24 July 2007
Gordon Brown has announced plans to "pay tribute to the people who represent the very best of Britain" every 24 July and to encourage more public service and social action.
Read the speech
It is wholly appropriate when as a country we are living through a week when communities have come together as one to face huge challenges, that we celebrate the contribution of local everyday heroes who make the difference —– and make Britain what it is today.
I have just come from a meeting of the emergency committee COBRA and the Cabinet where we have heard at first hand not only of the heroic efforts of the emergency services, our armed forces and communities themselves who are battling the flood waters, but also of their success in restoring power to some of the homes without it and preventing others from losing their electricity supply. We will continue to do all we can to help those affected.
A few weeks ago brave men and women, from explosive experts and airport workers to ordinary volunteers and members of the public, helped thwart three conspiracies to murder and maim British citizens.
Now this week we have seen in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury and in the surrounding communities men and women help each other support each other and often simply be there for each other. And in response to the unprecedented floods and their aftermath we have seen again and again what we witnessed a week or two ago throughout Yorkshire and Humberside: neighbour helping neighbour; young helping old; those with transport helping those who are stranded; and doing so selflessly.
And so it is an immense privilege to be here today to have the chance to recognise publicly the contribution of Britain’s ‘Everyday Heroes’ and do so with such a powerful and successful community group - ‘Community Links’ - led so ably by David Robinson whose founding belief is one we understand very well after the events of the last few weeks and one that I embrace: ‘that we all need help at some times in our lives and we all have something to give’.
So today we are here to recognise and celebrate men and women who are at the forefront of change but are seldom if ever in the public spotlight:
- carers devoting their energies and their lives to tend and support relatives and friends;
- helpers, neighbours, mentors, befrienders, coaches, offering the only thing that often matters - one to one time, support and friendship;
- community leaders day in day out building stronger communities;
- members of the emergency services so often working far beyond the call of duty;
- social innovators pioneering new ways of addressing today’s social challenges;
- men and women who have seen or experienced a need and responded often in an extraordinary way - by going first, taking risks, braving disapproval and standing up to entrenched interests.
Today - nearly a month after taking up this new position as Prime Minister - I am here to pay tribute to the people who represent the very best of Britain: people who inspire us all: the thousands of Britain’s everyday heroes.
With their achievements in mind, I want to recognise and celebrate a growing spirit of service in our country.
And today as a government we want to show our commitment to those who every day show their commitment to our country.
So the Minister for the Third Sector and I want to explain how we will to do more to:
- back thousands of small community led projects with greater access to small grants;
- examine, following consultation to end on August 9, how a new social investment bank might help support charities with limited access to mainstream finance;
- champion social action and innovation through a new Council on Social Action;
- establish in Britain - because we pioneered modern civic society - a new annual forum on social leadership to bring together people with ideas and who are changemakers from all over the world;
- embrace the new multimedia for community action and encourage it as a forum for social action by creating our Awards for Social Technology;
- scale up youth volunteering into a national youth community service for Britain;
- invest in building capacity in voluntary and community organisations and in social enterprises;
- and reform our honours system to recognise far more widely the great contribution to civic society of so many of our citizens.
And I believe this is all possible because in my journeys around Britain, I have been seen and been inspired and uplifted by so many people who give willingly of their time to build a better society for us all.
Of course ours is an era in which many of the traditional structures of society, association and voluntary engagement have declined. And there are fewer community gatherings in our church halls and town halls.
But I have seen, all around Britain, new and vibrant forms of civic life, social participation and multimedia technology that have transformed the scope and nature of civic participation so that the language of ‘volunteering’ no longer does justice to the enormous range of ways that people are finding to express their commitment to building a better society.
New associations - from mother and toddler groups and sports clubs to organisations for the elderly - and many informal networks - have emerged to reflect community needs in a new era.
Indeed everywhere I have travelled I have been encouraged and inspired by meeting and listening to concerned individuals wanting to do more to make their neighbourhoods safe and strong - people who offer their hearts and their hands, day in and day out, year in and year out.
The mothers and fathers helping with the local football team, lending a hand at their school, helping with Comic Relief fundraising, joining the local campaigns to reduce waste or recycle or improve pavements and parks. Young people mentoring younger pupils, collecting toys or clothes for children who need them more: their energy, their ideas, their devotion, everyday changing our country.
Some of their activities may be new to our times, but they are all rooted in the timeless values of the good society: a society where we all feel a part of, and play a part in, something bigger than ourselves.
And it is in these millions of quiet, often unheralded deeds of commitment and acts of humanity that never draw attention to themselves that we can see the greatness of Britain.
And today we need these deeds; these strengths.
Britain, as a changing society, faces serious challenges - from terrorism and security to environmental change and the huge global restructuring of our economy - and in that sense the British way of life is under pressure. But whether in peace or in war, Britain, as a society, is endlessly resilient, adaptive and never broken. And we know that we do best when we mobilise all the strengths of Britain - and most of all the strengths of our people.
My belief is there is no weakness in Britain today that cannot be addressed by the strengths of Britain today.
No problem so big in Britain that it cannot be fixed by what’s best in the British people.
Nothing that drags us down that cannot be tackled by the strong compassionate values that lift us up.
As John Buchan wrote: the task is not to put the greatness back into humanity but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
And this is my idea of Britain and Britishness today — not the individual on his or her own living in isolation sufficient unto himself but the individual with a sense of belonging that expands outwards as we grow from family to friends and neighbourhood; a sense of belonging that then ripples outwards again from work, school, church and community and eventually outwards to far beyond our home town and region to define our nation and country as a society.
A Britain where people recognise that it is indeed the duties discharged by each of us that are the key to improving the well-being of all of us.
So what I have seen whilst writing this book reinforces my faith in the capacity of individuals working together to transform communities and to change lives.
And if the deeds and achievements I saw and learnt about are representative - as I believe they are - then just think of the scale of what is being done and the vast potential of what might be achieved in future.
So we must celebrate all those people who make a difference —– but even more importantly as Ed Miliband publishes the results of the Third Sector review, the biggest ever consultation with the voluntary sector, I want the events being held today to mark the start of a new partnership of individuals, independent community organisations and a government working together to empower and help all those working for social change.
In many of the conversations I have had when writing this book I heard again and again a plea to remember the value of small grants for small-scale individual or community led projects. So we will build on the £80 million set aside in the last Budget for small-scale grants with an additional £50 million - allocated on a match-funded basis with charitable and corporate donations - for local foundations to invest in endowment funds which will generate income for front-line community organisations and activities for years to come.
We have simplified the Gift Aid scheme which is now worth over £800 million a year, but we are already consulting on how we can do more to increase its take-up.
And it is now my priority to examine how a new Social Investment Bank and other new approaches to social investment might help to ensure that voluntary sector and community groups can access more secure and sustainable funding.
This Government’s social change agenda must go beyond the traditional to embrace the new and diverse ways in which individuals, organisations, communities and business engage in social change. And so it requires a whole new approach from government: new kinds of support and a new style of inclusive leadership.
To bring social innovators together to generate ideas on how the whole of government can support the efforts of all those striving for change, in all their diverse ways, I am creating a new Council on Social Action, led by David Robinson, which will advise the Government on new initiatives to celebrate, connect and inspire those working for social good.
And we will support the development of an annual global forum on social leadership - which will meet each year to inspire debate, forge links between activists and stimulate the pursuit of social change, showing to the world that the UK is at the forefront of thinking and development in social leadership.
While writing this book I have been reminded again and again that we must do more to move beyond old, dull and all-too-familiar ‘one size fits all’ solutions and we must do more to encourage a stronger culture of innovation to generate new ways of advancing social change.
To recognise and support new ways of utilising existing and widely-owned technology for social ends we will introduce a Prime Ministerial Award for Social Technology; we are creating an Innovation Exchange to bring together the voluntary and public sectors to develop and share innovative practice; and I am pleased to be hosting this evening the launch of HorsesMouth, a new web-mentoring initiative to provide one to one support and enable people to share and learn from each others talents and experiences.
Through their capacity to break new ground, to cross new frontiers, to do what standardised services often cannot do - to try things out, to work informally, to do things differently - volunteers and voluntary organisations often change the way we see and do things.
To do more to inspire more people across the country to combine their business skills with a desire to deliver lasting social and environmental change, Ed Miliband is this afternoon launching a search for twenty new Social Enterprise Ambassadors to act as role models for the social entrepreneurs in the future.
And following recommendations made to me by Julia Neuberger, the Government will invest an additional £85 million to improve training and support for front-line groups and we will also set aside £10 million more to help large community organisations like community centres develop their own assets and generate more income themselves.
Because we are committed to creating an environment where innovative individuals and organisations feel able to speak up and speak out, the Government will work with the Charity Commission and others to explore ways of enabling voluntary organisations to campaign without compromising their charitable status.
And I am delighted to announce that at a meeting held this morning some of the City of London’s top leaders agreed to so more to utilise their talents and experience to help address key social challenges and strengthen leadership within the voluntary sector.
I am also committed to finding new ways of engaging young people in contributing to social change.
Last year following an extensive consultation with young people we set up the country’s first national youth community service.
In its first year, that organisation - ‘V’ - has:
- provided over 120,000 volunteering opportunities, supported by £21 million raised from the private sector;
- launched an innovative youth fund - V cashpoint - that will give young volunteers the chance to apply for up to £2500 to run community projects;
- and introduced ‘V inspired.com’, a new youth volunteering portal.
And I can announce today that - building on this success - the government is committing another £117 million over the next three years to fund part time and full time volunteering placements for young people in every area of the country as we move to a national youth community service for Britain.
I also believe that the honours system should recognise and celebrate the contribution of local people making a difference in their own communities.
Currently only 40 per cent of honours are for services to the local community.
I believe that this figure should be substantially higher. Indeed the significant majority of honours should, in my view, go to people who serve their community in our community organisations, schools, hospitals and voluntary sector.
I have written to all departments today stressing the importance I attach to local community service.
And the Cabinet Secretary is also writing today to the Chairs and members of the independently led Honours Committees with a remit that a significantly higher proportion of honours bestowed by Her Majesty The Queen should go to the often unsung heroes of our villages, towns and cities.
To emphasise this priority we will ask all local and regional newspapers, local radio stations and regional TV stations to make it known that in future the honours system will celebrate more everyday heroes and to invite their readers listeners and viewers to submit nominations that can be fully considered.
For future years the aim will be for a significant majority of honours to go to local community champions who are making a difference in schools, youth clubs, hospitals, charities, and faith groups throughout Britain.
We will instigate a national and local advertising campaign of our own that will ask people to think of the ‘Good Neighbour MBE’.
We will also ensure that more awards are available not only to the individuals who are community leaders but to the organisations which are making a difference. So alongside what we do to encourage the MBE and other awards for individuals, we will do more to recognise local organisations making a difference with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. We invite nominations for this award by 30th September this year.
And in this spirit of recognising and celebrating service to local communities and to our country it is right too that we look at how our honours system can recognise those in our emergency services and members of the public who showed such bravery and heroism in the face of the recent terrorist attacks; and who have worked beyond the call of duty during the recent floods.
So this 24th of July we recognise and celebrate ordinary people in all walks of life and across every neighbourhood who are making a willing commitment to act for social change, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Because the society we want to build is dependent not on exceptional people doing extraordinary things occasionally but on all of us doing ordinary things thoughtfully day after day, 24/7.
But I want today to be just the beginning.
I want to see 24/7 every year becoming a day in which I, the government, and the country as a whole can honour all those acting for good, and be inspired by the countless acts of social commitment which are shaping our country each day.
My late father always said that each of us could make a difference. We could all leave in his words, ‘our mark for good or for ill’.
And he said that it was not IQ or intelligence or, for that matter, money that defined whether you made the best mark in your society.
He believed in Martin Luther King’s words, that everybody could be great because everyone can serve.
So I certainly grew up influenced by the idea that one individual, however young, small, poor or weak, could make a difference.
The great American jurist Justice Warren once said that he read the newspaper sports pages first because stories there were of human achievements, and the front pages last because their stories were of human failings.
For too much of the time we focus on what divides us, disturbs us or pulls us down. This book - and our new commitment as a government to do all we can to support and develop an active society - is an attempt to focus afresh on what unites us and lifts us up.
I believe it is time to celebrate the best in Britain, and — by celebrating it and enhancing it, and by encouraging many more of us to participate in it - we can build the good society where each of us asks what we can give and all of us can make a difference.
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