The term ‘national service’ strikes fear into the hearts of liberal men the world over. As a mobilising concept, however, it is unmatched. This is not to suggest that we should start arming our hapless young Johnnies and sending them out onto Salisbury Plain to fend for themselves – there are other ways to serve one’s nation. Rather, the government should facilitate schemes of national community service targeted specifically at our increasingly disengaged youth.
The core problems of anti-social behaviour, social exclusion and political disengagement in the UK are exacerbated by the weakness of civil society. For many years there has been a decline in the appreciation of one’s place in society and the community – an ignorance of one’s rights and corresponding responsibilities. Indeed, without making excuses for occasional genuinely bad egg, the problem of anti-social behaviour can be seen as an extreme manifestation of exclusion and disengagement.
The social contract speaks of a square deal for all members of society, of rights alongside responsibilities. Rousseau concluded that an individual could only be free under the law, but equally an individual cannot be free without a community to secure the basic provision of, as Robert Sampson puts it, ‘public safety, norms of civility and trust, efficacious voluntary organisations and the collective socialisation of the young’.
So if this square deal is to have any resonance, the individual must be made aware of these terms when he enters into it. Frank Field proposes the creation of a ceremony welcoming new members into society. This would be a coming of age celebration which would outline the benefits that the individual stands to gain from society and what society expects from him in return. It is a variation on Gladwell’s tipping point theory. The idea, simply put, is that if you feel yourself to be a member of the community, and hold a stake within it, it is harder to urinate through your neighbour’s letterbox. As Lyndon Baines Johnson would no doubt put it: it’s better to get the kids inside pissing out than the other way round. This contract is aimed at empowering society’s figures of authority, parents, teachers, policemen, etc., so that the individual’s responsibilities can be clearly defined and young people can be held accountable for failing to meet them.
In a similar vein, presidential hopeful John Kerry proposes a broad national service programme based in part around a service for college initiative that would call public-spirited high school students into service in exchange for contributions towards their college or university tuition fees. Similarly short periods of public service could be required of teenagers before they graduate from secondary school. Local communities would be empowered to design their own programmes of service backed by government funding. There is scope for reducing illiteracy, preserving the environment, providing after-school care, helping the elderly live in dignity, building new homes and so on. The beauty of the system is that such a volunteer force, put to effective use, would largely pay for itself.
There are, of course, barriers to the implementation of such a system. In order that it is given a fighting chance, red tape surrounding voluntary groups would have to be cut, as would the threat of unreasonable litigation. There are, however, many successful examples of this sort of programme. Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps has rallied over 200,000 young Americans into voluntary public service in schools, housing projects and in disaster relief and reconstruction. Likewise, Kennedy’s Peace Corps continues to do the same on an international level, and currently attracts around 7,000 volunteers each year. President Bush has squandered this volunteerism and, as Amitai Etzioni points out, has failed to make any meaningful use of the renewed desire to help that the reaction against September 11 unleashed.
The revolutionary Cuban government in 1961 (whilst it was still operating on goodwill and popular support) mobilised a willing population to surpass UN targets and all but eliminate illiteracy in the space of a few months. In this case, it was invariably young Cubans teaching their elders and their contemporaries who had missed out. Think of the leap that could be made in the government’s attempts to get Britain on-line if the armies of technologically-minded youths were mobilised to pass on their knowledge.
There is of course a culture of volunteerism in the UK facilitated through bodies such as the National Centre for Volunteering, Millennium Volunteers, Voluntary Service Overseas and Community Service Volunteers, each of which receives central funding. The latter, Britain’s largest such group, attracted an impressive 128,000 volunteers in 2002/3. However, numbers have steadily declined over the past decade to the extent that some projects have been forced to close their doors for good. This downward trend is often attributed to the soaring numbers of people in work, ominously shifting the imperative to facilitate voluntary schemes onto corporations
An integrated national volunteer development agency for England, ‘Volunteering England’, is due to come on stream 1 April. This presents an invaluable opportunity to broaden the scope of the voluntary sector to impact upon disaffection and disengagement.
Teenagers do not hang around on street corners because they enjoy it. All too often they have nothing else to do. Such gatherings are intimidating to local people and are conducive to anti-social behaviour. These problems hit poorer communities harder and so too should the solutions. Despite the slew of volunteer organisations, many young people are not involved. There are problems of the size of organisations, levels of awareness of their programmes and, significantly, of the exclusion of certain social groups from their intake. A national programme utilising the existing infrastructure could create the buzz necessary to bring young people on board and, as ever, incentives are key in doing so.
These policies have long been the preserve of the progressive left. The current government, led as it is by an avowed communitarian, has implemented countless initiatives towards this end. From Sure Start to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, from the Adventure Capital Fund to Child Trust Funds, the government has worked, with mixed results, to promote community inclusiveness and opportunity for the disadvantaged. If, through active engagement in their communities, more young people can develop confidence and pride in their place in society, the results of the existing policies would likely be improved beyond recognition. A nationwide programme of voluntary community service based on incentives, controlled at a local level through schools, local councils and community bodies, could provide this missing link.