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The Labour Movement and Voluntary Action in the UK and Australia : a Comparative Perspective
Justin Davis Smith and Melanie Oppenheimer*
Despite the increasing awareness of voluntary action in both countries in recent times, there has been little interest in exploring the historical relationship of voluntary action and labour. It is argued in this paper that the overall silence of the relationship between voluntary action and the labour movement has its origins in the emergence of a 'myth' of Labour hostility towards voluntary action. This 'myth' explains to some degree the invisibility of voluntary action in labour historiography, and misrepresents the labour movement's relationship with voluntary action in the UK and Australia. Rather than being implacably hostile to voluntary action, there has always been a strand within labour thinking in the two countries that has seen voluntary action as an essential complement to the state, and as integral to the building of the modern welfare state.
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| There has been growing contemporary political interest in both the United Kingdom and Australia in the role of the state in supporting voluntary action. New Labour under Tony Blair in the UK and Australian State Labor governments, such as South Australia and Western Australia, have openly embraced voluntary action and volunteering. Indeed in both countries there has been broad support from the labour movement towards voluntary action both as a concept and as an action in the twenty-first century. |
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However, there has been little interest in exploring the historical relationship of voluntary action and labour in both countries. Indeed many on the left would deny that there is a relationship at all. Whilst British labour history has not yet engaged with this topic to any great extent, in the Australian context the inclusion of volunteer work as an acceptable topic for labour history has been a recent innovation. The Australian journal, Labour History, has been quite proactive, publishing articles on volunteer labour and voluntary action since 1998.1 Whilst there have also been important connections with volunteering and unpaid labour through studies on community and locality, placing volunteering as the central category of analysis is a new development.2 |
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The overall silence on the relationship between voluntary action and the labour movement has its origins in the emergence of a 'myth' of labour hostility to voluntary action. This has been perpetuated both from the left and right — from the left by New Labour, keen to break with the 'statist' past of old labour; and from the right, keen to portray post-war labour as responsible for the destruction of the voluntary sector. This 'myth' explains to some degree the invisibility of voluntary action in labour historiography. It is our contention that this myth misrepresents the labour movement's relationship with voluntary action in the UK and Australia. Rather than being implacably hostile to voluntary action, there has always been a strand (often a dominant one) within labour thinking in the two countries that has seen voluntary action as an essential complement to the state, and as integral to the building of a modern welfare state. |
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Of course there is some truth in the myth. Within the labour movement, there has always been a strand opposed to voluntary action. But this opposition is counter-balanced by a strand that has looked favourably upon it. And it is this latter strand that has been ignored in the historiography of the period. In the past, there was always a much more positive attitude towards voluntary action which has not been clearly understood. By focusing on this lesser known aspect of labour movement history, a new dimension of the labour experience is explored which enhances and adds complexity to the broad parameters of labour history in both the UK and Australia. |
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It is important to clearly understand the definitions and terminology to be used in this article. We are using the term 'voluntary action' not the broader and much more difficult concept of 'voluntary sector'.3 The term 'voluntary action', which is central to our argument, was developed by William Beveridge, architect and founder of the welfare state.4 It refers to 'private action, that is to say action not under the directions of any authority wielding the power of the State'.5 Voluntary action is for social advance in the community and volunteering is an integral part of it. Beveridge spent much of 1947 working on a major report entitled Voluntary Action: A Report on Methods of Social Advance. The report, published in 1948, was commissioned by one of the largest friendly societies in Britain, the National Deposit Friendly Society. It is argued by his biographer, José Harris, that Beveridge agreed to carry out the research project because of the Attlee Labour government's unsympathetic attitude towards friendly societies in the new social security system.6 Beveridge outlined two main types of voluntary action for social advance — mutual aid and philanthropy. He described both principles as follows:
It is Mutual Aid when consciousness of a common need leads to combined action to meet that need, to helping oneself and one's fellows together. It is Philanthropy when the driving force is not consciousness of one's own needs, but what I have described as social conscience.7
Beveridge defined mutual aid to include 'friendly societies, trade unions, consumers' co-operation, building societies, social clubs, trustee savings banks and hospital contributory schemes'. Philanthropy, on the other hand, after the advent of the welfare state meant increasingly specialised interests. One of the strengths of philanthropic organizations was that they were constantly evolving as social needs were identified with changing times. In his report, Beveridge identified 17 such areas including organizations that developed to assist the disabled, the infirm, prisoners, unmarried mothers and their children, as well as groups which supported the arts, national heritage, and protected animals and the environment.8 |
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In the labour historiography of both the UK and to a lesser extent Australia, there has been room for one part of voluntary action. Mutual aid through the emergence of friendly societies, co-operatives and, from the 1880s, the labour movement itself, has had some scholarly recognition. Mutual aid and self help organizations have been recognised as integral to the working class and form part of a rich mosaic of working-class life and culture.9 However, the second aspect of Beveridge's voluntary action — philanthropy — has been almost completely neglected. |
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It is also necessary to say a word of two about the term 'labour movement' which we use throughout the paper. We are not for one moment suggesting that the labour movement can be seen as a homogeneous entity, speaking with one voice during the period under consideration. The term encompasses a variety of different elements within the labour tradition, including labour governments and the parliamentary labour party, trade unions and associated working-class movements such as the co-operative movement, and the grass root labour party membership.10 We are not suggesting that the labour movement, thus defined, has exhibited a common position on voluntary action over the course of the past century. At times the grass roots and trade unions have been in the vanguard of opposition (or support) to voluntary action; at other times, the lead has been taken by leading figures within the parliamentary Labour Party. Nevertheless, despite the acknowledged danger of conflating the views of this disparate group, we contend that it is possible to discern a general trend within the labour movement in both the UK and Australia in support of our central thesis of a myth of labour hostility. |
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This article is introductory in nature and has drawn primarily on secondary material from the UK and Australia, including biographies of key labour figures and texts on social policy and labour history. Some limited primary source material has been consulted, including government reports, parliamentary debates, and the diaries and autobiographies of labour ministers. It is divided into the following sections. Section 1 examines the myth of labour's hostility to voluntary action in the UK and Australia, arguing that its origins lie both in the desire of the labour movements in both countries at the end of the twentieth century to break with their (perceived) statist past, and of the 'New Right' to return to a pre-welfare state, 'golden age' of voluntary action. Section 2 explores the roots of labour's hostility to voluntary action, identifying at least three key elements — class antagonism, concerns over efficiency and planning, and the threat volunteers were deemed to pose to the wages and conditions of service of public sector workers. But such opposition was only one part of the labour tradition and Section 3 examines the emergence within the UK and Australian labour movements of an alternative strand of thought (and action) — one of support for voluntary action, rooted in the traditions of self-help and mutual aid; of partnership between labour controlled local authorities and voluntary agencies; and a recognition of voluntary action as a training ground for social activism and female empowerment. |
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These two, alternative, traditions were brought into stark relief (and to some extent open conflict) after 1945 as the welfare state took hold in both countries and commentators began openly to talk of the death of voluntary action. Section 4 examines just how far such apocalyptic views can be upheld, and concludes that, rather than disappearing, voluntary action reinvented itself, less as an alternative to the state and more as a complement to the expanded social welfare services. |
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The final section examines the emergence of a much more openly supportive voluntary action stance within mainstream labour in the UK and Australia, led at a national level in the UK by Tony Blair's 'New Labour' government, and at a local level in Australia by the labour controlled states of Western and South Australia. The article concludes by reinforcing the central thesis: that the relationship between the labour movement and voluntary action in both the UK and Australia is much more complex than current views and mythology would accept, and that only by a richer understanding of the alternative tradition of labour support for voluntary action throughout the twentieth century, can we begin to make sense of the current thrust of labour politics in both countries. |
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The 'Myth' of Labour's Hostility | |
| In his speech to the first ever government convention on Active Communities in March 2000, Tony Blair drew a distinction between New Labour's support for voluntary action and old labour's hostility. In launching a raft of new measures to support volunteering, he accused the left of belittling voluntary activity and 'seeing it as a poor alternative to direct state provision', and berated his party for forgetting 'its own roots in self-help, friendly societies, cooperatives and voluntary organisations'.11 This same theme had been advanced a couple of months earlier by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in a speech to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, in which he argued that labour stood accused 'of seeking to substitute state for charitable action'.12 |
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As this article will demonstrate, both Blair and Brown (the two main architects of New Labour) have overplayed the extent of labour's past hostility to voluntary action and the degree of discontinuity between new and old labour. On the surface the reason why is clear enough. New Labour's appeal to the electorate has been based above all on its claim of newness, on its break with the culture, customs and policy's of the party's past. But there may be another reason. In addition to the desire to break from the past, the Labour government may have been over-influenced by the thoughts of one senior labour figure, Richard Crossman, who in the 1970s announced Damascus-like his conversion to voluntarism. In 1973 Crossman who, as Secretary of State for Social Services in the government of Harold Wilson, had come into close contact with voluntary groups, delivered a lecture on the role of the volunteer in the modern social service. His starting point was Richard Titmuss's 'remarkable study' of the blood transfusion service and the role in social policy of the 'gift relationship'. He went on in what has become the best remembered and most influential part of his text to denounce labour's attitude to charity, saying:
We all disliked the do-good volunteer and wanted to see him replaced by professionals and trained administrators in the socialist welfare state of which we all dreamed. Philanthropy to us was an odious expression of social oligarchy and churchy bourgeois attitudes. We detested voluntary hospitals maintained by flag days. We despised boy scouts and girl guides.13
It is this speech, perhaps more than anything else, that has created the myth of labour's hostility to voluntary action. Of course, as we discuss below, there was an element of truth in what Crossman had to say. But he significantly overstated his case. It was not the only time he did so. In the same year as his lecture Crossman wrote a piece in The Times in which he bizarrely claimed that the future belonged to the volunteer. He said:
I am convinced that community services — professionally trained but manned largely by part-time volunteers — will within a decade be running a large part of our welfare state. In a chaotic, haphazard, English way the volunteer takeover has already started.14
We do not need to detain ourselves for too long wondering about the reasons behind Crossman's outburst. As is often the case with the newly converted there is a tendency to go over the top. Crossman had found volunteering and was keen to proclaim it from the rooftops. Part of this meant overplaying his party's past hostility. Unfortunately future labour figures were inclined to take Crossman's view at face value. |
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But the myth of labour's hostility to voluntary action has not only come from the left. The New Right has also added to its creation in the UK, where from the 1970s onwards, numerous commentators have sought to portray the period following the end of World War II as one characterised by the growth of a monolithic state and the emasculation of the voluntary sector. Ferdinand Mount, for example, in Clubbing Together: the Revival of the Voluntary Principle, harks back to a golden age in the nineteenth century where the 'greater part of her [UK] social welfare was organised neither by commercial firms, nor by the State (or municipal authorities), but by voluntary associations'. 'All too often', during the twentieth century, he writes, 'we find the State — sometimes wilfully, sometimes out of cackhandedness — smothering the character of the enterprise, turning spontaneous enthusiasm into bureaucratic routine'.15 Robert Wheelan, from the Institute for Economic Affairs, makes the same point in his 1999 pamphlet Involuntary Action, where he places the blame on the decline of voluntary action after 1945 firmly at the door of the labour government whose members 'were, in some cases, extremely' hostile to voluntary action.16 |
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For the New Right an attack on labour's centrist past was an essential weapon in its battle to gain acceptance for its alternative vision of a welfare state ordered primarily along pre-1945 lines, with a much reduced role for government and centre stage going to voluntary associations. As we shall show below neither version of the myth — neither that created by New Labour as a means of breaking with its past, nor that created by the New Right as part of its vision of a return to a pre-welfare state, 'golden age' of voluntary action — can be upheld. |
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The Australian context is perhaps not as clear as the British perspective. For obvious historical reasons, voluntary action is, and always has been, more prominent in the UK than in Australia. Both mutual aid and philanthropy were stronger and better established. Historically the state has always played a major role in all facets of Australian life due largely to its foundation as a British government sponsored penal colony in the late eighteenth century. It is this reliance on what Beveridge termed 'public action' that distinguishes the two countries.17 Yet that is not to say that voluntary action was not important. As a transplanted culture, the Australian colonies inherited not only British forms of government, law, religion and political structures, but also voluntary action, in the form of philanthropy and mutual aid. But because of the political nature of the early colonies, the state was always closely involved with alleviating distress, either by assisting private philanthropy and mutual aid, or taking direct responsibility itself. With no Poor Laws or sophisticated system of church parishes, the state was obligated, and expected, to take an active role in social, economic and welfare enterprises.18 Mark Latham, the former Federal Labor opposition leader who took an interest in discussions on civil society, trust and voluntary action, suggested that whilst 'Right-wing libertarians have concentrated on relationships in the market economy', the left 'has focused on the relationship between the state and its citizens'. Both have, therefore, forgotten the 'third part of politics: the relationship between people in civil society'.19 |
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Labour's Hostility | |
| Whilst, as we shall show, the modern labour movement in both the UK and Australia have been guilty of underplaying the importance of voluntary action in the labour tradition, it is true that certain sections of the movement have always been suspicious (or openly hostile) to such action. It is possible to identify at least three elements which have underpinned this mistrust. |
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First, an antagonism fuelled by class suspicions. The view of Lady Bountiful doling out largesse to the deserving poor is a defining image in labour mythology. Quotes abound in the UK historiography that reflect this hostility. A writer in the Socialist, a Sunderland newspaper at the turn of the century, wrote that working classes required independence and had no need for the 'canting sympathy and foolish patronage' of philanthropists; while William Morris dismissed charity as a mere palliative.20 In this worldview it was all too easy to dismiss voluntary action as the sole preserve of the ruling classes. As one contributor to the 1947 Mass Observation Directive on voluntary work put it:
I detest charity, as such. Being a socialist I simply feel that all the talk about 'sweet charity' aside, pretty well all such work should be done by the state; or at any rate at state charge. I have no sympathy with the ramshackle condition of charity in general; flag days, hospital Saturdays and all the rest of the lazy, thoughtless, humbug that takes the place of real socialism.21
This quote, with its reference to the ramshackle nature of much charity, also draws attention to the second strand in the argument against voluntary action, that it was inefficient and the enemy of planning. This concern is reflected in the UK in the famous debate at the turn of the twentieth century on the future of the Poor Law and the role of voluntary action in the rival reports of the Royal Commission. The Majority Report, under the persuasive influence of the Charity Organisation Society, favoured the continued dominance of the voluntary response and a reciprocal relationship between charity and the poor laws as enshrined in the famous Goschen minute of 1869. The Minority Report (the work primarily of Beatrice Webb) saw a greater role for the state although it did not dismiss the importance of voluntary action. It called for the greater use 'of voluntary agencies and of personal service of both men and women of good will' and felt the state should not 'lay its heavy hand on the efforts of the charitable'. But voluntary action should be secondary to the state, analogous to the extension ladder, rather than the parallel bars favoured by the Majority Report.22 |
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The third element in the case against voluntary action was the threat volunteers were deemed to pose to the wages and conditions of service of public sector workers. Trade unions were generally suspicious of volunteers on the grounds that unscrupulous employers (including the state) might be tempted, particularly at times of economic downturn, to replace paid staff with volunteers. Union hostility was reinforced during the General Strike in the UK when volunteers (including enthusiastic bands of Oxbridge students — which only served to reinforce class antipathy) were brought in by the government to break the strike. Memories of 1926 were to cloud relations between the unions and the volunteer movement for a generation and more. In the early 1970s the health service union, COHSE, passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all volunteers from hospitals and during the Winter of Discontent in 1978 unions again clashed with volunteer groups over the involvement of volunteers in emergency planning.23 |
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In the Australian context, labour's hostility towards voluntary action is possibly stronger than the UK. Once again it is the historical underpinnings of white Australian settlement that has provided a general acceptance of state or 'public' action over and above that experienced in the UK. This is one of the key differences between the two countries. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Australia had developed an international reputation, whether real or imagined, of being a 'workingman's paradise' and a 'social laboratory' largely through the domination of the state in many aspects of everyday life. Through a system of government pensions, maternity allowances, the concept of the living wage (known as the Harvester Judgement), compulsory arbitration, and female suffrage, a view was formed that these reforms, commonly called 'state socialism' were examples of an egalitarian and fair society. The formation of a strong and dynamic labour movement that gave birth to a popular political party which represented the working class and which gained government at a federal level within a decade of federation in 1901, all gave credence to the view that the 'Australian way' was largely unique.24 |
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From its origins as a convict gaoler, the state in Australia either partnered private philanthropy and mutual aid, or assumed direct responsibility itself. From the establishment of the first private charity in 1813 (later called the Benevolent Society) onwards, the state played a pivotal role both in funding and directing benevolence. This integral role of the state touched all aspects of Australian life, be it social, economic or political. This 'hands on' approach was both expected and encouraged by the population. Yet the battle over philanthropy and the vestiges of a class war have been uppermost in much of the historiography that has only served to perpetuate the myth of labour's hostility towards voluntary action.25 The caricature of 'Lady Bountiful' associated with the Victorian and Edwardian eras especially, has dominated Australia historiography. This stereotype of an interfering, female, middle-class do-gooder, imposing her values on those below her as part of the class war through philanthropy, has been difficult to dislodge. It has also impeded research with feminist labour historians especially uninterested in engaging in discussion and debate during twentieth-century studies. This is despite the fact that for many women, volunteering was the only way to actively engage with the public sphere.26 |
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Issues surrounding the gendered roles of women in paid and unpaid labour also became a source of great conflict for the second wave feminist movement. Voluntary action was seen as upholding and reinforcing gender inequalities in the paid labour market. Women who performed volunteer work were simply another example of the subservience and dominance of women within the patriarchal society. Volunteering reinforced a woman's low self-esteem and was an extension of her domestic work.27 |
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Another major reason for labour's hostility towards voluntary action in the Australian context comes from a preoccupation with paid work, and the struggles of the working class against the capitalist system.28 Work was always assumed to be paid work, that is labour for which remuneration is received. Yet by the 1990s, a radical rethink about the nature of work and working lives was occurring, with volunteer labour becoming more acceptable as but one 'work' alternative, and as a 'revolutionary alternative to traditional forms of labor'.29 |
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An Alternative Tradition | |
| Although a very real strand in labour thinking throughout the twentieth century, this hostility as explained above, masks an alternative tradition of support for voluntary action. There are a number of elements which, whilst broadly similar, offer distinct differences in each country under examination. |
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The first element was the alternative socialist tradition, not of statism, but of mutual aid and co-operation, which ran deep within the British labour movement — encapsulated in the Party's General Secretary, Morgan Philips, oft-quoted phrase that the 'Labour movement owes as much to Methodism as to Marx'. Nineteenth-century labour was founded on the values of voluntary action and cooperation enshrined in such working-class mutual associations as the friendly societies, the rotating building societies and the Goose and Burial Clubs. During the depression of the 1930s, this rich tradition of mutual support was given institutional shape with the establishment of the Voluntary Occupational Centre Movement, which offered a variety of activities to the unemployed, including recreation, education and work. By the mid-1930s there were over 1,000 such centres with a total membership of 150,000. |
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The second element of this alternative voluntary tradition in the UK was that of municipal socialism with its strong emphasis on partnership with the voluntary sector. This spirit of partnership between local authorities and voluntary agencies was summarised by Elizabeth Macadam in the 1930s as the 'New Philanthropy'.30 The outstanding example was the London County Council captured by Labour in 1934 under the leadership of Herbert Morrison, who saw a pivotal role for voluntary action in public services especially in childcare. Such was the extent of these sort of partnerships that one contemporary observer estimated that by the end of the 1930s something like 37 per cent of the total income of registered charities was received from the state as payment for services.31 |
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An equally strong tradition within the British labour movement was the role of voluntary action as a training ground for future labour leaders, many of whom cut their teeth in the Settlements and voluntary social agencies of metropolitan working-class districts such as the East End of London. Clement Attlee was a former warden of Toynbee Hall, as indeed was William Beveridge, and this early exposure to the principles and values of voluntary action clearly influenced their future thinking on the proper balance to be struck between the state and voluntary endeavour. |
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A fourth element in labour's alternative voluntary tradition returns us to the issue of gender politics. The traditional viewpoint, as we have seen, was to condemn voluntary action for reinforcing gender stereotypes and subjugating women to a caring role. But there was an alternative tradition which recognised that voluntary action was often the only sphere in nineteenth and early twentieth-century society where women could play a leading role in the community. And such a perspective was not confined to the pre-war period. The experience of women during the British miners strike of the 1980s shows the power of voluntary action as a politicising force. |
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The fifth element in the alternative voluntary tradition in the UK was the new, radical philanthropy of the 1960s which gave birth to a new wave of campaigning, politicised organizations such as the Child Poverty Action Group and Shelter. Such groups could never have been accused by William Morris of being 'mere palliatives'. For these groups, that emerged out of a growing feeling of disillusionment among sections of both the Left and Right with the workings of the welfare state, voluntary action was not so much about philanthropy as about far-reaching, social change. However, to emphasise the point made in the introduction about the dangers of conflating the views of different elements within the labour movement, these new, radical voluntary agencies which drew on the commitment of many within the labour party's grassroots, did not always attract the support of the party's hierarchy, which was concerned that they were poaching party members. |
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Once again, in the Australian context, the alternative tradition is perhaps weaker than in the UK because of the historical strength of the state as mentioned above. Nevertheless voluntary action was much more part of the labour tradition than we have been led to believe. Mutual aid and co-operation through a range of friendly societies flourished in Australia, so much so that by the First World War, almost half the Australian population was attached to a friendly society in some way.32 The importance of friendly societies continued until the 1930s Depression when the movement was affected worldwide. Indeed the friendly societies never really recovered from that disastrous decade of economic stagnation and unemployment.33 |
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In many ways World War II was a watershed for voluntary action and labour in Australia. Wartime labour leader, John Curtin, came to power in mid-1941 and within a very short space of time was thrust into the most dangerous and dark period of Australian history — when fear of Japanese invasion and defeat was breathtakingly close. During the war the federal labor government recognised the value of voluntary action in keeping the population mobilised and focussed on the war effort in local communities across Australia.34 The Prime Minister had 'a great admiration' for the volunteers and it was 'the government's desire to encourage the praiseworthy efforts of these voluntary organizations in every way consistent with its policy of mobilising the whole of our resources for the common good'.35 |
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The trade union movement also developed close ties with the major wartime philanthropic organization, the Australian Red Cross Society, sending out industrial organisers to factories and workplaces to secure membership assistance and financial donations from a wide-ranging group of workers. This close association led William Mahony, one time ALP federal parliamentarian and Red Cross industrial organiser, to state that 'the Trade Union movement ... is showing, by its magnificent response to the wartime appeal of the Red Cross, that humanitarianism is still its guiding motive'.36 |
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Throughout the twentieth century in Australia, voluntary action has played an integral role in women's lives across the political and class spectrum. Rather than reinforcing gender stereotypes, voluntary action has provided women with the ways and means to positively engage in the public sphere. Indeed it can be argued that voluntary action has had a greater impact on women's active citizenship and leadership than women's entry into the paid workforce or female suffrage. Recent research carried out in Australia on the voluntary action of labour women in Western Australia and the impact of working-class political activism through the women's committees of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia supports this claim. The enormous contribution to the labour movement through public activism, unionising, organising, and reform work of labour women reveals the depth and breadth of women's involvement in voluntary action.37 As Alice Kessler-Harris stated, 'by loosening the theoretical constraints of Marxism over labour history' we can enrich our discipline. Through analysing volunteer labour, we come into contact with 'community, neighbourhood, country, family, and kin'. Most importantly, however, argued Kessler-Harris, it is through voluntarism that citizenship can be activated for many ordinary people — it is through volunteering, not necessarily paid work, that women can participate in the democratic processes.38 |
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The late 1960s and 1970s in Australia ushered in a new period of voluntary action, influenced by the radical social, political and cultural movements resulting from the Vietnam War, second wave feminism, and a new Australian nationalism represented by the short-lived but unforgettable Whitlam labor government (1972–75). Similar to the UK experience, a range of new voluntary organizations was established with an emphasis on advocacy and social change. Government funding to voluntary organizations increased and voluntary action exploded with groups representing the environment, heritage, and social welfare such as women's refuges and childcare centres. |
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The Whitlam government encouraged voluntary action through its controversial Australian Assistance Plan (AAP). The AAP was part of the vast rubric of social welfare reform initiated by the Whitlam government from 1972. It was a radical and innovative program of social service delivery that involved the active participation of local community groups and government in partnership. It was voluntary action, in action. The concept of the AAP rested on the active participation of citizens at a local, community level to provide an array of social welfare services.39 This 'imaginative concept' was to be overseen by 37 regional councils, funded by the Commonwealth government and administered by local voluntary organizations and local government.40 The idea of using capitation grants to fund local community groups and activities revolutionised the voluntary sector and assisted in the spawning of many hundreds of community groups especially in the area of community centres, family and the disadvantaged. It was heralded at the time by both sides of politics as one of the most creative innovations and certainly invigorated voluntary action.41 |
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The Welfare State and the Death of Voluntary Action? | |
| The introduction of the welfare state after 1945 in the UK and Australia marks a watershed in the development of relations between the state and voluntary action, though not in the way it has been characterised in the mythology. The standard argument is that with the advent of active state intervention through the auspices of the welfare state, there was no real need for voluntary action which had proved that it could no longer adequately cope with the poverty of an increasingly urbanised population. However, whilst voluntary action has certainly been overshadowed by state expansion in the second half of the twentieth century, it never disappeared. Rather both the state and voluntary action existed together, in a 'moving frontier'.42 |
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The state did take on a larger role in service delivery overall, but voluntary action was not squeezed out. In the UK, voluntary action was seen as crucial to the post-war settlement. Herbert Morrison, who acted as ministerial coordinator of the Labour governments social policy programme, was insistent that labour wanted to encourage voluntary organizations to take on additional functions. In a speech to the London Council of Voluntary Service in 1948 he stressed that government was anxious to encourage 'the variety and freedom of voluntary action' and to identify ways in which 'statutory and voluntary effort can cooperate efficiently'.43 |
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In 1948 William Beveridge (now Lord Beveridge) produced the third in his sequence of reports on different aspects of the future of British society. The third report, Voluntary Action, is less well known than the earlier two on social insurance and full employment.44 The report presented a passionate claim for voluntary action not to be ignored in the new welfare state. Beveridge's past eminence earned him a formal response from the Labour government in the form of a ministerial statement delivered by Lord Pakenham in the House of Lords. He said:
We are convinced, that voluntary associations have rendered, are rendering, and must be encouraged to continue to render, great and indispensable services to the community. I hope that deliberate expression of our basic government attitude will carry far and wide.45
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By the end of labour's period in office in the UK in 1951 it was clear this objective had been met. The national coordinating body for the voluntary sector in England, the National Council of Social Service, concluded that 'the importance of voluntary organizations was now definitely recognised and the authorities were prepared to regard them as important instruments of community life, not merely as useful agents'.46 During the 1950s and 1960s voluntary action continued to carve out a niche for itself in the new welfare settlement and, although its role was diminished in some key areas of service delivery, it retained a foothold in some others as well as finding new ways of expression in pioneering new responses to endemic social problems. |
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In the Australian context, post-war planning included a role for voluntary action although in a much more understated, and ultimately less successful way. Lloyd Ross, Director of Public Relations in the Chifley Labour government's Department of Post-War Reconstruction, was vitally interested in harnessing the enhanced wartime voluntary action and incorporating it into the future planning and direction of Australian social and economic policy:
There exists a great deal of voluntary activity which is basic to democracy; the success of our post-war plans depends on the co-operation of voluntary activity and Governmental responsibility; there is no clash but a harmony between State and citizen.47
Ross saw a role for community building through voluntary action and argued that it was integral to the success of the government's long term plans for post-war Australia. Lloyd Ross also had the opportunity to develop these ideas further when he escorted Lord William Beveridge through the Australian leg of his 1948 Australasian tour. Whilst Beveridge commented on the distinct historical differences between voluntary action in the UK and Australia (and New Zealand), by way of more established systems of mutual aid and philanthropy, he believed there were opportunities for voluntary action to adapt and renew itself to new challenges and situations in both countries. |
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In the Australian context whilst the state became the increasingly expected and accepted deliverer of many social services in the post-war period, the relationship between the state and voluntary action continued to evolve. Although a junior partner, voluntary action was integral to the emerging welfare state. Organizations such as the Salvation Army, the Australian Red Cross, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and many others continued their work and other organizations were founded to meet new community needs such as Meals on Wheels. During the 1950s and 1960s, the delineation between government statutory bodies and voluntary organizations became increasingly blurred. |
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A 'New' Approach to Voluntary Action | |
| As shown above, the labour movement's courting of voluntary action is not new, but in the last 15 years there has been a more positive stance adopted in both countries. Today in 2004 in Australia, two state labor governments (WA and SA) have specific policies and strategies to support volunteers and volunteer organizations. They also have government departments (or designated sections thereof), a Minister for Volunteers, and both governments are working on producing a 'compact' between government and community interests (similar to that in place in the UK). After the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when thousands of volunteer workers helped to transform the games into 'the best ever', long time NSW Labour Premier Bob Carr was effusive about the efforts of the 80,000 volunteers.48 Whilst the NSW government has not formally structured volunteering into a section or department, it continues to support the voluntary principle in all aspects of everyday life in that state. The same can be said for all the other current State governments in Australia (all of whom are, in 2004, led by the ALP). |
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In March 2003, the peak trade union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Executive announced their support for, and recognition of, voluntary workers who undertake unpaid labour in community endeavours.49 And in June 2003, the NSW Labor Council instigated an 'Activists Register' in order to provide support to strikers and pickets through the use of volunteers who are 'passionate about workplace issues and [are] prepared to defend the rights of workers'.50 From these examples, it can be argued that within the Australian labour movement today, there is some support for voluntary action and volunteering as a way of engaging in active citizenship and empowering citizens at the local level. There is also support for voluntary action and the partnership between government and the non-profit sector or third sector.51 |
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In 1997 in the UK Tony Blair led his 'New Labour' party back to power after 18 years in the wilderness. For the Blair government, support for the voluntary sector and voluntary action became a key defining characteristic of its newness, and an integral part of its attempt to define a new social contract between citizens and state enshrined in the (short-lived, Clinton-inspired) Third Way. Much of the groundwork for labour's new relationship with the voluntary sector and with volunteering had been carried out during the party's long period in opposition during the 1980's and 1990's. In 1989 a small grouping within the party, Labour Community Action, was established by members working in the voluntary sector with the express purpose of persuading the national party to adopt a more positive stance towards the issue of voluntary action. In association with the country's biggest trade union, the Transport and General Workers Union, it produced a discussion paper entitled Labour and the Voluntary Sector, which called for the party to embrace the voluntary tradition and place the voluntary sector at 'the heart of the Labour movement's thinking'.52 In 1990 the Labour Party commissioned a review of voluntary action under the chairmanship of an ex-minister and leading voluntary sector figure, Alf Dubs. In 1992 the fruits of the review were distilled in a new publication, Building Bridges. The document represented labour's fullest expression to date of its commitment to voluntary action:
We recognise that voluntary action, whether expressed as individual acts of support for friends, neighbours and relatives, through community based collective action or through wider professionally organised bodies, is part of the expression of citizenship.
Concerns about the threat posed to statutory services were dismissed:
The inter-dependence of government and the voluntary sector is an established aspect of British society and is warmly welcomed by the Labour Party ...We do not believe that voluntary activity is either a threat, or a cheap alternative, to the provision of statutory services.53
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Labour lost the election in 1992, as it had done the previous three, but when it finally returned to power in 1997 it had a ready-made blue-print for governing its relations with the sector, and it speedily embarked upon putting its ideas into practice. Central to this vision of a new relationship between the state and the voluntary sector was the Compact, which was introduced in 1998, having originally been proposed by an independent body and taken up by the Labour Party when still in opposition.54 The Compact, which was intended to provide a formal basis for future relations between the government and the voluntary sector, was predicated on the belief that the independence of the voluntary sector was crucial to its healthy functioning. The national Compacts in England and Wales were followed by a series of local Compacts and the concept was exported to several other countries including, as we have seen, Australia. No independent review of the effectiveness of the Compact has yet to be carried out and although some commentators point to its success, others maintain that its practical impact has been limited. |
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New Labour's enthusiasm for voluntary action was demonstrated by the introduction of a number of high level programmes aimed at encouraging more people to volunteer. Some, such as Millennium Volunteers, aimed at involving 100,000 young people aged 16–24, achieved a good measure of success; others such as Experience Corps, aimed at promoting the engagement of the over 50s, fared far less well.55 In July 2000 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, speaking at the Charities Aid Foundation annual Arnold Goodman lecture restated the government's commitment to voluntary action, describing it as 'an essential ingredient of civil society'; and he reminded the audience that 'citizenship is not a duty that should be left entirely to the state'.56 Clement Attlee for one would have warmly applauded. |
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Conclusion | |
| The relationship between the labour movement and voluntary action is, in both the UK and Australia, much more complex than current views and mythology would suggest. There is an alternate view that is rich, layered and multifaceted. Whilst the focus of this alternate view does differ between the two countries, due largely to broad historical forces, there is little doubt that the relationship between voluntary action and the labour movement existed long before the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. |
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To date, too much attention has been paid in labour historiography within both countries on the movement's suspicion (and often open hostility) towards voluntary action. Although much evidence exists to support this position, what it ignores is the alternative (perhaps equally important) tradition within the labour movement of support for voluntary action. This misreading of history may be partly due to a failure to dig beneath the surface of well established ideological positions; but it may also be due to a deliberate attempt in recent years to re-write the past to emphasise the newness of the New Labour experiment and its break with the supposed statist past of its predecessors. |
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The reclaiming of labour's voluntary action tradition is not simply an exercise in 'myth busting', useful (and enjoyable) though that is. It is also an important corrective to the view that a strong welfare state is inimical to a thriving volunteering movement — in neither Australia or the UK did the post-1945 welfare settlement result in the collapse of voluntary action — and a reinforcement of the tradition and value of partnership working between the state and civil society.57 |
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Endnotes
* This paper has been peer-reviewed by two anonymous referees for Labour History.
1. See articles by Melanie Oppenheimer and Joanne Scott, Labour History, no. 74, May 1998; and a special issue on volunteer work and labour history, Labour History, no. 81, November 2001 which was planned to coincide with the 2001 International Year of Volunteers. In the UK less attention has been paid to this theme but a start has been made by Justin Davis Smith and Nicholas Deakin with their unpublished article, 'The British Left and Philanthropy: Continuity or Change?', presented at ARNOVA's (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action) 29th annual conference in New Orleans, 16–18 November, 2000. See also the work by Abigail Beach, included in her book of essays, edited with Richard Weight, The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930–1960, I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 1998.
2. We are specifically referring to a Labour History and Local History thematic edition published in the Australian journal Labour History, no. 78, May 2000 where concepts of community and localism were examined in a number of case studies including Dungog, Port Kembla, Wagga Wagga, Lithgow, and Broken Hill in NSW and Ipswich in Queensland.
3. For a general analysis of this term — also referred to as the third sector or non-profit sector— see Justin Davis Smith, Colin Rochester and Rodney Hedley (eds), Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, Routledge, London, 1995 for the UK; and Mark Lyons, Third Sector, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2001 and Jeni Warburton and Melanie Oppenheimer (eds), Volunteers and Volunteering, Federation Press, Leichhardt, 2000 for an Australian perspective.
4. For a biography of Beveridge, see José Harris, William Beveridge. a Biography, Clarendon Press, London, 1977.
5.Voluntary Action: a Report on Methods of Social Advance, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1948, p. 8.
6. Harris, William Beveridge, p. 458. Under the National Insurance Act, 1946, the system of 'approved societies' which included many friendly societies which offered a range of sickness and ancillary benefits to members (formerly approved under the early 1911 Act) was abolished. This severely affected the financial operations of many friendly societies and, argued Beveridge, irreparably damaged the sector. See William and Janet Beveridge, On and Off the Platform: Under the Southern Cross, Hicks, Smith & Wright, Wellington, 1949, p. 63.
7. William Beveridge, 'Voluntary Action for Social Advance', in On and Off the Platform, p. 64.
8.Ibid, pp. 70–71.
9. For Australia, see for example, David Green, '1918 Strike of Medical Profession against Friendly Societies', Labour History, no. 46, May 1984; Ray Markey, 'NSW Trade Unions and Co-operative Principle in the 1890s', Labour History, no. 49, November 1985; D. Green and L. Cromwell, Mutual Aid or Welfare State: Australia's Friendly Societies, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984; and Bob James, 'The Literature of Friendly Societies', unpublished paper delivered to the UK/Australia Comparative Labour History Conference, Manchester, July 2003. A version of this paper is published in this issue. See For the UK, see P.H.J.H. Gosden, Friendly Societies in England, 1815–1875, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1961; P.H.J.H. Gosden, Self Help: Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth Century Britain, Batsford, London, 1973; D. Green, Working Class Patients and the Medical Establishment: Self Help in Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1948, Gower/Maurice Temple Smith, Aldershot, 1985; P. Gurney, Co-operative Culture and the Politics of Consumption in England, 1870–1930, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996; and G. Scott, Feminism and the Politics of Working Women: Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War, Routledge, London, 1997.
10. In Australia, the term 'labour movement', which had its origins in the 1890s, has traditionally been seen as a combination of trade unions and the Australian Labor Party. See Greg Patmore, Australian Labour History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991.
11. Tony Blair, Speech at the Active Community Convention on 2 March 2000, Cabinet Office, London.
12. Gordon Brown, Speech at the NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) Annual Conference on 9 February 2000, H.M. Treasury, London.
13. Richard Crossman, The Role of the Volunteer in the Modern Social Service, Sidney Ball Memorial Lecture, 1973, reproduced in A.H. Halsey (ed.), Traditions of Social Policy, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1976, p. 265.
14.The Times, 8 August, 1973.
15. Our emphasis in italics to point out the difference. See Ferdinand Mount, Clubbing Together: the Revival of the Voluntary Principle, W.H. Smith, [London?], undated, p. 3.
16. Robert Whelan, Involuntary Action, Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1999, p. 14.
17. Beveridge, On and Off the Platform, pp. 39–61.
18. Much of this discussion is drawn from Oppenheimer's work in Volunteers and Volunteering and from her PhD thesis, Volunteers in Action: Voluntary Work in Australia, 1939–1945, Macquarie University, 1997.
19. Mark Latham, '"If only men were angels": Social capital and the Third Way', in Ian Winter (ed.), Social Capital and Public Policy in Australia, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, 2000, p. 192. See also his Civilising Global Capital, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
20. Quoted in Geoffrey Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain 1830–1990, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 157.
21. Unpublished correspondence from the Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex.
22. Quoted in Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. 196–7.
23. For a discussion of relations between the trade unions and volunteers in the UK, see Justin Davis Smith, 'An Uneasy Alliance: Volunteers and Trade Unions', in R. Hedley and J. Davis Smith (eds), Volunteering and Society: Principles and Practice, Bedford Square Press, London, 1992.
24. Jill Roe, 'The Australian Way', in Paul Smyth and Bettina Cass (eds), Contesting the Australian Way: States, Markets and Civil Society, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 69–80.
25. See, for example, the didactic text by Richard Kennedy, Charity Warfare, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1985, which focuses on Marxist ideology and class warfare. But these themes continue in the historiography and are often overstated. See, for example, Shurlee Swain's '"Even in this distant and obscure corner of the world, the British character does not degenerate": Philanthropy in the Australian Colonies', Voluntary Action, vol. 5, no. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 107–117.
26. For a discussion of these matters, see Oppenheimer, 'Voluntary Work and Labour History', Labour History, no. 74, May 1998, pp. 1–9. Notable exceptions include the work of Cora Baldock, Volunteers in Welfare, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990 and Joanne Scott, 'Voluntary Work as Work?: Some Implications for Labour History', Labour History, no. 74, May 1998, pp. 10–20.
27. NOW (National Organisation of Women) Task Force on Volunteerism, November 1973, reprinted in Ms Magazine, vol. III, no. 8, February 1975, p. 73. See also Carmel Shute, 'From Balaclavas to Bayonets: Women's Voluntary War Work, 1939–1941', Hecate, vol. vi, no. 1, 1980, pp. 5–26.
28. See Oppenheimer, 'Voluntary Work and Labour History', pp. 1–9 for a detailed synthesis of these arguments.
29. Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work, Penguin, London, 2000 (1995), p. 242.
30. Elizabeth Macadam, The New Philanthropy, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1938.
31. Constance Braithwaite, The Voluntary Citizen, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1938, p. 171.
32. Green and Cromwell, Mutual Aid or Welfare State, pp. 3–14. See also James, 'The Literature of Friendly Societies'.
33. Green and Cromwell, Mutual Aid or Welfare State.
34. For a comprehensive discussion of wartime volunteering and government reaction, see Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work. No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War, Ohio Productions, Walcha, 2002.
35. Prime Minister to Hon. T.J. Collins, MP, Young, 19 December 1942. A2421/T1 G1343. National Archives of Australia (NAA), Canberra.
36. 'A Message to all Workers — Your Help is still needed', broadcast talk over Station 2KY, 4 June 1945. NSW Red Cross Archives, uncatalogued.
37. Bobbie Oliver, '"In the Thick of Every Battle for the Cause of Labor": the Voluntary Work of the Labor Women's Organisations in Western Australia, 1900–70', Labour History, no. 81, November 2001, pp. 93–108, and Margot Beasley, 'Soldiers of the Federation: the Women's Committees of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia', Labour History, no. 81, November 2001, pp. 109–127.
38. Alice Kessler- Harris, 'Voluntary Work and Labour History: a Postscript', Labour History, no. 81, November 2001, p. 132.
39. For a comprehensive analysis of the social welfare reforms of the Whitlam government, see Carol Johnson, The Labor Legacy. Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1989, especially chapters 5–7.
40. Geoffrey Bolton, The Oxford History of Australia: the Middle Way, 1942–1988, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1993 (1990), p. 221.
41. See Social Welfare Commission, Report on the Australian Assistance Plan, February 1976 Commonwealth Government, 1976 especially Appendices for a full and comprehensive account of variety of funding opportunities through the Australian Assistance Scheme (AAP) scheme to 1976.
42. This term was first used by Margaret Brasnett in her 1969 history of the National Council of Social Service; and later by British social historian Geoffrey Finlayson. See his Citizen, State and Social Welfare.
43. Herbert Morrison, The Peaceful Revolution, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1949.
44.Voluntary Action.
45. Quoted in Nicholas Deakin, 'The Perils of Partnership', in J. Davis Smith et al, An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, Routledge, London, 1994, p. 46.
46. Margaret Brasnett, Voluntary Social Action, Bedford Square Press, London, 1969, p. 175.
47. Speech given by Lloyd Ross, Thursday 27 April (undated) c 1945. Papers of Lloyd Ross, MS 3939. Series 10. Department of Post-War Reconstruction, 1944–1949. Community Activities Section. MS 3939/10/5. NAA.
48. See Bob Carr, 'Sydney 2000 Olympic Games', 10 October 2000, NSW Legislative Assembly Hansard, p. 8874.
49. 'Volunteer Work: ACTU Executive, 5–6 March 2003, Volunteering NSW: News Room. http://www.volunteering.com.au/news/newsarticles.
50.Sun Herald, 8 June 2003, p. 23.
51. Mark Latham has written widely about this. See, for example, his latest book, From the Suburbs: Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods, Pluto Press, Leichhardt, 2003.
52. Labour Community Action, Labour and the Voluntary Sector, Labour Community Action, London, 1990, p.1.
53. Labour Party, Building Bridges: Labour and the Voluntary Sector, The Labour Party, London, 1992, p.1.
54. Home Office, Compact on Relations between Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector in England, The Stationery Office, London, 1998.
55. For a review of Millennium Volunteers, see Institute for Volunteering Research, UK-Wide Evaluation of the Millennium Volunteers Programme, Department for Education and Skills, London, 2002.
56. Gordon Brown, Arnold Goodman Lecture, July 2000, Charities Aid Foundation, London.
57. Such a conclusion that a strong state works in favour of, rather than against, the development of voluntary action is supported by the findings of a major cross-national study of the non-profit sector, co-ordinated by the Johns Hopkins University in the United States. See, for example, L. Salamon. and W. Sokolowski, 'Volunteering in Cross-National Perspective: Evidence from 24 Countries', Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, no. 40, The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society, Baltimore, 2001.
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