It is when times are tough that you often see someone’s true nature. This Christmas, when times are tougher than they have been for years, I think we’re seeing what most of us would call the “best of British”.

All over the country we are hearing stories of charities being inundated with volunteers who want to do a little something to help out someone else. It seems that what people are taking away from the slowdown is that it’s time to step up giving.

At the beginning of December, Crisis, the homelessness charity that I visited in Birmingham yesterday, was reporting an incredible 66% rise in the number of volunteers stepping forward to run centres. On Christmas Eve, the London Evening Standard said charities across London were being forced to turn away hundreds of volunteers to run services over the holiday. St John Ambulance reported “the best Christmas for several years” and charities for children, the blind and for those with terminal illnesses were all reporting full rosters of volunteers.

Few have better captured the new urge to give than The Kindness Offensive. Founded by three north Londoners – James Hunter, David Goodfellow and David Crane – “TKO” is devoted to surprising strangers with “random acts of kindness”. Starting with a desk on Parliament Hill asking passing members of the public to describe what act of kindness they would most appreciate, TKO’s preChristmas push saw it distribute some £250,000 worth of food to the hungry and homeless in London. The source of these donations? “Phone whispering.” Quite literally, ringing up companies and asking for donations. TKO’s newsclip on YouTube has already clocked up nearly 200,000 views.

What is inspiring about this volunteering surge is that it could signal a new boom for Britain’s giving generation, a force quietly gathering pace for years. Made up of people who put real heart into the neighbourhood, the giving generation is a huge silent majority and the evidence is that it is getting bigger.

This year an estimated three-quarters of us volunteered at some point. Four out of five of us have given to charity in the past four weeks and nearly half of all people volunteer – formally or informally – at least once a month. Research conducted early in 2008 showed the average donation up 13% on 2007.

Between 2001-5, Britain’s army of volunteers grew by 10% to top some 20m. Over the decade to 2005 there has been, quite simply, a revolution in the strength of the charitable sector. The number of charities is up by a third to 164,000 as the government has pumped billions in public funding into the sector, doubling funding from £5 billion to more than £10 billion.

Is this just a “crunch spirit” or does it reflect something deeper? I think it’s a bit of both. The instinct among all of us to join the giving generation is getting stronger. It is in part a reaction to modern life. All of us now live more and more in networks: networks at work; networks of interest; networks that define the span of our recreation and conversation. These new ways of connecting have given us an extraordinary opportunity to develop ourselves and our interests as we like.

It is not often that you get Labour ministers quoting John Stuart Mill, the Liberal guru. But there is a quote of his that I’m fond of. “It is useful,” Mill wrote in On Liberty, “that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.”

The networks we live in are instrumental in developing the kind of character Mill was talking about. But this new freedom brings with it a degree of uneasiness and a subtle sense of loss that poses questions about how we refresh fraternity in modern Britain.

In other words, people don’t just want to live in networks but neighbourhoods, too. We want fair rules that bond us together. And we want to put something of ourselves into the mix. That’s an important spark to give something back.

Has this got political significance? Of course. It could spell a timely end to this wearying argument about broken Britain. Most of the political class knows that “broken Britain” was branding designed to renew David Cameron’s law and order credentials while avoiding accusations of reverting to “nasty party” politics. It went along with “sharing the proceeds of growth” (cutting taxes to you and me) and the “postbureaucratic age” (cutting public investment) as semiotic devices designed to project a sense of renewal. All have had unhappy endings, as events in the past few months required something more than sound bites. The country itself is overturning the accusation that somehow the nation is torn.

Britain isn’t broken. And the great British spirit that we’ve seen this Christmas is proof.

Liam Byrne is minister for the Cabinet Office

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