath and its revival
from squalor. The Tory leader has visited several times, once staying
overnight with a Muslim family. His “Webcameron” video diary memorably
recorded him filling the dishwasher after a curry supper.
Last week Balsall Heath’s theme of moral fightback came to the fore of
Cameron’s strategy when he made a taboo-breaking speech about the dangers of
“moral neutrality” and the importance or “right and wrong”. He was launching
the Conservative campaign for the Glasgow East by-election in a
neighbourhood notorious for unemployment, drugs, and short life expectancy;
there he laid out a vision for fixing a broken society.
“We as a society have been far too sensitive,” he said. “In order to avoid
injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgmental, we have
failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of
responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others.
“Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is
good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour.” Cameron also addressed
head-on the recent spate of stabbings, declaring that any young person
convicted of knife crime should expect to go to jail. “We talk about people
being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much
and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty,
or social exclusion: it’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug
addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.”
Cameron’s meteoric political rise has been defined by his speeches. A
barnstormer in Blackpool in 2005 propelled him to the leadership, and
another in the same town last year forced Gordon Brown to think again about
calling a snap election. Cameron’s allies believe last week’s “moral
leadership” speech was his third great moment.
It is being compared to Tony Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of
crime” speech, arguably the foundation text of new Labour. Certainly the
impact of Glasgow is still being felt, even beyond Britain. “Tory chief gets
politically incorrect”, declared Canada’s National Post last week.
Is it a risky lurch to the right, back to the sort of basics that got John
Major into trouble? Or has Cameron struck a chord with voters fed up with
years of moral neutrality under Labour?
After Cameron’s revival of compassionate Conservatism, things have moved on.
With the Tories 20 points ahead in the polls, he can afford to take more
risks. And voters, feeling the credit crunch and fearful of social
breakdown, are looking for a tougher message from the government in waiting.
The Glasgow speech was a result of numerous conversations over late-night
meals of home-cooked pasta and chianti between Cameron and Steve Hilton, his
shaven-headed policy guru. Previously Hilton ran a consultancy advising
companies on corporate social responsibility. The idea that individuals – or
companies – should take their own “moral” courses of action rather than wait
for the nanny state to intervene has long been his mantra. The book Nudge,
essential summer beach reading for the political classes, also inspired some
of Cameron’s rhetoric. Its American authors, Richard Thaler and Cass
Sunstein, argue that the state should not compel people to do things, but
that instead a “nudge” in the right direction can be enough. But that means
setting out what the “right” direction is: it means taking a moral stand.
Another influence is a book called The De-Moralisation of Society: From
Victorian Virtues to Modern Values by Gertrude Himmelfarb, which argues that
the maintenance of the social fabric depends on a clear understanding of
right and wrong.
The question, of course, is: can fine talk be translated into action? Among
those who believe it can is Shaun Bailey, a black youth worker and
Conservative candidate for Hammersmith. Bailey, who grew up in a tough
inner-London suburb and is the co-founder of a charity helping wayward
youths back on the straight and narrow, said: “I couldn’t agree more with
what Cameron said. In fact, for me, it sums up why I’m in politics. This
notion that everyone is a victim makes me sick to my stomach. For me, you
cannot make a future for yourself if you are not responsible for yourself.
“I run a job club, and our motto is, ‘We will do nothing for you, but we’ll
help you do anything.’ I say you’ve got to ‘self propel’.”
To show that the party is making practical progress as well as policy
speeches, parliamentary candidates are required to undertake good works in
the constituencies they hope to win.
Charlotte Leslie, who is standing in Bristol North West, said: “We are
encouraged to get involved in social action projects. It really tackles why
people have lost faith in politics. There is no way you can stand on a
doorstep and convince people you are going to do something – the only way to
convince them is by actually doing it.”
Leslie has become involved in getting youths interested in boxing as an outlet
for their energy and aggression. “The thing they say time and again is that
if they hadn’t found boxing, they would have been in with the wrong crowd.
Boxing has given them another way; taught them that they don’t need to pick
fights to be hard. They already know they’re hard. They realise the clever
thing is to walk away.”
Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, is another of the driving forces
behind the new morality. “This was a significant speech,” he said. “[Last]
week people really began to get what David means by social responsibility.
It will define what he wants to do in office. The priorities David has
outlined for legislation in a future government are education, welfare and
the family – making our schools a safer and more aspirational environment,
getting the jobless into work or supporting commitment and responsible
parenting.”
The shadow cabinet is drawing up policies to meet these themes. Chris
Grayling, the work and pensions spokesman, is planning a system of
“workfare” that will make it tougher for the jobless to opt to stay on the
dole. In the Treasury brief, George Osborne is hoping to restructure the tax
system to reward parents who stay together.
It is the schools system that will see the most ambitious shake-up. Gove plans
to scrap the red tape that prevents groups of parents from starting their
own free, state-funded schools. He also wants to rebuild the status of
teachers, ending the culture where parents blame the school for their
child’s own poor behaviour.
Some Labour MPs leapt on Cameron’s message, hoping to tarnish his Mr
Nice Guy image. Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister and MP for
Rotherham, likened the Tory leader’s Glasgow speech to Margaret Thatcher’s
declaration there was no such thing as society. “Mr Cameron is harking back
to the Thatcherite idea that only individuals exist,” he said. Hazel Blears,
the communities secretary, also voiced scepticism. “Of course individuals
have a responsibility, but so does government,” she said. “It sounds
dangerously like Cameron is heralding a return to sink or swim.”
The dirty tricks team at Labour’s Victoria Street headquarters are rubbing
their hands with excitement. They hope that the Tories’ occupation of the
high moral ground will make them vulnerable to “back to basics” sleaze: if
Cameron takes the moral high ground, he will be attacked if any Tory MPs
fail to live up to the same standards.
Already the Conservatives have encountered scandals over Euro MPs’ expenses
and allegations that Caroline Spelman, the party chairman, paid her nanny
from public funds. However, Cameron is meeting the challenge head-on. Next
week the Tories will publish details of the expenses claimed by their
frontbench spokesmen and a new code of conduct for shadow ministers.
Privately, some Labour ministers admit that Cameron’s comments have touched a
nerve, even provoking embarrassment that Labour has failed to do more to
rebuild society. One said the Glasgow speech reminded him of a young Tony
Blair who, in the wake of the Jamie Bulger murder in 1993, spoke of the
“moral chaos” that would ensue if we failed to teach young people right and
wrong.
“Another problem,” said the minister, “is that for 10 years we have been
trying to control things from the centre with targets and top-down control.
We have not done enough to encourage people to take control of their lives
from the bottom up.”
At a recent cabinet meeting, Brown was greeted with sullen silence when he
told ministers that the next election would be a choice between Tory cuts
and Labour investment in public services – just as it had been in 2001 and
2005.
While the prime minister might not yet realise it, most of his colleagues now
understand that the game has changed.
Cameron is speaking basic common-sense about the need to channel boys' energies & natural aggression, using language everyone can understand. It is equally imperative that we tackle boys under-achievement in school, We need to de-feminise education & teach practical skills for non-academic boys.
Donna Walker, Effingham, England
Good on ya Dave - somebody should !!!!
Ian Payne, walsall,