Date and venue: 24 September, London, RSA (now sold-out)
Speakers: Anthony Browne, AC Grayling, Julia Neuberger,
Respondents: Naomi Eisenstadt
Chair: Julia Unwin (Chair)

“… while values change, panic about their decline is one of the constants of history. Panics about moral decline are experienced in every generation, almost as though there is a human need for them.”
Anthony Browne

“For a student of ethics and history, the results [of last year's consultation] confirm the observation that every generation thinks that the past was a better place and that its own time is one of crisis.”
AC Grayling

“The idea that we have an obligation to society beyond the demands we ourselves wish to make of it is becoming unfashionable.”
Julia Neuberger

Anthony Browne argues that, in the face of unprecedented and unsettling decline in values, discussing the problem and its causes is the first step towards making things better.

AC Grayling suggests that it is the responsibility of each of us to confront such difficulties by getting them in proportion; working out if they really are problems; and deciding what we can do about them, individually and collectively.

Julia Neuberger argues that we can change society for the better by deliberately rebuilding trust, opening up our institutions, and stopping the ‘blame culture’ from preventing simple acts of kindness and altruism.

Anthony Browne

Anthony Browne is director of Policy Exchange. He was previously a national journalist for fifteen years, having been chief political correspondent and europe correspondent for the Times, Health Editor, Environment Editor and Deputy Business Editor of the Observer, and Economics Correspondent for BBC TV and radio.

He has written policy reports on issues ranging from NHS reform to immigration for a range of think tanks including Adam Smith Institute, Social Market Foundation and Civitas.

Naomi Eisenstadt

Naomi Eisenstadt is the Director of the Social Exclusion Task Force at the Cabinet Office. In this role she is responsible for the coordination of the delivery of the Socially Excluded Adults Public Service Agreement, and other cross Government projects designed to ensure that departments work together to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged members of our society.

Naomi has a long history of working in social policy, mainly on children’s services. Having gained a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and a Credential in Early Childhood Education from the University of California, she came to Britain in 1974, and worked in nurseries in Edinburgh and then Milton Keynes.

Naomi joined the civil service in 1999 to run the Sure Start Programme. This grew into a portfolio including the Government’s policy and delivery on services for young children, extended schools and parenting. She is also a non–executive director of a primary care trust.

In 2002 Naomi was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University for services to families and children. She was awarded a CB in the 2005 New Year’s Honours List.

Professor A.C. Grayling

AC Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He has written and edited many books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are a biography of William Hazlitt and a collection of essays. For several years he wrote the “Last Word” column for the Guardian newspaper and is a regular reviewer for the Literary Review and the Financial Times.

He also often writes for the Observer, Economist, Times Literary Supplement, Independent on Sunday and New Statesman, and is a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He is the Editor of Online Review London, Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine. In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British Philosophical Association, the Aristotelian Society. He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and has been involved in UN human rights initiative.

AC Grayling has been a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 2003 was a Booker Prize judge.

Baroness Neuberger DBE

Baroness Neuberger DBE was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977, and served the South London Liberal Synagogue for twelve years, before going to the King’s Fund Institute as a Visiting Fellow.

She was at Harvard Medical School in 1991-1992, Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust from 1993 until 1997 and then Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, an independent health charity until  2004.   She has been a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life , the Medical Research Council and the General Medical Council, a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust and the Imperial War Museum (until 2006). She was also a Trustee of the British Council and of Jewish Care and remains a Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation as well as a founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, in memory of her parents. Until recently she chaired the Commission on the Future of Volunteering, is President of Liberal Judaism, and last year was appointed the Prime Minister’s Champion for Volunteering.

She is the author of several books on Judaism, women, healthcare ethics and on caring for dying people, and her book ‘The Moral State We’re In’, was published in March 2005. Her latest book ‘Not dead yet – a manifesto for old age’ was published by HarperCollins in May 2008.

She was created a Life Peer in June 2004 (Liberal Democrat) and was Bloomberg Professor of Divinity at Harvard University for the Spring Semester 2006. In her spare time she likes swimming, gardening, family life, opera and Irish life.

Julia Unwin CBE

Julia Unwin has been the Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation since 1 January 2007.

She was previously Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency and worked as an independent consultant operating within government and the voluntary and corporate sectors. In that role, she focused on the development of services and in particular the governance and funding of voluntary organisations.

She also served as a member of the Housing Corporation Board for 10 years and a Charity Commissioner from 1998 until 2003. Among other voluntary roles, she was chair of the Trustees of the Refugee Council from 1995 until 1998.Julia has long experience as an advocate for the users of housing, health and social care services.

Julia is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action, a member of the Ethics Committee at the University of York and a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Date and venue: 21 October, York
Speaker: Zygmunt Bauman,
Respondents: Gary Craig, Thomas Baldwin
Chair: Debby Ounsted

“… consuming more is the sole road to inclusion; whereas the inability to consume more is a sure recipe for exclusion.”
Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman argues that modern-day ‘ills’ are products of the withdrawal of the traditional conception of ‘society’ and are rooted in the way of life of today’s individualised society of consumers.

Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds.

His latest publications are: ‘Has ethics a chance in a society of consumers’ (Harvard University Press) and ‘The Art of Life’ (Policy Press), both 2008.

Thomas Baldwin

Thomas Baldwin was born in 1947. He studied Philosophy at Cambridge where he received his Ph. D. in 1971. Thereafter he has pursued an academic career, with teaching positions in Uganda, Cambridge and York, where he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in 1995.

He is currently editor of Mind, the leading philosophy journal. Other appointments include membership of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2000 – 6), of the HFEA (2001 – 5: Deputy chair 2002 – 5), and of the UK Stem Cell Bank Steering Committee (2002 – 6). He is currently a member of the Government’s Expert Advisory Committee on obesity.

Gary Craig

Gary Craig is Professor of Social Justice at the University of Hull, Head of the Centre for Social Inclusion and Social Justice and Associate Director, Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE).

Prof. Craig was formerly at the Universities of Bradford, York and (as Professor of Social Policy and Head of the Policy Studies Research Centre), the University of Lincoln. Prior to this, he worked in local government and the voluntary sector, mainly in large-scale community development projects.

He was the first person in the world to hold a Chair in Social Justice. He has been a member of the Carnegie UK Trust Commission on Rural Community Development for which he has written several papers and is a research adviser to the Big Lottery Fund. He was elected Academician to the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2002 and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts since 2002.

His major research interests include children and young people, community development, social security, income maintenance, poverty and anti-poverty work in local government, ‘race’ and ethnicity, rural policy issues, local governance, the voluntary and community sectors, and evaluation methodology. His two hundred-plus publications include 7 edited books, more than thirty chapters in books, and forty academic journal articles.

Debby Ounstead

Debby has been a Trustee since 2002 and was appointed Chair of the Foundation and the Housing Trust in 2006. Educated at Girton College, Cambridge and with a postgraduate diploma in publishing from Oxford Brookes, Debby worked in housing and local government until 2001. During that time she was chief executive of Habinteg Housing Association, which is especially concerned with housing for people with disabilities. She was also CE of the Octavia Hill Housing Trust, a long established community-based association with a particular interest in the care and support of older people. She has also served on a number of housing association and voluntary sector boards including six years as chair of KIDS, the charity concerned with children with disabilities and their families.

Now a freelance management consultant and writer she specialises in governance, strategic development and inspection. Debby is a member of the Housing and Almshouse Committee of the Mercers livery company.

Debby chairs the Bradford Strategy Group and the Nominations Committee. She is a member of the Poverty Strategy Group, Finance and Personnel Committee, Derwenthorpe Partnership Advisory Committee and the Remuneration Committee.

Date and venue: 18 November, The RSA - London (now sold-out)
Speakers: Neal Lawson, Matthew Taylor, Stephen Thake
Respondents: Katherine Rake
Chair: Julia Unwin

“What is required is a redefinition of freedom. Instead of viewing it only through the prism of limited individualism and consumerism, freedom needs to be recast in more expansive terms to give people real autonomy, defined as control over our lives.”
Neal Lawson

“The era of rampant individualism and social pessimism may now be drawing to a close. New solutions require us to engage with all the ways in which we are human.”
Matthew Taylor

“Countering individual excess is not just a question of addressing a social evil but of social justice and environmental sustainability.”
Stephen Thake

Neal Lawson discusses why we are less happy and why our lives feel more out of control than ever before, despite gaining many individual liberties.

Stephen Thake argues that, in the face of selfish individualism and wasteful consumerism, we must focus on new forms of agency, solidarity and individual behaviour to rebuild a strong civil society.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, questions the very foundations of who we think we are as individuals and asks whether we are heading towards a new Enlightenment.

Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson writes regularly for the Guardian and the New Statesman about equality, democracy and the future of the left. He often appears on TV and radio as a political commentator. He is chair of the centre-left pressure group Compass, whose goal is for a more equal and democratic world. He is author of Compass pamphlets on democracy and the future of the NHS and public service reform. He is Contributing Editor of the social democracy policy journal Renewal. He is an Associate of the think tank Demos, on the Board of CentreForum and a Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute at London Met University.

Neal was formerly an adviser to Gordon Brown and before that a trade union researcher. For ten years he worked as a public affairs consultant and ran his own company. He co-edited The Progress Century (Palgrave, 2001) and is currently writing a book called ‘All Consuming’ for publication by Penguin in May 2009.

Matthew Taylor

Matthew Taylor became Chief Executive of the RSA in November 2006. Prior to this appointment, he was Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to the Prime Minister.
Matthew was appointed to the Labour Party in 1994 to establish Labour’s rebuttal operation. His activities before the Labour Party included being a county councillor, a parliamentary candidate, a university research fellow and the director of a unit monitoring policy in the health service. Until December 1998, Matthew was Assistant General Secretary for the Labour Party.

During the 1997 General Election he was Labour’s Director of Policy and a member of the Party’s central election strategy team. He was the Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research between 1999 and 2003, Britain’s leading centre left think tank.

Matthew is a frequent media commentator on policy and political issues, and has written for publications including The Guardian, The Observer, New Statesman and Prospect.

Stephen Thake

Stephen Thake, is Reader in Urban Policy at London Metropolitan University. He is a member of the Quirk Review group advising the Secretary of State at the Department on Communities and Local Government (DCLG) on asset transfer. He leads the team evaluating the Adventure Capital Fund, sponsored by the Cabinet Office, DCLG and London Development Agency. He was also policy advisor to the Commission on Unclaimed Assets.

His knowledge of leading edge practice in disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the UK as well as parts of North America and Northern Europe has enabled him to propose policy frameworks and programme initiatives designed to create a sustainable community sector. He has also advised and undertaken policy analysis and programme evaluation for community focused organisations, central government departments, regional development agencies, Church of England and local authorities.

His most recent publications are Community Assets: the benefits and costs of community management and ownership (DCLG, 2006); Making Assets Work: Quirk Review of management and ownership of assets (DCLG, 2007), Delivering Against Expectations: interim report on the Adventure Capital Fund (LMU, 2008); Votes and Voices: complimentary of civic and civil societies (2008, NVCO/LGA).

Julia Unwin CBE

Julia Unwin has been the Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation since 1 January 2007.

She was previously Deputy Chair of the Food Standards Agency and worked as an independent consultant operating within government and the voluntary and corporate sectors. In that role, she focused on the development of services and in particular the governance and funding of voluntary organisations.

She also served as a member of the Housing Corporation Board for 10 years and a Charity Commissioner from 1998 until 2003. Among other voluntary roles, she was chair of the Trustees of the Refugee Council from 1995 until 1998.Julia has long experience as an advocate for the users of housing, health and social care services.

Julia is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action, a member of the Ethics Committee at the University of York and a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Katherine Rake

Dr. Katherine Rake is Director of the Fawcett Society and one of the UK’s leading specialists in gender and social policy. Under her leadership, Fawcett runs passionate, informed campaigns for women’s rights. Katherine has advised the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, HM Treasury and a range of other Government departments. She is a regular broadcaster and has contributed to a wide range of print media.

Katherine was previously Lecturer in Social Policy at the LSE and secondee to the Women’s Unit, Cabinet Office where she edited a ground-breaking report on women’s lifetime incomes. In 2008, Katherine was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities, an Institute of Directors ‘Good Director’ Honour and the Social Policy Association’s Annual Award for Outstanding Contribution from a Non-academic.

“We need a democracy where our individual aspirations for a better life for ourselves and our shared aspirations for equality are not seen as mutually exclusive.”
Chris Creegan

“How are we to give the condemned and excluded a real stake in society, a genuine sense both of participation and self-worth? Is not equality of treatment often easier and more effective than carefully targeted benefits?”
Ferdinand Mount

“… while extravagant rewards are now reaped at the top, those at the bottom live at a level of deprivation which makes inequality as unacceptable as the poverty of the majority at an earlier time.”
Jeremy Seabrook

Chris Creegan argues that until we can reconcile the problems of individualism, consumerism and greed at the heart of contemporary society, life opportunities will continue to be lost, limited and wasted.

Ferdinand Mount takes a wide view of the causes and possible cures of injurious inequalities, looking at five overlapping types of inequalities and how to remedy them.

Jeremy Seabrook argues that, in the face of extraordinary imbalances in society, the myth that accumulating wealth is the supreme human purpose needs to be replaced before any improvement will occur.

Chris Creegan

Chris Creegan is Deputy Director of the Qualitative Research Unit at the National Centre for Social Research where he has worked since 2006. He leads research programmes in the areas of social inclusion, equality and diversity and recently directed a project to elicit the voices of marginalised groups on social evils as part of JRF’s public consultation.
Prior to working in social research, Chris was a full time trade union official at the public sector union Unison where he was Deputy Director of Equal Opportunities from 1996 -1999. Chris has held numerous positions in public life, having been a local councillor in Tower Hamlets between 1998 and 2002. He currently chairs the boards of Tower Hamlets Homes and the Scottish Adoption Association.

Ferdinand Mount

Ferdinand was the Political columnist of the Spectator from 1977-1982, head of the No.10 Policy Unit from 1982-1984 and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991-2002.
He is a prolific author whose work includes ‘The Subversive Family’, ‘The British Consitution now’, ‘Mind the Gap’, ‘Cold Cream’ and eleven fiction novels. He is married with three grown up children.

Jeremy Seabrook

Originally teacher and social worker, Jeremy has been a writer for 40 years, including works for radio, TV and theatre.

Among recent publications are ‘Children of Other Worlds’, a comparison of child labour in 19th century London and contemporary Dhaka; ‘Travels in the Skin Trade’, an examination of why western men go to Thailand for sexual encounters; ‘Freedom Unfinished’, Fundamentalism and Popular resistance in Bangladesh, ‘A World Growing Old’, Consuming Cultures – globalization and local lives; the ‘No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty’, and this year, ‘The Refuge and the Fortress – Britain and the flight from tyranny’.

Robert Maxwell

Robert was appointed as a Trustee in 1994. Educated at Oxford, Pennsylvania, Tromso, and the London School of Economics, his background lies in the field of public health policy and administration. He has served as an Administrator of the Special Trustees of St. Thomas’s Hospital, as Director of several NHS Trusts, and was Secretary and Chief Executive of the King’s Fund from 1980 to 1997.

He is the author of books on the future of NHS administration. Robert has recently retired as Chair from the Gloucestershire Partnership Trust which runs NHS mental health and learning disability services.

Robert is a member of the JRF Investment Committee, Bradford Strategy Group, Place Strategy Group and Poverty Strategy Group.

Atif Imtiaz

Atif Imtiaz has been involved in community activism since the late eighties, completed a thesis on Muslim identity politics in social psychology at the London School of Economics.

Atif is now working as an Equality and Diversity manager in the Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust.

Participants felt that neighbours no longer know or look out for one another, which leaves people feeling isolated, lonely and fearful – particularly the elderly and those who live alone.

People also spoke of a decline of community in a more abstract sense, in terms of a lack of public spiritedness or social responsibility. Older people spoke about how different things used to be:

…the community spirit, is broken down terribly over the last 20 or 30 years. I am nearly 50 years old. I can remember before. Society has changed, it is a lot more selfish and ‘me, myself and I’.

While it was recognised that new kinds of communities were emerging (such as virtual or online communities) people felt these were an inadequate substitute for the face-to-face interactions of more traditional local communities.

Some comments from the consultation

“Community breakdown – society has become very insular and people quite often don’t know any of their neighbours or who lives on their street with the ramifications of no community spirit with everyone looking out for each other and helping each other out.”

“It seems that people no longer care about others or the community area they live in. People are too busy making sure that they have whatever it is that makes their life easier, happier, etc. Regardless of the cost to others.”

“People don’t care for others, in fact it is safer to walk by on the other side of the street, people don’t come into contact with each other, they are isolated by their cars and their televisions.”

Participants suggested that people increasingly look after their own individual or family interests without considering the needs of society or the community.

Nothing is more important than my success, comfort and convenience – and that of my family.

This individualism was seen to have damaging consequences, fuelling selfishness and greed and leading to isolation and fear as people struggle to cope and live fulfilling lives alone.

Some comments from the consultation

“Most of our friends have no priorities external to their families. For example, they agree that climate change is a serious problem but will not alter their lifestyles because it is an external pressure outside the family universe.”

“Individual isolation bringing with it unconscious sense of fear and hopelessness because individuals know they cannot survive alone in a complex society.”

“Narcissism. The infatuation and love of self over the love of the other drives everything from greed and wasteful consumption to eating disorders and a preoccupation with celebrity. It is the darkest force within the modern collective psyche.”

Greed emerged as a key issue, seemingly a symptom of society valuing things in terms of money or material worth. People argued that the concept of need or of having enough has been forgotten and that we are losing sight of the things that are really important in life – things that can’t be bought and sold, such as friendship and kindness.

Everything seems to be based around money and owning things. The more you have, the more successful you are. There’s nothing wrong with having enough, but there’s pressure on people to go for more and more.

These issues of consumerism and greed did not emerge as strongly in the discussions among the unheard groups, but there was a shared concern about the impact of celebrity culture on society and particularly on young people.

Some comments from the consultation

“The materialistic celebrity and ’success’ culture. The worship of celebrity, fashion and success is the cause of bullying and causes a competitive society to appear and intensify, which sets us all against one another in the race for status and possessions.”

“We are in danger of losing sight of what is important in life, like kindness, playfulness, generosity and friendship. The immaterial things that can’t be bought and sold.”

“Obsessive consumerism [is] fuelled by advertising media and banks which lend money to people who cannot afford it to buy things they do not really need.”

Participants felt that we lack a set of shared values which guide people’s behaviour and interactions. This was strongly associated with individualism, selfishness and consumerism: people were described as pursuing their own desires regardless of potential harm to others.

The consultation also identified other virtues that participants believed informed people’s behaviour more in the past. A decline of honesty, tolerance, empathy and compassion, respect and reciprocity were seen to have damaging consequences for society.

People felt that this decline of values has occurred not only at the individual level: the media, business institutions and the government were criticised for being dishonest and self-serving.

Participants often associated this issue with a decline of religion and the loss of Christianity as a foundation for ethical behaviour in Britain, although other participants identified religion itself as a social evil, that causes confusion and conflict.

Some comments from the consultation

“People not respecting each other. I don’t just mean young people having no respect for older people, it works the other way as well – some older people tar youngsters with the ‘nasty’ and ‘ill-mannered’ brush when they do the same. It pervades all parts of society.”

“Some people just don’t seem to understand that other people are thinking, feeling humans; they really seem to lack empathy, and it’s quite frightening.”

“The lack of real care and compassion and solutions for those who fall through the safety net, young people in care, drug abusers, older people in poverty, homeless, etc.”

While ‘bad parents’ were criticised, it was also argued that parents were often doing their best in difficult circumstances. People emphasised that parenting is a skill and that getting it right can require support. Young parents were highlighted as a group in particular need of guidance.

Participants agreed that having a strong family was very important for children, but disagreed about the importance of a traditional family structure. Some felt that having a cohesive family of any form was enough, whereas others highlighted the importance of having a mother and a father.

Experience of family breakdown among the unheard groups was widespread. Many of the young people involved had grown up in care, something universally described as negative. They talked about periods of family disruption or violent family backgrounds acting as a catalyst for ‘going off the rails’. This was also suggested by web respondents, who saw family breakdown as a cause of anti-social behaviour among young people.

Some comments from the consultation

“Breakdown of the family structure, whether single-parent or not, the lack of a cohesive family unit and the support of the wider family and the values that brings.”

“Irresponsible, uninformed, ill-educated, unprincipled parenting…which sadly leads inescapably and directly to many of the problems seen, heard, smelt, felt and experienced in almost every city, town (and many villages) across the length and breadth of the country involving ‘young people’…all of which are merely the symptoms of this real social evil.”

“…some people raising children have no way of gauging how to raise a child. I mean they do the best they can, I wouldn’t say that was a ’social evil’.”

Some participants criticised youth culture and blamed young people for anti-social behaviour, binge drinking, violence, gun and knife crime and other problems. Others focused on how young people are failed by their families and the school system, and are misrepresented in the media.

There was also concern about the perceived “growing gulf between the old and the young” as one website participant put it, and the negative attitudes this can encourage between generations.

Young people in the unheard groups talked about how their place in wider society felt uncomfortable. There were concerns that young people lack good role models and that some face limited opportunities and job prospects.

Negative stereotyping was a common concern, borne out by comments from older participants, who expressed their – at times unfounded – fear of young people:

I noticed there was a bunch of youths standing around and my immediate reaction was to stop and think ‘Oh my goodness, shall I go the other way?’ Until two seconds later I realised it was my own son and his friends. But that reaction was in me already.

Some comments from the consultation

“Young people [have] no manners, no self-control, no respect for anything.”

“There is a wealth of potential in young people…they tend to be stigmatised rather than encouraged.”

“They just, they’re stereotyping young kids now as all being little yobs…There are a lot of yobs out there, but not everyone who just wears tracksuit bottoms and stuff like that.”