Ragged Trousered NGOs: Development Work under Neoliberalism 2018061182, 2019009079, 9780429026652, 9780367134693, 9780367134709

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Ragged Trousered NGOs

Ragged Trousered NGOs is a compelling first-­hand account of the NGO sector and wider civil society over the past 40 years, examining how and why people take collective action and engage in social development projects. The book explores different organisational and methodological aspects of NGO work and social action, asking what was possible to achieve at a grass-­roots level at different times, in different economic and political contexts in the East and West. Adopting a critical perspective, the author argues that social action continues to play a vital and varied role, and yet it struggles to challenge deep-­rooted power relations and traditional forms of behaviour in today’s unequal world. In particular, the book draws on examples from the former Soviet Union in transition, and the UK’s voluntary sector over the last 40 years, with a view to challenging Eurocentric views about organisations and communities. The analysis adopts a Gramscian view of hegemony and an internationalist and anti-­war position on key issues arising in recent armed conflicts and the new cold war with Russia. The book concludes by addressing the challenges for development workers, noting the precarious nature of NGO work despite its many achievements, and suggesting ways in which social activists can pick up more strength and support. This book’s practical perspective on progressive forms of organisational management will be of considerable interest to civil society and NGO development workers, as well as to researchers and students in the fields of international development, politics, sociology and regional studies. Charles Buxton was Senior Capacity Building Specialist and Regional Representative for INTRAC’s Central Asia Programme, based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, from 2002–2018. He still lives in Bishkek, active as an independent civil society analyst and expert.

Ragged Trousered NGOs Development Work under Neoliberalism

Charles Buxton

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Charles Buxton The right of Charles Buxton to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data Names: Buxton, Charles, 1951– author. Title: Ragged trousered NGOs : development work under neoliberalism / Charles Buxton. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018061182 (print) | LCCN 2019009079 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429026652 (eBook) | ISBN 9780367134693 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367134709 (pbk) | ISBN 9780429026652 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Non-governmental organizations. | Community development–International cooperation. | Social action–International cooperation. | Social planning–International cooperation. Classification: LCC JZ4841 (ebook) | LCC JZ4841 .B89 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/4–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018061182 ISBN: 978-0-367-13469-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-13470-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02665-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of theory and practice boxes List of case studies Acknowledgements

vii viii ix x xi

Introduction: a story of civil, social and political activism that starts in East London and travels to the USSR and post-­Soviet Russia and Central Asia

1

1 On time, place and youth activism: from Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 revolution to the anti-­racist movement in East London in the 1970s

9

2 Schools of self-­management: promoting an alternative urban strategy in the face of Thatcherism in the 1980s

33

3 International volunteering and solidarity: and the fall of Soviet socialism

60

4 NGO capacity builder: organisational development in Central Asia in the transition period

87

5 Improving services or promoting rights: ideological and practical dilemmas for NGOs faced with cuts to social welfare East and West 120

vi   Contents

6 Working in conflict: a Gramscian and world systems analysis of NGO responses in the new hot and cold wars

144

7 Theories of change: new agendas of civil society, social and political activists at the international, national and local levels

169



192

Conclusion: towards 2020

Index

199

Figures

1.1a 1.1b 1.1c 2.1a 2.1b 3.1a 3.1b 3.1c 3.2a

Youth training for collective leadership Loosening up by the lake Photo exhibition in a village Dan Jones’ painting Brick Lane Jagonari Women’s Educational Resource Centre Soviet poster: ‘Have You Volunteered?’ Youth activist handbook cover: ‘Step Forward!’ ‘Open Society Debates’ Volunteer youth worker with children at Tomilino children’s home outside Moscow, early 2000s 3.2b Volunteer nurse (centre) with her Russian counterparts in Yekaterinburg, early 2000s 4.1a Resource Mobilisation workshop participants 4.1b Creating a village development plan 4.1c NGO partners from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan 4.2a Pensioners committee meeting 4.2b Self-­help group, Issyk-­Kul, Kyrgyzstan 4.2c Rural self-­help group, Southern Tajikistan 4.3a–d Common problems faced by consultants 4.3e Voting for change 4.4 Principles of partnership 5.1a Outside the White House, 25 March 2005 5.1b Beta Stores looted, 2005 5.1c Outside the White House, 8 April 2010 7.1 NGO headaches

14 14 14 42 42 64 64 65 76 76 102 102 103 108 108 109 113 114 116 122 122 123 174

Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2

The shift to postmodern controls in the NGO sector International volunteers and political activism Modes of discussion and decision-­making Development and inequality: indicators for the USA, the UK, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Key features of the training programme for NGO support staff Community work continuums Trade unions and NGOs as service providers Social issues and NGO responses in Central Asia

47 66 67 95 100 110 134 135

Theory and practice Boxes

I.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 C.1

Civil society – some key terms Youth, gender and innovation Social movements – some key terms John Berger on cultural and political action Neoliberalism and ‘risk society’ – some key terms Management and control in the NGO sector John Adair on modes of leadership The INTRAC model of organisation development Beyond the Fragments – the personal is political The theory and practice of state socialism in the USSR Development gaps and inequality Civic education as liberation Consultants and their clients Marxism and feminism on the welfare state Radical social work? Insights from world systems analysis Ken Leech, secular and religious radicalism Populism, corruption and anti-­corruption Theory of change The responsibilities of left analysts Social, political and civic movements On poverty, charity, religion and rights

6 14 20 25 33 47 50 55 68 73 95 97 113 132 137 147 153 161 170 177 187 195

Case studies

1.1 Community development in a post-­conflict situation, Fergana Valley 1.2 The anti-­racist movement in East London in the 1970s 2.1 Managing an equal opportunities vocational training organisation 2.2 The complex dynamics of pluralist community work 3.1 Working for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) 3.2 A volunteering experience in Soviet Russia 3.3 Moving east – a transition travelogue 4.1 Coordination of a regional civil society capacity-­building programme 4.2 A local NGO resource centre 4.3 Working as a consultant in organisation development 5.1 Building self-­help as a social movement 5.2 Women with disabilities fighting for their rights 5.3 Learning from the experience of NGO social sector initiatives in Russia 6.1 ‘Stop the War’ and ‘Respect!’ in Tower Hamlets 6.2 Visits to Ukraine during Euro-­Maidan 6.3 Protest movements and ‘foreign agents’ in Russia 7.1 Dutch international NGOs resisting donor demands 7.2 Changes at the national level – examples from Kyrgyzstan 7.3 Social media and environmental activism in Kyrgyzstan

10 18 43 48 65 70 75 91 99 105 125 127 139 151 154 157 174 180 184

Acknowledgements

At its grandest, this book aims to take a look at the voluntary and socialist traditions in the UK – with a glance in the direction of twentieth century communism in USSR – and write something that is relevant to young people, and also to civic, social and political activists today. I tried to do this through an account of professional and political activity over 40 years, all of which was done in collaboration and friendship with a huge amount of people. Many of them have much greater technical skills, leadership ability, political consciousness or understanding of the communities that are described in the book than me. In acknowledging their commitment, help, experience and influence on me at different stages of my working life, and naming people, I have had to limit myself very strictly for reasons of space. Apart from those lucky or unlucky enough to have been listed below, there is a second and a third circle of friends, colleagues and ragged trousered or skirted activists who I have not been able to mention. Please forgive me for this. From East London, I would like to thank Victor Adereth, David Kessel, Terry Wilson and Dan Jones for helping me to enter into the political, community and trade union arena of the 1970s that is described in Chapter 1. My work in vocational training in East London during the 1980s and 1990s was carried out with a large team of talented and committed people. It was incredibly satisfying as well as stressful – so much was done of obvious benefit for people. Thanks, then, to Roseni Dearden, instructor coordinator and women’s rights advocate at THATT, John Pipal, THATT Services manager, Andrei Baternay, coordinator of our trade union group, Siobhan Lanigan, Lynda Brown and Pam Frost – Employment Development Worker, English Language teachers and social activists; Ileana Shirley-­Smith and Diane Fairley, coordinators of the childcare project. Second, I must pay tribute to Peter Chester, Bob Morton, Rosalind Garde, Mick Gavan, Tassaduq Ali and Sybil Yates – keepers of the community and

xii   Acknowledgements

working-­class interest on our management committee. Bob and Tassaduq are sadly no longer with us, but I have an abiding and very grateful memory of their long commitment to THATT – and I hope that my account of our joint work in Chapter 2 expresses this in some degree. No less effort was put into the launch of the Davenant and Jagonari Centres by my determined and committed colleagues, local accountant Mahmoud Rouf, citizens advice worker Manuhar Ali, community worker John Eversley, and Jagonari leaders Mitthu Uddin and Sheila Thakor – co-­management committee members through thick and thin; plus the Davenant Centre’s directors at different stages in its life – Adrian Wilson, Alison Kenny and Abdur Rahman. The Russian side of my interests and work has benefitted no less from support from my family, friends and colleagues. I tried to acknowledge those who helped me enter this field in the introduction to my book Russia and Development (2014). During my ‘volunteer placement’ in Moscow in the late 1970s, I must thank again my wife, brother and sister for their support and visits, plus Ludmila Kuropatkova, her husband Sasha, and the staff at Novosti News Agency for the unique experience that eventually led me to come back and work in the region for more than 20 years.  My work in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the 1990s was supported by an energetic, highly mobile team at Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), of whom I will only mention Myra Green, founder of the whole operation and a good friend to Russian NGOs since then; our director Penny Lawrence, my FSU programme development colleague Michele Turner and the three directors of the VSO Russia office – Cathy Judelson, Caroline Leveaux and Sergei Aleshonok. These were key staff, however, our short but action-­packed and intensive relationship with VSO volunteers across the EE-­FSU region also sticks in the mind and their hard work and innovative approaches were the essence of our successes. When I moved from VSO to INTRAC (International NGO Training & Research Centre) and went to live in Bishkek, we once again assembled a great team of people including Lola Abdusalyamova and Simon Forrester, my co-­ managers, plus our community development advisors Kulnara Djamankulova, Chinara Tashbaeva and Bakhodir Fozilhodjaev and later our research and knowledge management experts Kazbek Abraliev and Konstantin Kovtunets. Their work was backed up by INTRAC’s international experts in civil society, organisation development, monitoring and evaluation and other topics: Anne Garbutt, Chris Wardle, Janice Giffen, John Beauclerk, Rod Macleod, our director Brian Pratt, and several others. Without their knowledge and experience, we could not have run this high-­level regional programme. The Central Asia part of this book (Chapters 4–5) contains several NGO case studies, and once again these were chosen from a large number of examples of hard-­working and effective development organisations. Svetlana Bashtovenko (NGO Umut) and Lyazzat Kaltaeva (NGO Shyrak) are featured because I worked very closely with them at different times and they represent the strengths of civil society in the region and the qualities of its leaders. Just as important are three

Acknowledgements   xiii

NGOs with whom we worked closely all through the post-­2010 period: Centre Interbilim Osh (Gulgaky Mamasalieva), Jalalabad Civil Society Support Centre (Chinara Jusupova) and EHIO Farhang van Tariqot (Marina Safarova). Alongside them stand large numbers of other local trainers, consultants and organisations whom I have been privileged to work with. I tried to name as many of these as possible in The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia (2011). On the personal side, I must first of all acknowledge my parents. My father, Paul Buxton, was a civil servant with active voluntary commitments – not such a different person from me as I thought at one time, and probably his travelling lifestyle (in the diplomatic service) set me going likewise. My mother, Katharine Hull, was a successful writer of children’s books from her teenage years; I have tried to pursue her writing path right up to the Oxus River which played a big role in her imaginative world, flowing through the Central Asian steppes to the Aral Sea. I have spent many years outside the UK, which was not easy for my family and I would like to thank them, especially my children Sam and Amy, for their love and support. In writing this book, which was a strangely solitary experience given its reference to so many shared experiences, I have relied most of all on my wife Anara. And not only that, I have been building on the work we have done together to research key issues, launch new projects and work out an alternative personal and political position with regard to civil society and development. Anara played a leading role in many of the innovations in our work over the last few years (e.g. the projects described in Chapter 1). This book is a contribution to the struggle to identify and address forces that create and sustain inequality and injustice in society. At an early stage of writing, I got huge encouragement from professional colleagues Jenny Pearce and David Lewis, who looked at the writing plan and gave me invaluable advice. At later stages, Garry and Roseni Dearden, Victor Adereth and John Eversley ventured into the text and made very useful comments, from both the stylistic and political perspective. In writing this book, my previous experience with Kumarian Press and Zed Books came in very useful in lots of ways, emotional and technical. And of course I am grateful to Helena Hurd and the team at Routledge for accepting the manuscript and preparing it for publication. This book is a big piece of work, quite mildly stated but, as I see it, a root and branch critique of the development system as it operates today, so many thanks for helping me to get it to the wider public.

Introduction A story of civil, social and political activism that starts in East London and travels to the USSR and post-­Soviet Russia and Central Asia

Dear Reader This book is about NGO (non-­governmental organisation) work. The story begins with individual and youth activism, how people come to be helpers, volunteers, social or political activists, what motivates them, how they develop, what they get out of it. Very quickly it moves on to an analysis of organisational aspects, which vary just as much as the people themselves; so collective action can take the form of informal groups, local or national campaigns, volunteering opportunities and registered NGOs. Many activists become paid-­up members of charities, political parties or campaigning organisations. Others become salaried members of staff of a NGO or even members of its management committee or board of directors. The book’s title takes the liberty of directly referring to one of the classics of the labour movement in the UK – Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1955). The essence of Tressell’s novel about building workers in the south of England at the turn of the twentieth century was how hard his heroes were prepared to work for their unscrupulous employers, labouring for low wages and with a huge expenditure of effort for a quality result (though the employers cut costs and skimped on materials at every stage). It was in this sense that Tressell called his heroes ‘philanthropists’ – effectively, they worked for free. And this book is posing similar questions about workers in today’s NGOs – whether they are involved in community development, social or educational programmes, large or small organisations, working for development in the UK or in other countries. ‘But we are not like those building workers!’ many a NGO manager or committed NGO worker will say. ‘We are doing this out of love of our organisation, our job and our values! We are not exploiting or being exploited by anyone.’ If you read Tressell, that’s what his philanthropists said too … So a key question to be investigated in this book is whether the hard work of NGO workers of all kinds is being exploited, and if so, how and for whose benefit?

2   Introduction

There are huge numbers of ragged trousered NGOs, volunteers and staff in any society. The focus of my book is on frontline or rank-­and-file NGO work, plus efforts to support it (e.g. through capacity building) in development projects and programmes. ‘Development’ in my book is taken as a process that is ongoing in any society, rich or poor. At some times it may proceed quickly, at others it may seem to have halted or even gone into reverse. In one sense, development is organic – like the growth of a plant or human being – and in another it is more technologically driven (e.g. through technical inventions or innovation). In my book, the main focus is on community and social development, not on economic or technological aspects. Key issues are posed about the aims of development programmes as implemented by activists, project workers, managers and experts of different kinds. In the region where I work – the former Soviet Union (FSU) – most local NGO workers are on short-­term, project-­based contracts, many working unpaid; they are part of the international precariat. This is a book about NGO work in the heyday of neoliberalism from 1970–2010. Often we look at neoliberalism as a national phenomenon, for example, as a set of austerity policies imposed by the UK government after the financial crash of 2008–09, or the restrictions placed by Margaret Thatcher on trade union action three decades earlier. This book looks at it from a wider international perspective – East and West – and brings in the implications of the collapse of Soviet socialism and the consequent market-­oriented changes throughout the former Eastern bloc from the early 1990s. These changes were given the title ‘transition’ and so one of the aims of this book is to examine how transition as a subsection of development actually worked out. My analysis may be useful for readers studying or working in other transition, middle- or lower-­middle-income countries (e.g. the BRICS countries). A very wide set of players are involved in the aid chain. In Tressell’s book (1955), the location for the action is Mugsborough – a town ‘being run for private profit’ – and the relations between the town authorities, the main employers, local charities (the ‘Organised Benevolent Society’) and the population (in a time of severe unemployment and deprivation – similar in many aspects to FSU during the crash of the 1990s) are arranged accordingly. These differences in power and access to resources play a key part in the modern development process. The book is based on personal and professional experience of 20 years work as a political, social and voluntary sector activist in London, followed by 20 years working in very similar fields in the former Soviet Union – Russia and Central Asia. It continues a writing project begun in two books about the former Soviet Union region (Buxton, 2011; 2014). This is my specialist area. I studied Russian at school and university and from the early 1970s Russia, its language and culture, and the Soviet Union and Eurasia region have been a constant source of interest to me. I lived in Moscow for two years during the Brezhnev era, working as a translator/ editor for a Soviet news agency; I have taught Russian literature and language on short-­term contracts in British universities; and from 1995 I have been working full-­time in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as a programme manager, consultant and trainer.

Introduction   3

In this account, I am returning to my voluntary sector roots in the East End of London. I try to assess different NGO worker roles in a logical, progressive way, using my own experience as a way of introducing the discussion. Thus, in the UK, I started out on the familiar path of student and community volunteer and activist, later graduating to paid worker, manager and management committee member. During the 1980s, I helped found two voluntary organisations in the East End of London and became the coordinator/director of one of them for the first 12 years of its development. When I arrived in Russia in the mid-­1990s and Central Asia a bit later, I found myself working alongside people pursuing the same path as I had travelled a bit earlier. And now, I was employed as an advisor to them. The book is in part a memoir and in one or two chapters almost a travelogue. I have tried to give a brief description of some of the places where I have worked and the committed NGO leaders and activists I have met; but inevitably much more could be said about them than I have been able to include. Over the last ten years, our little office in Bishkek has worked with around 50 different international agencies working in Central Asia and the wider FSU region – and on roughly 100 projects, big and small. I haven’t attempted to refer to large numbers of them, or to assess individual strategies or programmes. Rather, this book tries to address big issues that affect all these agencies and to make more general arguments; plus, to raise questions about individual responsibilities and roles that are a challenge for everyone working in the sector.

Structure of the book The book is made up of seven chapters, the first two of which are devoted to activism and NGO work in East London in the 1970s and 1980s, though with fast-­ forward sections to my recent work in Central Asia. Chapter 3 functions as a link between my work in the UK and the FSU via the theme of international volunteering during the transition period of the 1990s, including a section on the challenges of international solidarity work. Chapters 4–6 are devoted to different aspects of international development in the FSU during the 2000s and 2010s. These sections move on from NGO worker roles to wider issues for the organisation as a whole. So, Chapter 4 focuses on capacity building and organisation development, while in the following chapter, there is a discussion about NGOs’ role in service provision and defending rights in the context of attacks on the welfare state. Chapter 6 introduces a framework for the analysis of the changing environment for development work, in particular the widening gap between Russia and the West. This leads into Chapter 7 where various strategic options for NGOs and their supporters are discussed at local, national and international levels. Case studies occupy a very big part of the book. They come in various shapes and sizes – in fact, some of them have grown into the book’s structure so they are part of the main account. Most of the cases focus on different organisations and projects, whereas in others I look back on my own work like a case study. Through cases, I tried to illustrate the wide range of issues and practical problems that we

4   Introduction

confront in NGO work; indeed, this variety is one of the most attractive things about working in the sector. The cases show critical points in individual and organisational practice where things can go wrong – or where careful planning and an open, flexible approach can help bring in more strength and support. ‘Ragged’ questions and theory ‘shorts’. My topics are rather wide and the political questions equally tricky – so the stories are not very translatable into to step-­by-step instructions. Nonetheless, I tried to gather together key questions or discussion points for activists or the engaged reader. I call them ‘ragged’ questions and they focus on how to deal with the contradictions we find ourselves in – personally, professionally or politically. Most of these questions are focused at the organisational level, requiring collective or political action. They are placed at the end of each chapter where Further Reading is also suggested in topic blocks. There are also a set of inserts – ‘theory and practice boxes’ – that lay out very briefly key terms, concepts and methods that are important in the book. The first of the inserts is about civil society and comes at the end of this Introduction. I hope that the theory shorts will help readers to find useful materials for further study or to develop their own views on key issues raised. You should not expect them to have the full breadth or depth of an academic text, but they might help readers to clarify their own ‘active life position’, as the Russian phrase goes, or help decide what aspect of NGO or development work interests you most. As well as the theory and practice boxes are some photos, illustrations and tables that I hope give more colour and explanation to the analyses. Some shorter references (including texts in Russian) and more incidental commentary are provided in Notes at the end of each chapter.

My arguments My first argument is that NGO work is almost universal in today’s world, that is, it takes place in all countries and is very close to people. The vast majority of this work is carried out at a local, even village, street and family level. It’s a mass activity like teaching or primary health care and can have huge impact. NGOs often function like a ‘school’, whether in basic management skills, professional skills (e.g. as trainers, youth and social workers) or political activism. People take these skills into a wide variety of future occupations including in government or business – that is, they can be quite influential. The challenges facing civic and social activists in the UK are not far different from those in Russia or Central Asia. Not only are activists trying to meet a similar range of human and social needs (education, culture, economic, infrastructure, etc.) but they are very often looking for new approaches. So another theme in this book is about how innovation and the search for alternatives to state and private sector provision are at the heart of many socially oriented projects. It is also about how they come up against similar problems, for example, the dominant individualistic ethic in today’s society, economic crisis or control mechanisms established by governments and donors. Indeed, the increasing regulation of voluntary activities is a

Introduction   5

real threat to activism and creative development work in many countries, East and West, today. My account paints a broad-­brush picture of the four decades that it spans. Thus, the 1970s decade when I began my activist career in the East End is taken as a period of political radicalisation, not just in the UK but also in Third World countries that challenged the system of international development. However, the leftward trend in the UK was stopped in its tracks by Margaret Thatcher’s victory and her new rougher form of right-­wing government in the 1980s. The welfare settlements that had gradually been built up since 1945 began to gradually unravel. We can now see the neoliberal set-­up as one where the power of the state has been undermined by proponents of the market system, with civil society in a disputed role providing the ‘liberal’ or ‘social’ side of the new arrangements. And similarly, the early 1990s in the FSU can be analysed in terms of the spread of victorious neoliberalism, where NGOs were one of the main tools used to popularise political pluralism and the market economy, and also to deal directly with its losers (who were actually the majority of the population in those countries). So while the 1990s can be seen as a period of ‘civil society hopes’ in that region, by the end of the decade, many of them had been dashed and the civil society sector was under increasing threat from other forces – just as the period of left or radical hopes in 1970s UK had been dashed in the 1980s. And the private sector was rampant, in a corrupt alliance with government. The comparison between the two regions will not be pressed too far, because there are differences too. The book takes a critical view of development, especially as regards the FSU region, where the huge changes experienced since perestroika demand a rethinking of radical and left positions. I come to these questions from a non-­expert background, having never studied political theory or civil society in a formal way. However, I picked up some basic (ragged) Marxism in a Sociology MA in the early 1970s, when courses on Cultural Studies were being established for the first time in the UK. I learned what politics I have from activism in left groups like the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Party of Great Britain. The term ‘civil society’ was rarely used in the UK until the 1990s and I only came across it in relation to international development work when I joined VSO and later INTRAC.  Under neoliberalism, capitalism looks a bit different from Marx’s time. It is certainly capitalism and exploiting the labour of those who have only their labour to sell, or who depend on loans and credits of all kinds, but other factors have changed. This book will address these questions inasmuch as they touch on our main themes. Like many writers on civil society, I have found the Gramsci analysis of ‘hegemony’ and hegemonic relations under capitalism strikes a chord, so I try to explain and use these ideas. Finally, the book takes very seriously the realities of state violence and political conflict, which have a particularly destructive effect on communities and civil society. In the West, aggression against other countries and ideologies has been dressed up as ‘defence of the free world’ or the ‘war on terror’. I hope that I have been able to mount an argument against this rhetoric and in particular for a better

6   Introduction

understanding of the former Soviet Union region where I have spent so much of my life and professional energies. It is a moot point whether the era of neoliberalism is drawing to a close, despite the evidence that US world military domination is slowly weakening and some checks have been imposed on the international banks. What is certain is that new social and political movements are emerging to challenge the status quo, while on the other hand many well-­established NGOs are now part of the status quo – unless they can somehow break free from the power relations that bind them into the system as subaltern ‘philanthropists’. New international competition and conflict threatens to pull apart the two regions described in this book – UK/Western Europe and Russia/Central Asia – with major consequences for NGOs. Sometimes, we theorise about civil society as though conflict was not a regular feature of the political space, as if structural inequality and injustice did not exist. In my analysis, questions are at least asked and it is not assumed that things can go on indefinitely as they are now.

BOX I.1  CIVIL SOCIETY – SOME KEY TERMS Civil society organisations: In the pages that follow, the term ‘NGO’ is used to denote a registered non-­profit organisation of the type that works in development projects, at home or abroad, often with public funding. The term ‘CSO’ (civil society organisation) is used as a wider category, referring to any form of collective association, registered or unregistered, working for its own members (e.g. a cooperative, residents association or trade union) or for the common good, on a non-­profit basis. The number of CSOs is far greater than the number of NGOs, though NGOs are one of the most important, even dominant forms of CSOs. By civil society, we understand citizens, collective or public associations that come together to pursue shared or linked actions or causes, in a formal or informal way, long-­term or short-­term, and which are relatively autonomous and independent of the state and market. This includes a wide variety of groups pursuing many different and sometimes contradictory or conflicting aims, working in different ways and at different levels in society: from local to national and international. Sometimes we describe civil society (CS) as a ‘sector’ (like the government or private ‘sectors’), at other times, as a set of civil society organisations (CSOs), and sometimes as a ‘space’, for example, for dialogue between people or organisations. In the three-­sector model, a diagram often shows the government, business and civil sectors as three circles of an equal size. In reality, this is very far from the case. The business sector in neoliberal society has drawn a huge amount of power out of the government sector (though this varies from country to country) and they both dwarf the civil society sector. In Western society, each of the three sectors has evolved its own identity and ideology and

Introduction   7

huge efforts are made in international development to cajole or force business to work ‘in partnership’ with government or CS. In the FSU, by contrast, the three sectors were forcibly merged under Soviet socialism and they are still finding their own feet (i.e. an opposite, centrifugal, process has been taking place – despite the efforts to develop partnership). The theoretical frame for discussions around civil society and international development is clearly presented in a series of books published by INTRAC and listed in the Further Reading section at the end of this chapter. Another useful book by our professional colleagues Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce (2001) shows how the approach to civil society as a ‘sector’ borrows much from the US experience and tends to lead towards an ‘institutionalising’ approach, that is, towards attempts to define the characteristics, membership, rules and priorities of a group of organisations. As well as giving lots of opportunities for development, it can lead to a bureaucratic approach where formal relations with the government or business sectors predominate. By contrast, the view of civil society as a ‘space’ seems much more open. Anyone can occupy a space and, in civil society, we like to think of ourselves as autonomous actors, beholden to nobody but ourselves. However, in reality, very few space are truly open these days, and most people experience extreme difficulty in getting access to the spaces they would like to occupy – including civil society space where they can say what they think or influence society more widely. Howell and Pearce (2001) introduce an opposition between ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ civil society that is central to this book. In reality, the CS sector works for the most part within clearly defined limits – for example, the law, local traditions of public action – and is very influenced by ideas and practices coming from government and the private sector; that is, the hierarchical nature of society organised in layers of government and dominated by large, often transnational corporations, privately owned, with a very tight top-­down structure, limits the freedom of action of citizens. Knowledge is generated in highly structured scientific institutions, disseminated through an equally layered education system. Voluntary effort has to work, compete or struggle in a very different way.

Ragged learning: a glossary of Russian and Central Asia terms in the civil society field Learning should go both ways – ‘we’ learning from ‘them’ as well as ‘they’ learning from ‘us’. Some terms from the Russian or Eurasian region are already international and familiar in English – for example, intelligentsia, mujaheddin or perestroika – and below are some other words and phrases from my topic areas that are quite useful and used in my text.

Active citizens/life position  The commitment to being positive, active and public spirited.

8   Introduction

Ashar  Voluntary work in the community, always collective and sometimes family based (a Kyrgyz word with variations in other Central Asia languages). Flashmob  Spontaneous demonstration or protest. Used widely by youth. I first learned this term in Russian, though it is English. Initiative group  Group of people coming together on a voluntary basis to raise an issue or solve a problem. Note: this term is generally used for new not traditional groups. Komsomol  Young Communist League (a Soviet term). Many of the first generation of NGO activists came from the Komsomol ‘leadership school’. Kto-­kovo  Literally, ‘who does what to whom?’ Who is the subject and who is the object in a given development process? Narod, narodnik  People, supporter of a people’s party, often translated as ‘populist’. See Chapter 6 for Russian narodniks. Party of power  The party that is in control of power at the present time (and is determined to hang onto power). This term can refer to political parties that dominate the field in a multi-­party system (not just a one-­party system). Subbotnik  Saturday cleaning up operation organised in the workplace or the community from Soviet times, unpaid. This institution is still widely practised by local authorities, hospitals and schools across the FSU, for example, for spring cleaning public spaces.

Further reading on civil society and development Beauclerk, John, Brian Pratt and Ruth Judge (eds), 2011. Civil Society in Action: Global Case Studies in a Practice-­Based Framework. Oxford: INTRAC. Buxton, Charles, 2011. The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Buxton, Charles, 2014. Russia and Development: Capitalism, Civil Society and the State. London: Zed Books. Eade, Deborah (ed.), 2000. Development, NGOs and Civil Society. Oxford: Oxfam. Fowler, Alan, 1997. Striking a Balance: A Guide to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Non-­ Governmental Organisations in International Development. London: Earthscan. Howell, Jude and Jenny Pearce, 2001. Civil Society and Development: A Critical Interrogation. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Joll, James, 1977. Gramsci. London: Fontana. Korten, David C., 1990. Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Powell, Fred, 2007. The Politics of Civil Society: Big Society and Small Government. Bristol: Policy Press.  Pratt, Brian (ed.), 2003. Changing Expectations? The Concept and Practice of Civil Society in International Development. Oxford: INTRAC.  Tressell, Robert, 1955. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

1 On time, place and youth activism From Kyrgyzstan’s 2010 revolution to the anti-­racist movement in East London in the 1970s

Osh, Kyrgyzstan, summer 2011 Our story begins in the Fergana Valley region of Central Asia, in Kyrgyzstan’s second city or ‘southern capital’ Osh, a year after the country’s second post-­ independence revolution. I had been living in Kyrgyzstan for almost ten years, working on a civil society support programme from INTRAC’s regional office in the capital Bishkek, a day’s drive to the north over mountains rising to 3,500 metres. The Fergana Valley is like the tongue of a jigsaw piece, an oval shape occupied by Uzbekistan that fits neatly into the surrounding mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Except that many of the boundaries inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991 are contested; and that the Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Tajik populations are spread all over the jigsaw – along with Russians, Uygurs, Turks and other nationalities. The rich agricultural resources of the valley have to be shared out among many different political and economic actors and a closer look at the atlas of the region will show that it is almost like an enclave. Some 14 million people live in Fergana Valley, almost cut off from the rest of the world. Indeed, from the early 2000s, Uzbekistan closed its borders within the valley to all but a trickle of traffic, fearing a terrorist incursion from Afghanistan via Tajikistan, and life became even harder for people living here. Our civil society programme was, like many others at the time, picking up the pieces after the political and ethnic conflict in Osh and neighbouring Jalalabad in June 2010. In April that year, a political alliance describing itself as liberal-­democratic had forcibly ousted Kyrgyzstan’s president in Bishkek. President Kurmanbek Bakiev was a southerner from Jalalabad and he resisted the coup violently. On 8 April, columns of protestors had converged on Bishkek’s central square from several directions (one of them passing under the windows of our office, two blocks from Kyrgyzstan’s ‘White House’, where the presidential administration is housed).

10   On time, place and youth activism

They reached the square around midday. Meanwhile, the leaders of the opposition had been detained by Bakiev’s police and so were not present during the dramatic and violent events that followed. By early afternoon, as the crowds grew, marksmen began shooting at individual protestors from the roofs of government buildings. Ninety people were shot dead over the next six hours as the demonstrators persisted in trying to get access to the White House, ramming the gates of the presidential enclosure in lorries and eventually breaking through.  That evening, President Bakiev fled to his home town in the South. As well as the titular Kyrgyz population, Jalalabad is home to thousands of ethnic Uzbeks, who are indeed the majority ethnic group in Osh city. As the new provisional government headed by Roza Otunbaeva tried to oust Bakiev, old ethnic divisions reared their heads alongside class, clan and regional divisions within the population as a whole. In the 9–11 June events, some 400 people lost their lives and ten times this amount were injured. While the civil and political activists who were killed in Bishkek in April 2010 were proclaimed as national heroes by the new regime, those who died in the South remained unsung and the underlying causes of the violence were very difficult to discuss openly. The government protested loudly that some ‘third force’ was behind the trouble, but no evidence was produced to support this claim, so it seems that in reality the conflict was internal, and not just ethnic but political and economic in character, that is, a competition for power and resources.1

Case study 1.1 Community development in a post-­conflict situation, Fergana Valley Over a four-­year period (2011–15), my organisation INTRAC (International NGO Training & Research Centre) worked with local activists, civil society and local government organisations on two main projects. The main project was aimed at identifying social, political or economic problems at a local level, researching them and discussing the results with the wider community.2 The data collection and analysis work for the research studies was carried out by civic activists from different organisations, working in small groups. These were extremely sensitive issues. For example, after the violence and arson in Osh and Jalalabad, one study looked at the distribution of government benefits to victims (many of who were afraid to come forward and access health facilities); another examined the process for identifying municipal housing for those who had lost their homes. To reduce the risk of further divisions, the researchers presented their plans and interim results at regular intervals to a ‘community of practice’ made up of experts from local government, universities, international agencies and other NGOs. These sessions helped to ensure that the studies went in the right direction and officials were informed about issues early on – so that when the reports were published a mixed working group was ready to begin acting on the recommendations.3 From 2012, the project extended from Osh and Jalalabad at the eastern end of Fergana Valley along its southern edge to the city of Khojend, capital of Sogdh

On time, place and youth activism   11

province in northern Tajikistan. Though the Tajik population in Kyrgyzstan had not been directly caught up in the June 2010 violence, they were equally affected by underlying problems arising from the lack of effective regional policies. For example, cross-­border problems had begun to arise between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and between ethnic groups in villages ever more frequently. Our research studies focused on issues affecting different population groups – from access to school education and jobs for people with disabilities, to distribution of drinking water in villages along the border. Most participants in the programme were experienced NGO staff and leaders, but still the process of identifying a topic for research, collecting information, writing up a report and presenting it to the authorities took about nine months. Ten years earlier, I had made my first visits to Fergana Valley as part of a team effort to assess different forms of community development. From the Uzbek capital Tashkent, we flew to the ancient city of Kokand, famous as the centre of the Kokand Khanate and nationalist-­religious movements that resisted first the Tsarist authorities and then the Bolshevik revolutionaries up until the 1920s. There is an impressive old fortress and palace in Kokand plus several streets with Russian colonial era buildings. Travelling from Kokand into Kyrgyzstan via the border at Batken is quite a shocking experience, as you gradually move from the lush fields of Uzbekistan, planted with melons or cotton and irrigated by an extensive canal system, on roads lined with silk-­yielding mulberry trees, into a very arid belt of sandy, gritty, seemingly empty foothills which is the first impression of Kyrgyzstan. It is only having passed through this belt that you reach more fertile valleys with their orchards and small family farms planted with mixed vegetables, and then if you have time to go much higher, you can reach the famous high mountain pastures called jailoo. By 2011, our main routes were quite familiar. We would fly from Bishkek to Osh, with luck catching a sight of the city’s spectacular mountain and holy site Suleiman Gora (Solomon’s Throne) from the plane. Our NGO partner meetings were held in Osh, in the offices of Centre Interbilim on Lenin Street. We usually travelled to Jalalabad to our partners in the Civil Society Support Centre by car, traversing the same dry foothills of Kyrgyzstan so as to make a circle around the easternmost finger of Uzbekistan – a journey of 120 km, which would be half that, if the border were open. Another frequent journey was from Batken to the Tajik city of Khojend via the border crossing at Isfara, through some more dry hills and a long section of road alongside the Syr Darya (Oxus) River. After regular travel around the FSU region since 1996, small town hotels held few further surprises for me. I seldom wasted energy arguing with taxi drivers or market stallholders (as I would normally lose) and followed simple rules for personal security. Russian was the main language in our projects and even in rural parts of Kyrgyzstan, most adults had excellent Russian (young people – less, though now it was in demand because of migration). On most issues involving detailed local negotiations, I was confident to leave matters to our experienced NGO partners. Several of the studies in this programme had focused on the deeper, long-­term causes of violence, and in the fourth year of our joint work, we united a group of

12   On time, place and youth activism

NGO researchers from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and carried out a research on youth and employment in four provincial centres: Osh, Jalalabad, Batken and Khojend. The team worked closely with youth associations, trade unions and employment centres to collect information on youth expectations and experiences in the search for work – identified by everyone as one of the main causes of instability in the region. Fergana Valley was seriously affected by the break-­up of the Soviet Union. While cotton remains its main export crop, industrial production in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was hit hard and several major silk and cotton plants in both countries closed down or were reduced to a shadow of their former selves. The main conclusions of our joint study were that while more than 50 per cent of jobs in both countries are in the grey economy, youth employment rights are almost impossible to guarantee. We found that city level employment policies were weak or ineffective and that formal ‘social partnership’ mechanisms between government, trade unions and employers were not delivering results at a local level. NGOs were not active in this area at all, so our team made a number of practical recommendations on how to launch campaigns for youth employment rights in the future. The second project focused on youth activism. In 2013, we were contracted by UNICEF ’s Kyrgyzstan office to provide training for more than 20 new youth centres scattered around the northern, eastern and southern edges of Fergana Valley. Many young people had been caught up in the violence in Bishkek and Osh and they were often involved in cross-­border incidents. Indeed, some young people from the Kyrgyz community had become increasingly politicised, often with a militant nationalist orientation, arising in a large degree from the way in which the Osh events were explained by the government and the media as an external or separatist threat. Many young people from the Uzbek community had fled the country after June 2010, and it was clear the interests of those that remained had to be catered for, too, alongside those of young people from the Kyrgyz and other ethnic communities. So, in each youth centre, we trained outreach groups to monitor the situation in their village and develop an early warning system in case of old or new conflicts arising. Needless to say, these groups worked on a wide range of problems not directly related to ethnic issues (e.g. problems in the family or at school). The youth workers were often university students or recent graduates working on a volunteer basis, and the outreach groups were made up of older-­age schoolchildren, students and unemployed youth. Girls outnumbered boys by roughly two to one. In both projects, we encountered issues that were affecting NGOs across the whole Central Asia region. After a period of crisis and depression as the economy plummeted in the 1990s,4 community groups gradually established themselves to deal with all kinds of local priorities, mostly dependant for funding on international aid and development projects. Our NGO partners in Osh, Jalalabad and Khojend had all been active for years as resource centres, channelling information about grants to local groups, running training courses, linking with government agencies and so on. But after Kyrgyzstan’s first revolution in 2005, the attitude of foreign

On time, place and youth activism   13

donors changed and they became more wary about supporting independent citizens’ initiatives; a tendency already visible before 2005 to channel aid funds directly to government became more pronounced. Our partners in Osh and Jalalabad told us that the number of active NGOs in their region had declined by more than 50 per cent in the five years before the 2010 events.  The situation in the South of Kyrgyzstan changed radically after June 2010. A large amount of emergency funding was contributed by the international agencies to contain and improve the situation over the next five years. Most of this went into infrastructure projects – rebuilding the parts of Osh and Jalalabad that had been burnt down. Other funds went into government reorganisation, economic regeneration and peace-­building programmes. NGOs played a big role in peace-­building, and to do this they needed to take on and train new staff, many of them youth volunteers who joined to help clean up after the violence. In general, a new generation of social and civic activists was emerging; and religious associations were becoming more and more influential in the chaotic situation of political conflict and the moral crises of crude capitalism. INTRAC’s task was not just to train staff and volunteers in the youth centres but also to help develop them as organisations. The centres had been set up in a partnership between UNICEF and the new Ministry of Youth, Labour and Migration, and typically they occupied a couple of large meeting rooms in a public building. One of these was equipped with computers and offered drop-­in facilities and computer literacy classes, while the other was used for cultural or sports events. Sometimes, these were quite grand buildings from the Soviet era, now empty and falling into disrepair, for example, the Palace of Labour in the miners’ town Tash Kumir and the House of Youth in other district centres. The youth centres had close relations with local government and its youth committees and were often asked to organise cultural and leisure activities from the local budget. So it might seem that they were institutionally well catered for. However, the reality was that public budgets remained extremely meagre and their running and staff costs were almost 100 per cent covered by international agencies. Nonetheless, there were high hopes that the Ministry would find a permanent place for the youth centres in its work programme. The provisional government had for the first time brought work with youth up to the level of a ministry, acknowledging the role politicised youth had played in bringing them into power. And the combination of youth, labour and migration issues in one unit was certainly relevant at a time when unemployment was such a problem and so many young people were leaving the country in search of work. During the project, UNICEF asked INTRAC to help organise a survey of youth views about the current situation in Kyrgyzstan and youth prospects in the future. This was part of the United Nations’ national consultations for its next global plan – the Sustainable Development Goals due to be adopted from the year 2015. With youth leaders in each district, we rapidly organised meetings in schools and youth centres and sent groups of volunteers out to survey young people’s attitudes in the bazaars and on the streets. The consultation revealed the idealism of

14   On time, place and youth activism

BOX 1.1  YOUTH, GENDER AND INNOVATION Youth, gender and innovation were the focus of another INTRAC training programme in the north of Kyrgyzstan in the post-­2010 period. The aim was to help young people find positive ways to develop activism, through democratic and shared leadership in the community.

FIGURE 1.1A  Youth training for collective leadership. Using a battery of computers and other equipment, participants learned new skills including email use, internet search and blogging

Photo credit: Kazbek Abraliev.

FiGuRe 1.1B  Yoga sessions on a jetty on Lake Issyk-Kul were part of the strategy to focus on participants’ personal development

Photo credit: Kazbek Abraliev.

Among the practical results of the course were several initiatives to increase the voice of youth in local affairs. One participant, Syrgak D, created a photo-exhibition in a village on the south shore of the lake. His presentation of photos led directly to discussions about the need to jointly buy new equipment for the storage and processing of apples and apricots that this region is famous for

FIGURE 1.1C 

Photo credit: Syrgak D.

On time, place and youth activism   15

Studies undertaken by INTRAC had shown that while gender was an important theme in most development projects, young women were still expected to carry out traditional roles in the family, including a heavy economic burden when so many men were unemployed or in migration. Meanwhile, an authoritarian or ‘command’ style of leadership predominated in many NGOs, even at a local level. The programme aimed to overcome old stereotypes with the help of new technology. Learning how to use a camera, make a short video film or write a blog were the practical skills offered (Moldosheva, Bagyshbaeva and Abraliev, 2011). Many of the participants in this project went on to play important roles in the NGO sector and beyond. Just three examples. One of them set up a very successful blog titled ‘Grannies on the Attack’ highlighting the active community role of older people in informal settlements around Bishkek. She herself became a community worker in a leading NGO, Child Protection Centre, and continued to work in the Dordoi Market area. Another was a youth debating club activist and later became the director of the debating organisation IDEA in Kyrgyzstan. The third, one of our trainers had already been active on healthy lifestyle issues in the youth association Y-­Peer, developing peer-­to-peer models of work. She later joined FINCA Bank and became a human resources manager helping to train staff to work with poorer communities around the country.

young people, Kyrgyz and Uzbek, boys and girls, and also a high level of disillusionment with the adult generation – politicians, government officials, schoolteachers and parents. It was quite a shocking report. One of the surprises was the level to which information technology and communications systems had penetrated the youth milieu, even in remote and rural areas. Mobile phones had become an essential part of life but were deepening many old problems, for example, sexual harassment, ‘bride-­stealing’ and bullying at school. Class divisions between rich and poor were often seen in the discussions about what clothes young people could afford to wear. Two main strands of opinion emerged: one strand argued for greater and deeper involvement in social and political life; the other took a more moral and religious view and urged young people to look inwards at themselves. In an attempt to analyse these problems further, our research project organised a study of youth involvement in local government. The study found that despite the youth activities being organised at a local level, young people rarely took part in decision-­making around budgets or facilities affecting them. In fact, the capacity of the youth centres was quite limited. It became clear to us that despite the wide range of activities being organised, they needed to employ at least one youth leader on a regular salary plus cover minimal core costs on a longer-­term basis. There were lots of potential youth volunteers but there was a problem in organising them. Local businessmen and employment centre workers were ready to help provide advice and job opportunities or take part in a management committee, but without good coordination these opportunities went begging. Lots of young people were interested in starting a business but start-­up capital or loans were very hard to find.

16   On time, place and youth activism

With annual interest rates of around 25–35 per cent, microcredits were prohibitively expensive. At the same time, there were examples of successful networking between NGOs groups after the violence in June 2010. One of the most active coalitions was led by our partners Centre Interbilim and Central Asia Water Alliance. The Regional Humanitarian Forum was an alliance of people who came together during the crisis (or ‘war’, as local people called it) to bring help to city dwellers in Osh and Jalalabad across the barricades, neighbourhood and ethnic divides of those tragic days. Once the fighting had subsided, they helped ensure effective distribution of humanitarian aid supplied by international organisations. Next they brought together a coordinating group that met with the new president, Roza Otunbaeva when she visited Osh, and at the same time established close working relations with the city authorities (who were seen as oppositional by central government). The areas where this group of NGOs were involved included legal assistance, humanitarian, psychological and medical aid; assessing need and ensuring access to local services for those affected by the conflict; participation in the government commission set up to evaluate property damage; and help to internally displaced persons. When the priorities changed from emergency assistance to longer-­term development, Forum members worked closely with the Directorate for Reconstruction and other government departments. Two years later, when the immediate post-­ conflict needs had been resolved, they revised the Forum’s mission and developed a new strategy for work with municipalities. A joint memorandum was signed between the Forum and the Osh city administration and a cooperation centre was set up to improve liaison with the general population. However, in early 2014, a new mayor took charge of the city and abruptly terminated prior arrangements with the voluntary sector. The network continued work with its main target groups, but the wider possibilities created by institutional connections with the previous city administration diminished. These were the kind of disappointments we had to get used to. In my first five years in Central Asia, the CS sector was expanding and gaining in influence, albeit at different rates, in four out of five countries in the region (Turkmenistan was the exception). Risks like political or ethnic violence did not seem to be very great – we could see with our own eyes how much in common different people had, both in their national traditions and in their joint heritage from the USSR. The 2005 ‘tulip’ revolution in Kyrgyzstan had been achieved without violence and ushered in a period of huge optimism and renewal. We were not ready for the war in 2010. Indeed, the Osh events showed that in reality lots of problems and lots of conflicts had remained under the surface.

East London, summer 1973  I came up to London after graduating from university and completing a master’s degree. In fact, I was born in London – but in Paddington, the West End not the East End. When I went up to university in 1969, I had the benefit of receiving a

On time, place and youth activism   17

government grant, despite being from a middle-­class family, at this time, we students did not have to take out loans. At school, my friends and I considered ourselves daringly liberal, fiercely against the Vietnam War and pro the students’ struggle in Paris 1968. My decision to study Russian was taken not just out of a desire to read the classics of nineteenth-­century Russian literature but also my active interest in the country that had accomplished the 1917 October Revolution. It was while I was at university that I first got involved in community action. With a group of fellow students, we had managed to get access to a run-­down warehouse not far from the centre of town, which we turned into a community arts centre. We organised exhibitions, student rock bands practised there, and eventually we founded an inter-­student association uniting arts activists from the university, polytechnic, teachers training college and college of further education. This was all rather innovative and, in fact, the association became quite successful for a while. However, at this point, I transferred my attention to left-­wing politics. My second degree combined sociology with Marxism and cultural studies in a new curriculum created by Stuart Hall and a Russian literature scholar and translator of Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin, Stanley Mitchell. I had a short-­term teaching contract, lecturing in Russian literature at Queen Mary College, University of London. At first, I lived in a rented basement in Whitechapel, in an area occupied mostly by newly arrived immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan. But quite soon, I met up with groups of squatters and one night with a friend we found our way into an empty two-­up, two-­down terrace house about a mile to the east in Stepney. It was never clear why this house had been left to rot unoccupied. It was part of a charitable housing settlement dating to the early twentieth century and we tidied it up, reconnected the services and lived happily there for a couple of years. On local history. The title of this chapter is not accidental – its argument is that for NGO workers or activists, it is important to understand time and place (and even the nature of the family or community you were born into – which may not be the same as where you are active). Sometimes, times and places are given a stereotype meaning in our culture or in the mass media, a meaning that does not correspond to our own experience, so it is important to develop our own understanding and hold onto it. Several things can be said about the East End as a location for community and social action in the early 1970s. First, this area of London acted as a magnet and clearing house for all kinds of people, many of them students and youth, many of them migrants from other parts of the UK and immigrants mainly from Britain’s ex-­colonies. In the 1950s, immigration was mainly from the West Indies, but by the late 1960s, most immigrants were from South Asia. They followed several other waves of immigration to Inner London from earlier centuries. Thus, in the seventeenth century, the Huguenots, a Protestant group famous as skilled weavers escaped from religious persecution in continental Europe and formed a community in the Spitalfields area of Whitechapel. In the nineteenth century, Irish people arrived in great numbers, following the failure of potato harvests in their homeland. And in

18   On time, place and youth activism

the early years of the twentieth century, Jewish people fleeing nationalist pogroms in Tsarist Russia, Ukraine and Poland similarly found a home in the back streets of East London. Many of them were radicals – anarchists or communists – who soon got involved in a variety of political struggles.  The district where I had chosen to live, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, was predominantly a working-­class area, originally a group of villages on the eastern outskirts of the City of London, then developing fast as the London docks took on increasing economic importance during the nineteenth century. London had a turbulent political environment in the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, the National Union of the Working Classes and the Chartist movement gathered strength in their call for decent wages and popular suffrage. The political mobilisation ‘toolbox’ used by activists included leaflets, placards and posters, and a number of protest ‘pitches’ became well known at this time – famous ones like Trafalgar Square and Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and similar, local pitches on Clerkenwell Green and in the East End’s Victoria Park. The causes that motivated radicals at this time were not so different from today’s issues – poor working and living conditions, inequality and injustice. The estate where we squatted was built as one of a number of philanthropic settlements that sprang up across the East End from the middle of the nineteenth century. Charles Booth, in his famous exposé of London poverty in 1889, estimated that 35 per cent of East Enders were living on or below the poverty line. Thousands slept rough on the streets or in shelters set up by charitable associations; the alternative was to enter the workhouse, undertake hard labour and suffer rigid, prison-­like rules in return for a bed and food to eat. Further highlights in East End history include the Matchgirls’ Strike in Bow, led by a radical secularist and campaigner for equality between men and women, Annie Besant, supported by Jewish community activist and tailor Lewis Lyon, and the progressive Church of England preacher Stewart Headlam. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Great Docks Strike was led by Ben Tillett and soon after that, the Suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst was organising working-­class women in East London. The contrast between the richer West End of London and the poorer East End is a matter of long tradition – and indeed is partly stereotype and legend, since these old divisions and inequalities are constantly being broken down and replaced by other ones. The main point here is that a huge store of alternative and radical history was on hand for social and political activists in the 1970s.

Case study 1.2 The anti-­racist movement in East London in the 1970s Political activism. I had become a political activist, selling the Socialist Worker newspaper in Whitechapel and Stepney. Our group focused on mobilising or recruiting clothing workers from the Bengali community. In the evenings, after work, we would assemble and spread out around the older tenement blocks and newer council estates. In the Whitechapel area, we were admitted to three- or four-­storey

On time, place and youth activism   19

terrace houses which were hugely overcrowded and climbed up and down narrow staircases in a hot, moist atmosphere with dinner being cooked in every corner on Baby Belling cookers by men with towels round their waists, makeshift curtains hung across the rooms to create separate living spaces. Several weekly buyers of Socialist Worker were always ready to have a longer chat. Meanwhile, our group had made friends with a local guru on Cockney history, the writer Jim Wolveridge, who could talk at length about the Jewish working-­class East End, its character, poetry, rhyming slang and famous local institutions from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In the early 1970s, Bangladesh had attained independence from Pakistan, in a short but very bloody struggle. The majority of the Whitechapel Bengali community were fiercely for independence and those who had campaigned against the break-­up of Pakistan were widely reviled. The role of next-­door India during the Bangladesh War of Independence was also very controversial. We had another close friend who was a leading figure in Bangladesh’s National Awami (Freedom) Party, a socialist party not to be confused with the Awami League led for many years by Sheikh Mohammed. Here again, as youth political activists, we were as much learning new things as imparting our own very basic socialist knowledge or messages. And many of our newspaper buyers were not in any sense Trotskyite supporters. I remember members of our group taking offence when a regular Bengali reader called us ‘social workers’ (not socialist workers!). Voluntary work on race and employment issues. Once my lecturing contract with Queen Mary College came to an end, I got myself a short-­term volunteer placement with the Council of Citizens of Tower Hamlets (CCTH). This was a body set up after the Race Relations Acts of the 1960s to defend the rights of minority groups in the local area. Its chief officer was Joe Hunte, an authoritative figure in the Caribbean community, now nearing retirement. My task was to assist the office in the collection of evidence for a parliamentary subcommittee on the employment of ethnic minority workers in Tower Hamlets. I accompanied Joe Hunte on several of his visits: to the local labour exchange; to Bow Match Works (at that time, it still occupied the huge redbrick building where the match girls had gone on strike); to the Tailor and Garment Workers Union office in Hoxton; and so on, taking notes and eventually drafting a report for the committee. Listening to CCTH’s chief officer pose questions about the employment of immigrants and members of the ethnic minority community to senior managers in private companies, the employment exchange and various government offices was of course a huge learning experience for a volunteer/intern not long out of university. Actually, it was quite difficult to collect hard facts about ethnic issues in employment at that time. I still have a copy of the report that we presented to the House of Commons Select Committee, its pages faded yellow and crackly where sellotape was used to put sections together (this being before the advent of word-­processing). Almost none of the employers kept statistics on the ethnic origin of their staff (or shall we say, they did not admit to doing this). They explained this to Joe Hunte in different ways. Some said keeping statistics would lead to discrimination against

20   On time, place and youth activism

black and Asian people. Others claimed that: ‘colour does not matter to us’. But when we spoke to local authority managers about the need to ensure that all sections of the population had reasonable access to jobs, they answered differently, saying that the keeping of ethnic records would lead to discrimination against ‘our own people’ or the ‘local population’. Managers at the local Employment Exchange and the Youth Employment and Careers Office estimated that it took almost five times longer to place a ‘coloured’ applicant in a job. The report made some serious comments about the problems black and Asian people faced in promotion in the mid-­1970s. Only one firm we interviewed had an ethnic minority person in senior management. The report comments: ‘This is the same as in law, politics, religion, academic and most other walks of life in Great Britain. In Great Britain there is not one coloured person of national eminence.’ This comment must have been written by Joe Hunte, since I was definitely not qualified to make it, and shows what a huge task lay ahead in implementing equal opportunities policies in the early and mid-­1970s. Ethnic minorities made up 7 per cent of the Tower Hamlets population at this time but this percentage was soon to grow substantially. 

BOX 1.2  SOCIAL MOVEMENTS – SOME KEY TERMS In the paragraphs above, we have already been using ideas and terms from the literature on social movements. This is a second block of theory that sits alongside the discourse on civil society presented in the Introduction to this book. The difference is that social movements are specifically about conflict or the threat of conflict (whether class, gender, national or inter-­ethnic conflict). In their book Contentious Politics, Tilley and Tarrow define a social movement as ‘a sustained campaign of claim-­making, using repeated performances that advertise the claim, based on organisations, networks, traditions and solidarities that sustain these activities’ (2007: 8). Social movements operate in defence of particular social interests in opposition to the powers-­that-be or the status quo, contesting the distribution of resources, power, opportunities and rights in society. These struggles can be long-­term or more short-­lived. In Tilley’s earlier work on social movements (2004), he shows that they quite often have a wave pattern. This is illustrated by Rosenberg’s description of political mobilisations in London (2015). A study of London history shows that periods of intensive political struggle have occurred at roughly 50-year intervals – in the 1830s, 1880s, 1930s – so, in the 1970s, we were due for another cycle. And during the twentieth century left-­wing and workers’ activists found they had to confront a contrary mobilisation on the streets – the fascist movement. Anti-­Semitic activity began in London soon after the beginning of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century and in the aftermath of the First World War. The economic crisis of the early 1930s provided a political opportunity for

On time, place and youth activism   21

Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and its attempt to building a working­class base in the East End of London. It was in 1936, during this period of political contestation, that the famous Battle of Cable Street took place, where the East End and Jewish community stopped the fascists from marching through multi-­ethnic areas. Social action is another term that will be used quite often in this book. Its meaning is quite close to two other terms: civil action or civic action. However, the term social usually relates to particular social groups, which could be defined in class, caste, age or gender terms, for example, farmers, untouchables in India, or young women. Social action is slightly different from political action, in that it may be dealing with themes that political parties choose not to debate. The political elite or class may be ignoring these themes and therefore social movements need to bring them to their attention. Finally, many individuals and organisations have developed what we call social learning – in other words, shared, non-­hierarchical or horizontal learning. This is an attempt to create relatively autonomous or alternative spaces for the exchange of information and experience. The Internet is an example; Wikipedia is another example; peer-­to-peer learning initiatives or scientific innovation centres are others. Networks of different kinds are very important for social learning.

Formation of a local anti-­racist committee. In autumn 1974, a group of community and left activists got together to found the Tower Hamlets Movement against Racism and Fascism – THMARF for short. The organisation certainly had a grand title! In reality, this was a local anti-­racist committee more than a movement. Its membership was based on individual or organisational affiliation – both from trade union branches and community groups. The committee originally met monthly, later fortnightly, to plan activities. Cultural events were just as important as political ones. Thus, film shows, plays and poetry readings were held at local arts venues like the Half Moon Theatre in Aldgate, in community centres like Oxford House and St Hilda’s in Bethnal Green, and in local libraries. Sometimes the events were organised in collaboration with arts groups like the Basement Poets or Tower Hamlets Arts Project. Direct action on a variety of scales was also a regular feature in THMARF ’s repertoire. In one of the early actions, East London teachers’ union members having a drink after a branch meeting in Mile End discovered that the pub that they frequented did not admit black people. They immediately left the pub and in following weeks and months organised a picket outside it. The principle was important in itself – why should a pub be able to refuse admission to a section of the local community? – and the picket drew attention to the problem of everyday racial discrimination and helped to mobilise people and draw them into the ranks of THMARF and other similar-­minded groups. Rereading the material produced at this time, it is striking what a non-­sectarian note THMARF tried to adopt in an environment where a variety of small left-­wing

22   On time, place and youth activism

political parties (including the Socialist Workers Party) were continually trying to recruit members for themselves. An early leaflet says:  We have never claimed to be the only group in the borough that is prepared to oppose racism and fascism. Thousands of people are involved in this anyway, whether professionally or in their daily contact with people: at work, in the schools and the parishes and through their various political parties.  The same leaflet describes ‘dilemmas that face the movement’, for example, ‘Should the National Front be banned or does this endanger free speech? Is it a good idea for the black communities to organise on their own? Where exactly do the police stand on racism?’ The question of autonomous or semi-­autonomous organisation by the black or Asian people, not just to defend themselves against the racists but also on a whole variety of issues about access to rights and services, was very much on the agenda at this time. When the National Front started its provocative pitch in Brick Lane, in the heart of the Bangladeshi community, during the large market held there on Sundays, it was natural that Asian youth should take self-­defence steps, for example, and the task of anti-­racists was how to defend them from attacks both by the police and National Front supporters; and how to ensure maximum unity and effectiveness of anti-­racist actions. Here the contribution of THMARF as a local civil society coalition was reflective as well as mobilising. For example, in its bulletins, we see analyses of the history of East End fascism; detailed reports on racial incidents and ensuing court cases around the borough; a review of anti-­racist leaflets produced by various local institutions and political parties; and an analysis of recent race relations legislation. The attempt to speak in plain (maybe slightly naive) language to a wide audience was visible in the bulletin’s lead articles and editorials. Thus, after describing a series of attacks on Asian people in Poplar in early 1975, where despite clear evidence of physical injuries, the police ‘simply don’t cooperate’ with the victims and ‘refuse to take details’, it comments:  The danger in Poplar is one that affects the weak and alone whoever they might be. If it isn’t Asian people it might be Old Age Pensioners or bus conductors … The area is criminally neglected … The problem goes far beyond racialism. It is lack of opportunity, lack of money, lack of space. In summer 1974, I had completed my placement with CCTH and I got a temporary job in the Parks Department of London Borough of Tower Hamlets, working on a tree gang, pruning and lopping branches along the roadsides and in the parks across the Isle of Dogs, Wapping, Stepney and Whitechapel. This patch included some beautiful old parks and squares populated by fearsomely tall London plane trees – luckily, we didn’t have to tackle these too often. At the end of the summer season, short-­term staff were being laid off and I took part in a campaign to allow those who wanted to stay on to extend their contracts. This was successful

On time, place and youth activism   23

and subsequently I joined a local authority workers branch of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), became a trade union representative and attended training for shop stewards at the union’s national training college in Cirencester. This was effectively my first formal training as a civil society activist and, from that time, I have had great respect for rank-­and-file trade unionists and their everyday work representing union members. Later, I was elected by my branch as a representative on Tower Hamlets Trades Council. The labour movement as a whole was undergoing big changes at this time. The London Docks were in gradual decline and the introduction of containerisation during the 1970s led to major cuts in jobs in the Port of London. Indeed ‘dockland’ – for example, the area around the Isle of Dogs – was just about to be carved up for development, the creation of elite housing blocks and a new base for the City of London (the Canary Wharf complex). Dockers had once been leaders in working-­ class actions of all kinds. Now trade unions representing manual workers were being forced onto the defensive. Still important were the gas workers (General, Municipal and Boilermakers Union – GMBU), the building workers (Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians – UCATT) and local authority manual staff. Civil society in Tower Hamlets. I hardly reflected about the structure or main characteristics of civil society in Tower Hamlets in the 1970s, in any case, we referred to it as either the ‘voluntary sector’ or the labour movement. But looking back, one can see that the alliance between voluntary organisations and trade unions being developed at that time created a particular kind of hegemony or moral force – a combination of resources that put new progressive ideas and projects on the local agenda. By contrast, we can see fascism as ‘uncivil society’ or a latent regressive force, recurring at moments of economic misfortune or social unrest. After the defeat of Hitler in 1945 and the election of a reforming Labour government, local fascist activity declined and it was only in the 1960s that it reared its head again. But up until the early 1970s, the Tory MP Enoch Powell commanded more popularity on the far-­right because of his political charisma and anti-­immigration speeches. In THMARF, we were addressing the difficult question of how to work with those in the community who hold strong opinions opposite to our own – and on occasion we were acting without recourse to the police or the law (which we understood can be used against working people when the ruling class so decides). One of our allies in the struggle was a Church of England priest, Reverend Ken Leech, pastor of St Matthew’s Church in Bethnal Green. In autumn 1997, THMARF, CCTH, the Trades Council and others got together to organise a major public meeting at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel about the threat of fascist groups. Among the speakers were the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council and the editor of the investigatory national anti-­fascist journal Searchlight. The venue itself was a traditional meeting place for progressive and reform-­minded people from its founding in the 1870s as a ‘university settlement’ where students could live and undertake researches about the London poor. Local Labour Party leaders of the time like George Lansbury had viewed this with some scepticism, but the commitment of its founders, Christian social reformers Samuel and Henrietta Barnett and

24   On time, place and youth activism

its contribution to social and community development in East London since then is not in doubt. Canon Barnett urged his students to get close to the people, to ‘learn as much as teach’, and to earn the right to speak with ‘indignation’ about the poor conditions and human suffering they saw around them. Most of Ken Leech’s address at the meeting in Toynbee Hall concerned the special threat posed by fascism to Christian churches and religious people, because it can appeal to a certain kind of false piety. Pointing to a 1974 speech in favour of the ‘re-­moralisation’ of society and politics by the Conservative minister Sir Keith Joseph, he noted that the scapegoating process could move from ethnic minorities, the Irish, the mentally ill and so on to a ‘wholesale attack on social classes 4 and 5’. Taking a diametrically opposite position, he argued that: ‘one cannot fight fascism without building socialism’ and ‘to be a professional anti-­fascist is no good; there needs to be a deep involvement in such issues as health care, tenants’ rights, the care of the old and lonely and so on.’ In this speech, Ken Leech used the phrase ‘genteel fascism’ and in the book Care and Conflict, which came out in 1990, he explained how with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street, this tendency was enshrined. That is, a very right-­wing regime took shape and a major attack on the working class and its organisations began.  Meanwhile, the teachers’ union, THMARF and its allies had achieved a campaign result: the proprietor of the Railway Tavern was forced to leave. He complained that he had been forced out by the pickets, but in reality local people had begun to avoid the pub. Significantly, his employers the Charrington Brewery did not offer him a licence to run another pub in their chain. Another important institutional change took place in 1977, with the launch of a new multi-­stakeholder committee, the Tower Hamlets Association for Racial Justice, replacing CCTH. There were two main planks in the programme suggested by the reformers. The first was that the organisation should take a more active and public role in defending the ethnic minority community against racialist attacks; the second was that it should focus on influencing mainstream health, education, housing, trade union and citizen’s rights agencies so that they make their services more appropriate to the needs of the immigrant community. Anti-­racist demonstrations took place all around London at this time, not just in the East End. In neighbouring Hackney, the Trades Council and Hackney Committee against Racialism had a very similar approach to Tower Hamlets. In Hackney, there were large Turkish, Cypriot, African and Caribbean communities plus a number of active and progressive Labour MPs and local councillors. In the south-­ eastern district of Lewisham, the Afro-­Caribbean community was active. Eventually an All-­London anti-­racist committee was formed, and meanwhile the Anti-­Nazi League had been set up and soon musicians and artists developed their own actions as part of Rock Against Racism. Nonetheless, arrests took place on most marches and demonstrations. A succession of these events led up to the racially motivated murder of Altab Ali in Whitechapel in May 1978 and the mass rampage of skinheads down Brick Lane a month later, smashing shops and restaurants belonging to the Bangladeshi community.

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BOX 1.3  JOHN BERGER ON CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ACTION One of the radical thinkers who influenced me at this time was the novelist and art critic John Berger. I had written about his novel ‘G’ in my master’s dissertation and at THMARF we got the opportunity to put on a play with songs by Adrian Mitchell based on Berger’s book about migrant workers (with a great set of photographs by Jean Mohr), titled A Seventh Man (1975). In John Berger’s book about art criticism, Ways of Seeing (1972), he describes demonstrations as a dress rehearsal for revolution. Indeed, in the events of 1968 around Europe, to many participants mass demonstrations seemed to be just that. The ‘repertoire’ of actions that can be used to promote a cause includes information aspects (the dissemination of facts and arguments), the symbolic nature of a crowd taking over the centre of the city, and direct action like the seizure of premises and resources (such as in factory occupations) (Berger, 1972). In the anti-­fascist protests of the 1970s, as in previous and subsequent decades, a physical and ideological battle was held for the hearts and minds of the population. The physical risks in taking part in some of these actions were quite significant, indeed a close comrade of ours in the East End, Blair Peach, later died in an anti-­racist demonstration in Southall, killed by a blow from a policeman’s truncheon. Added to which there was always the risk that street actions would annoy or provoke the very people that we were trying to bring onto our side. In East London, a unique attempt was made to bring cultural actors onto the side of anti-­fascism and anti-­racism. Dan Jones’ paintings of mass demonstrations in which the colourful banners of the labour movement were seen hoisted amidst a sea of faces of all kinds and colours, became very popular (see Figure 2.1a). And from the early 1980s, the Rock Against Racism movement pioneered major events in Victoria Park and other venues around UK. The tactics of the police changed accordingly. At key events – for example, at the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ in 1977, when anti-­racist protestors stopped a National Front march near New Cross, and two years later, during the Grunwick strike by Asian workers – they introduced new methods of crowd control. However, the role of mass demonstrations continued to be very important for social and political action. Thus, the street protests against the Poll Tax at the end of the 1980s played a large part in the defeat of the proposed legislation; and the anti-­Iraq War demonstrations of the early 2000s helped to deprive the Blair government of popular legitimacy for the illegal war. In these complex and multi-­sided mass actions, we can see what Tilley and Tarrow call a ‘scale shift’, the moving of struggle up a level. This can also be achieved through the ‘diffusion’ of the protest message via new channels of communication (e.g. social media) or through the ‘brokerage’ function of key organisations: NGOs, political parties and social movements that support the actions (2007: 60–7 and 89ff.).

26   On time, place and youth activism

Labour movement campaigns in Tower Hamlets in the 1970s. In all of this, the Tower Hamlets Trades Council (later Trades Union Council) played an active role. This was a representative body with a long history: the first All London Trades’ Council was formed in 1830 and district-/borough-­level trades councils emerged gradually in the second half of the nineteenth century. At first, they only covered select groups of skilled workers, but gradually they took in a wider section of labour organisations and from time to time made common cause with other voluntary groups. One of the most urgent issues for Tower Hamlets TUC was the rapid haemorrhaging of jobs in the East End. In the 1970s, the rate of loss of employment in the East End was around 3–5 per cent per annum. ‘This shattering decline is obvious to anyone who looks round the area,’ a TUC leaflet commented. ‘Derelict buildings, vacant land and corrugated sites litter the area. Real incomes are falling and journeys to work lengthening as workers are forced into lower skill jobs.’ The Council made a number of policy and institutional proposals to counter this trend. First, they demanded that the government create jobs by expanding the National Enterprise Board so that it could support local firms and ensure new investment targeted areas of high unemployment. Second, they proposed a system of loans and subsidies to firms wishing or able to invest in new plant and buildings or to take on extra workers. Third, local authorities themselves were urged to take a more pro­ active role – buying and developing empty sites, setting up joint ventures with local firms, and so on.  One of the TUC proposals concerned local government workers and was supported actively by the trade union branch that I belonged to. This was a proposal to expand the Local Authority’s direct labour force. In the heyday of early twentieth century, Municipal Socialism as promoted by George Lansbury in Poplar, local councils had built up large and effective construction departments: without this the boom in public housing schemes in the period between the First and Second World Wars would not have been possible. But these units had been allowed to decline despite the need to tackle bomb damage and replace old housing stock. Thus, in 1974, only £16 million worth of public contracts went to Direct Labour departments in London, compared with £391 million to private contractors, the TUC calculated. In the mid-­1970s, the National Health Service in inner London was under attack and accused by central government of ‘overspending’. The new Labour Government elected in 1975 was trying to cut back services or reallocate budgets to outer London areas. They argued that this reflected the declining population of inner London boroughs, whereas Trades’ Council activists argued that government policies were forcing people out, especially younger, economically active families. Working closely with doctors, they produced figures showing clearly that the incidence of diseases like tuberculosis, stomach cancer, lung cancer and coronary diseases affected semi-­skilled and unskilled workers much more than the professional classes. The government was urged to give health unions and workers a bigger role in discussions around the future of the health service and to strengthen community

On time, place and youth activism   27

health councils – a recently created watchdog body but one which the TUC described as ‘toothless’. At the start of the 1980s, London got a new, more radical Labour Party leadership which tried to implement many of these proposals. Chapter 2 will briefly describe the programmes promoted by the Greater London Council (GLC) under its leader Ken Livingstone as a counter to Thatcher’s attack on the left and local government. Indeed, the two projects I worked in during the 1980s were among the largest and most successful that the GLC bequeathed to Tower Hamlets before its demise in 1986.

Linking the stories from Kyrgyzstan and East London The stories and case studies presented in this chapter are quite a long way from each other, both geographically and in time. However, even at this early stage we can see some things that can help in our analysis of the nature of and links between political, social and civic (citizen’s) activities. They help to set the parameters of the chapters that come after. In the Fergana Valley story, we have an account told in terms of civil society and civic activism, where NGOs and youth associations were involved in trying to solve social and economic problems and prevent further conflict. This story is told from my position as a civil society development worker, aiming to support citizens’ or youth interests and at the same time help strengthen their organisations. By contrast, in the story from Tower Hamlets, I was an inexperienced youth activist, working with well-­established citizens groups like CCTH and the Trades’ Council. In both stories, the issues raised by citizens in these organisations were very close to politics – in fact, you could say that they were the stuff of community politics. Both stories concern conflict, illustrating the very different activities of civil society groups before, during and after conflict takes place. In both cases, young people were some of the most active elements – but at the same time quite a long way from the main decision-­making level, whether demonstrating on the streets or organising activities in their youth centres. In later chapters of this book, we will return to the question of conflict and its connection with development – whether on the local, national or international levels. Does conflict drive development (as Marxism tells us)? Or is it a consequence of development (especially uneven or unfair development)?5 In both the case studies in this chapter, significant political and social movements were active. As noted already, the 2010 revolution in Kyrgyzstan was accompanied by a significant rise in nationalism, with Kyrgyz nationalist youth groups making new demands on government and Uzbek youth on the defensive. In the UK of the 1970s, there was a mobilisation of both British nationalist and anti-­racist groups, plus new forces from among black and Asian youth. The academic literature defines two main types or ‘generations’ of social movement that have taken shape historically. The ‘old’ social movements include the anti-­slavery movement, the working-­class associations that grew up around Europe

28   On time, place and youth activism

in the nineteenth century, and the beginnings of the women’s movement (including the suffragettes). Analyses of these movements point to their organised, sometime hierarchical nature, that is, with a clear structure based on local branches or thematic sections, a constitution, rules, well-­developed repertoires and practices. Many of these movements were explicitly political, that is, demanding government policy changes and linked directly or indirectly to political parties. These movements are often supposed to have been supplanted – or at least supplemented – by ‘new’ social movements in the 1960s. To the latter category belong the hippy movement in the USA and Western Europe, the student radicals of 1968, and various alternative lifestyle movements. However, our East End case study shows that an ‘old’ movement such as the trade union movement could at that time, in a location where there was a history of working-­class and socialist activity, still act as a leader or coordinator for a number of campaigns that ‘belonged to the future’. We can include the movement for black and Asian equal rights in this category since this was early days for the struggle for equal opportunities, despite the progressive race relations legislation that was beginning to be enacted by the Labour Party in the UK. The trade union movement still had a strongly social character in East London because of the rootedness of labour leaders in the working class, the continuing vitality of traditions and memories around the 1930s (e.g. the Battle of Cable Street) and the Second World War (e.g. stories about how families and communities survived the Blitz), and in general the preservation of so many East End cultural values. Newly arrived minorities such as middle-­class students and gentrifiers, on the one hand, and immigrants from the Caribbean and Asia, on the other, were beginning to change the social character of the area and its organisations, but quite slowly. As regards youth activism, in both stories we can see some key elements: the desire for a radical change in society, the importance of mobilising community support and spreading information. The mechanisms for social learning were a bit different from today, because, in the 1970s, there was no Internet and no internet­based social networks. Collective learning was conducted via meetings. Squatters met informally; trade union branches met formally. Leaflets, public letters, posters, left-­wing and local newspapers, information and campaign bulletins and journals were all important. So were the public events – pitches and demonstrations – and the link with national and local culture via poems, paintings, film and theatre. Here the work of radical East London bookshops, Dan Jones’ paintings of trade union and community action, and on a smaller scale the TMARF bulletin, all show a conscious attempt to be non-­sectarian and to reflect and dialogue with diverse groups within the community. Three other elements of youth activism can be mentioned. First, young people are very often ready to take risks, for example, to enter a house and turn it into a squat, to attend a picket outside a pub, etc. Second, young people are often willing to join with relative strangers (people from other backgrounds, countries or parts of your own country) in various short- or longer-­term groupings for mutual help or

On time, place and youth activism   29

the cause. Third, while they are usually quite a long way from the ‘smoke-­filled corridors’ where political decisions are made, young people are often ready to make a noise about their cause. All this is very valuable. In his book about student and political activism in 1960s USA, Todd Gitlin writes: ‘As an outsider … one of your main functions is to improve the clout of insiders. Your shouts lead to their murmurs’ (2003: 97). While the 1970s is often portrayed as a time when radical trade unionists and left-­wing groups took on the government or even as the Tories say, ‘held it to ransom’, my account shows a rather different picture. It shows that in inner London a number of defensive struggles were taking place. First, there was an attempt to defend the immigrant community from physical attack and force the police and other authorities to pay attention to this emerging problem. Second, a campaign took place to maintain public services at a decent level as national government attempted to cut them back. On the other hand, we can see some new, constructive or ‘transformational’ demands. The first was a readiness to turn Britain/London into a multicultural community; the term ‘multicultural’ was not yet very much in vogue, but there was already a commitment to meet new needs and listen to new voices in the immigrant communities. And second, the kind of debates demanded by the Trades’ Council and its allies add up to a more participatory style of local democracy.6 Finally, the stories refer albeit briefly to some of the practical issues facing youth activists and youth associations. For example, a big issue facing most people at this stage in life is how to make the transition from education (school or college level) to work; and whether any connection can be made between the social and political issues that you have got involved in, on the one hand, and the education/specialisation you received, on the other? The need to get a more stable and well-­paid job, particularly if you are just starting a family, is something few people can ignore.  A second issue has already been highlighted: the importance of learning for youth activists – which often takes place while you are fighting political battles. Learning can be finding about a community that is new to you as an outsider (in the city almost everybody is an outsider is some way or other), or simply making a survey of what various groups in your own community think or want. A third issue is intergenerational communication, and as youth activists we can surely admit to sometimes being impatient and intolerant with existing groups or elders in the community. It is important to find your activist niche: on an individual level, only practice and regular involvement as a youth activist or project worker can show what you are good at, or to put it another way, what you can contribute to the group or the movement. By the early 1980s, I had discovered what I liked or didn’t like (or to put it another way, my usefulness) as a political or civil society activist. I could do socialist newspaper-­selling, whether on street corners or on housing estates. I could take part in demonstrations without any particular fear: I was sometimes a risk to myself but not a danger to anyone else. I was probably most useful in an organisational or secretarial role – such as I carried out in THMARF and which I was later

30   On time, place and youth activism

to carry out in Tower Hamlets Trades Union Council. I had little interest in sectarian politics, in fact, I didn’t find the upper echelons of politics attractive at all. Maybe I was more comfortable in the so-­called ‘female’ support roles in organisations; I was now committed to working with voluntary sector organisations where women are often in the majority. However, at this moment, a significant pause in my activism occurred. In December 1979, pursuing the aim of activating my Russian language for a future career, I left UK for a two-­year contract in the USSR, working with translations for the Soviet news agency Novosti. We departed with my wife Cecile and six-­ month-old son Sam from another East London landmark, Liverpool Street Station, on a train that would take us across the English Channel, through West and East Europe, via Berlin and Warsaw to Moscow. The Russian part of this book gets going in Chapter 3.

Questions for ragged activists 1 2 3 4 5

How can the spontaneity and dynamism of youth movements be translated into more sustainable and effective youth organisations? How can youth gain a bigger say in political life? How can the successful combination of old and new social movement activism in the 1970s be reproduced today? How, when and to what extent can movements based on national or ethnic consciousness play a positive role in civic and political affairs? Where do you, the reader, most agree or disagree with my analysis?

Further reading around the East London case study Adams, Caroline, 1987. Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life Stories of Sylheti Settlers in Britain. London: Tower Hamlets Arts Project. Berger, John, 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. Berger, John and Jean Mohr, 1975. A Seventh Man. London: Penguin Books. Eade, Deborah (ed.), 1999. Development and Social Action. Oxford: Oxfam. Gitlin, Todd, 2003. Letters to a Young Activist. New York: Basic Books. Glynn, Sarah, 2014. Class, Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengali East End: A Political History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hain, Peter (ed.), 1976. Community Politics. London: John Calder. Leech, Kenneth, 1990. Care and Conflict: Leaves from a Pastoral Notebook. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Mac Ginty, Roger and Andrew Williams, 2016. Conflict and Development, 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge. Moldosheva, Anara, Botoguz Bagyshbaeva and Kazbek Abraliev, 2011. ‘Leadership, Gender and Youth: Reviewing the Old and Experimenting with the New’. INTRAC Praxis Note 59, January. Rosenberg, David, 2015. Rebel Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering London’s Radical History. London: Pluto Press.  Tilly, Charles, 2004. Social Movements, 1786–2004. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.

On time, place and youth activism   31

Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow, 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.  Tower Hamlets Trades Council, 1979. Blood on the Streets: A Report on Racial Attacks in East London. London: Bethnal Green and Stepney Trades Council. Wainwright, Hilary, Andy Beckett, John Medhurst and Suresh Grover, 2014. ‘The Long Shadow of the 1970s’. Red Pepper 197 (August–September).

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Notes 1 I wrote a more detailed account of the background to the April and June 2010 events in a chapter titled ‘In Good Times and Hard Times: Civil Society Roles in Kyrgyzstan’, in Charles Ziegler (ed.), Civil Society and Politics in Central Asia (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2015). 2 The project was titled ‘Research in Action: Civil Society Working for Conflict Prevention in Fergana Valley’, and was funded by the Department of International Development (2011–15). Three NGO partners worked on the project with INTRAC: Centre Interbilim Osh, Civil Society Support Centre Jalalabad, and Ehio Farhang van Tariqot Khojend, with support from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation-­Kyrgyzstan. 3 For action research methodology, see papers by Rachel Hayman and Rowan Popplewell on the INTRAC website, www.intrac.org. This is a useful source for several other civil society and capacity-­building materials mentioned in this book. 4 The five ex-­Soviet republics of Central Asia lost roughly one-­third of their previous gross domestic product as they became independent, due to the collapse of inter-­ republican trade and production. 5 For a good account of the relation between conflict and international development, see Roger Mac Ginty and Andrew Williams, Conflict and Development, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). The book shows how in the post-­1945 period the development sector did not really consider conflict (though the Western countries were in direct conflict with an alternative system of state-­led development – the USSR). Since 1991, the failure to create a new world order and the proliferation of conflict inside and between nations has forced a rethink. Neoliberal policies have involved more and more actors in development programmes, but despite a focus on poverty, huge inequalities remain inside and between nations, and hence conflict continues unabated. 6 For a recent analysis of the myths and realities of this decade, see Hilary Wainwright, Andy Beckett, John Medhurst and Suresh Grover, ‘The Long Shadow of the 1970s’, Red Pepper 197 (August–September 2014), including an article by David Renton on the long campaign to bring those responsible for the death of Blair Peach to justice.

2 Schools of self-­management Promoting an alternative urban strategy in the face of Thatcherism in the 1980s

In the 1980s and 1990s, both in the UK and in the former USSR, we see a period where previous arrangements protecting social and economic rights were gradually broken up. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s government speeded up all the anti-­ working-class policies that we had begun to see in the 1970s. Her political victory at the polls in 1979 ushered in the neoliberal economic era. In the USSR, market mechanisms gradually gained in importance under Gorbachov: enterprises were given more responsibility for their own finances, price controls were loosened in some areas, and the cooperative movement was twisted from its original aims so as to enrich a generation of entrepreneurs. The advance of capitalism in the economy was crowned by the political victory of perestroika. In this chapter, we begin to consider the activities of registered NGOs and NGO workers in the UK under neoliberalism. For this, we need a rough definition of neoliberalism as it operates at national level – or as we called it in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s – ‘Thatcherism’. My case studies continue the analysis begun in Chapter 1 and focus on employment and vocational training policy, community development and multiculturalism; and the location is East London (with another short incursion into Central Asia). 

BOX 2.1  NEOLIBERALISM AND ‘RISK SOCIETY’ – SOME KEY TERMS These are some elements of neoliberalism at a national level, some of which are referred to directly in the pages that follow: privatisation in the economy; use of unemployment as a way of disciplining the workforce; abolition of previous three-­sided (government–employer–trade union) mechanisms regulating social and employment policy; attacks on local government decision-­making

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and the transfer of powers and resources to central government; technocrats dominate public policy; promotion of entrepreneurship and home ownership including mass sales of council housing. The critique of neoliberal policy in the 1980s and 1990s can be found in many different sources. In looking at alternatives, I have found useful recent publications by Hall, Massey and Rustin (2015), Birch and Mykhnenko (2010) and Mason (2016) stimulating; and with a feminist perspective, Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright ([1979] 2013).  How does neoliberalism affect the mass of the population? It puts them under new pressure. The sociologist Ulrich Beck (1992) describes the ‘risk society’ of the advanced Western countries as a society, which has achieved a certain level of well-­being but at the cost of vulnerability to certain risks. These can be ecological, political or social in character. The type of society that was brought into being by the nineteenth-­century industrial revolutions in various countries produced and distributed goods on a mass scale and was structured through social classes. Risk society, by contrast, is less dependent on mass production and the distribution of goods and it tries to distribute the risks arising from economic activities back to the population. Processes become steadily more individualised. In this conception, the industrial element has not lost all its meaning today because industry and science continue to be involved in the creation of risks such as, for example, the possibility or even likelihood of physical harm (industrial accidents or breakdowns) arising from technological processes. This means that technological experts have a big role in defining public policy – or ‘managing risk’. In fact, technological experts have taken over much of the power of so-­called representative political institutions, which come to play a formal, mass media-­serving or play-­acting role. Beck argues that industrial society saw itself as a stratified class society, each group with its own culture and traditions – the East End of London is a good example of this. However, post-­1945, these traditions came under attack. In the world of work, industrial work routines are undermined by rationalisation and flexibilisation of work times that blurs the boundaries of work and non-­ work. Computer and micro-­electronics allow new forms of networking of departments, plants and consumers. The previous legal and social premises of the employment system are eroded. ‘Mass unemployment is integrated into the occupation system in new forms of pluralised underemployment’ with all their associated hazards and opportunities (Beck, 1992: 13). Another important idea in risk society is the individualisation of social inequality. While the traditional parameters of industrial society – class culture and consciousness, well-­established gender and family roles – are dissolved by the processes of individualisation, relations based on inequality remain stable. How is this possible? Against the background of a comparatively high material standard of living and advanced social security systems, the

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people have been removed from class commitments and have to refer themselves to themselves in planning their individual labour market biographies. Such is the fate of the ‘free wage labourer’ in modern capitalism. Entry to the labour market forces him or her to free himself/herself from traditional bindings – place of birth, family networks, neighbourhoods and communities. Some negative experiences continue to affect many people together, for example, mass unemployment, de-­skilling. However, they are softened by the welfare state and ‘class biographies are transformed into reflexive biographies which depend on the decisions of the actor’. As regards social inequality as defined by Marxists not much has changed. ‘The separations in the hierarchy of income and the fundamental conditions of wage labour have remained the same. On the other hand, ties to a social class recede mysteriously into the background for the actions of people.’ Increasingly everyone has to choose between different options, including to which group or subculture one wants to belong. ‘In fact one has to choose and change one’s social identity as well and take risks in doing so’ (Beck, 1992: 87–8). Since Beck wrote his book, we can see how modern information technology has gone further and further in supporting the celebration of individual biographies via hand-­held computers and a variety of Facebook-­type programmes.1

The question of risk was raised in Chapter 1 as regards radical youth action. And it is a key theme in this chapter, at least in two respects. First, we examine the risks being taken by different groups of people in finding work and how NGOs in East London tried to help them get a job. Second, we look at the risks involved in running a NGO. Many of us accept risk, some of us may even seek it out, taking bets with ourselves. But the laws of betting machines and other systems set up to encourage risk and distribute results arising from risk-­taking show us that while one person might achieve a spectacular, life-­changing success, many more will lose their investment. Back in the 1970s, John Berger posed the situation facing migrant workers in Europe as being symbolic of the transition from the industrial to the post-­industrial age. In the Introduction to A Seventh Man, he wrote: Today the migrant worker experiences, within a few years, what the working population of every industrial city once experienced over generations. To consider his life – its material circumstances and his inner feelings – is to be brought face to face with the fundamental nature of our present societies and their histories. (Berger, 1975) His book was mainly about migrants coming to the UK from different countries of Europe, a process that speeded up dramatically after the Eastern European countries

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joined the EU. What were the main elements of this experience? The gulf between expectations and reality; the trauma of travel to the European metropolis; checks: bureaucratic, medical, etc.; the toughness of new work demands, poor living conditions. All in all, this 1975 book seems very up to date and reflects the risks and traumas of workers coming to the UK or Europe from countries around the world. The experience of Central Asia is quite interesting in this respect because Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have one of the highest percentages of migrant workers in the world (from 30–50 per cent of their working-­age population is estimated to be in labour migration outside the country). For most of them, the destination is Russia’s cities. On the one hand, they suffer super-­exploitation by employers since they are often employed in the grey or black economy, vulnerable at any moment to sacking or reductions in their work conditions. On the other hand, the presence of a super-­vulnerable section of workers, ready to work for lower wages, undermines the standards that the Russian trade union movement has fought for. For ruling elites, this is a very satisfactory solution, since the new entrants to the labour market are often highly qualified workers, young and active and able to replenish the country’s ageing population. The creation of the Eurasia Economic Union provides a policy and legal framework in which to tackle these issues, and since Kyrgyzstan joined the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the procedures for its migrant workers have been eased significantly, but as with migration into the European Union, many problems remain. A 2014 report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) for Kyrgyzstan notes that about one-­third of the population is employed in agriculture, 10 per cent in production and 45 per cent in services. The grey economy in Kyrgyzstan accounts for more than 50 per cent of total economic activity, according to labour market experts. There is a structural imbalance across the whole Central Asia region between the low demand for qualified labour, on the one hand, and the much higher supply of workers with a suitable level of education entering the labour market each year, on the other. Some 75–80 per cent of new jobs are being created in the informal sector. Of those employed in the informal sector, some 75 per cent are in agriculture – and some of this continues to be seasonal child labour.2 When our civil society researchers collected information for the ‘Youth and Employment’ report, it showed how helpless the country has become in the face of world economic inequality. The collapse of industry and production networks caused by the break-­up of the USSR has not yet, 25 years later, been replaced by a coherent new economic system. In this, the international development sector, led by Bretton Woods Institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has failed Central Asia. A huge emphasis was put on private sector development – and a blind eye was turned to its failings such as tax evasion, exploitation of labour and short-­termism in economic planning. Civil society has been asked to come in and help alleviate poverty, but the question needs to be asked: when will real efforts to stimulate comprehensive economic development benefitting the whole of the population be given more precedence?

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The lack of these policies means that the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan do not have full employment strategies that would give work to their expanding population. Our local study revealed that the major cities in the strategically important Fergana Valley do not have clear objectives or targets for the employment of young people in new economic initiatives. Instead there is a stubborn belief in the market or that private business will solve the problems.3 Out of 400 young people aged 16–30 years interviewed in 2014–15, 40 per cent had already been in external migration! Whether for migration or for local jobs, some two-­thirds said that they find work through family or friends with a much smaller number using employment agencies or official information. A quarter of respondents noted problems with employers not offering work contracts or paying less than originally promised. When problems arise at work, once again young people are more likely to ask for help from parents and relatives than to go through trade union or official channels. A series of city-­level round tables held by INTRAC and its NGO partners in 2014–15 helped our team to identify what local organisations are involved in youth and employment issues. In each city, we discovered that there are a small number of key, experienced youth associations who offer careers advice, life and communications skills training and support to young entrepreneurs. But they have little impact on local government strategy and programmes. Youth centres and youth projects focus mainly on school-­age children, education, cultural and sports activities. Older and unemployed youth are harder to attract and are often seen as a source of disruption or potential conflict. Other CSOs pay little attention to youth employment issues – with the important exception of some women’s and disability NGOs working for their specific target groups. Youth projects in the employment field are mainly focused on entrepreneurship – as though everyone wants to set up their own business … Trade unions (TUs) across Central Asia have official status in three-­sided social partnership agreements with government and employers, at national and city levels. They have a big say on employment conditions in sectors like education and health, but little or no influence in the private and informal sectors. The NGO and TU sectors have almost no contact with each other, even in campaigning. So if work with issues around employment and unemployment is taken as a test case of civil society’s ability to tackle long-­term social and economic problems, we see quite a worrying situation in the former Soviet Union. While youth associations and youth centres may be involved in careers advice activities, the voluntary sector as a whole is hardly involved in vocational training or employment policy-­making and targeted work with youth unemployed is at a very low level.  There is one exception: preparation for migration. Here the international community is willing to provide funds to Central Asia, since the wealthy receiving countries prefer to receive workers with qualifications and a reasonable awareness of their rights and responsibilities. Indeed, preparatory work pays off in both economic and security terms, since regions like Central Asia are increasingly defined as a potential conflict zone or a ‘security risk’. This indeed is risk reduction – first and

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foremost. However, it is clear that neoliberal market-­led approaches cannot solve the underlying problem of economic inequality and a much more integrated solution needs to be found.

Community work in risk society: the pluralist and conflict models Community work has an ancient history. After all, surely there has never been a society where some form of voluntary, unpaid activity hasn’t been necessary from time to time? Ashar, as it is called in Central Asia, can be defined as collective DIY when more than one pair of hands in necessary to build a house, repair a bridge, or help a sick or elderly neighbour. Before the advent of the welfare state, this was the normal way of bringing bigger resources to bear on a problem. And though often unseen, in fact informal community activity at a village or street level may add up to more than the sum of efforts by registered organisations – recent studies in Russia seem to show this.4 In the UK, the history of voluntary organisations goes back to the sixteenth century and the debates between the King and the Church about who should hold property and take responsibility for education, cultural and poverty alleviation work in the community. This confrontation was one of the reasons behind Henry VIII’s confiscation of hospital and guild property held by the Church. In modern times, the issue of how to keep the balance between charity and public sector responsibilities has been raised regularly – and not only raised within the Christian tradition. Charity giving plays an equal role in Judaism and Islam and the question of the state’s responsibilities arises in many different countries in a similar way. We have already given examples of the work of university sponsored urban settlements like Toynbee Hall and Oxford House. Methodist missions in the East End play a similar social and community work role to this day. The reality is that community development in developing and developed countries is much more similar than we might think. Thus, in international development thinking, charity giving or the provision of humanitarian aid (food, clothes, shelter, etc.) is often seen as the basic or first level of work, for example, to help survivors of a flood or earthquake or the victims of civil war. And charity giving to especially vulnerable groups is still important in the Western countries today. However, humanitarian aid is really only a short-­term measure (except as we know from the refugee camps around the world, it often isn’t). Commonly, the promotion of self-­help is seen as the next development strategy, that is, the provision of resources with which the survivors of a disaster, for example, can themselves set up small-­scale economic initiatives, train themselves in new skills, and so on. In the UK, too, promoting self-­help was an important strand of the ideology of the Victorian middle class. This movement took various forms. For example, in the late nineteenth century, the Charity Organisation Society attempted to coordinate self-­help initiatives – and also helped to launch social work as a profession in the UK. The workers’ self-­help movement included the cooperative and trade union movements, the Workers’ Educational Association and a variety of

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friendly societies. In all of this, we can see a strategy to ameliorate the harshness of capitalist living and working conditions at this time. Important political events can significantly affect societies at some distance from each other. Thus, after the First World War and the Russian Revolution, community struggles broke out all around the UK. The wave of protests that took place in Glasgow in the early twentieth century, the rent victories by tenants and the strikes of munition workers, all these were key moments in the development of working-­class action and autonomous workers’ associations that continued into the 1920s and 1930s. A variety of writers have written about the recognition in government and society as a whole of the need after 1945 to develop a new approach to social policy and bring in more egalitarian policies including ‘collective state intervention’. During the long post-­war economic boom that lasted up to the early 1970s, community work was increasingly organised through the voluntary sector – using techniques of social mobilisation borrowed from the USA and Canada and indeed the UK’s colonies and ex-­colonies. Keith Popple sheds further light on community development as a way of combatting the spread of communism as the British colonies attained independence: ‘The main purpose of this form of community development was the integration of the colonial territories into the capitalist system. The technique involved incorporating the indigenous ruling class into the colonial hegemony’ (Popple 1995). Two strategic issues stand out for those who would like to oppose an alternative to the prevalent forms of community, assailed as they are by commercialism, individualisation and risks for their members. First, there is the debate about what is ‘community’ and the tendency to idealise it, that is, to refer to an ideal situation or a ‘golden age’ that may have once existed (but this is doubtful) but definitely does not exist now. The romantic view of community was promoted by British socialists like William Morris, John Ruskin and G.D.H. Cole. By contrast, Marxists historically ignored the role of community (e.g. the traditional Russian peasant commune, which the narodniks or populists extolled) in their analysis of the sites of class struggle, focusing instead on relations in social production (i.e. in and around the place of work). The second issue for community development or community work is about who belongs to a particular community and what their interests are. This requires a careful analysis of the key actors or stakeholders. The dominant view, Popple (1995) argues, is the pluralist one. This sees community as a mixture of people and interests, often including within its boundaries an element of inter-­group competition. Communities can be divided into several broad categories, for example, based on: (1) locality or territory (e.g. neighbourhoods, streets); (2) shared interests (e.g. professional interests, national groups); and (3) a common condition (e.g. sufferers from a particular sickness) or bond (e.g. working for the same employer). When we made a study of community-­based organisations in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the categories were not far different. However, an opposite view is based on the premise of conflict, whether expressed as class struggle, gender inequality, social exclusion or powerlessness.

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In the 1970s, the critique often came from the radical left, based on its critiques of workplace relations and economic exploitation, and now it comes from the radical feminist camp, working from the analysis of gender roles, women’s rights and the family; and indeed from many other groups that do not see a solution to inequality and injustice without a struggle for macro change (e.g. see Cowley and Mayo, 1977).  In Russia, philanthropic work had similar beginnings to the UK in the nineteenth century. Education, welfare and women’s associations all expanded fast during that century. However, the progressive intelligentsia constantly wavered between philanthropy and radical action – whether in the narodnik movement (‘going to the people’) or in anarchist or socialist activity. Voluntary groups continued to play a big role for several years after the Russian Revolution, pulled this way and that by conflict and civil war, some of them adopting a Bolshevik proletarian ideology and agenda. But by the late 1920s, the situation had changed. Thereafter, the USSR promoted state provision of educational, cultural and social services to the exclusion of private charity. A key role was played by public organisations – not just the trade unions but also Soviet women’s organisations and the Komsomol – under the direction of the Communist Party itself. For leading anarchist thinkers like Pyotr Kropotkin in Russia or more recently Colin Ward in the UK and social ecologist / libertarian municipalist Murray Bookchin (2007) in USA, any significant degree of state involvement is a mistake. Ward constantly questioned the development of state welfare and professional social and community work as a step backwards from the more informal and voluntary model of local associations and neighbourly assistance.

The Greater London Council in the early 1980s: significance of the new politics and programmes In 1981, the Greater London Council (GLC) experienced a mini-­revolution and an ex-­Hackney councillor took over the leadership of the ruling Labour Party group – Ken Livingstone – who immediately seized the opportunity to mount a challenge to the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. The radical socialist politics promoted by Livingstone included a ‘Fares Fair’ plan to cut the costs of public transport in the city; the declaration of London as a nuclear-­free zone; support for the republican movement in Ireland (not all Livingstone’s Labour Party colleagues agreed); and the creation of Enterprise and Training Boards to create jobs in the face of rapidly increasing unemployment. New committees were set up within the GLC to promote and monitor policies and programmes ensuring equal opportunities for ethnic minorities, women, and gays and lesbians. A new form of ‘rainbow-­coloured’ pluralist community action was on the horizon – as indeed was the readiness to go into battle with Thatcherism. Developing an alternative strategy: local experiences. From the very start of the Livingstone administration, the GLC was on the look-­out around London for projects that would express its new politics. In the Oxford House community centre, where

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I had just started working part-­time in a project called Tower Hamlets International Solidarity, a new ‘alternative strategy project’ appeared, supported by the Trades Union Council among others.5 One of the main alternative strategy groups at this time was the Joint Docklands Action Group that for a decade subjected the government’s plans for Docklands to expert scrutiny. Another line of enquiry and analysis for radical community groups was around how to counter unemployment and create jobs. I joined a Trades Union Council working group on employment and vocational training policy and soon we established links with the Greater London Council and Greater London Training Board. Via other channels, we heard of a derelict Victorian school building on Whitechapel Road some 400 yards from Aldgate East underground station that the GLC was minded to hand over to the community. The political stand-­off with the Conservative Government had got hotter and hotter. Mrs Thatcher had clearly decided she could not put up with an affront to her harsh new anti-­working-class politics, in particular by an elected London-­wide body. In 1984, she pushed a law through parliament abolishing the GLC. It was in this context that Tower Hamlets got two new community organisations, Tower Hamlets Advanced Technology Training (THATT) and the Davenant Centre. It took just over a year to design the new training project and assemble the Davenant consortium, create a constitution for each of them and register them as charities and ‘companies limited by guarantee’, courtesy of Tower Hamlets Law Centre, another important ally in those days. We worked hard with GLC officials on the detail of both projects and the Davenant Centre only got final funding approval in the last few weeks of the Council’s existence. The cheque for the project was issued, as it were, ‘a few minutes to midnight’ on 31 March 1986, the last day before GLC abolition. And this was a big cheque – just over £2 million, since we were not only going to renovate two historic Victorian-­era buildings (the old Davenant School), but also to build a brand new Asian women’s resource (the Jagonari Women’s Educational Resource Centre) on an empty lot next door. Party politics on different levels. The Labour Party in East London had a proud history, arising not just from the labour movement struggles of the late nineteenth century and against fascism in the 1930s as described in Chapter 1, but also from the very significant success of municipal socialism led by George Lansbury, sometimes called Poplarism. It was in Poplar, a poor working-­class area close to the London Docks, that Labour Party leaders led a variety of campaigns during the 1920s asserting the right of local authorities to pay wages and distribute benefits in excess of central government policy. However, by the 1970s, the Labour Party in Tower Hamlets was in slow decline, with a backward-­looking leadership that was unhappy about new waves of immigration to the area and uncomfortable with the post-­1968 new forms of left politics. The local branch of the Liberal Party began to make inroads into the traditional Labour electorate with the promise of more local decision-­making on bread and butter community issues: the collection of rubbish, improvement of street lighting, and better management of public spaces. And this won them votes. In the early

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Art and multicultural politics in East London

Dan Jones’ painting Brick Lane. Dan Jones was a mentor and role model for many youth and community workers in Tower Hamlets in the 1970s and 1980s. His wife, Denise Jones, was not only one of the founders of the Tower Hamlets Arts Project and later the Brick Lane Bookshop, she was also for several years leader of Tower Hamlets Borough Council

FIGURE 2.1A 

Photo credit: Dan Jones.

Jagonari Women’s Educational Resource Centre was designed by the feminist architects Matrix in an Asian style. As well as an impressive frontage located almost directly opposite East London Mosque, the building had a café area, flexible space for meetings and classes, and a small nursery unit across a courtyard at the back of the building, plus disabled access throughout. It stood next to the Davenant Centre, site of the old Foundation School

FIGURE 2.1B 

Photo credit: Charles Buxton.

Schools of self-management   43

1980s, they won control of Tower Hamlets council and pushed through a reform by which the borough was divided into four ‘neighbourhoods’ each with its own ‘town hall’ and the borough budget was divided among these new units. In fact, a new form of community politics had been born. Some neighbourhoods were won by the Liberals, others by Labour, and some civil society actors fitted quite well into the new scheme, for example, residents groups. But others, like the voluntary organisations I was involved in, were critical of the new politics in that it tended to distract public participation from more strategic issues that could be discussed better at borough level – like employment policy and major infrastructure developments – and focus on more ‘petty’ issues like street lights. Here we can see a contest between two important strands of political thinking and action. In reality, there is no theoretical contradiction between these two types of participatory democracy. However, many voluntary sector activists in Tower Hamlets found themselves in competition with elected councillors in the new ‘neighbourhoods’ – the latter working with quite a grass-­roots perspective but often with reactionary views (e.g. on race issues). Meanwhile, the Thatcher government, having confronted the coalminers and sent a naval task force to retake the Falklands Islands, instituted an important new government player – the Spitalfields Task Force – at the western end of the borough, to complement the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) at the eastern end. These were well-­funded centralising interventions intended to take the initiative away from local government. They were backed by key employer organisations like Business in the Community who engaged in a softer sell of Conservative politics via all kinds of consultancies and partnerships.6 Voluntary organisations were encouraged to apply for funding and support at these three levels of political representation – neighbourhood, borough and national – and we had to weigh up the odds of which political influence would be greatest or most useful, also taking into account the risk or hope of another party getting into power at the next election. It is not difficult to see why most voluntary organisations decided to play safe and avoid direct association with any political party, even if individuals in their ranks were party activists.

Case study 2.1 Managing an equal opportunities vocational training organisation Founders and staff. Several influential local activists were involved in the ‘initiative group’ that in time became THATT – described in its first annual report as a ‘voluntary but political’ organisation based on socialist principles. The Secretary of the management committee was a senior manager in the Bethnal Green Adult Education Institute; the Chair was a research worker in the Joint Docklands Action Group; the treasurer was a city worker and long-­time branch official in the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU). Apart from me, just one other TUC delegate, an experienced computer professional, had been appointed to the staff. The management committee included several women and representatives of minority

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groups. When they interviewed for staff, achieving a mixed team was an explicit objective as was local knowledge. From our original team of 13 staff, eight lived or worked in the borough, while eight were of non-­English origin. Five were women and the management committee admitted that they were unhappy not to have been able to employ more female computing instructors. Working to redress the imbalance of men and women in the computer industry was a clearly expressed aim throughout THATT’s early years. This applied to the recruitment of trainees for THATT’s courses as well. A target was set for at least 50 per cent women and 50 per cent ethnic minorities – we achieved 60 per cent for both indicators and held to these proportions year on year. Training programme and trainee participation. THATT was set to provide vocational training not academic courses. In the first year, we set ourselves a fearsome task for a newly appointed team, some of whom had never worked as trainers before – a 46-week full-­time course. There were 35 trainees in our first intake, organised in five study groups, three of which focused on computer software and office applications, while two focused on an introduction to microelectronics. The trainees were required to join the National Union of Students as a condition of joining our programme and each week we held a Trainee Forum where questions about the training and any other matters could be brought up. In the first year of the project’s existence, the Trainee Forum played a very important role. This was, among other reasons, because the training premises at the Whitechapel Technology Centre were only brought into operation gradually and there were teething problems with new equipment; so we relied heavily on the trainees’ cooperation. One of our trainees took a leading role in setting up our library, another helped develop a new computer operating system; trainees with pre-­school children formed a parents group to liaise with THATT’s crèche staff; and a trio of trainees formed a small company and we signed a contract with them to clean the premises. There were many hurdles ahead in programme development. One was gaining the right to offer formal vocational qualifications; another was tackling language and numeracy issues with the trainees. It took two years to prepare ourselves to offer City & Guilds qualifications in Computing and Microelectronics, plus English and Maths O level. THATT was unique in offering this all-­round educational opportunity – government training schemes offered vocational qualifications but O levels required a full-­year course and most schemes were much shorter. These qualifications are essential for most white-­collar jobs. What our trainees wanted most of all was a job. And it was this aspect that occupied our attention most of all over the next ten years. The organisation began as a radical project aiming to challenge government policy on employment and vocational training – and it continued to promote itself as a progressive alternative to the new, shorter training schemes that were springing up fast alongside the previously dominant apprenticeship schemes for young workers just out of school. However, the practical objective of accessing jobs for our trainees was a more daily challenge. Indeed, the value and importance of good service provision is a conclusion that has been etched in my mind ever since those days; I find it hard to agree with people

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in the NGO sector who consider policy or advocacy more important than services (see Chapter 5). In any case, THATT did not abandon its critical stance on new technology and employment. In the first years of the project. we pioneered a social studies course where alongside the history of computer technology, issues like employment trends, equal opportunities and health and safety were discussed. But the tendency was relentlessly in one direction: studying for qualifications, preparation for jobs. In fact, thanks to the trainers in our English department, social issues now became discussion topics in GCE English or English as a Second Language, so they continued under a different guise. In the first year of the project, we piloted a session called Bureau Services where trainees carried out simple assignments for community groups: word processing documents, creating databases, etc. And this led, within a year, to the launch of our own community enterprise, called THATT Services Ltd. This company was wholly owned by THATT and any profit it made was bound by its constitution to be returned to the parent organisation, and one of our founder members took charge of it. In summer 1985, we launched evening classes in our computer rooms, managed by THATT Services and a semi-­autonomous group of computer enthusiasts. Within a couple of years, THATT Services had signed major contracts with Tower Hamlets Council and was drawing real jobs into our remit. It became the vehicle by which THATT entered a dialogue with private sector employers, researching possible work placements, getting experience in the use of new computer programmes, updating the skills of staff and trainees alike. And meanwhile, THATT the charity maintained its community identity. This was a hard time for jobs. In the mid-­1980s, the unemployment rate in the poorest Tower Hamlets wards varied between 19–25 per cent and though the City of London with all its riches was just next door, the competition for city jobs at any level was very tough. Workers management. The coordination of the THATT team posed a lot of challenges. We had gone from one part-­time development worker (myself ) to a dozen full-­time staff, without any intermediate stages. We were running what seemed to us a very large training premises – 7,000 square feet – and a big budget, over £400,000.7 Two-­thirds came from the Greater London Training Board (GLTB) and one-­third from the European Social Fund. However, the European money arrived late – staff were paid late seven months in a row during our first year. If the GLTB had not helped us with prepayments on the eve of its abolition, we would never have got through it. But it was far from just a money question; the GLTB had supported THATT’s main idea of a people-­oriented training scheme where participants would not only learn a technical skills but be empowered politically, and had given us a year in which to assemble a team and brainstorm ways of working together and for the trainees’ benefit. Management arrangements in THATT developed through several key stages. In the first year of the project, like in many new NGOs, the staff worked in a cooperative style. All the administrative and instructor staff had been appointed on

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the same salary as each other and the staff meeting took collective responsibility for decisions. The chair and secretary roles were rotated each meeting and as project coordinator I was like an officer, serving the staff meeting. The 1984/85 annual report records some of the difficulties that arose with this:  the evolution of the staff ’s style of working has been towards greater responsibility invested in individuals to carry out clearly defined pieces of work. It became gradually obvious to all that to say ‘we will do this’ meant more often than not that nobody will do it … The other side of the issue is that excessive mixing of roles has been seen to distract staff from the essential work that they were employed to do. Staff, including trainees, were required to join a trade union and the main vehicle for representing their interest was the ACTSS (white-­collar) section within the Transport and General Workers’ Union. ACTSS had a very active voluntary sector branch during the 1980s and 1990s, with regular and well-­attended branch meetings and stable, experienced branch officers. But it was hard to maintain trade union standards and procedures in the voluntary sector. For example, during our first funding crisis (caused by delays in funding decisions by our main donors), we issued warning notices of possible redundancy to all staff, following union rules. These were withdrawn once the funding decisions were made, but in future years we did not repeat this practice. THATT was funded 95 per cent on annual funding decisions and our European money was agreed three–six months late every year. To fully reflect the financial risks we were taking, we would have had to keep staff on redundancy notices almost half the year, every year. We decided that this would be pointless as well as dispiriting. In year three of THATT’s existence, a major decision was made with the creation of the so-­called workers management group. By this time, my own role ensuring the link between the staff meeting and the management committee had been strengthened (I serviced monthly management committee meetings almost without a break for 12 years) and with the other three coordinators (for the instructor, administration and childcare teams) we were responsible for the maintenance of up-­to-date job descriptions and a disciplinary code. This operational role enabled the management committee to focus on external relations. As well as the coordinators, the workers management group included two elected staff members. Its title reflected the workers’ self-­management ethos of THATT and this structure helped us through another ten years of development during which the organisation opened three new training centres (in Shadwell, Bethnal Green and Hoxton) and two full­time day nurseries adjoining the training units. It was around this time that I became Secretary of Tower Hamlets Trades Union Council, following on from Dan Jones. I performed this role for about two years. But by this time, the coordination and fundraising tasks in THATT had become very onerous and I quit the Trades Council position, something I regretted later. I had begun to study management on a distance course with the Open University

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Business School. This, I realised early on, was a different kind of politics – the politics of managers – but an important one that helped me to get to grips with the challenges of running a fast-­growing organisation. Gradually we got used to the for-­profit and private sector jargon that has swamped the public and voluntary sectors: management not coordination; clients not trainees; services not courses; branding not ideals, and so on. We resisted it wherever we could. My fellow students on the Open University management course were a mixed group from the public and private sectors, mostly from much bigger organisations; they were intrigued by the story of a local organisation trying to maintain collective and non­hierarchical working. Our women colleagues and trainees played a big part in the political direction of the project in the second half of the 1980s and the early 1990s. During one of our funding crises, our Employment Development and English departments organised

BOX 2.2  MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL IN THE NGO SECTOR Open University management training materials define some interesting options for control of staff and organisations. ‘Managers have to make choices about the nature, mix and extent of controls’ that they will employ. There are four types of control: (1) direct supervision of staff by the manager or his/her sub-­managers; (2) self and social controls, where individuals or groups are persuaded to control themselves; (3) administrative controls or rules and procedures written down for all to observe; and (4) technical controls that are imposed by the nature of the equipment or technology being used. This is followed by Table 2.1 that is scary enough to make your hair stand on end. TABLE 2.1  The shift to postmodern controls in the NGO sector

Classical/modern organisational controls

Postmodern organisational controls

Mass production of standardised products; assembly lines

Flexible production systems; multi-batch production for niche markets

Hierarchical organisation structures, bureaucratic, vertically integrated

Flat, flexible structures, decentralised

Administrative controls (rules, timetables) Institutional controls (collective bargaining) Insecurity expressed as collective sense of social and economic injustice

Normative controls (through cultures, values, manipulation of meanings and attitudes) Identity control (e.g. through programmes such as service excellence, total quality management) Insecurity based on individual self-doubt, weakness or absence of alternative allegiances

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It is a moot point whether the controls listed in the right-­hand column are ‘post-­modern’ or simply ‘modern’. But they show how things that we usually view as aspects of freedom can be subject to management control, too: flexible working, horizontal structures, adopting values and keeping to them, establishing an identity, trying to build an independent position in life … This is the world of NGO commitments and the question is whether it is in danger of being undermined by modern management? A ragged question: maybe NGO staff should be prohibited from studying management, and people with management qualifications should be banned from taking up NGO jobs? In Central Asia, we often discussed the word ‘control’ in workshops about the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development projects. For many Russian speakers, the word kontrol summed up their understanding of monitoring and evaluation – a top-­down process of checking on what staff and projects are doing. Whereas our workshops attempted to promote the notion of M&E as a self-­generated process by which the NGO takes control of its own fate, through timely analysis of what is going on in its projects.

a letter-­writing campaign aimed at local councillors and we discovered that our trainees – as local residents – were THATT’s most powerful political weapon. After that, our campaigns were always jointly organised with our trainees. The equal opportunities aspect of the project came to be symbolised in our Women into Technology course, which grew out of the Microelectronics department and eventually won registration as an official access course enabling adult women ‘returners to work’ to enter new technology subjects in London’s polytechnics. Our results in terms of jobs or places on further courses gained were good – always over 75 per cent – and the annual awarding of vocational and GCSE certificates to our trainees became a triumphal event. With such a range of nationalities among the trainee group, the food was delicious and the parties held in the Whitechapel Technology Centre lasted late into the night. As a logical next step in its development, THATT became a founder member of a new alliance for quality training – the London Voluntary Sector Training Consortium. Set up at the end of the 1980s, this body became not just a major player in extending access to European funding for vocational training with an equal opportunities focus, but also increasingly in discussions around regeneration policy in the inner city.

Case study 2.2 The complex dynamics of pluralist community work Parallel with the successes at THATT, a much more problematic story gradually unfolded. The Davenant Centre was a second major community development project bequeathed by the GLC to voluntary groups in Tower Hamlets on the eve of its abolition. The consortium was made up of the THTUC, THATT, Tower

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Hamlets Training Forum and three mainly Bengali community groups – the Asian Unemployment Outreach Project, the Progressive Youth Organisation and the Jagonari Women’s Educational Resource Centre. The history of the Davenant School began in the late seventeenth century by The Reverend Ralph Davenant, rector of St Mary’s Church in Whitechapel, who left money to fund a school for poor boys. In the early nineteenth century, the school was expanded to serve 100 boys and 100 girls and according to information we discovered in our researches, the school was one of the first in the UK to pilot the system of school ‘monitors’.8 The front building was nothing special to look at but behind, at the back of an internal courtyard, a roofed arcade led up to a magnificent hall with a high wooden beamed ceiling, the whole thing standing above a covered and arched play area. The Davenant Centre was located in a strategic position at the western entrance to the borough on Whitechapel Road. In Chapter 1, I wrote about the importance of local history, and in this case study, we had become guardians of a Grade 2 historic building in the very centre of London!  Building responsibilities. Two million pounds was committed by the GLC to the renovation of the Davenant Centre, which had stood empty for ten years after the relocation of the school in outer London/Essex, and to build a new Asian women’s education centre next door.9 Our community consortium took control of the two buildings, but with the condition that in case we could not maintain it, the ‘first charge’ or legal control would pass to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Davenant Centre was registered as a charity and membership was limited to representatives of the five consortium members. Thus, a knot was tied that held us bound tight for over ten years. The reason for our problems lay in the building contract for the renovation of the Victorian-­era buildings. The work had been put in the hands of a firm of architects specialising in historic buildings who were determined to restore the school’s old glories. The GLC had gone out of business by the time the project overran on costs and the community consortium had to accept the handover of an uncompleted project. Tower Hamlets Borough Council, which had lost a prime site to the voluntary sector, was not keen to pick up the construction bills and the charity had become insolvent. In fact, the public authorities refused to fund even basic running costs for the centre. The only way to save it was for consortium members to contribute cash to pay for their use of office space and to gradually bring the back hall into use and charge for its use for community events. Management and staff. The members of the Davenant management committee held personal responsibility for the debts that had been incurred by the centre. Luckily, the construction of Jagonari took place on an empty site and did not overrun, so that part of the project went ahead to plan and ran almost autonomously, though formally tied into the Davenant Centre. Only two consortium members had money to pay for space, THATT and the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO) – a mixed-­sex youth club serving mainly Bengali youth in the borough. Like THATT, the Davenant Centre managed to maintain the commitment of key management committee members for the ten difficult years where we

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BOX 2.3  JOHN ADAIR ON MODES OF LEADERSHIP Civil society organisations have a major role and responsibility in practising collective, ‘horizontal’ or non-­hierarchical forms of leadership. In this way, they can provide an alternative to the ‘charisma’ or ‘great man’ models of leadership dominant in mainstream political and business circles. The narrative in this chapter provides examples of how leadership can be shared between people, and how new, younger leaders can be supported as they emerge from the community. John Adair’s book Effective Leadership (1993) is interesting for it unfussy analysis of leadership in different sectors of society – from the army and political life to local youth associations – and its attention to different types of leaders, for example, those oriented on: (1) achieving planned results; or (2) the dynamics in the team; or (3) attention to individual staff. Another important distinction is between elected and appointed leaders. The usual model for a well-­established voluntary organisation is a leader (described as a ‘manager’ or ‘director’) appointed by a management committee or board of directors. However, in informal ‘initiative groups’ and representative or political organisations the leader is often elected. As John Adair notes, the election of a leader by his/her peers can lead to a quite different power dynamic. For example, the leader will have to pay more attention to gaining the agreement of the team (or at least earn their respect to the extent that they will follow his/her lead in critical situations) (Adair, 1993: 83–92). The role of the chairperson of the board or management committee is vital for most NGOs. This is usually an elected position (i.e. elected by the members of the organisation, a group of people who in registered charities do not include paid staff ) with all the power that this confers. In the vibrant political environment of East London in the 1970s and 1980s, political party and community meetings were often packed events, with Asian community meetings being among the most vibrant. Leaders of NGOs and community groups had a big responsibility to their members and constituents and had to develop strong communication skills. Coming through this school of fire helped many of them in their successful political careers later. In my own experience of trade union activism, work as a shop steward was an excellent school in negotiations, public speaking and representing members of the union. We learned how to listen to issues coming up at the workplace, how to analyse a workplace problem or an individual grievance, and how to communicate this to management. This experience – with its successes and failures – was discussed at branch meetings and formed the basis on which activists were delegated to attend conferences or various official bodies. When I took on role of Project Coordinator at THATT, I saw myself as serving the trade union and community coalition that had set up the project – a sort of delegated responsibility. This was my model of democratic management.

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were beset by debts and unable to receive normal council funding for community activities. Offices were developed in the basement and ground floors of the front building and on the first floor the PYO organised an active youth club, enhanced when we were able to fully restore a Victorian classroom with banked wooden benches that became a puppet and video theatre, courtesy of various charity foundations that supported us with relatively small but vital sums in those years. THATT created its first nursery under the big hall at the back of the courtyard. Role of a community centre. The Davenant Centre was a completely different kind of voluntary group from THATT. As we learned gradually, it was a network and service NGO whose main function was to provide space and facilities for its members and the general public. This is a notoriously difficult job for NGOs that usually want to run their own events or projects. And the centre had to earn money since nobody would fund it for fear of getting involved in its debts.

Developments in the Bangladeshi community in the 1980s In his book Contesting Culture (1996), the social anthropologist Gerd Baumann describes the complexities of ethnicity and culture in the West London suburb of Southall in the 1980s and 1990s. His argument is that as immigrant communities establish themselves in the big city, inevitably they begin to mix with other communities and take on aspects of other cultures. However, the ‘dominant discourse’ about ethnicity continues to associate them with particular features of the culture of the country and society from which they came to the UK. In simple terms, we call this stereotyping. In Southall, as in East London, there had been for many decades a very mixed community, whose immigrants included Irish, Afro-­ Caribbean, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim elements – just to name the five most numerous ones (Baumann, 1996). Sometimes the community can throw up charismatic leaders onto the national stage who do quite unexpected things. This happened with a strike of photographic processing workers in the late 1970s against factory conditions in Southall. The Grunwick strike was led by a dynamic East African Asian woman called Jayaben Desai, who united her colleagues and pressed management to recognise the TGWU. The workers stayed on strike for an amazing two years. There were huge demonstrations in support of the Grunwick workers, in at least one of which I remember participating. However, the result was negative: division between the strikers and the official trade union movement and a victory for the Conservative Party on the eve of their 1979 election victory. The Grunwick story exemplifies the point that Baumann (1996) is making (though he does not mention the strike in his book). While older and recently arrived members of the immigrant community cling to the language and mores of their mother country, younger elements take on various influences and in the political field they make new alliances. Thus it was in the 1980s and 1990s that  younger and more politically involved Asian activists began to accept the term  Black to describe their movement, rather than always emphasising their

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Asian-­ness, or indeed seeing their identity as more narrowly Bangladeshi or Pakistani. And people from other cultures began to recognise new cultural phenomena originating in a particular minority community. Often this is because the innovators (in clothes, music, visual arts or whatever) have made a creative mix with some other culture or trend. Such it was with Bhangra music in the 1980s, which became popular among city youth in a way that previously Asian or Bengali music had struggled to achieve. This was already a long way from the situation in the 1970s when representatives of the Bangladeshi community described themselves often as not as Sylhetis (after the region of the country where most of them originated). A similar situation could be seen with the West Indian community. In the 1970s, the issue of which Caribbean Island you or your parents came from was very important in determining your place within the ethnic Caribbean community. As the largest island, Jamaica dominated and to some white Londoners, all West Indians might be ‘Jamaicans’. These identities and sub-­identities were particularly important in battles for leadership of the minority communities, both for symbolic and practical reasons – they were critical in assuring leaders of votes or the equivalent of votes in a leadership contest. And once British/white society began to recognise and appreciate the importance of leaders of the ethnic minority communities, the authorities used these categories – for example, the five ‘main’ ethnic minority communities in Southall – as a way of channelling power and resources. So, on the one hand, you could see a process of mixing, integration and transformation going on, whereby people gradually changed their social and cultural behaviour under the influence of the external environment; and on the other, society and the powers-­ that-be rewarded them for remaining (or pretending to remain) in their original ethnic group and culture. Community development as it was practised in London of the 1980s is described by Baumann as an appeal to new possibilities in the multi-­ethnic community (1996: 188–204). Such was the Davenant consortium – a new mixed body that the GLC gave strategic support to. Through their support for multi-­ethnic, mixed-­sex strategies, the GLC gave incentives to service providers like the PYO and THATT to maintain their positive discrimination, equal opportunities policies. Our allies in the ethnic minority communities were in constant dialogue and competition with more conservative community groups that interpreted ‘community’ as the older heritage of their ethnic group. Thus, in the 1970s, the main currents in the Bangladeshi community were determined by people’s allegiance to political parties ‘back home’. Later, in Central Asia and Russia of the 1990s–2000s, I was to see the same thing: traditionalist community development based on religion, clan allegiance or patriarchy. And the fact is that traditional community leaders often have resources that they can use in the new (neoliberal) social and economic environment. For example, in London of the 1970s and 1980s, just as in Moscow of the 2000s and 2010s, more established community leaders gained the loyalty of (and exercised control over) newer arrivals by helping them to gain them access to housing and jobs.

Schools of self-management   53

Nonetheless, as we have already seen, in the UK of the 1980s, the younger generation was beginning to break through, not just taking a lead in the anti-­racist struggle but also taking on English ways like going to the pub, dressing differently and entering mixed-­race/nationality relationships. As for political allegiance, at first the Bangladeshi community in the East End voted Labour en bloc, but by the beginning of the 1980s the more conservative elements had begun to vote Liberal and within a few years they had won several councillor positions in the borough. Bangladeshi businessmen began to move out of their clothing industry ‘ghetto’ into a variety of trades and sectors and Brick Lane became ‘Banglatown’ with a string of restaurants and cafes increasingly popular with both tourists and local residents. Internal Bangladeshi politics were largely invisible to the majority of voluntary sector activists, but in reality, the Bengali trainees at THATT (especially the female ones) and organisations like PYO and Jagonari were in the vanguard of secular community politics. In the 1990s, sectarian politics and religion gradually got the upper hand and first Davenant, then Jagonari, fell prey to differences within the Bengali community. As ‘honorary life president’ of the Davenant Centre, I had maintained contact with the centre for several years after I left Tower Hamlets. First, a very commercially oriented manager was appointed, with good community links but little in common with the ‘founding fathers’ ’ philosophy, then religious oriented youth took over the PYO and confronted the Davenant management. Similar battles took place in Jagonari as successful community leaders could win big political prizes. From our founding group of Bengali activists, some became councillors, others MPs, and one of our women community leaders even took a place in the House of Lords. Joe Hunte would have been very pleased. Resolution of the debts. In 1995, we successfully resolved the building debts issue; the building company we owed money to went bust on a much bigger commercial project in Wapping. But in retrospect this was not just a triumph but the beginning of the end for the GLC-­inspired consortium. Public funding was now more available and shorter-­term political gains more easy to achieve. In the clash of different personalities and interests, the winner was Tower Hamlets Council. When the warring parties went to court and could not resolve their differences, funding was held back and the Council used its old weapon, the ‘first charge’ it had held on the building since 1986, to take it over and put in a public sector agency. The new regime was dedicated to youth training and careers – and so the mission of the Davenant was continued albeit in a different way and despite the loss of a voluntary centre, alternative politics flagship.

Conclusion: what we achieved and what we did not achieve On the political front. In retrospect, we can see the 1980s as a decade where progressive organisations and individuals in the community sector attempted as best they could to hang onto ideals and agendas inherited from the 1970s. While Ken Livingstone was an exceptionally effective communicator and proponent of new

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ideas (anti-­racist, pro-­women’s equality, anti-­war and so on), the abolition of the GLC was a big blow to the labour movement and London as a whole, which suddenly became the only capital city in Europe without a directly elected body.  While the 1980s saw a reduction of direct support for the National Front, there was continuing pressure from the police on the Black and Asian communities. Government policy and funding programmes targeted areas of perceived poverty – in other words, hotspots that presented a danger of social explosions for the authorities (Toxteth, Brixton, etc.). Projects that openly challenged the authorities or worked with a conflict rather than a pluralist model were axed. Significant popular mobilisations took place around the People’s March for Jobs in the early 1980s (supported by the GLC) and, later, against the Thatcher government’s proposal of the new local authority tax (the Poll Tax). The street protests against the Poll Tax were successful and led to Thatcher’s fall from power. So this was a decade of considerable political conflict in London and the country at large. As regards organisational development, while the record is positive, it can be noted that almost all GLC-­funded projects had to make significant adjustments to their strategy so as to survive after 1986. The analysis in my two case studies shows that, if community groups were prepared to take advice from a variety of sources, they could indeed adapt to the times, strengthen their organisation and improve their services. In a rapidly marketising society, this was indeed a valuable survival strategy. Government programmes like the Urban Programme and City Challenge included significant capital elements for the regeneration of inner city areas and, to the limited extent that voluntary groups could influence decisions and take part in developments, this was vital to attempts to retain some degree of community control over the city environment. In THATT, we negotiated two management reviews with the help of outside consultants. After the first review, we developed the workers management group, tightening organisational coordination but hanging onto our democratic self-­ management approach. The second review led to a more technical set of decisions. By this time, we were running three training centres and we had three different types of coordinators: team coordinators, subject/technical coordinators and managers for the different centres. External advice helped us resolve some of the tensions that arose between these different functions. Despite these issues, the Davenant and Jagonari consortium can be proud that we created and held onto a community space that had been won through political and community action for more than ten years. The PYO prospered as a secular youth club serving both sexes. Jagonari grew into an innovatory and autonomous women’s education centre; there were sometimes tensions with Davenant but at least Jagonari was not dragged down by the Davenant’s financial problems. The Davenant project provided a venue for local events in a renovated historic building, exploring ways to make a connection with the school’s past history. In part, it realised the original vision of a community centre with a different character and  dynamic from Toynbee Hall, Oxford House and the university or church

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BOX 2.4  THE INTRAC MODEL OF ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT What help would the approaches that I used later in my work as an NGO development consultant in INTRAC have been in THATT? I sometimes wonder. If we look at one of the very basic tools that we use for organisation diagnosis, the ‘three circles’ model of an organisation, with its three different aspects – internal organisation (‘to be’), programme performance (‘to do’), and external relations (‘to relate’) – what has been recounted above shows that our NGO was pretty healthy on all accounts. However, I have raised the question as to whether it was still carrying out its original mission – to promote left-­wing alternatives and a critique of new technology – and there is also the question of whether it was trying to grow too fast, on too many sites, both for training and childcare facilities. INTRAC would probably have recommended a formal strategic planning process, during which many of these issues would have had to be discussed. This process can help ensure that issues that are being relegated get the attention that they deserve. By contrast, an organisation diagnosis using the ‘three circles’ would have shown that the Davenant Centre was weak in all three areas – ‘to be’, ‘to do’ and ‘to relate’! Which we already knew … but certainly skilled facilitation would have helped us tackle the problems and find solutions.

(Anglican, Methodist) related ‘missions’ in the East End. This was a new kind of mission, based in the contemporary labour movement, in women’s and Asian/ black organisations.

Lessons for alternative civil society Alliances. There are several practical examples in these case studies of how civil society and social activists can promote alternatives to neoliberalism. On the political side, this was not just an alliance with the GLC, in the case of THATT, it was a readiness to work with local borough councils and the European Social Fund (ESF ) to develop the more rounded and long-­term approaches to vocational training and employment development that has been described above. Local councils and the ESF continued to fund these programmes well beyond the demise of the GLC because they reached the whole London community and met special needs. Alternative strategies. Though voluntary organisations like ours took on service functions that the education authorities or the welfare state had traditionally provided in London, we never joined Thatcherite political attacks on government provision. Quite the opposite, we hoped that the better conditions and more

56   Schools of self-management

client-­focused services we developed would be adopted in the public sector (as indeed they are now in many areas). For us, the welfare state is a key factor in building socialism. We were part of the movement that in the 1980s resisted the trend towards a ‘liberal-­residual’ welfare state – with limited benefits and a selective approach. Our work in the London Voluntary Sector Training Consortium supported this political line – even though most of its members had to work flat out on their own management tasks and had little time to carry out wider policy lobbying functions. Introducing better facilities. Alternative strategies are sometimes short on practical detail. However, in our projects, there were facilities that were clearly superior to mainstream state provision. For example, from the start, THATT took the decision to try to open, register and staff day nurseries for women trainees returning to work after bringing up a family. This was a much more complex task than simply offering individual childcare/childminding payment like government schemes did. It meant a commitment to enhancing local childcare provision. Second, the organisation offered trainees studying on its full-­year course weekly living allowances paid out of its own funds. Once again, it could have shortened the training week and required trainees to remain on social security benefits. But we decided that the motivational and educational benefit of bringing unemployed youth and adults off benefits was worth the significant financial burden that we took on ourselves. This was indeed a significantly alternative kind of provision. Keep moving the agenda forward. Both cases studies show alternative projects under pressure. In these conditions, it is hard to develop new ideas and it is easy to get stuck in simply delivering existing promises to the target groups. One way of opening up the agenda again is to undertake special research projects. For example, at the end of the 1980s, our Women into Technology project got a small grant to study the results of the courses we had been holding (that is, the destinations of our graduates and the opportunities for further training development). The grant included an exchange visit element with computer and microelectronics training colleges in Germany and Portugal. In Germany, the technical level of our partners was much higher and our trainer teams got lots of useful ideas. In Portugal, there was a direct connection with the main trade union federation. Some of our women graduates had become trainers themselves. They took part in the exchange visits and got valuable new experience. The Davenant Centre also got the chance to visit other centres through the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (BASSAC) – helping to keep our vision alive through seeing how others cope with similar problems. Use crisis as a rallying point. In retrospect, the financial insolvency that affected the Davenant project from its opening served not just as a limitation but also as a source of inspiration. In a ‘risk society’, the local voluntary sector is a significant risk-­taker, as are its staff, never sure where next month’s or next year’s salary will come from. In this sense, local organisations are very different from major national charities with their wealthier supporters, large membership base and reserve funds. Local

Schools of self-management   57

management committees frequently have to take hard-­headed decisions that directly affect the work contracts and salaries of people who they usually know quite well. In the case of both Davenant and THATT, sensitive financial and human issues were involved all the time: we had to run a very tight ship. The importance of unity. Only a united and dynamic collective leadership can counter the kind of risks we faced in both these organisations. The Davenant Centre in particular was able to challenge the building firms and local council to ‘close us down if you want to, but it won’t be popular with residents of the borough’; and meanwhile was able to show that the consortium was continuing to serve the community, even from an unfinished building, without government funding, but still united, maintaining valuable old buildings, earning at least some income from service charges and hall hire, and continuing within the mandate of the organisation. This list is an important set of arguments that a determined and united community alliance of any kind can use to challenge the authorities and hang on to what it has.

Ragged manager questions What management decisions in the two examples in this chapter seemed important to you in terms of resistance to dominant neoliberalism? Did you have any ideas about how the challenges could have been addressed more effectively? How can NGOs avoid management jargon and the categories coming from the business sector? Are there particular terms, concepts or approaches that you could try to remove from your own organisation’s practice? Or better terms that you could add to your repertoire? How best can NGOs maintain an active membership and at the same time run a tight ship in the face of unstable annual funding?

Further reading on community development and alternatives to neoliberalism Adair, John, 1993. Effective Leadership: How to Develop Leadership Skills. London: Pan Books. Baumann, Gerd, 1996. Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-­Ethnic London. New York: Cambridge University Press. Beauclerk, John, Brian Pratt and Ruth Judge, 2011. Civil Society in Action: Global Case Studies in a Practice-­Based Framework. Oxford: INTRAC. Beck, Ulrich, 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications. Birch, Kean and Vlad Mykhnenko (eds), 2010. The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? London: Zed Books. Campbell, Beatrix, 1984. Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 80s. London: Virago.  Cowley, John and Marjorie Mayo, 1977. Community or Class Struggle? London: Stage 1. Craig, Gary, Marjorie Mayo and Nick Sharman, 1979. Jobs and Community Action: Community Work Five. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hall, Stuart, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin, 2015. After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

58   Schools of self-management

Mason, Paul, 2016. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bookchin, Murray, 2007. Social Ecology and Communalism. Chico, CA: AK Press. Popple, Keith, 1995. Analysing Community Work: Its Theory and Practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Rowbotham, Sheila, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, [1979] 2013. Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. London: Merlin Press.  Twelvetrees, Alan, 1991. Community Work. London: Macmillan.

Schools of self-management   59

Notes 1 I would argue that even if class affiliations have been undermined, this does not mean that class divisions have disappeared or that inequality is no longer an issue. It may even be getting worse. 2 International Labour Organization, Decent Jobs in Kyrgyzstan (Geneva: ILO, 2014), pp. 14–15. In 2013, per capital income Kyrgyzstan was 3,216 soms per month (about US$50) and the average income of persons in employment was 10,726 soms (about US$165). About one-­third of the workforce are members of trade unions – mainly in the public sector. 3 These conclusions are taken from the Youth & Employment report published in Russian, Molodyozh I Zanyatost (INTRAC, 2015). 4 The Civil Society Study Centre at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow publishes major sociological surveys on this and linked topics. 5 The search for alternatives is described by John Beauclerk, Brian Pratt and Ruth Judge (2011) as one of the main functions of civil society, by reference to Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony.  Gramsci explained that civil society becomes complacent in the face of exploitation by absorbing the values of the ruling class as ‘common sense’. The emancipation of working classes from their bondage, argued Gramsci, required a fight over dominant or ‘hegemonic’ ideas as a precursor to their mobilisation against the ruling classes.  (Beauclerk, Pratt and Judge, 2011: 69)  6 On qangos: the story of NGO–state relations in the UK since the 1980s would not be complete without a mention of intermediary bodies like Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), education and health trusts – in a word quasi-­NGOs or QANGOs. Having taken so much power to itself, central government was left with the problem how to implement policy locally. The question is how much accountability, legitimacy and effectiveness these new bodies have compared with, for example, elected local government or autonomous NGOs. Meanwhile, they are regularly abolished in the next round of social policy reforms and replaced by other agencies with very similar aims. Are QANGOS the same as what in civil society literature are referred to as GONGOs (government organised NGOs) in developing countries? Probably, quite similar. 7 We designed the training spaces with the help of community architects with a maximum of open plan spaces and room for class discussions to counter the tendency for computer and electronics work to be done by trainees in isolation from each other. 8 A school monitor is like a prefect and the idea was to encourage an element of self-­ management among pupils. 9 The word ‘Jagonari’ in the centre’s title comes from a poem by the Bengali writer and composer of songs Rabindranath Tagore urging women to rise up and fight for their rights.

3 International volunteering and solidarity And the fall of Soviet socialism

In summer 1995, I decided to leave THATT.1 At the beginning of August, when I should have been on holiday I was, like every year, engrossed in the next round of grant applications. The fact was that the funding system was exploiting organisations like us that wanted to do something new and useful for people. Through hard work, we had just achieved a revenue budget of £1 million a year, working in three training centres and running two full-­time nurseries. Some 55 per cent of the income came from a variety of central and local government and charitable sources – up to a dozen grants in all. The balancing 45 per cent came from Europe – on condition that the rest of the financing was already in place. Almost all our UK money was granted annually, without longer-­term promises, running according to the British financial year April–March. The European Social Fund made its decisions in mid-­year and they applied to the calendar year January–December, once again on a year-­by-year principle. And no sooner had we confirmed our massive interlinked budget for the current year than we had to begin planning for the following calendar year. Situations of this kind are familiar to anyone who works with fast-­growing innovative projects in the voluntary sector. They put immense personal strain on managers and management committees who only tolerate it because of their commitment to the cause. In reality, as I look back on it, my tiredness and sense of disillusion had begun a bit earlier. At the start of 1990s, I entered a period of personal and professional crisis that lasted several years. For me and the NGO that I had helped set up, this was a significant break, showing that personal and organisational development is seldom predictable or straightforward. Responding to a job advertisement that I saw by chance in a national newspaper, I went for interview and was appointed Regional Programme Manager for VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) programme covering Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The fact is that all these years from 1981 when I returned to

International volunteering and solidarity   61

work in East London, I had been somehow maintaining a link with my original specialisation in Russian and Soviet studies. At the beginning of the decade, I had returned to the USSR a few times, leading tourist groups and at the same time setting up contracts for translation work that I continued, on and off, through the 1980s. Our family had almost no Russian friends in the UK; the one exception was Terry Bushell, an ex-­Morning Star correspondent and a neighbour in South-­East London, and his Russian wife Lara. This was how I got into international development work. I didn’t have an economic or social development background – simply a practical understanding of the nuts and bolts of NGO management, plus personal experience of conditions in the USSR. And Russian language: sooner or later international development requires communication – that is, a knowledge of foreign languages – and many people around the world come into it this way. People with much greater technical expertise complain from time to time ‘he (or she) just got the job because they can speak English (or French or Chinese)’ and they have a fair point. But language is so important for so many things.

International solidarity movements in the 1970s and 1980s In Chapter 2, we focused on civil action and social movements countering neoliberalism at a local and national level. However, this was time of intense, worldwide opposition to what we called colonialism, imperialism or international capitalism. In the East End, local anti-­apartheid groups were active throughout this period, as were solidarity campaigns supporting the Cuban Revolution and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. When the fascist regime in Portugal fell in the mid-­1970s, the national liberation struggles in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-­Bissau immediately gathered strength. Volunteers from London went to work camps in Cuba and Nicaragua, and East London teacher’s leader Chris Searle, poet and veteran of the anti-­racist struggles described in Chapter 1, went first to Mozambique and then Grenada to help set up the education system for the revolutionary governments of those countries. In the wider development field, this period was notable for the advance of the Non-­Aligned Movement, led by India, Yugoslavia and Cuba. Organisations like the World Development Movement and Third World First actively promoted alternative, participatory and democratic development models in both the formal (school and university) and informal (voluntary) sectors. In the 1980s, the Solidarnost trade union in Poland opened up a new arena of struggle for activists to support in the Eastern bloc. This indeed was the hope of many social movement activists in the USSR itself who supported Gorbachov’s perestroika policies (see Further Reading). Perhaps the most significant of all these international solidarity struggles was the anti-­war, nuclear disarmament movement with its national coalitions like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the UK and its emblematic, long-­running citizens’ actions like the Women’s Peace Camp at the US nuclear bombers base at Greenham Common.

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Aspects of community and international volunteering One of the central themes of this chapter is volunteering. We can define volunteering as a kind of unpaid work to a set of tasks or job description that usually takes place in a non-­profit organisation. It differs significantly from, for example, the involvement of members of a NGO, trade union or social movement in the activities of their organisation, or the members of a NGO management committee. Members of a trade union unite to defend their own collective rights. Social movement activists unite to press a shared identity or political position – but with less formal structure usually than in a trade union. Members of a management committee are elected by the membership of an NGO; they are therefore delegated and meet regularly to direct its work. Volunteers may be working for a cause, too, but they are usually neither members of the organisation, nor paid staff, but rather a temporary source of assistance. The famous poster ‘Have You Volunteered!’ (Figure 3.1a) from the early Soviet period for Red Army recruits expresses the sometimes military connotations of this word. Indeed, volunteering is often state-­sponsored or religious in character (the Salvation Army combines military and religious modes of work). In times of economic crisis, the state often resorts to volunteer programmes as a way of engaging unemployed people to tackle community problems (human, social or infrastructure). As the post-­war labour market began to break up and reconfigure in the Europe of the 1980s and 1990s, volunteering was proposed as a way of involving people surplus to the requirements of the market economy. It has close connections with temporary job creation schemes of the type (e.g. insulating flats, tidying up the urban environment) that we began to see in East London. Sometimes these projects are focused on particularly disadvantaged or excluded groups, for example, ex-­ offenders or those on probation. Consequently, the degree of motivation of their participants may vary quite a lot. Some are forced to volunteer (likewise, in Central Asian ashar, informal community pressure often forces people to join in). But, in any case, volunteers need a weekly income so as to survive and feed themselves and their family, and where payment is offered, this is offered at below the market rate for the job. Whatever the many good things we describe in this chapter, we won’t forget the element of self-­exploitation (or ‘ragged trousered philanthropy’) that may take place.

Global civil society, internationalism and transnational activists In recent decades, globalisation and global civil society have been much written about. It is clear that the strategy of neoliberalism is indeed to develop a global sphere in which capital can move about freely, national taxes are avoided, and the political and military elite can force through policies either with or in spite of public opinion at home or in other countries. For these reasons, the idea of globalism has become increasingly discredited and the protests by anti-­globalists (in Seattle, Genoa, Copenhagen, etc.) are viewed with understanding by many people across

International volunteering and solidarity   63

the world. NGOs that are admitted to consultations and discussions (‘insiders’, as we noted in Chapter 1) on social, economic or political questions have been unable to make the force through the policy changes that opponents of neoliberalism hoped for; hence, the suspicion that some of the major international NGOs have fallen in with the cosmopolitan elites. Another reason for questioning the term ‘global’ in relation to the type of issues and struggles listed above is that most of them do not fully encompass the globe. As Tarrow (2006) has argued, internationalism or internationalisation may be more accurate terms for issues and struggles that begin at a national level and then spread slowly and incompletely to other countries. For example, the anti-­colonial struggles of the 1960s and 1970s brought together forces within the colonising and colonised countries, but had less resonance elsewhere. Many political links have a bilateral character. Trade union links mostly operate where transnational companies have their factories, mines or farms. Mary Kaldor has written more optimistically about the potential of global civil society to oppose war and promote a new kind of world order (2003). Indeed, she describes environmentalism and the human rights sector as new ‘world religions’ – secular and liberal in character. In her recent book on ‘old and new’ wars, she expressed the hope that registered NGOs (e.g. aid and humanitarian assistance agencies like Oxfam or Médecins Sans Frontières) alongside unregistered or community associations (e.g. women’s groups and councils of elders) in the war-­torn countries could increasingly support peace-­keeping operations organised by the major international agencies (UN, Red Cross, etc.) and national governments (Kaldor, 2012). This is the vision of a kind of ‘bottom-­up’, participatory solution to the spate of wars and civil wars that have broken out since the fall of the USSR and the attempt to create a new unipolar world led by the USA. Indeed, the process of internationalisation can be seen to include, for example, more and more horizontal links between individual activists, NGOs, states and regional or international agencies; more and more vertical structures tying local and national actors into national or higher-­level policies and structures; and more and more information and migration flows between countries and regions. Truly, many people have become ‘cosmopolitan’, even rootless cosmopolitans, in the sense that they have no clear geographical ‘home town or village’ and their political and economic orientations and motivations are constantly shifting, individual rather than collective (as we saw in the introduction to Chapter 2). However, for sustained action for development or political aims against dominant neoliberalism, it is the hypothesis of this book that some form of personal, family or local experience is a necessary starting point; added to which there must be some form of collective action (which could be in the professional or work sphere just as in political or civil society). And since conflict is often involved – hopefully ideological rather than physical – some vision of an alternative society is necessary with which to rally support and keep the struggle going.

64   International volunteering and solidarity

Images of activism and volunteering The Soviet poster: ‘Have You Volunteered?’ (Dmitri Moor, 1920) is one of the most iconic early Soviet political posters. The poster was designed as a proletarian ‘answer’ to the famous British First World War poster featuring Lord Kitchener as recruiter, with smoking factories in the background and an ordinary soldier, not a general in the foreground. But it is still quite militaristic – after all, this was still the period of ‘war communism’

FIGURE 3.1A 

Photo credit: British Library.

FIGURE 3.1B  ‘Step Forward!’: on the cover of the youth activist handbook, a boy and girl activists are stepping out of circles called ‘inequality’ and ‘indifference’ under the triple slogan ‘Learn! Act! Unite!’ The drawings by the Almaty-based artist Nikolya Journeau show a very different image of activism, light and friendly, but the text includes more political sections including one on volunteering as an expression of unity and solidarity. Published by Y-Peer, INTRAC and  Friedrich Ebert Foundation-Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, 2013

Photo credit: INTRAC.

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FIGURE 3.1C  ‘Open Society Debates’ is the slogan on the placard held by participants in this photo. Debates can be seen as a form of active learning alongside training workshops and youth camps. They were promoted by Karl Popper as way of expressing ‘open society’ and debating clubs for youth, students and schoolchildren opened across Central Asia from the 2000s. Other methodologies that have proved very attractive to young people in the region include school parliaments and forum theatre (theatre of the oppressed)

Photo credit: IDEA-Kyrgyzstan.

Case study 3.1  Working for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) The origin of VSO is in the 1950s within the context of the late colonial period and decolonisation. Voluntary service opportunities were offered to young men and women, usually just out of university, very often working as teachers in schools and  colleges in the English-­speaking countries of Africa and Asia. By the early 1990s, VSO had around 2,000 volunteers overseas at any one time, working in almost 50 countries in placements with local employers of two years upwards. Volunteers received a local wage of around US$100–200 per month plus free accommodation provided by the employer. The range of jobs had widened out considerably over time, including large contingents in health, technical and agricultural occupations. The professional nature of the programme was emphasised more and more (rather than its voluntary or volunteer nature). The section of VSO that I began work in was called East European Partnership (EEP) and it had been set up at the start of the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginnings of massive Western funding to the countries of Eastern Europe and the FSU. We operated in a semi-­autonomous way, using VSO systems and expertise but recruiting our own volunteers, usually for a shorter term – one year – that reflected the notion of a ‘temporary’ input that would help the countries

66   International volunteering and solidarity TABLE 3.1  International volunteers and political activism

VSO volunteers

Transnational activists

… are men and women who identify with VSO’s purpose, share VSO’s values and are motivated to offer their services overseas. They live and work in ways which are sensitive to the cultural values of others. They receive a modest living allowance for their work. Through relationships based on shared circumstances and mutual respect, volunteers can derive an understanding of the realities of life for their friends and colleagues (VSO Strategic Plan 1998–2003).

… are people and groups who are rooted in specific national contexts, but who engage in contentious political activities that involve them in transnational networks of contacts and conflicts (Tarrow, 2006: 29).

of the region introduce pluralistic political systems and adapt to the market economy. Selecting, training and placing UK volunteers with our team of a dozen staff, based at the VSO HQ in Putney, West London, represented about half of my new job. International volunteers can be described as transnational activists, but a comparison of the two terms shows that they are a particular type – less ‘political’, more committed to ‘sharing’: What was the motivation of the international volunteers that EEP recruited? At the risk of simplification, I would identify four main elements: first, professional advancement – volunteers often got the chance to develop skills and experience in a new setting, setting up new projects, developing systems, advising local colleagues, and so on; second, escape from the stifling nature of UK bureaucracy, especially in the public sector or in occupations subject to cutbacks; third and specially for older volunteers including those near retirement age after a successful and rewarding career, the desire to ‘put something back’; and fourth, for most people and specially younger volunteers, the urge to travel and have a bit of ‘adventure’. As a NGO worker, two things were new for me in VSO-­EEP. First, I came into the organisation as a middle manager whereas I had been used to taking a large amount of organisational decisions myself or with direct reference to our management committee. This was quite hard to adapt to. Second, VSO’s human resource management systems were far more developed and had a different character; they were more subtle and adapted to individuals and teams – and less political. In my East London, the rights and roles of women and ethnic minorities in the UK were at the centre of organisational life, whereas in VSO and other organisations working internationally the attention was on things going on in different countries. Styles of management. I now came into contact with a different way of discussing and organising activities. Small group work was encouraged among staff and

International volunteering and solidarity   67 TABLE 3.2  Modes of discussion and decision-making

The trade union/political style

Small group work in a NGO

The model is a branch meeting. The chair is a working-class leader. He or she knows the rule book for conducting meetings perfectly, is politically astute, knows the local area or professional sector back to front, is confident and has a sense of humour that enables him/her to deal with difficult issues or interruptions. Minutes are taken and brought to the next meeting for a check on actions taken.

Staff or activists discuss issues in groups of 4–5 people. As a rule, there are just a handful of key questions: 1. what is our aim in this activity? 2. what are our more detailed objectives? 3. what do we want/need to do? and 4. who can help us, what time or resources do we have? A facilitator may help to run the discussion, which if possible is recorded on a flip chart and presented to a wider group.

volunteers wherever possible at VSO. The organisation had just taken on a new corporate methodology for this. I found small group work quite exhausting to begin with and by the end of my time at VSO I had begun to wonder whether this kind of intensive participation is a form of ‘tyranny’2 – by which I mean that managers demand a level of participation from their subordinates that is greater than the actual effect is likely to be (e.g. because a decision has already been made at a higher level). However, I should also quote the comment of a future Country Director of VSO’s Russian office, Sergei Aleshonok, a very experienced youth worker in both the communist and post-­ communist period, who said that learning this kind of interactive, devolved discussions was almost the most important aspect of development work that the international agencies had brought with them. Personal issues raised in the selection and placement of EEP volunteers. This was an area that raised some new issues for me, even though as an NGO manager I was already pretty familiar with the challenges of interviewing and staff selection. The nub of the matter in EEP was that, like in VSO, volunteers were committing to a significant period away from home – not less than one year. Second, they were not permitted to go overseas with a partner (except in a small minority of cases where both partners volunteered and a double work placement could be found). The organisation took very seriously the possibility volunteers might have second thoughts and all our careful preparation work would therefore be undone. We therefore became quite adept at asking sensitive (politically incorrect) questions at interviews about people’s relationships. And really, we touched on the sort of issues that are affecting many people in balancing work, relationship and family responsibilities every day, and which are only dramatised and intensified when they face the decision: could you actually go overseas for a year or two, on your own, and what would happen to your relations with close relatives and friends if you did? The statistical result of these selection decisions was that the average age of volunteers in EEP was just under 40 years; the male/female ratio was roughly

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BOX 3.1  BEYOND THE FRAGMENTS – THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL In their book Beyond the Fragments ([1979] 2013), Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright argued for a better understanding between the revolutionary left (Leninist) groups of the 1960s and 1970s, and the fast-­growing women’s movements. It was clear that left-­wing groups had not paid enough attention to women’s issues including what in Marxist language is termed the ‘area of reproduction’, that is, family life and the bringing up of the next generation – as opposed to ‘production’, that is, the world of work where labour is in conflict with capital. By the mid-­1970s, women’s groups at different levels had accumulated a wide repertoire of discussion, solidarity and action methodologies, many of which could be seen as more open or flexible than traditional political party modes of organisation. Their book has much bigger implications than simply the dialogue between feminists and leftists because the relation between political parties and wider movements (e.g. the anti-­racist, environmental or international solidarity movements) is difficult and without better understanding of how to find common ground or unite very different forces, little progress against neoliberalism is possible. The focus on the personal is increasingly linked with the discussion about ‘identities’. Many identity groups face discrimination in society and have little alternative than to fight for recognition, that is, for the understanding, rights and services they are entitled to. But the questions raised by the suggestion that we link more closely the personal and the political affect everyone, from whatever social group. A consciousness and understanding of one’s origins, character, responsibilities and options must surely be a key element in any sustained political or professional action – at a local, national and especially at an international level.

equal. Volunteers were placed carefully in jobs appropriate to their educational qualifications and work experience, though often the institutional and professional framework in the receiving country was quite different. In simple language, often the job or work role that the volunteer carried out in the UK simply did not exist in the receiving country, at least not in the form that they were used to. Therefore, they would have to think on their feet about how to carry out these functions. One of the most important principles in VSO volunteering was ‘skills share’, that is, the idea that each volunteer would find/have a local counterpart/colleague in their new workplace and there would take place an exchange of skills. Here we can see a human-­centred equality principle, but it was beginning to be eroded by managerialism and the top-­down results-­oriented approaches demanded by VSO’s donors (the UK government in particular). Thus, the

International volunteering and solidarity   69

interaction of volunteer and counterpart on the micro-­level (good team work, practical results in the particular job or service) began to assume less importance than ‘higher-­level’ results in the organisation or in the development of wider systems and policies. A second example of the interesting issues raised by VSO/EEP volunteer selection systems came up during group interviews. Typically, volunteers attended a group interview with two, three or four other applicants. During this interview, they acted out a role-­play, which became a classic. The topic for discussion was: what happens if you arrive at your placement in an African country (or Central Asia) and your accommodation has not been arranged properly? Instead, various short-­term options are suggested, from taking a room above a café in the district centre, to staying temporarily with your employer in his residence outside town, to sharing a flat with an existing volunteer etc. Each applicant had a script with slightly different information about the different options and the task was to come to a joint decision about the best choice on offer. On the surface, this is a discussion about what is the safest, most convenient option. Deeper, it is about the role and positioning of a foreign worker in a setting where your every move will be assessed by the local community. It makes a very important point about inter-­cultural relations – that very few choices or actions are not value-­laden or without implication for your work or personal relationships. Here, too, we have the important idea of ‘immersion’, that is to say, community or development work will be more effective if the worker lives alongside the people he or she is serving. Everyday contact will not just provide him or her with more information or insights relevant to work, it might even change his or her way of thinking and bring it more in line with the culture and priorities of the host country or society. We come back to the idea of an exchange; we move away from the idea that an expert from a ‘developed’ country brings lessons to the ‘developing’ country along a one-­way street.

The changing context in the Former Soviet Union region As noted above, EEP was created as a division of the VSO. Its director was an experienced VSO manager and I was one of two regional programme managers (a colleague covered Central and East Europe and the Balkans) reporting to the director. In the wider VSO, there were six–seven other regional development managers covering Africa, Asia, Central America, the Pacific region, etc. At our height, the division had just over 100 volunteers spread across Eastern Europe and the FSU, specialising in social work, health professions, English-­language teaching, NGO and small business development. Quite soon after I began work in EEP, the organisation undertook a review of progress. VSO had established EEP in order to develop a new kind of work appropriate to the transition countries. Supposedly, these countries were on their way to a market economy and pluralist democracy. However, serious problems had arisen, as our analysis showed. ‘In 1998 it is clear that the transition has been

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more successful for some than for others. There are now wide regional, national and sectoral disparities in economic and social well-­being’.3  The facts of increasing poverty and inequality had been laid out in detail by experts from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) a year or so earlier. ‘General poverty’ could be seen in a fall in incomes and GDP similar to that seen in the depression of the 1930 in the West. This was hitting vulnerable groups most of all.4 A year or two later, after the 1998 rouble crash, the situation got even worse. DFID officials estimated that between 38–49 per cent of the Russian population could now be described as poor.5 Many people (including in urban areas) were scraping an existence by selling produce from their household plots, often relying on family networks or selling household items on street corners. Barter of goods had replaced money-­based transactions across industry. Male life expectancy had dipped to below 59 years. A small layer of the population had become rich from the privatisation process.6 Among the priorities that EEP set for the new period were: (1) prioritising the needs of more vulnerable people; (2) focusing on social and civil society development for greater impact; (3) developing new forms of partnership; and (4) new strategies for recruiting volunteers (including youth and volunteers from other countries). To address the challenges of a longer-­term intervention, the VSO began a process of integrating EEP operations into the main body of its development programmes.

Case study 3.2 A volunteering experience in Soviet Russia The VSO model of international volunteering is an important one. While I was at VSO, EEP short-­term placements were not the only initiative or innovation. For example, the organisation began a rather successful move towards South–South volunteering whereby instead of recruiting European volunteers to work in Africa or Asia, experts were found in a neighbouring country, who might adapt more quickly to conditions in the receiving country. And in EEP, we helped to pilot the new European Voluntary Service whereby young people could spend up to six months on a range of more practical project-­based assignments. Indeed, if we take a broader view of this, it’s immediately obvious that many people engage in their own independent form of work abroad, often quite akin to volunteering. Some find jobs as English teachers, others volunteer their labour in youth camps or via religious networks or international solidarity programmes. I had my own experience of work in the USSR from 1978–80 and in retrospect it can be compared with volunteering. My two-­year contract with Novosti Press Agency in Moscow was quite unusual at a time when the USSR was an official enemy of the Western countries and it transformed my knowledge and understanding of the language, culture and everyday realities of the region. Inevitably, my experience of work and life in the USSR underlay my feelings and opinions about what I saw in the region some 15 years later. Here, this two-­year stint will be described briefly, first, as a political volunteering experience, and second, for what it tells us about the

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alternative state-­led development model that existed in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s.  Description of the placement. I had visited Moscow on a one-­month Russian language refresher course in autumn 1977. While in Moscow I visited Novosti to see if I could gain translating work for them in the UK. Instead, after a short trial, they offered me a two-­year contract in the role of style editor in the English department of their Press Agency in Moscow, working with Soviet translators preparing a daily digest of the national press. I was one of just two English native-­speakers working in the department with about 25 Soviet translators and editorial assistants. The role was as a kind of technical language advisor rather than implementer of work, and in this respect it was quite similar to many EEP volunteers. For example, in teachers training colleges, much of EEP volunteers’ work was advising national teachers and experts, rather than undertaking classes themselves. As a style editor, I earned a top-­end Soviet wage, paid partly in local and partly in foreign currency, and in addition my employers provided free accommodation for myself, my wife and son in a four-­room flat in the Sokolniki ­district of northern Moscow. Working conditions were 9 a.m.–5 p.m. in the downtown Novosti press agency office, off Pushkin Square. Our foreign currency earnings could be spent in the special Beriozka shops, saving valuable time queuing for daily shopping. My income was a bit higher than many EEP volunteers and our flat –  located in an ordinary high-­rise housing estate, not far from Sokolniki Metro and Park – was very spacious and comfortable by local standards. But a major difference here was that, unlike EEP volunteers, I had gone out to the USSR with family. There was a big risk element for all of us, especially for my wife, quite apart from being completely unexpected. Our preparation was all done in a couple of months, much less than volunteers in the more organised EEP set-­up. Naturally, working for a Soviet news agency at the height of the Cold War had a political aspect. For most volunteers, this is one of their life’s big experiences and for us this was no exception – strange, new, often difficult but always full of interest. For me, the language editing work was quite tough because of the press agency’s daily deadlines. There was a huge amount of articles to check and the quality of translations varied a lot. The material we published covered virtually every feature of Soviet life, albeit with an official or propaganda slant. Meanwhile, daily life provided many opportunities to compare the official story with unofficial realities. For my wife, things became a lot easier when she could resume her teaching career at Moscow’s international school. In summer 1978, my mother-­in-law came out to join us and helped take care of our son. The press agency had an efficient travel department and with their help we visited Leningrad, Kiev, Novgorod, Abkhazia, Georgia and Uzbekistan. Once we bought a car, family trips round Moscow and its environs became much easier. I had strong left opinions but they were never discussed with my employers, indeed, many of my Soviet colleagues seemed to be much less interested in politics than I was. Being in the office every day, I took part in whatever workplace

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meetings that I was invited to – indeed, I observed all kinds of technical, trade union, Communist Party and Komsomol interactions and discussions. However, active participation in political debates was not seen as part of the job description. I only visited the Party Committee office on the top floor once. This was during a corporate blood donor session when I felt faint and was invited to lie down for a few minutes on the main boardroom table! Like EEP’s international volunteers, our family was constantly ‘on view’ in the host community and the smallest details of how we dressed or what we did took on an importance that we had never experienced as ordinary citizens at home in the UK. As a young British mixed-­race family, we occasioned a lot of interest from day one – since it turned out that Soviet people were very keen to know more about the West, including London life and ethnicity issues more generally. People were continually coming up to us in the Metro, on the streets, in the shops, asking questions and admiring our son. This part of volunteering was a kind of 24/7 responsibility and often quite annoying. Ideologically, there are two approaches that a foreign visitor can tend towards when confronted with different views on what seem to us to be key questions (lifestyle, politics, gender and so on). The first is to advocate strongly for your views wherever possible, in whatever company. This can be quite effective for those who are good at it. The other approach is to keep quiet and listen to other views – after all, two years is an excellent opportunity to learn about a different set of experiences and understandings of the world. Somewhere in between these two extremes comes genuine, respectful and engaged dialogue. Cultural exchange and solidarity. Among all the friends and acquaintances that we made in this two-­year period, two groups stand out. First, my work colleagues Sasha Tyurin and Ludmila Kuropatkova and their family. Sasha sought me out quite early in our time in Moscow. He was a talented journalist, a lover of encyclopaedias and an expert on Tamla Motown music. He and Ludmila lived in her parents’ three-­room flat in north-­west Moscow and soon we began to go there for Sunday lunch, cooked by Ludmila’s mother and grandmother. Hence, we developed a three-­generation cultural exchange, with experiences from the Urals region where Ludmila’s mother was born, through Moscow to London and Jamaica. Ludmila’s father was a veteran of the Battle of Stalingrad and a very highly decorated military officer. The second group whose friendship meant a lot to us was the new Jamaican mini-­community in Moscow. Michael Manley’s left-­oriented government had  just established an embassy in the USSR and embassy staff along with Caribbean and African students at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University became regular visitors to our flat. Several of them became very close friends.

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BOX 3.2  THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF STATE SOCIALISM IN THE USSR In the first two chapters of this book, I painted a picture of the 1970s as a period of political radicalisation in the UK, and the 1980s as a struggle to hang onto gains in the face of a general swing to the right. In my account, the turn of the 1980s in the Soviet Union possesses some of the same elements and I will briefly describe these since they are important for what will be said in the second half of this book.7 After Nikita Khrushchov’s secret speech denouncing Stalin’s crimes to the Communist Party conference in 1954, a political thaw had begun across the USSR, only to gradually slow down once power passed to Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin. By 1977, Brezhnev’s rule was in its last phase. While we can now see more clearly the elements of liberalisation that were there (including the slow re-­emergence of voluntary associations), the regime was actively repressing the dissident movement. And the word ‘stagnation’ was already used to describe its inability to grapple with new economic and political challenges. Looking back, it is clear that many of the problems we saw in Moscow in the late 1970s only got worse in the next few years. In the economic sphere, it was hard to deny the achievements of Soviet industrialisation and planning, but a glance at the daily press (including articles not usually published in Novosti round-­ups) showed how difficult it was for many enterprises to get round the barriers created by the planning system. The Communist Party seemed unsure whether to encourage or stem the process towards greater autonomy for enterprises and more money incentives for workers and managers. The original socialist ideals (including volunteer-­type commitments) were under increasing pressure from market tendencies. The official rhetoric had ceased to focus on the leading role of the working class and more emphasised the country as a ‘state of all the people’. In the housing field, we saw for ourselves the advantages of the massive house-­building schemes set in motion after the destruction of the Great Patriotic War. We lived in a typical estate with a very effective central heating system (and armies of cockroaches in the heating ducts). It took a while to get used to the expansive layout of soviet cities and their wide open spaces, very cold when the winter winds were blowing. Like everyone, we were much impressed by the Moscow Metro and the public transport system in general. Once we were more settled in, I found the time to attend residents meetings held in our housing office and realised that a form of community self-­organisation was taking place – led by the local babushkas who sat on benches outside the entrances to the flats. Rents and service charges for housing were massively subsidised by the state.

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Like most Muscovites, our preference was to shop in the collective farm markets rather than wait in line in the shops. Further study into this issue showed that agricultural production in 1970s USSR was beset by problems and that individual household plots in the countryside played a huge role in vegetable and fruit production for the population. But produce bought at the market was much more expensive than in state shops and not everyone could afford it. This was a time when the grain harvest had a huge political and economic importance for the USSR and at Novosti we were constantly editing articles about it. In the political field, the Soviet press waged an unremitting war against the idea of democracy. Their basic line was that democracy is a sham: behind the freedom of the ballot box lies the reality of economic inequality that is not up for discussion under capitalism. While this is an argument which is quite easy to understand, the problems of the one-­party state were clearly on view in 1970s USSR. As someone who laboured long hours editing Brezhnev speeches and reviews of his autobiographical works, I can testify to the failure of the system to make explicit the political dilemmas and debates that were immanent (semi-­hidden) within many a Soviet text. Gender and ethnicity were issues that we considered we had some experience from 1970s London. But we found that our hosts’ opinions were a bit different on lots of issues. One instance of this is the question of women’s emancipation. Women had clearly made huge professional advances in the USSR, with a dominating role in the health, education, accountancy and legal professions; but women themselves did not always conform to Western feminist models. Another instance is ethnic relations where the history and character of different groups (over 150 nationalities) in the USSR was quite different from the heritage of British colonialism – and not easy to grasp. The Soviet ban on any form of overt or public racialism was in place and working, but under the surface discriminatory attitudes continued to exist. Future trends. It was pretty clear in 1980 that any changes in the USSR would be in a direction leading away from socialism, if we understand the latter to mean: the elimination or reduction in the economic exploitation of the working class; a reduction in gender, national and ethnic inequalities; and a resistance to global capitalism. Members of the intelligentsia whom we met were often very reactionary in their views. This was quite clear to me as I reflected on our soviet experience and read deeper.8 However, as the 1980s got underway, we allowed ourselves to think differently. I write this as someone who, like most people on the Left in the UK, welcomed Gorbachov’s perestroika and glasnost policies – which took precisely this anti-­socialist turn at the end of the decade.

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Case study 3.3  Moving east – a transition travelogue Within a few weeks of taking up the job in VSO, I was on the road in the EE/FSU region. Over the next five years, I travelled regularly (five–six times a year) to projects in nine countries from the Czech Republic in the west to Kazakhstan (and later Mongolia and China) in the east. The aim of these visits was to assess programme possibilities and local needs; to meet potential partners in the region who would be ready to host a volunteer; and once the project was agreed and the volunteer in place, to monitor the progress of the placement and help out where problems arose. Our small UK-­based team relied heavily on our country office in Russia and an in-­country coordinator in the other countries. This travelling lifestyle demanded a great deal of understanding from our families back home. Returning to Moscow in early 1996, after a ten-­year absence, it was amazing to see so many goods in the downtown shops around the corner from Novosti, many of them imported. But my main reaction was one of shock to see so many desperate people in the streets, in particular, so many seemingly respectable old people selling their personal and household belongings. I was escorted to meetings by our Russia director Cathy Judelson, from the same generation of Soviet-­era translators as me. She had come out to Moscow just over a year before and had set up the programme from scratch. Finance came from the British government’s Know-­How Fund. While we were sending British know-­how to Russia in the form of volunteers (English teachers, business advisors, social workers), our director’s Soviet know-­ how had already come in very useful with visas, train timetables, local landlords, and in particular the expectations and psychology of our Russian employers. In the summer and autumn of that year, I did my first visits to volunteer placements in the provinces. First, I travelled to Nizhny Novgorod, an overnight train ride to the east of Moscow, once a closed city to which Andrei Sakharov was exiled, and the birthplace of Maxim Gorky. I visited a young British lecturer teaching at the university – his open, communicative style went down well with students who had never been taught by a native English speaker. Another placement nearby was designed to help tackle the social consequences of the break-­up of collective farms. We drove south to the provincial centre of Arzamas, a traditional centre for pilgrims with a big Russian Orthodox cathedral. Our volunteer was a senior British social services administrator who had just embarked on a survey of villages in the region, finding out how people were coping now that kindergartens, community firewood collection services and social clubs developed under the Soviet social welfare system were closed.  Most of our work in Russia was in the Urals, another 24 hours on the train to the east of Nizhny Novgorod, in the cities of Ekaterinburg and Perm. This too was a closed area pre-­1990, for it was in the low hills of the mineral-­rich Urals region that the Soviet Union relocated much of its arms and heavy industry during Hitler’s invasion. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Russian military spending, all the oblasts (provinces) here faced huge restructuring problems. Among other tasks, we were researching a project proposal on measures to combat

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International volunteers in the EEP/VSO Russia programme

FIGURE 3.2A  Volunteer Mary McAndrew continued to promote children’s rights in Russia after her placement and set up her own organisation in the UK to continue this work

Photo credit: VSO.

FIGURE 3.2B  A large group of VSO volunteers in Yekaterinburg made a significant contribution to new patient-centred care systems at a critical time for the Russian health sector

Photo credit: VSO.

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unemployment. In Ekaterinburg, a city of 1.5 million, the newly established Urals employment service was keen to cooperate with UK agencies. Local administrations in Russia were desperate for assistance; employment, housing, child care, social support – all these used to be provided by major factories relating directly to central government ministries. Local councils inherited them at just the moment that the federal funds dried up, and for the first time, they had to create their own labour market policy. Suddenly, I was as if back in 1980s UK, working in vocational training in East London. A group of unemployed people in their 30s and 40s, mainly women ex-­production line workers, described how hard they had been hit by the loss of their jobs. They mercilessly attacked the young city council researcher who was accompanying with me for the absence of a satisfactory local strategy. In the Baltic States, the VSO’s programme focused on social work and disability. In March 1997, in Vilnius, capital of newly independent Lithuania, I had my first meeting with a representative of Viltis, the Lithuanian welfare society for persons with a mental disability, who had become our in-­country coordinator. In many ways, it was a new issue. Our partners at Viltis told me at our first meeting that: In Soviet times, mentally ill people were hidden away as if they didn’t exist. As parents, you had to either give your child away to a residential home, usually located far away from the main towns. Or if you kept your child at home, there was shame and discrimination, often you couldn’t even tell the neighbours. This project had good links, right up to central government level. Four British volunteers had already started work – two social workers, a nurse and a teacher, all with disability experience, and with some extra funds; we had engaged four young Lithuanian graduates as project counterparts and interpreters. We travelled to meet them on-­site at two provincial centres and two residential units. As in Russia, the social protection units were new, with inexperienced staff and a preoccupation with the distribution of money benefits; links with parents and the wider community were very weak. In Latvia, the EEP volunteers were spread out in different regions, teaching business studies and English in schools, universities and teacher training colleges, and we were planning to work on disability issues too. One of my first meetings was in the Hotel Latvia, an ex-­Intourist monster in the centre of Riga, with a successful businessman who told me how he had used his old Soviet university networks and new British ones to launch a new management training programme. His aim was to create a new cadre of Latvian entrepreneurs. ‘We Latvians control government,’ he said, ‘but the Russians still dominate in business.’ I spent much of the next summer in Latvia; I met my son and we drove down the southern coastline of Latvia. The shore was sandy the whole way, with pine trees coming down to the edge of the beach. But tourism was in spectacular decay, especially in famous holiday resorts like Jurmala just outside Riga where rest homes once run by trade unions for the soviet tourist industry were literally falling apart.

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Our hotel was like a ruined mansion in a Hollywood set. We only saw a handful of new Western-­style B&Bs down the whole coast, and along the roads, agricultural land and collective farm buildings could be seen lying abandoned. Another of our volunteers in Latvia was a farming advisor, and from his employer I heard first hand about the problems of privatisation, the disputes over property and use of farm machinery, and the steep decline in production. New agricultural and selling techniques were being introduced, but they hadn’t taken effect yet – and the prospect of access to the markets of the European Union was still a distant one. EEP’s Central Europe programme – in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary – had been launched on English-­language teaching (often to replace Russian). The switch-­over largely achieved, it was now drawing to a close and we were discussing whether to redirect the programme into NGO development, that is, supporting the new voluntary or ‘third’ sector. On a visit to a national NGO support centre in Budapest, I was impressed by how developed Hungarian organisations already were. With excellent information and advice services, they were now lobbying for a law by which part of your income tax could be paid to a chosen voluntary group rather than central government! If successful, this would give the voluntary sector enormous financial advantages – and a greater influence on government policy too. In another organisation, we arranged to send a volunteer to help with services for the Roma population. This was obviously a huge problem. The Roma community made up over 20 per cent of the population and in socialist times the government had tried to integrate it with the rest of the population, but it now seemed very much cast adrift. Hungary, with a head start under the liberal-­communist Kadar regime and now the HQ of the Soros Foundation and Central European University, had already become a model for Western-­oriented civil society development in the region. Bratislava, capital of Slovakia (recently separated from the Czech Republic) was different – less than half the size of Budapest and in 1996–97 just beginning to renovate old buildings in the city centre. It had an important anti-­fascist history during the Second World War, I learned. The second most important anti-­fascist uprising in Eastern Europe (after Tito’s in Yugoslavia) was organised in the Tatra Mountains in the east of the country. The Slovakian government was unpopular with Western agencies at this time because it was ‘less democratic’. But I was beginning to wonder about some of the terms used. Was it perhaps that the Slovakian leadership was more left-­leaning than the Czech, and that economic ‘shock therapy’ was less enthusiastically embraced? A few months later, I visited Banska Bystrica and a volunteer teaching nearby, in a small town in the mountains. It was a spectacular setting but a difficult time. Strung out along the narrow valleys of Slovakia, there were huge factories which once supplied the whole Eastern bloc with mining, metals and manufacturing. The name of the game now for multinational companies was buy-­ups, asset-­stripping, use of cheap Eastern labour and access to new Eastern markets. Right opposite our volunteer’s flat was an enormous empty brick building like a Lancashire flour mill.

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‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘It was a cigarette factory,’ he said, ‘but a foreign company [called West, as if symbolically] bought it and six months later they took out the machinery and relocated somewhere else.’ Spring–summer 1998. We had launched a pilot youth programme with the European Voluntary Service, working alongside our ‘standard’ professional volunteers. We started in Bucharest, meeting with Romanian social sector NGOs offering services to children and young people. One potential partner was working in telephone help lines, drug problems and sex education; another, in all manner of humanitarian aid projects. I was struck once more by how advanced their leaders were, but gradually I had realised it was a qualitatively different situation from the West. Not only was the NGO sector an attractive professional career, especially for English speakers, but also it was often two, three or even ten times better paid than the public sector. So it attracted capable and ambitious people.  All this time, EEP was in negotiations with different funders as to how to continue its work. A major new stage began when the Labour Party won the UK general election in 1997. VSO was able to negotiate new levels of support for its international development work and began the process of absorbing EEP into its mainstream programme. In Russia, we had begun a big European Union-­funded child protection project. One of our first Russia volunteers, Dina Dominney, helped us to design this project with a Russian NGO partner, the Ozon Centre, and Moscow city administration was putting in resources too. EEP volunteers would help develop needs assessment and case planning, supported by our new Moscow director, Caroline Leveaux. In the Russia programme, we had decided to prioritise projects in health and social welfare. As part of the new strategy adopted in 1999, VSO agreed to switch resources further east and open up a new programme in Kazakhstan, recognising Central Asia as the poorest region in the Former Soviet Union. Our first feasibility trip began in Almaty, the country’s former capital, nestling in the south-­east corner of the country, under the Tien Shan Mountains. Almaty, like other cities at this time, was in the grip of mass unemployment. One of the groups that suffered most were men aged 35–55 years, with careers curtailed and income cut off. In Almaty, over a period of two–three short visits, I conducted a survey among the taxi drivers who transported me around town. I collected a surgeon paediatrician, a couple of university lecturers, an opera singer, a master of sport and several engineers and factory workers – gone to cabbies all! I just hope that at some stage they were able to return to their professions. From Almaty, we moved north-­east along the mountains to Taldykorgan near the border with China; then north-­west through the plains and deserts to the new capital Astana, formerly Tselinograd – ‘town of the virgin lands’9 – and on up to Kostanai near the Urals and the Russian border. Kazakhstan is a big country and rich in oil, gas and minerals. It was also home to the Soviet space programme and an infamous nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk – and very cold. The highlight of my first trips to Kazakhstan were several visits to Tekeli, a small town in the hills outside Taldykorgan, site of a lead/zinc mine and an almost derelict factory that I was told once supplied most of the bullets fired by the Red Army in

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the Second World War. The town was now dying on its feet, the younger people moving away, the sturdy, brick built miners’ homes literally ripped apart for their fittings, in piles of rubble like you see on television after an earthquake. Our planned project was a women’s refuge set up in an abandoned tuberculosis clinic. An Azerbaijani teacher and his Kazakh psychologist wife were creating a home for up to 20 families, mainly single women and their children, refugees from the poverty, despair, alcoholism and domestic violence that gripped these one-­industry towns, robbed suddenly of their livelihood. It was an ambitious project eking out a subsistence lifestyle, the women clients helping with the cooking and cleaning or working in small-­scale production on a small farm for their keep. As usual, we wrote up the project, defined the type of volunteer required and tried to find candidates in the UK. And in this way, we began a new country programme. 

The problem with the transition strategy The transition strategy was thought up for Eastern Europe and the USSR when the previous regimes collapsed – and the term is still used for development programmes in different countries, based on adjustment to the market economy. Local context is always important but I would bet that some of the problems we saw in the FSU have been experienced elsewhere. The experiences described above led me to several conclusions that are briefly described below. The idea of transition as a short process, from one defined point to another, had proved erroneous. First, the countries of Eastern Europe and the FSU had not started from a single point. It was only policy makers’ ignorance that allowed them to think this, in fact, there were huge historical, cultural and economic differences within the ‘Eastern bloc’. Second, the countries were not all travelling in the same direction (despite the hopes and urgings of officials in the Know-­How Fund, ­European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Union and others). Some countries were being encouraged to plan for EU membership; others not. Some were brought into NATO; others were still considered a threat by NATO. Some have an Asian character alongside a European elements and influences. Third, the process of transition had not been the same in all these countries. In a few ­countries, a ‘velvet revolution’ took place; but in others, there was civil war, mafia violence and widespread depression. Fourth, the processes of brain drain and capital flight were undermining the chances for successful adaptation all the time. A telling moment for me came one day when I was sitting in the waiting room of an international accounting firm in Almaty, hoping to get a small contribution from the company for a new volunteer placement in Kazakhstan. I picked up a glossy brochure that the company had prepared for its business clients and, among various luxury adverts, I found that the company was openly advertising a tax-­free haven for capital in the Isle of Man. The small contribution we were asking for (£3,000–£5,000) was nothing compared to the thousands and millions of pounds that were being lost to the FSU in capital flight to offshore zones, aided and abetted by Western companies, governmental and international agencies (nor did they give

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us the little contribution I was asking for). It took several years for those of us working in the region and feeling for its population in this time of crisis to begin to gather our forces for an alternative analysis. The ‘post-­socialist’ school, to give just one example, brought together information from the micro-­level that contradicted the triumphal pro-­Western commentaries on how well the market and pluralistic democracies were developing. Sue Bridger, Chris Hann and Shirin Akiner are just a few examples of writers that helped me to develop my own alternative thinking in the early and mid-­2000s. As for the VSO Russia programme, the third of its three country directors Sergei Aleshonok had some interesting comments on transition and development in his final report as the programme closed in 2003. First, he noted that the initial name of the programme – East European Partnership – had been a good banner for work in the Russian Federation. The European dimension remains hugely important for many people in Russia, he said, also the word ‘partnership’ implied an exchange, rather than a one-­way street where Western ideas are non-­negotiable and Russian or Soviet experience are disregarded. One of the main reasons why VSO closed the programme was its extra costs compared to developing countries in other continents, and here Sergei agreed with the decision. Added to which, VSO’s visual images and narratives focused on the world’s poorest countries, appealing for private donations and public funding, and here Russia could not compete. Indeed, by the mid-­2000s, the country had begun to recover after the calamitous Yeltsin years. It was ready for exchange but didn’t really want ‘aid’ – UK Aid or USAID (though USAID continued its work for almost ten years more). Undoubtedly, the EEP-­VSO programme helped a transition to different forms of social and health care, including new contributions from NGOs like associations of people with disability, patients’ lobbying groups in the health service, youth associations and community groups of all kinds. The final report for the Russia programme noted success at an individual level (training received by different groups of workers); at an organisational level (strengthening of government departments as well as NGOs); and at an institutional and policy level (e.g. promotion of social work, occupational therapy, HIV-­drugs prevention policy and support to indigenous Russian volunteering). However, the policy mistakes of the transition period meant a reversal of development in many areas. Alongside increased unemployment and poverty levels, children, for example, were at risk in far greater numbers than before – both children in social care facilities now starved of funds, or in families without a stable income. In this sense, long-­term development problems were sharpening, not being solved. This was the paradoxical and critical situation Russia and the countries of the region found themselves in.

Conclusion on international solidarity  If we look at the literature on international development in the longer historical frame and compare it with the examples and accounts above, some things leap out. First, there have been definite stages and distinct periods in this kind of activity. From the

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nineteenth century, missionaries led the way in spreading education and health programmes within the British, Spanish and French colonial systems. In fact, up to this day, a large part of the international development sector is financed and managed by religiously inspired organisations – even if many of their programmes are presented and run on a secular basis. Missionaries were out and about in the FSU from the early 1990s. The early Soviet leaders denounced this mode of aid and development as a continuation of imperialism and refused to take part in the League of Nations up until the Second World War (after which they joined the UN and other international bodies). Perestroika weakened and then led to the collapse of this resistance. The solidarity campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s were based on a new kind of mainly left radicalism, born in part out of young people’s opposition to the Vietnam War, US imperialism in Latin America and the continuing Israel–Palestine conflict. Religious and non-­religious programmes in the global South began to work on a long-­term partner or development cooperation basis with local NGOs, trying to reduce the top-­down and paternalistic nature of many poverty reduction programmes. New approaches emerged like the movement for fair trade. For many social activists involved in international solidarity and development, poverty, inequality and injustice in their home country in the USA or Europe was just as much a problem as in other countries – and big efforts were made by more radical agencies to explain the links between exploitation at home and exploitation abroad to the general public. From the 1990s, the issues of human rights and the promotion of civil society became more prominent in the development and international relations fields. The experience of transition in the USSR and Eastern Europe was crucial here, since it was in this region that civil society was considered to have led massive social, economic and political changes, albeit very problematic ones as we have shown above. The transnational activists described by Tarrow (2006) operate above all in the human rights field, with important campaigns in the world justice, workers’ rights, environmental and women’s movements (a good round-­up can be found in Batliwala and Brown, 2006). And yet, from an international solidarity standpoint, the results are disappointing. In autumn 2016, I was back in the Latvian capital Riga, visiting a global education NGO, and I picked up a book by Finnish activists in international development. The book recounted the professional life stories of a dozen activists who, like me, began political and social activism as students in the 1960s and 1970s. For some of them, this was an expression of their Christian commitment to working for and alongside the poor. For others, it was part of a socialist or communist commitment to end political injustice and economic exploitation. The paths taken by different contributors to the book were very various. Many had been involved in the fair trade movement, opening up new ways of bringing products from developing countries to the market in the West. Some had struggled against economic globalisation as expressed and promoted by the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the EU. Others had focused on development education within Finland. They had played a key role in setting up all the main Finnish NGOs devoted to

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solidarity and development issues. Their partners included NGOs from every continent. Sometimes the views of partners from the South had forced them to seriously reconsider their strategies. Despite this long-­term, carefully thought out work, the book is titled Dreams of Solidarity. Why dreams? Why is it that our struggle seems to have brought so few of the successes that we hoped to achieve? Indeed, the different authors in the book are well placed to give an answer to this question – and they do. In a word, it is the system, the forces that are still arranged against us, the weakness of our own forces and the divisions in our ranks (Hakkarainen, Toikka and Wallgren, 2003). How do we assess the work done by volunteers in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s and 2000s against the aims and standards of international solidarity? First, we need to remember the situation inherited from the Cold War in 1990. Up until that time there were very few contacts between the West and East – and those that existed fell clearly into the pro-­communist or anti-­communist camps.10 EEP, VSO and other NGOs led the way in trying to open up communications and find common ground. The role of VSO volunteers was much less political than many of today’s human rights activists. On the other hand, the very apolitical role of volunteers gives their experience a huge potential strength. They are not just talking about issues, they are engaged in solving real problems with real people. And ‘bearing witness’ to what they had seen with their own eyes, or heard ‘from the horse’s mouth’ was one of the opportunities and responsibilities of returning volunteers. This was especially effective when volunteers returned to their own professional activity in the UK and could give talks or write articles for specialist associations.11 In VSO, a huge attempt was made not just to prepare volunteers for work abroad but to enable their continued commitment to development ideals once they came home. Many returned volunteers (RVs) became paid-­up members of VSO and took an active part in its local branches or in other organisations with an internationalist or development education remit.12 Relatively few of them were able to get a job in international development. Most had to find work anew – only rarely did their previous employers hold a job open for them. So the first months back home could be quite difficult. On the other hand, the opportunity for self-­reflection and to look at their profession from a new angle gave RVs an advantage in the labour market. I well remember the regular get-­togethers in VSO’s offices in Putney during which recently returned volunteers were given the chance to stand up with an object that they had acquired during their placement and describe what it meant, what they had achieved with it, what they had learned, etc. This was often quite hilarious, and it also showed what a long distance people had travelled and some of the difficulties of communicating their experience to others – or hanging on to it for yourself. In my own case, returning from the USSR in 1980, I did some talks about the realities of Soviet life for left-­wing groups and took an active role in the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR.13 I spent one year teaching Russian language at the University of Surrey. And then the opportunity came up to go back to the

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voluntary sector in East London. The job I was offered was in a community project called Tower Hamlets International Solidarity, funded by the development education departments of Oxfam and Christian Aid. In this way, I made my first steps towards international development.14 In 2006, the old EEP-­VSO team reunited in London with a special RV meeting for our region. In promoting international understanding, the volunteers in the Balkans had worked in an environment no less difficult than in the FSU, what with the wars in Former Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing of Belgrade. The forms of continuing commitment by RVs and ex-­staff were quite various. Some volunteers maintained links with their previous employers – for example, with children’s homes and disability NGOs in Russia – and some had even been back to the region to visit friends and professional colleagues. Others were engaged in networking or advocacy groups – for example, in the global education field or campaigns in support of migrants. Others had found local authority twinning schemes (linking towns in the UK and other countries) that they could contribute to on a regular basis. Others had given presentations to professional networks like the BEARR Trust with its focus on health and social welfare in the FSU region. Cold War-­based associations gradually fell away after 1990, but it is sad to say that few sufficiently influential exchange or solidarity associations have appeared to take their place. Even the international peace movement that played such an important role in the Cold War period, challenging the stand-­off between the USA and the USSR and appealing for good sense and disarmament, gradually lowered its focus and level of activity in the region. This is despite the deterioration in relations between the USA, Europe and Russia that began about the time our volunteer programmes ended, in the mid-­2000s, despite the rapid rearmament in the USA and Russia that has taken place since then. This is a topic we return to at the end of my book.

Ragged North–South partnership exercise Imagine that you are working in an international development NGO and that you invited your long-­term Indian NGO partners to the UK to discuss future plans. However, at the end of their visit, your Indian guest NGO representatives made the following comment:

After visiting a number of urban, working-­class areas in UK, we were in a state of shock. Why do you assume that our development problems in India are worse than yours? Our visit shows that in many respects the social and economic problems on your depressed housing estates are worse than those in our villages.15 How could you address this analysis in a new partnership project with your Indian partners? What could your organisation do in the information sphere to present a more balanced view of development problems in the UK and India?

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Further reading on international solidarity and transition in the former Soviet Union Akiner, Shirin, 2002. ‘Prospects for Civil Society in Tajikistan’, in Amin Sajoo (ed.), Civil Society in Comparative Muslim Contexts. London: I.B. Tauris. Batliwala, Srilatha and L. David Brown (eds), 2006. Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Bridger, Sue and Frances Pine, 1998. Surviving Post-­Socialism: Local Strategies and Regional Responses in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union. London: Routledge. Buckley, Mary (ed.), 1997. Post-­Soviet Women: from the Baltic to Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooke, Bill and Uma Kothari (eds), 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed Books. Hakkarainen, Outi, Miia Toikka and Thomas Wallgren (eds), 2003. Dreams of Solidarity: Finnish Experiences and Reflections from 60 Years. Helsinki: Kepa. Hann, Chris and Elizabeth Dunn (eds), 1996. Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge. Kaldor, Mary, 2003. Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kaldor, Mary, 2012. New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kotz, David M. and Fred Weir, 2007. Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin: The Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia. London: Routledge. Rist, Gilbert, 2008. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books. Roberts, Glyn, 1974. Questioning Development. London: Returned Volunteer Action. Rowbotham, Sheila, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright, [1979] 2013. Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. London: Merlin Press.  Sedaitis, Judith and Jim Butterfield, 1991. Perestroika from Below: Social Movements in the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Steele, Jonathan, 1994. Eternal Russia. London: Faber and Faber. Tarrow, Sidney, 2006. The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In my books, The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2011) and Russia and Development: Capitalism, Civil Society and the State (London: Zed Books, 2014), there are longer bibliographies devoted to these topics as they relate to the FSU region.

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Notes   1 By this time, the organisation had renamed itself ELATT (East London Advanced Technology Training) reflecting its wider coverage, in particular in the neighbouring borough of Hackney.   2 This term was used by Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari (eds), in their book Participation: The New Tyranny? (London: Zed Books, 2001).   3 ‘VSO Strategic Plan for Eastern Europe 1999–2003’ (London: VSO, 1997).   4 ‘DFID Support to Transition Countries – A New Strategy’ (London: Know How Fund and DFID, 1997).   5 The Russian government’s official poverty level was anything below $6 per day. In some developing countries, a poverty level of $1 per day is often used, but DFID officials decided that this was not appropriate in the harsh climatic conditions of the Russian Federation. They suggested a better poverty level is somewhere between $2–4 per day.   6 ‘DFID Russia Country Strategy Paper 2001–05’ (London: DFID, 2001).   7 It should be noted that even the most ideological articles written for Novosti News Agency did not describe the USSR as having reached the level of a ‘communist’ society (though the regime was referred to as communist). Rather, they used the term ‘real’ or ‘actually existing’ socialism. The standard explanation for these two different levels of development was as follows: under communism, each person receives benefits ‘according to their needs’; while under actually existing socialism, people should receive benefits ‘according to their work’.   8 For the analysis of the USSR at the start of the 1980s, I found useful: Herbert Marcuse on Soviet Marxism; E.H. Carr, Victor Serge and Isaac Deutscher on Soviet history; Alec Nove and Moshe Lewin on economic debates; Aleksandra Kollontai and Ernest Mandel on women’s liberation; and Leon Trotsky and the journal Critique for the left alternative. For reasons of space, I have not included books on the USSR in my reading lists.   9 Referring to Khruschev’s 1950s campaign to plough up the steppes and make the USSR self-­sufficient in grain. 10 For example, in the UK, there was a British–Soviet Friendship Society, supported by the Soviet government, and a GB–USSR Society supported by the British government. Similar politically contending associations existed in different forms all round the world. 11 Tarrow (2006) writes that the most effective transnational activists are people who have a strong political or professional activity base in their own countries; in his vocabulary, they are ‘rooted cosmopolitans’.  12 Many adopted a radical and questioning attitude to their own experience as volunteers. See, for example, Glyn Roberts, Questioning Development (Returned Volunteer Action, 1974). 13 Now renamed as the Society for Cooperation in Russian and Soviet Studies (SCRSS). 14 For a while, when friends asked me what I was up to these days, I could nonchalantly reply, ‘Oh, this and that …’. 15 This comment is paraphrased from the report of a visit by Indian NGO leaders to UK in the 1980s: Across the Geographical Divide. A Report on the Visit of Stan and Mari Thekaekara to the UK in May 1994 to Look at Community Development and Regeneration (London: Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action, 1994).

4 NGO capacity builder  Organisational development in Central Asia in the transition period

Introduction: CS development programmes in Central Asia Civil society development programmes were a central feature of the international agencies’ plan for the transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU); it was a three-­pronged strategy in which the development of CSOs occupied an important place alongside the leading role for the market and a much reduced role for the state (Howell and Pearce, 2001). While some experts and policy makers saw the future relations between the three sectors as consensual and harmonic, others foresaw a potential conflict between the state and civil society as the state drew back and civil society marched forward to take its place. By contrast, in transition thinking, civil society and market (capitalist) development were expected to proceed in parallel. Both sectors relied on the development of a new middle class, new private initiatives, new consumer and community demands that they would in time be able to satisfy. The role of the state was slightly enhanced in the concept of socially responsible capitalism promoted by Tony Blair, in which civil society complements but doesn’t replace the state. Indeed, the various conflicts that had taken place around the FSU region had shown that the state was still necessary to retain order in society (and to take orders from the leading countries and international agencies). In the USA, the term ‘non-­profit’ was used to describe what in the UK is called the voluntary sector. It is interesting to note that ‘non-­profit’ is an economic not a political term. In fact, the work of the Johns Hopkins University (based in Baltimore in the USA), which came to lead international research on these questions, very often focused on its economic role in capitalist society, that is, how many CSOs there are in a given country, how many jobs they account for, what investments have been made in civil society and what economic weight the sector has.

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Each of the major donors had their own way of theorising and expressing civil society interventions around the world. For example, from 1997–98, the DFID emphasised the role of Southern NGOs in development in a ‘demand-­led’ approach from which the poor in society would ultimately benefit. By contrast, civil society is closely linked to democratisation in the rhetoric of USAID, that is, CS development was often used to support US foreign policy objectives. The World Bank, in its turn, focused more on economic development issues. It was already caught up in major battles with NGO critics of its policies at global level; therefore, one of its main objectives was to avoid sparking broader opposition movements among CSOs. There were three main ways in which the donors supported civil society: (1) funding new NGOs; (2) building their capacity as organisations; and (3) encouraging networks and coalitions between NGOs in support of their shared or wider aims. The first two strategies began to be employed in Central Asia from the mid-­ 1990s (Garbutt, 2003). I was already a dissident as regards the aims and effects of transition strategy by the time I left VSO. On the other hand, it was clear that after ten years of de-­ development in the region, new long-­term development strategies were called for and that new voluntary associations of different kinds could play a useful role. For example, disabled people’s organisations were among those who felt the worst effects of transition, and the VSO’s programmes in the Baltic States, Russia and Kazakhstan had created important partnerships helping to maintain and even improve services for both adults and children. Other NGOs had sprung up to meet the crisis in children’s homes, or to tackle unemployment and environmental questions. Even the very first mappings of the NGO sector in Central Asia, carried out at the end of the 1990s, show a very wide range of organisations and sectors being covered (Giffen, Earle and Buxton, 2005). Moreover, as analysts began to delve a bit deeper, they discovered that elements of civil society had been active in Central Asia back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that on the eve of independence, CSOs in Almaty, Kazakhstan and in Tajikistan’s civil war (1992–97), civic associations supporting both the Democratic Party and the Islamic Opposition, played a significant ideological and mobilising role. It had become clear to me by the late 1990s that NGOs in Eastern Europe and the FSU were struggling with many of the same issues in setting up and developing an organisation as I had seen in East London a decade earlier – albeit in the midst of a more serious economic and social collapse. Civil society development seemed to be part of a more general grass-­roots, bottom-­up strategy that would focus on people’s needs rather than the get-­rich-quick aims of the businessmen and politicians across the region. There was an urgent need to support collective actions at a local level and to counter the almost universal sense of desperation and despair.1 Maybe my experience could be useful. At any rate, I could show some international solidarity. And so, in 2002, I started a new job as regional coordinator of a programme for civil society in the five ex-­Soviet republics of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Since 2002, I have been living in

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Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, working around the region for INTRAC, a registered charity and specialist in civil society capacity building with its head office in Oxford.

Development context in Central Asia: was the USSR a colonial system? As successive studies into the patterns of development funding show, a very large proportion of international aid is spent by former colonial powers in their former colonies. This can be viewed either positively or negatively, that is, as representing a continuation of relationships established in the colonial period, for common ends (the mainstream political view), or as neo-­colonial exploitation of the ex-­colony by other means (the alternative political view). One thing is quite clear: the system needs lots of ragged trousered/skirted individuals and organisations to carry out development policies, whatever they may be. A regional historical perspective. Central Asia was the poorest region of the USSR. The five present-­day countries of the region had been incorporated into the Tsarist Empire in an uneven, gradual process over three centuries. The northernmost country of the region, Kazakhstan, was colonised first, from the north, province by province and not without armed resistance. By contrast, the people of what is now Kyrgyzstan accepted Russian rule in the late nineteenth century as a way of gaining respite from the Kokand Khanate, based in Fergana Valley in present-­day Uzbekistan. The feudal rulers of Kokand, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva all resisted Tsarist colonisation as best they could. The conquest of Turkmenistan by Tsarist armies around the same time was very violent. By contrast, Tajikistan (large parts of which were put into Uzbekistan when the Soviet leaders established the Soviet socialist republics during the 1920s and 1930s) was the most distant and remote region from Moscow and its incorporation mostly took place during the Soviet period. By 1991, when the five countries of the region became independent, they had been transformed (the word is not an exaggeration) by 70 years of rapid social and economic development – literacy, education, gender relations, development of agriculture and even some industry. The years from 1950 were particularly important for Central Asia in development terms. A major construction programme took place, in human, institutional and infrastructure terms, with huge gains to the population. Looking back, we can see that in 1991 far from all potential for development within the socialist system had been exhausted in Central Asia – despite an unbalanced economy and many political, social and ecological challenges. At the same time, traditional power systems (feudal lords, clans, religious structures) and age-­old mechanisms for solving family and community problems, religious practices and rituals had been driven underground, severely weakened but not completely wiped out (Roy, 2000). The October 1917 Revolution led to a very complicated overlay of issues. The proclamation of a new socialist regime led to civil war in which all parts of the country – from the Baltic to the Pacific – were involved at one time or another, and in which all social groups – rich and poor, indigenous peoples or settlers, workers or

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peasants – were forced to make life or death choices. Some radical, modernising Muslim groups like the Jadidists in Uzbekistan and Alash in Kazakhstan collaborated with the Bolsheviks up until the 1920s. The civil war between Reds and Whites created a situation very far from what one might call ‘colonialism as usual’, since private landlords even in the most far-­flung areas like Central Asia were obliterated in the process. Indeed, the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s, the hardships of the Great Patriotic War, and the major development programmes of the post-­war period referred to above all demanded huge efforts from ordinary people and resulted in a unique ‘Soviet’ experience (good or bad as the case may be). As the years go by, we see that this history still has a resonance for millions of people across the post-­Soviet space. That is, the experience of people’s parents, grandparents or great grandparents, engaged or repressed in the process of Soviet construction, ‘collected’ in the mass collectivisation processes or ‘lost’ in war, exile or prison-­camps, educated, professionalised and brought into the modern nation-­ building process, still demands reflection and the making of political judgements. However, analysis of the Tsarist and Soviet period was not uppermost in the minds of the neoliberal reforms and their development ‘foot soldiers’ in the 1990s (at least, if they were thinking about it, they did not put it to paper). The region was taken either as a ‘clean sheet’ or development workers hoped and expected that approaches, tools and experiences in other regions of the world would work here. This had been a closed region, therefore, everything was new – except to the inhabitants of the region – for whom it was never closed and not new at all. But it was to be ten years or so before they got any real say in development policy in the region.

Capacity building within a programme for institutional development of civil society The term ‘capacity building’ is widely used in the development sector, but not it seems much outside it. Sometimes the terms ‘capacity development’ or ‘capacity strengthening’ are preferred, to avoid the implication that the person or organisation did not have any capacity before. In fact, there are important political questions at stake here, the first being: who decides that a person or organisation needs capacity building? Who defines capacity needs? And in the succinct Russian phrase kto kovo? Who does it to whom? This returns us to the question of aid versus exchange that the VSO Russia director raised. At the beginning of the post-­1991 process, it was definitely more aid than exchange in Central Asia. In civil society development programmes, capacity building is conceived on several levels, that is, capacity can be identified or strengthened at individual, team, organisational, sector or even society level. At its best, a capacity-­building programme will be holistic, working at different levels simultaneously and making connections between training, discussion and exchange at different levels. ‘In its simplest form, capacity is understood as an “ability to” or “power to” be or do’ (Lipson, 2008). During the 1990s, donors responded to requests from initiative groups or registered NGOs to provide training courses on NGO set-­up and

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­ anagement, project design, project monitoring and evaluation and so on. However, m NGOs and development projects do not operate in a vacuum and it became necessary to consider how to make them more effective within wider society. In the civil society programme in which I began work, several aspects can be mentioned as particularly important. First, there was a conscious attempt to promote civil society as a sector. The full name of the programme was ‘Institutional Development of Civil Society in Central Asia’; that is, the aim was not just to support particular NGOs, communities or issues, but also to strengthen links and create practices that would go across the whole sector. This was an extremely ambitious programme, if we take the words at their face value: imagine trying to develop civil society across a whole region! But this was the style of the times, as if we were operating in a green field with no obstacles and just the horizon all around.

Case study 4.1 Coordination of a regional civil society capacity-­building programme What did it mean to become the in-­country coordinator of an international development programme? In what way was it different from being a coordinator or manager of an organisation in London? What relation does this role have to our theme of social activism? How can such a role be carried out in a progressive and useful way, given the problems of the external political and economic situation that have been referred to in previous chapters? In the following sections, I briefly describe this work, the structure within which a development programme operates, and try to give some answers to the wider questions. As always, this account is trying to be specific and the analysis may not apply to all situations or answer all questions. INTRAC’s programme for ‘Institutional Strengthening of Civil Society in Central Asia’ was funded by the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID). With a budget of just over £2 million for a two-­year contract, this was quite small, compared to many development projects, especially those with an economic or infrastructure character. INTRAC was lucky to win this project – they normally went to larger international NGOs, big private sector companies, or the money-­earning adjuncts of universities and public sector organisations in the UK. For a small UK charity (INTRAC had just 20 staff and no overseas offices), this was quite an achievement. The organisational and management strategies of INGOs are under the microscope these days. But even 15 years ago, they were much discussed (Eade and Kothari, 1999; Lewis and Wallace, 2000). At VSO, I had worked alongside regional programme managers for South Asia, East Asia and Pacific, East and West Africa, all of whom were managing country offices with large premises, fleets of four-­ wheel drives, and a big local staff team made up of drivers, guards, cleaners, office workers, right up to programme officers coordinators and technical experts. That is to say, big accumulations of power and resources! By contrast, none of the EEP operations had a car. Our only country office, Russia, employed three staff in a single office room. This was INTRAC’s approach too.

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The organisation had already been working in Central Asia for several years – I had met the regional manager, Anne Garbutt, while visiting Almaty in 1998 – but the new DFID contract demanded a rapid expansion. Offices were opened in Bishkek, Almaty and Tashkent. At the height of the programme, we employed ten local staff across the three offices. Two country managers reported to me: one covering Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; the other covering Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The region was a big one – 60 million people approximately at the turn of the new century. DFID ran its programmes under country level agreements with the five governments of Central Asia. Our Bishkek office operated under its umbrella; INTRAC had no formal registration in Kyrgyzstan but was permitted to open a bank local account, receive funds from the UK and spend them in the region. We paid no tax on money spent in the programme. The situation was significantly tighter in Uzbekistan, where local staff had to pay income tax, for example, and financial reporting to the government was more detailed. I learned that these conditions were very similar to those under which major development projects funded by the USA (e.g. under USAID), other European governments and the European Union operated. We had almost complete operational autonomy in Kyrgyzstan where, under the liberal regime of President Akayev, no government ministry had been given the task of supervising links with civil society programmes. By contrast, in Kazakhstan, we maintained contact with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Culture, meeting with officials from time to time to inform or consult them about workshops or other events that we were planning. The management-­light arrangements that INTRAC in Central Asia made have become more prevalent with INGOs in other regions, as they contract more and more operations to their NGO partners. Indeed, at the beginning of the 2000s, VSO was beginning to move away from the delivery of services (i.e. volunteer projects based on direct teaching or delivery of health services) to more of a capacity-­ building or policy role. The UK policy agenda. Undoubtedly, in the minds of the Whitehall officials who designed our programme, there was an ambitious idea that by strengthening civil society, DFID would ensure that its input into government or even donor policy in the region would help neoliberal reforms proceed more smoothly, taking necessary account of the views of the population and local communities. This fitted into the strategy that had been put together by the John Major government in the early 1990s and would be continued with limited changes by the Tony Blair government into the 2000s. That is to say, it would provide the element of popular participation that had become essential in development strategies with a ‘grass-­roots’ aspect. Bishkek was the regional office of DFID and I used to attend quarterly meetings at which representatives of the main development projects attended to give short updates. They included projects on health reform (the break-­up of the public health service and introduction of paid services); tariff reform (an attempt to significantly raise the fees paid by households for electricity, gas, water, rubbish disposal and other municipal services); reorganisation of the state statistics service; a project for

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improving hygiene and sanitation in rural areas; and various high-­level proposals for the reorganisation of state structures, agencies and even whole ministries. I looked on much of this with scepticism and tried to concentrate on the needs and strategies of the CSOs we were working with.2 A feature of international development is that policies which many people at home consider a disaster are promoted with other nations as a great success that they should emulate if they can. Thus the UK’s system of representative democracy, which appeared in the 1980s and 1990s to have gone into terminal decline, with low voter support and gridlocked discussions on so many issues, was actively discussed with government and CS leaders in Eastern Europe and the FSU, who were only too happy to take up an invitation to visit London and see Parliament or local government in action for a week or two. The same goes for reforms in health and education (e.g. government cutbacks and privatisation), which were highly controversial in Europe but actively promoted if not imposed upon other countries (under the so-­called ‘structural adjustment’ policies). This is not to say that the UK government officials and external consultants who promote Western policy are stupid; but they are under contract to promote certain lines of work and the qualifying statements they might express (e.g. about problems that arise with these policies back home) are quite limited compared to the main message and recommendations. And many, perhaps most of them, agreed with these policies. The linkage of personal, professional and political aspects. As a social/NGO sector manager coming from the UK environment into international development, several things had struck me immediately at the VSO. First, attention to and understanding of local issues in partner countries (especially if we are going to look at alternative, not official history, as I suggested is important in Chapter 1) is much harder to achieve if ‘your’ region stretches across Asia or includes 60 million people. In reality, this can be done much better by local staff and experts. But these individuals, however well qualified, may not have a very high status or level of influence in the head office or your organisation. Indeed, they may not completely agree with the political assumptions or views of your organisation. Second, national issues are much more important than local ones – and are highly affected by inter-­government relations between the ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ country and the mass media back home, who generally promote all kinds of stereotypes, prejudices and enmities. These power relations were analysed in INTRAC’s materials as being part of the ‘aid chain’, in which power and resources are seen to pass downwards from (northern-­western) government donors, via international NGOs, to local (southern-­eastern) NGOs and thence to local communities and final beneficiaries. Participants at our workshops much appreciated critical and analytical materials on key issues like this, but changing the balance of power within the aid system was a far-­off objective at that time. Third, on the individual level, there is almost always an enhancement in status for the development worker. Almost any person who leaves work in their own country and becomes an ex-­pat – whether volunteer, consultant, programme officer or embassy official – finds themselves dealing with wider issues than they did

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at home and comes under the temptation to ‘throw their weight around’. As noted in Chapter 3, you can become a celebrity without any real reason for why you should be one. In this way, you become a link in the aid chain, wielding power or distributing resources in a good or bad way, and only a consciously adopted alternative political, organisational and personal agenda can counter this in the long run. Finally, in international development, there is another temptation – to think in so-­called ‘global’ terms, that is, to raise your own views, values and interests to a higher level and begin to assume that they apply to everyone else. This is the ideology of globalism or in our field – global civil society – that became a major plank in the spread of neoliberalism from the 1990s. Of course, there are significant differences of opinion about globalisation as expressed by different organisations (including many famous INGOs) or on the Internet. Indeed there is the work of hackers, saboteurs, human rights activists and even revolutionaries in some countries, trying to disrupt the system of global capitalism or the working of internet-­ based control systems. But, at present, we don’t see an overall challenge to neoliberalism – at least not in the development sector. Which is a pity. Management. As a development project manager, various more practical challenges arise. First, there is a human resources issue. Ex-­pat staff spend a relatively short time in the country – say two–three years – and this is a short time in which to ground themselves in the language, culture and development issues. International consultants visit for even shorter periods – from a few days to a few weeks typically. The effect of this is that ‘global’ assumptions and approaches dominate the agenda. This is compounded by the attitude or local staff, many of whom see international agencies as a way of learning about what is going on in the wider world, earning a reasonable salary and carving out a future career. They willingly go along with the ruling agenda and may even block access to resources for other local people (the negative ‘gatekeeper’ role). International positions consume a large part of many development project budgets. At the time I began work in INTRAC, the rate for an international consultant was £250–300 per day (and our rates were not generous in UK terms), while the salary of a local staff member might be the equivalent of £250–300 per month, and the monthly salary of a local government official or NGO worker might be half or one-­third of that. This is just one aspect of the structural inequality that so seriously affects the international development system. And of course, the inequalities and injustices are much starker in government and business than they are in NGOs. We can work round the edges of this – for example, adopting the most progressive attitude we can to local staff pay and conditions – but to address the situation more fundamentally is difficult. In organisations that have to take a long-­term international approach – the United Nations agencies, for example – we see not only a convergence of many staff polices and conditions between international and national workers, but also the creation of new layer of people quite significantly privileged in comparison to local and national cadres in their own country; and also, some rules on the contracting of experts that are almost impossible to observe on a daily basis.

BOX 4.1  DEVELOPMENT GAPS AND INEQUALITY TABLE 4.1  Development and inequality: indicators for the USA, UK, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

Indices (country positions in the indices are shown in brackets)

USA

UK

Russian Federation

Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan

Average monthly wage in US$ (2012) Human development index (2017) Gender inequality index (2018) Happy Planet index (2016) Gross national income per capita (2017)

3,263 3,065 1,215 336 753 0.924 (13) 0.922 (14) 0.816 (49) 0.672 (122) 0.800 (58) 0.189 (41) 0.116 (25) 0.257 (53) 0.392 (91) 0.197 (43) 20.7 (108) 31.9 (34) 18.7 (116) 33.1 (31) 19.1 (114) 54,941 39,116 24,233 3,255 22,626

Tajikistan

227 0.650 (127) 0.317 (69) 34.2 (25) 3,317

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development: reproductive health, measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates; empowerment, measured by the proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and the proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education; and economic status, expressed as labour market participation and measured by labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older. HDI and GII help to expose the differences between and within countries’ development policy. Both were developed within the United Nations system. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) measures life expectancy, experienced well-­being, inequality of outcomes, and ecological footprint in order to determine the countries that are able to deliver not just the longest and happiest, but also the most sustainable lives to their populations. Created by the UK-­based New Economic Foundation, HPI stands the whole system of development indicators ‘on its head’. In this system, ‘the last shall come first and the first shall come last’.

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Some ‘ragged’ comparisons from Table 4.1: The highest Gross National Income per capita (USA) is 16.8 times higher than the lowest (Kyrgyzstan) The highest Average Monthly Wage (USA) is 14.3 times higher than the lowest (Tajikistan) The highest Human Development Index figure (USA) is 1.4 times higher than the lowest (Tajikistan) The highest Gender Development Index (UK) is 3.3 times higher than the lowest (Kyrgyzstan) The highest Happy Planet Index (Tajikistan) is 1.8 times higher than the lowest (Russian Federation)

Commentary: In the development field, NGOs often use figures of this kind to ‘sell’ our services with the general public – arousing their sympathy or pity as regards the population of poor countries or specially disadvantaged groups in them. Indeed, the facts of poverty and inequality speak for themselves and demand a response. However, my intention in presenting Table 4.1 is to highlight something else. The economic indicators show a much higher level of inequality between rich and poor countries than the indicators for human development or gender equality. That is to say, the greatest inequality is in the economic sphere where market relations dominate in what people own or earn. The differences in human capacity and well-­being are much less significant and when issues like contribution to environmental degradation are added in, poorer rural countries may even come higher than richer urban ones. My conclusion from this analysis is not just that we should fight inequality and injustice, but that experience in the South and East could be very useful in the North and West; so Southern and Eastern activists and experts could take a much more prominent role in global debates and leadership than they do at present. Bishkek was a very congenial place to run the DFID programme. The city is situated at the far southern edge of the Central Asia steppes and deserts. Less than 20 km away, the Tien Shan Mountains rise up towards a height of 4,000 metres, in a long East–West wall, the highest peaks capped in snow all summer. I had briefly visited Bishkek, travelling by car from Almaty while at VSO and was immediately impressed by its leafy green centre and more leisurely pace of life. The climate in Kyrgyzstan was great too: blue skies four days out of five, snowy but not over-­cold winters and hot summers. From our office window in central Bishkek, we could enjoy the whole mountain panorama in 2002, but over the next 15 years, elite housing projects, thrown up in the absence of any city development plan, began to block the view section by section – and unbridled imports of second-­hand, mainly German and Japanese cars, gradually fouled up the streets.

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BOX 4.2  CIVIC EDUCATION AS LIBERATION For many people in the international development field, inspiration comes from Latin America and the work of liberation thinkers and educators like Paolo Freire. In his works The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) and Cultural Action for Freedom (1970), he presented literacy and education campaigns as tools for social revolution. One of the key terms in Freire’s vocabulary is ‘conscientisation’ – learning how to perceive the social, political and economic aspects of the oppressive system that we live in. Another key idea is that development projects and programmes should aim not to solve problems but rather to pose them – both to ourselves and to those around us. ‘Problem-­posing’ education is contrasted with ‘banking education’ – the latter being based on the idea that the consultant or trainer presents a ready-­made solution, so the student simply has to bank the knowledge that has been delivered to them. Problem-­posing education, by contrast, dissolves the space between teacher and student and brings them together in shared consciousness of the larger challenges facing not just them but the whole movement for liberation. According to Freire, our aim is to tackle together a dehumanising system that divides people into oppressors and the oppressed. The oppressor is afraid of losing the freedom and resources that he has, with which commit violence against the oppressed. And the oppressed often suffer from a fear of freedom, a lack of confidence in their ability to transcend their current situation, or to find a new voice and role. The civic educator or leader in a liberation programme presents the ultimate goal as revolution (social transformation). In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the principles of a participatory and bottom-­up approach have been adopted by many development agencies. However, the anti-­imperialism of Freire and other radical Latin American educators (e.g. Ivan Ilych) is hardly to be found in civil society in this region. Once again, historical and current context issues play a big role. The political and economic heritage of the Soviet period is quite different from colonialism in Africa, South Asia or Latin America. For example, no big private land or plantation owners were left behind at independence. In Kyrgyzstan, the land was split up among families in the early 1990s; in the other countries, most of the collective farms continued to be run as famers’ associations under tight guidelines set by the state. The literacy level of the population – even in the poorest Soviet republics – had reached over 95 per cent. Like in Latin America, many of the most vociferous democracy NGOs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the transition period were funded by the US State Department, USAID, individual European governments and the European Union, working within a hegemonic project whose frame was set by those donors. However, in the FSU, there was no social movement of workers or the landless peasants to lead progressive minded NGOs to an alternative set of political positions.

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P1 – Training and community development INTRAC’s DFID-­funded programme had four main objectives: (1) to build organisational capacity among a number of key CSOs in the three main countries targeted by the programme (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan); (2) to raise the skills and knowledge of CS staff and activists; (3) to research what community development means or could offer in the region; and (4) to improve communications and networking between CSOs and donors. In the pages that follow, I will call this programme P1 so as to distinguish it from the programmes we ran later. There is one aspect about P1 that needs to be remembered: as a capacity-­ building programme, it did not set out to achieve end-­results like infrastructure built, humanitarian aid or social services delivered to people, but rather to enable other organisations and individuals to work more effectively. Another way of putting this is that INTRAC and NGO support organisations (NGOSOs) like it are secondary-­level organisations – helping primary-­level organisations to do their work with local people (youth, women, farmers, elderly) and carry out technical or thematic projects (in agriculture, social services, small business development or whatever).

The NGO training programme One of INTRAC’s flagship projects in P1, a training programme for NGO support workers,3 had already begun work in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by the time I started work. It was designed to train a new generation of local trainers and advisors to support the community groups and NGOs that were now springing up across the region. In each country, a group of 20 participants were selected from among NGOs working at the district or provincial level. These were organisations that had an office or resource centre open to local activists; they collected information on local events, staff vacancies and fundraising programmes, and ran training programmes. Coming into this programme – not as a trainer, but as the overall programme manager – I found myself alongside a group of people with whom I had a considerably affinity. Most of the participants were NGO founders or leaders, with (by 2002–03) some ten years of experience in the sector. Like me, they had set up an organisation from scratch and had learned how to work to a local agenda. Most NGO leaders had higher education, whether technical or in the humanities; many had a background in the Komsomol and a few in the Communist Party too, while others were non-­party people. To achieve this transition, they had been forced to make a complete change in their work and career perspectives. They were on the whole open, enthusiastic and confident people. Over time, we noted that there were two main types of local NGOSO emerging. The first was an across-­the-board resource centre, set up with international funding and catering to all groups equally. The second was an organisation with its own niche or mission – for example, working with women or democracy issues, most likely foreign funded, too – which then opened an NGO resource centre as a second line of work. They both had their own advantages at that time.

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Case study 4.2 A local NGO resource centre  NGO Umut is a social sector NGO, located in Balykchy – a town at the top end of the deep ravine leading up to Issyk-­kul Lake. In Balykchy, the wind is always blowing hard out of the gully. The town was called Rybache in Soviet times – both names meaning ‘fishing’ – and this was an industrial town, railhead and port with a largely Russian working-­class population. Then suddenly the USSR fell apart, the railway and boats on Issyk-­Kul stopped running and many Russian families departed. Russian pensioners who did not want to leave their home in Kyrgyzstan were left on their own and they became one of Umut’s main target groups. A history of Umut written by its chair stresses the determination of people who set up voluntary groups in the early 1990s – and the power of messages like ‘Help us!’, ‘I can!’ and ‘You can!’. Umut’s experience, in her words, ‘shows that in conditions of systemic crisis only more targeted support can help raise the level and quality of social analysis, assistance and support to elderly people.’ At the end of the 1980s, the future director of Umut, Svetlana Bashtovenko, was a secondary schoolteacher and trade union activist. One of her first ideas was to open a children’s business school registered as an NGO. The children painted pictures on kitchen cutting boards and sold them to passing tourists on the Bishkek– Issyk-­kul road. The NGO organised discotheques and a local youth band played concerts at the holiday resorts along the north shore of the lake, arriving home in Balykchy late at night. NGO activists also helped unemployed women and wrote all kinds of projects to the new international funders, but almost all of this was on a voluntary basis and many staff could not keep up with it and drifted away, in search of more substantial earnings for themselves and their families. In the first five years, the focus was on children, with humanitarian or survival activities predominating. The Kyrgyz government was bankrupt at this time, businesses were only just starting up and could not offer much help. Umut got its first real funds from American agencies like the Peace Corps in the shape of a succession of international volunteers and Counterpart Consortium, also the Protestant aid agency ADRA. It was with Counterpart funding that Umut opened its resource centre – a computer room and a programme of training, information and advice facilities for the Balykchy area. Gradually the organisation switched its focus to elderly people, though a local volunteer programme maintained the contact with youth and involved them in helping the older generation. Umut was always really good at documenting its history due to the efforts of another founding member, a local journalist who brought all the main characters to life in her accounts of the organisation’s activities and development.4 Later, Umut set up an office in Bishkek, changed its name to Resource Centre for the Elderly (RCE), and began to advocate on behalf of elderly people with government. Working closely with their partners HelpAge International, it developed a regional advocacy platform ‘Agenet without borders’ and became one of the first local NGOs to begin collecting contributions from the public via ­campaigns and collection boxes outside shops. Their early work with local

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g­ overnment in Balykchy was widened out in a network of NGO-­led consultative councils. INTRAC’s training programme was highly successful and influential, coming at a moment when it was necessary to spread information and skills to a whole new set of organisations. During 2002–03, I visited Uzbekistan with its lead trainer, Chris Wardle. One workshop was in Tashkent, another in Samarkand, and a third was in Bukhara. We had a chance to visit some of the ancient mosques and medrassahs so our tourism objectives were fully achieved! Soon afterwards, I accompanied another lead trainer, Rob Wells, to Astana to run our first resource mobilisation training workshop in the region. Astana had been proclaimed Kazakhstan’s new capital and a prodigious set of new construction projects were starting up across the city. The resource mobilisation programme was our first attempt to pose the question of how NGOs can promote the basic idea behind their organisation more effectively, and hence achieve a level of income diversification and financial sustainability. Most of the organisations attending the workshops focused on disadvantaged or vulnerable groups – children, women, people with a disability. The NGO training programme consisted of five workshops organised over a period of six months and a very important role was played by the local trainers (see Table 4.2). Critical to success was the extended nature of the programme and the opportunities it provided (each module being held in a different town or city) to develop collaboration and networking between participants. The international and local trainers planned the workshops together as a team, and in this way, INTRAC built up a group of local experts who were happy to work with us again in the future. The drawbacks of the neoliberal policy framework were not much discussed in our programme, though by 2004–05, leading NGOs in Kyrgyzstan at least had begun to do this. TABLE 4.2  Key features of the training programme for NGO support staff

Main programme elements (modules)

Role of the local trainer/mentor

Situation assessment in the area covered by your NGO/NGOSO

Supervise translation of training materials and back up the interpreter during the workshops. Adapt materials where necessary to local context

Basics of NGO management Skills needed by local trainers and consultants

Lead sessions or part-sessions as agreed

Support homework assignments/projects by Development of external relations between the participants between each module NGOs, government and business Make contact with the host organisation for Dealing with conflict in organisations and each workshop and any external speakers the community Assist in the monitoring and evaluation of the training programme

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Community development While the training component in P1 relied on bringing in expertise from outside Central Asia (albeit in dialogue with local trainers), the community development component was more explorative. Our work began very quietly and methodically with the employment of three community development advisors in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and a research phase that lasted a whole year. Visits were made to community groups and local development projects around the three countries, mainly in rural areas, since the population in Central Asia is 70 per cent rural. Looking back at the reports of these meetings, I am reminded of the important role played by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), especially its poverty reduction and local government decentralisation projects, and the community programme set up by Counterpart Consortium in the late 1990s. Many of the insights gained in the INTRAC programme came out of their work at the grassroots. Typical examples of community projects include: (1) teachers and parents in a village get together to repair the school roof; (2) a water system is supplied for newly built houses for refugee families fleeing from the civil war in Tajikistan; (3) a microcredit programme is launched for village women; (4) money is collected from the community to supplement local government funds and repair the electricity generator; and (5) the project purchases a number of milking cows for the poorest families in the community … In almost all cases, an initiative group was formed after a village or street meeting and the members of the group took on the organisation of the project, including the search for financial or in-­kind resources. Usually local government was involved directly or indirectly. In Kyrgyzstan, the local self-­government unit was called ayil-­okmutu, while in Uzbekistan a key role was played by the mahalla – a traditional neighbourhood association. Registered NGOs sometimes played a role – for example, women’s or business associations – but not always by any means. Our three community development advisors played a central role in this project. Their local understanding, contacts and ideas provided the main information and tools for the work. On the other hand, it was not always easy for local staff to make their implicit knowledge explicit. By this, I mean that there were times when everything seemed ‘obvious’ to them and it was hard to critically interrogate their own experience. In these cases, having a naive or ignorant foreigner in tow could actually be an advantage; simple questions put by an outsider to local respondents could very often elicit a surprising or unusual reply. At the end of the research phase, an excellent report was produced and shared with local activists and experts at a regional conference in Osh, South Kyrgyzstan (Earle et al., 2004). It is worth mentioning some of its main conclusions. First, it contained several important insights about power relations. In village politics, the aksakals or elderly and their informal committees often played a decisive role. Traditional community groups at a village level were often led by powerful individuals, who often felt threatened by new donor projects. Within the projects themselves,

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INTRAC’s training and community development programme

NGO workers and leaders from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in high spirits after attending a Resource Mobilisation workshop in Astana, 2002. In the background are the new high-rise blocks that were sprouting up all over the new capital of Kazakhstan

FIGURE 4.1A 

Photo credit: Charles Buxton. Photo: INTRAC – group of participants in a workshop.

FIGURE 4.1B  Community development advisor Chinara Tashbaeva leading a workshop with village activists in Northern Kyrgyzstan, 2003. The aim was to create village development plans involving a range of different organisations and individuals

Photo credit: INTRAC. Photo – group of NGO leaders at front of the hall.

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FIGURE 4.1C  INTRAC’s partners at the final conference in our Analytical Skills Training Programme, Osh, 2014. The key partners are all represented: Gulgaky Mamasalieva, Centre Interbilim Osh; Shudzhoat Khasanova, Government-NGO Liaison Committee, Sogdh Region, Takijistan; Elmira Mavlieva, Civil Society Support Centre Jalalabad; Chinara Iskakova, Ebert Foundation-Kyrgyzstan; and trainer Chynara Irisova. The support from an official consultative group in Tajikistan was particularly crucial – without it, the research studies into government services could not have taken place

power relations needed to be considered carefully so that the project did not exacerbate inequality or create conflict within the local community. In fact, many Soviet­era institutions and practices still remained important and influential in rural areas: for example, the old collective and state farms. New programmes could not simply ignore these local dynamics. Second, the study argued that the issue of gender relations and the status of women in rural communities needed more careful attention. As in many countries, the role of women was a politically sensitive topic in Central Asia and the views of outside agencies not always welcomed. Women had made huge gains in education and professional life during the Soviet period and were already playing a key role in NGOs and many development projects. This had led to a widely accepted idea that they had already achieved equality with men. But the study challenged this, arguing that there were significant variations in the status of different women, and also that age played an important role.

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For example, in a case study from South Kazakhstan, villagers told the researchers that women and men were equal and quoted the common saying: ‘the man may think he is the head, but the woman is the neck’ – holding him up or turning him this way and that. But in more confidential discussions they spoke about the ill-­treatment that some young wives suffer after going to live with their husband’s family. The new wife, they said, plays a role almost like a servant under the domination of her mother-­in-law, until her child-­bearing years are over and she in turn assumes a position of authority over younger women. It was at this time, in the early 2000s, that widespread women’s rights campaigns began, led by Central Asian women’s associations, to counter the return to traditional practices of early marriages and so-­called ‘bride-­stealing’, that is, forced marriages. There are many important differences in social organisation within the Central Asia region. For example, our community development study noted that within Uzbekistan, cultural habits in the traditionally nomadic areas in Karakalpakstan near the Aral Sea were somewhat freer than in the dense, sedentary communities of the Fergana Valley. And within both urban or village mahallas (neighbourhoods) there is also a complex combination of traditional and modern elements. Thus, mahalla committees played an important role in local administration in the Soviet period and post-­1991 the government had delegated significant tasks to them, for example, the distribution of social benefits to the population. This had reduced the freedom and informality of neighbourhood associations but also greatly increased their responsibilities and influence. In the early mid-­2000s, key agencies like UNDP and the World Bank were increasingly moving to what they called ‘community driven development’. This meant creating mechanisms to fund community groups directly, especially for infrastructure projects. In Kyrgyzstan, a huge project was developed – the Village Investment Programme – with its own semi-­governmental agency (quango) ARIS and a multi-­million US dollar budget with which to set up village investment committees around the country and make funds available for these purposes. One of INTRAC’s community development advisors went on to play a key role in ARIS’s new training department and so our tools and approaches found a very practical outlet over the next five years. However, INTRAC itself took a quite critical approach to these big programmes, since they tended not to tackle social, power or conflict issues in villages. The building up of more permanent and sustainable community and civic associations seemed to have secondary importance, behind the infrastructure tasks. It seemed that international development agencies were keen to do the work with communities as directly as possible: they appointed their own local staff and reported successes as their own.5 Local CSOs that might have a different view or might do things in a different way, were potentially a nuisance and the international community had already begun to question whether these groups were so essential after all.

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P2 – The self-­help programme Towards the end of the second year of the DFID contract, it was agreed that we could continue our work into a third year (without extra financing) and so it happened that the big regional programme came to an end in autumn 2004. No replacement funding could be found for this level of work and INTRAC closed its Tashkent and Almaty offices at the end of that year. The Bishkek office remained open with just four staff posts but without the British government umbrella. Therefore, it became necessary to register under Kyrgyzstan law as the representative office of an international NGO and to begin to observe all the normal finance reporting, tax and legal requirements. The programme would remain regional as far as possible but without permanent positions in the other four countries. In actual fact, INTRAC almost pulled out of Central Asia at this point due to lack of other funding. This is a common problem: an international NGO is engaged to carry out a major project and invests huge efforts in implementing it, which means that it has little time to consider ‘what next?’. So work comes to a dead halt at the end and the local workers are made redundant. However, I had decided to try to continue work in Central Asia and with the help of the colleagues who remained, by early 2006, the Bishkek office was engaged in launching a new capacity-­building programme (P2) that would last until 2010. Here, three Protestant development agencies played the donor role – ICCO (Dutch Interchurch Aid), Christian Aid (UK) and DanChurch Aid (Denmark), each of them with funds both from government and from their own constituencies of supporters in Europe. The programme was titled ‘Strengthening NGOs to Support the Self-­Help Movement’ and INTRAC’s role as capacity builder was to advise and train 15 main partner organisations located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In other words, its main themes were organisation development and community development. This was a much smaller number of partner NGOs than we had in P1; almost all of them worked on poverty reduction using a self-­help methodology that had been very successful in South Asia and was now being introduced to Central Asia.6

Case study 4.3  Working as a consultant in organisation development Our starting point in P2 was organisation assessment and development. What does this mean? First, an assessment of the process by which an organisation came into being, for what purpose, through whose efforts, its early trials and experiences (as we saw with two London organisations in Chapter 2 and NGO Umut in this chapter). Second, its development through a succession of stages from youth to maturity, and by various indicators, for example, number of staff, main types of work undertaken, size of annual budget etc. As ‘capacity builders’, our first step, once a request for help has been received, would normally be to make an assessment of the state of the organisation today. A number of well-­tested procedures

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exist for this and many of them stress the participation of NGO staff, members and supporters in the process. So it was with the ‘NGO Strengthening’ programme. The self-­assessment stage would normally come up with a number of issues that need to be resolved. For example, the organisation may have outgrown the space (office, physical resources) it possesses; there may be staff development needs or conflicts between managers; there may be a question about which way to go in future. Some of the problems may have been anticipated by the leaders of the organisation when they first asked for help, but it is not unusual for outside experts to identify issues that were, so to speak, lurking below the surface of its everyday activities. Usually, it is important to prioritise the issues that are most important to deal with, and to make an action plan – or even a longer-­term or strategic (three– five year) development plan. Here are some examples:  One of the partners in P2 was NGO Moldir, a well-­established women’s association in Almaty that had come into being to help organise and support redundant women textile workers in the city in the early 1990s. Later its leader Lyazzat Ishmukhamedova and her team (supported by a VSO volunteer) had gone on to focus on the problems of single mothers and their families in small towns around Almaty oblast by setting up self-­help and microcredit groups. During the organisation assessment they posed the question: should we expand our work to different regions of the country? We advised caution – they had a very good base in Almaty and this might be hard to reproduce elsewhere despite their excellent women’s movement networks.  Another partner was based in the Aravan district in Osh oblast in Kyrgyzstan. NGO Mehr Shavcat was an organisation working on social and economic issues for rural communities. This was a mainly cotton-­growing area bordering Uzbekistan. The level of social mobilisation here was extremely high, the self-­help groups in both Uzbek and Kyrgyz villages very well supported and active. The organisation development issue was how to maintain their effectiveness: the NGO had created federations of self-­help groups, plus a number of village committees that were liaising closely with the local authorities and quite often setting the local agenda. The main technical issue was how to enhance their already successful agricultural development activities (promoting alternatives to cotton) via better joint marketing of family produce (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) and improving links with food-­processing factories in the region.  In Tajikistan, a very successful initiative by the INTRAC team brought together action learning groups for community workers in rural areas in the South near the Afghanistan border. This was a peer-­support exercise where local capacity-­building experts provided facilitation rather than any formal advice or training. Participants ranged from community development workers to project managers. The problems were very varied – ranging from issues

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facing women balancing family and work responsibilities, to problems in liaison with local government or in developing new local services. Minuses and pluses of consultancy. Around the time we started P2, I came across a disillusioned international consultant who had been working for many years in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia on administrative reform. He concluded that too many programmes are designed out of context and in a high-­ handed manner; while apparently rational in approach, they don’t produce real change in the countries being advised. He therefore argued for a capacity-­building approach that would put more store on working pragmatically at different levels, on priorities defined by the beneficiaries and partners (in his case, local government officials), stressing the need not just to train staff in new, Western skills, but to improve the style and structure of local management and leadership. Many consultants, he noted, are highly qualified and ambitious individuals but the nature of private sector contractors is that they compete with each other and oversell their expertise. Hence, while some small short-­term reforms may be proposed or initiated, a longer-­term, well-­negotiated community of practice is very hard to achieve (Young, 2006). Indeed, coming back to our own experience as informal advisors, external consultants or trainers, serious issues of this kind arise. For example, in organisation assessment and development, a fundamental question is who sets the terms of reference for our work and whom do we report to. The fact is that many assignments of this kind are requested and paid for by a donor. So the first principle is – the NGO itself must write the terms of reference (shopping list) of what they want from a consultant, based on their own vision of the problems and priorities. Second, as advisors or trainers, we need to ensure that we can get access to people from all departments and levels within the organisation that may have an experience or view of the issues in hand. This includes staff in the administration or technical sections and of course beneficiaries of services or project activities. Third, our reports should go to the NGO (not the donor) and it is up to the NGO to act on any conclusions and recommendations. This three-­sided approach worked very well in the ‘Strengthening NGOs’ programme. The donors respected the capacity builder–NGO relationship, indeed the NGOs set up a consultative group that guided INTRAC’s work over a period of almost three years. This was a complex programme involving training workshops, one-­to-one advice to NGOs, joint research studies, teamwork development and other technical support. Each year we provided a report to each of the NGO partners on the work that had been done, collectively and individually, with proposals on how to continue in the following year. All this took place within a ‘development cooperation’ strategy.7 The agencies in the donor consortium all worked through NGOs, focused on local projects but with a national advocacy component too, in long-­term programmes. Their partners could hope and plan for two–three year contracts including an element of support for their core costs. They worked closely with international project staff on issues

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Self-­help groups in Central Asia

The members of the SHG federation committee in Balykchy supported by NGO Umut were mainly Russian nationality, living on their own. Groups typically specialised in a single economic activity, for example, fruit or vegetable conserves, keeping chickens or rabbits. I undertook a one-year consultancy with NGO Umut, during which one of my main tasks was to help support the SHG federation. This was based in a set of abandoned kindergarten buildings down by the Balykchy docks, now being gradually brought back into use by the NGO. One of my most vivid memories is of how cold it was in these buildings in winter. Like in public buildings in villages around the country, there was no money to pay for heating. Galina Kovaleva, NGO Umut coordinator in Balykchy and chair of the consultative committee for INTRAC’s capacity-building programme, is shown just behind me on the left of the photo

FIGURE 4.2A 

Photo credit: Charles Buxton. Photo: men and women sitting in a circle with washing on the line nearby.

FIGURE 4.2B  Meeting of self-help group in Tura-Suu village, Issyk-Kul. This group had been created with a dual aim: first, to support older people in the village; and second, to develop its main economic activity – livestock husbandry. The group was based on an extended family though non-family members could also join

Photo credit: Charles Buxton.

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FIGURE 4.2C  Self-help group members in Khatlon province, Southern Tajikistan. The group made money via vegetable farming and sales undertaken together, meanwhile contributing their labour in the cotton fields of the ex-collective farm in return for a small money or in-kind payment

Photo credit: Peter Kenny, Ecumenical News International (pictured on far left of photo).

around self-­help group development, support to the elderly, fair economic development and so on. P2 was for us a more intensive collaborative relationship with a smaller number of NGOs than in P1 and the commitment to certain values and to people on the ground was better expressed; but its geographical reach and institutional frame was of course narrower.

Capacity building for what? The question, ‘capacity building for what?’, is often raised in INTRAC’s materials. The issue is not just about the planned results of projects and the place of training or NGO development within them. It is also about who defines the aims, who defines what capacity is needed, who does the work and how they do it. Under this heading, we will consider several challenges that arise for development workers up and down the aid chain. A set of political questions about NGO work in development has already been outlined in the preceding sections of this book. One is that NGOs do not challenge the power system as it exists in the world or in particular countries today; on the contrary, they might even draw power away from more political movements. There are many aspects to this question and it is hard to make a snap judgement. We need to consider time, place and the balance of forces very carefully before coming to a view. Indeed, in many regions of the world, CSOs have regularly lined up with the forces campaigning against imperialism, colonialism or neoliberalism. But the reality in former Soviet Union is a bit different. Although the political situation in the USSR at the end of the 1980s varied a great deal between the 15 Soviet socialist republics, in general, the new organisations that emerged from the break-­up of the USSR were

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nationalist and pro-­democracy in character, quite ready to make deals with neoliberalism. A second question concerns the professionalisation and creeping managerialism in NGOs (often enhanced by training workshops on various aspects of NGO management). Indeed, this tendency has been given the name ‘NGOisation’.8 It is important to remember that a huge variety of organisations and individuals come under the banners of civil society and social activism. They vary by aims, size, location, type of activity and so on. Generalisation rarely works in trying to analyse

Table 4.3 helps to show, for example, how INTRAC’s focus on process (e.g. participation, careful facilitation) differs from agencies more concerned with physical, quantitative results (e.g. numbers of canals repaired, bridges built). Or how P2 with its intricate many-­stage process for setting up self-­help groups (starting with assembly of the group, agreement on roles of group members, creation of a self-­generated group fund) differed from groups supported by the UNDP or the government, where the internal dynamics and longer-­term sustainability of groups was less important than quick infrastructure results. As we will see in Chapter 5, the self-­help groups in P2 moved gradually from tackling basic needs to lobbying the authorities. Where international agencies organise community work through a local project unit, this seems to reflect a social planning or engineering approach, that is, a direct intervention for goals decided at a higher level. This approach was quite familiar to communities from the Soviet period. And in the community projects in East London analysed in Chapter 2, the desire to develop new social policy and local services seems to me to have been uppermost in the donors’ aims, rather than civil society development per se. TABLE 4.3  Community work continuums

There are many approaches to community work. Twelvetrees (1991) suggested that they can be located in a series of continuums Community development (via local organisations) –––– vs –––––– social planning (engineering) Self-help groups tackling basic needs ––––– vs –––––––– attempts to influence higher authorities Generic community work ––––– vs –––––––– specialist community work (with target groups) Concern for process –––––––– vs –––––––––– focus on products or results (e.g. infrastructure) Enabling role of the community worker –––– vs ––––– organising role of the community worker

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them. So in looking at professionalisation or managerialism, we are analysing a tendency that takes different forms. Smaller and local NGOs. Most readers will probably agree with the author that basic coordination or management skills and experience of the kind described in this book are quite important in any organisation. There are major challenges in everyday management practice for progressively minded NGOs: for example, how to operate in a democratic way, how to ensure openness in decision-­making, how to develop a clear political line on complex issues (inside or outside the NGO), how to manage staff payments using criteria of equality and fairness, how to prioritise expenditure when working on a limited budget, and so on. We can sum this up by saying that in addition to the normal standards of management (i.e. doing things effectively and efficiently), there may also be another set of (higher or more specific) standards that we want to abide by. They are things taken from our organisation’s aims or mission and might include, for example, issues around equal opportunities (as with my East London case studies), environmental concerns, social justice or whatever. These extra standards need to be developed in the team, written down and  checked regularly – otherwise, they have little chance of being observed. Any NGO manager who reflects on their practice knows that this is all quite difficult and successes achieved last year don’t guarantee that things will go well this year – such is the rate of change in our organisations, most of which do not have a statutory (official) position in society or long-­term funding. In respect of smaller NGOs, it is interesting to look at the results of a study in Kyrgyzstan by Kanykey Bayalieva-­Jailobaeva (2014), based on and supplementing data collected by the network of NGO resource centres that we helped to train in the Education and Training Support Programme (ETSP). The study showed that local NGOs could be seen on a range through from non-­professional, semi-­ professional, to professional. This was based on having full-­time paid staff, formalised structures and work procedures, and activities aimed at promoting a constituency or target group in wider society. Just over half the NGOs that Bayalieva-­Jailobaeva interviewed fell into the professional category, with paid staff, a governing body (board), organisational systems, regular activities in compliance with the Law on Non-­Commercial Organisations, and regular funding. The interviews revealed that government regulations and donor requirements are the key drivers of formalisation and professionalisation. The difference between non- or semi-­professional NGOs is in the latter’s level of informality and resourcing. They can’t afford full-­time or regular staff, their premises are minimally equipped and furnished, their activities are intermittent, small scale or short-­term only. Rural associations tended to be in this category. Once a NGO loses its funding, it can revert to the informal, irregular pattern of activity. One of the key issues in organisational development throughout the FSU has been the formation of management boards that can supervise staff and provide accountability. Local legislation provides for these safeguards but they have proved very difficult to implement. Activists who founded public associations have proved

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unwilling to create independent boards that might challenge their control of the organisation. This may in part have been because there were few people in the village or town who had experience of management board roles and responsibilities, so it was hard to form them. And in part it may be because employment in NGOs had such a major importance for personal survival during the economic downturn of the 1990s and 2000s. Some NGOs are organised on a family principle and this absence of checks and balances in the organisation runs against the rules set by both government and donors (Bayalieva-­Jailobaeva, 2014).  The critique of professionalisation coming from social and political movements is a bit different. In the USA and Europe, the criticism is that paid staff from outside the membership or target group increasingly dominate the organisation. This weakens NGOs as potential social movements and reflects decreasing popular participation in their activities. And as time goes by, the professional nature of NGO leadership will likely lead to the elitist or technocratic view that everything can be left to the policy makers and experts. Popular movements once pressing for power through political action on the streets gradually turn into NGOs selling their services to the donors or to government. If we go back to the examples of London NGOs given in Chapter 2, we can see that many of the same issues came up. Maintenance of a large membership was difficult while management committees struggled with serious staffing and financing challenges, without long-­term funding, year in year out. These practical, bread-­ and-butter problems tended to dominate or crowd out political questions that might previously have been on the agenda. The staff tended to be people with key skills and experience (like myself ) but who had not been born or brought up in Tower Hamlets or Hackney, despite the aspiration of the organisations to represent local citizens.9 Here we come back to the questions around mobility and flexibility in the labour market and in services provision that are such a key factor in today’s economy. Smaller and local NGOs in Central Asia are highly mobile and flexible, partly due to the enthusiasm and self-­sacrifice of the founders and supporters, partly because they have to be in order to survive. So here we have acquiescence in the dominant pattern of neoliberal exploitation of people’s commitment and labour power. The pattern of work depends on short-­term projects. For each project, a team is assembled and each person gets a set of tasks. In larger, more stable organisations, they may be given a proper job description. In smaller organisations, when the project ends, its workers cease to receive a salary – until the next project begins. Larger and international NGOs. To some extent, the same issues apply. More and more often, NGO executive directors and department managers are recruited from large companies, speaking the same commercial, marketing jargon as the private sector. Rereading a classic description of the UK voluntary sector from the 1990s, Mike Hudson’s Managing Without Profit (1995), what leaps out is the author’s assumption of a stable, well-­regulated sector, confident of continued support from both government and business. Most of the NGO case studies in his book are

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BOX 4.3  CONSULTANTS AND THEIR CLIENTS Bill Crooks’ cartoons have adorned many of INTRAC’s capacity-­building publications and training workshops over the years. Here are some illustrations accompanying the 2017 publication Consulting for Change. They show, in an amusing way, some of the challenges faced by consultants striving for a non-­ directive, participative approach to organisation development. Common problems faced by consultants in the organisation development field when the objectives of the assignment have not been fully identified at the start: A

B

C D

The client does not really know what they want and they keep moving the goal posts. You tackle one issue, then it turns out they want something else. The client expects you to instantly solve a fundamental problem that has been insoluble for years. Usually there is a deep reason why this problem is hard to solve, even by a brilliant consultant. The client has unrealistic and ever-­expanding demands on your time (much more than you first signed up for). The people you are working with on the assignment do not really want your input.

A

B

C

D

FIGURES 4.3A–D 

Common problems faced by consultants

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Identifying the motive for change. If the consultant is being asked to help bring about a change in the organisation, the motive for change has to be shared by more than one person. People are more motivated to change when they have been part of the process that identifies the need for it.

FIGURE 4.3E 

Voting for change

‘Change’ is one of the buzzwords in development these days, and management consultants often ask their clients to ‘begin change inside yourself ’ (an almost religious approach, it seems to me). However, these two cartoons show how while the official line in the organisation may be that we are ready for change, very often nobody much enjoys this process.

devoted to major organisations, some with several decades of existence and 100 or more staff, national coverage and local branches, proven methods and excellent work. They are part of the establishment; some even have members of the royal family or showbiz celebrities as patrons. Many of these individuals speak out firmly on single issues, but if we ask ourselves whether organisations of this kind could be part of a challenge to the neoliberal system as a whole, I would suggest ‘no’. UK charity law and the habits and instincts of the vast majority of board members would likely be far more cautious. And the interests of the sector itself seem to be against adventures of this kind. When major INGOs (or ‘northern’ NGOs) go into partnership will smaller local (‘southern’) NGOs, we get unequal partnerships. There are many aspects of this situation, and much has been written about how to counteract this tendency. Our own efforts were devoted to capacity building of the local NGOs so that they had as much information and power as possible when drawing up and implementing joint projects. Observing from time to time the country offices of INGOs in Central

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Asia (Oxfam, Save the Children, HelpAge International, ACTED, Aga Khan Foundation, Helvetas, Soros Foundation, Red Crescent, GIZ are some examples), generally, I had a respect for the job they were doing and the way they were doing it. It would be unfair to say that issues like participation, openness, a concern for the NGO’s identity, values and mission were not being prioritised. But equally, the management and methodology of development work is increasingly heavy, as the funding agencies and, in turn, the INGOs demand an enormous amount of paperwork for any activity. Have we forgotten what it takes to be a good donor? Is partnership something we aim for but fail to achieve? Has the model of Northern NGOs supporting southern groups through feeling of solidarity, funding, light-­touch technical assistance and mutually agreed advocacy come to an end?10 Thus began an issue of ontrac ten years ago. Behind the crisis of trust between partners lies increasing pressures from the funding agencies – and behind this, a lack of trust, respect and agreement on long-­term goals at international level between Western countries and their aid recipients. The so-­called harmonisation of donor requirements, proclaimed loudly under the Paris Agreement in the early 2000s, so that recipients of aid don’t have to write different reports for each donor, never takes place (the donors are in competition with each other so they have limited interest in this). Donors and INGOs export the maximum of bureaucratic tasks down the aid chain, so as to save their own administrative costs … In some cases, it even seems that the system is guilty of creating an imaginary reality so that managers can show that they have been successful and reached their targets. The most quoted examples of these cumbersome, oppressive ‘upward accountability’ tools are results-­based management and logframe evaluation mechanisms. In the UK, the larger development NGOs have been forced into competition with for-­profit consultancies like GRM, Oxford Policy Management and DAI that use business tools to gain an ever larger proportion of the aid budget.11 Tragically, once the meaning of work has been twisted to suit egotistic management targets, then the whole ‘value for money’ ethic loses its meaning too (because value is no longer really value). All we have is the unequal economics that I referred to earlier in this chapter. During P1, we did some useful work on the issue of donor–CS relations, the idea being to develop a dialogue so that both sides could understand each other better. The main mechanism used was donor round tables meeting regularly in Tashkent, Almaty and Bishkek, at which donors and international agencies working with civil society could discuss the current situation and best approaches to take. This was, on the whole, very positive useful work and we used the space to lobby some of the progressive approaches that have been described in this chapter. However, local NGOs only attended from time to time, in order to make presentations about their work, and there was no system whereby representatives of the sector could make a case on behalf of one and all.

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This situation has improved in that most donors working in Central Asia have gradually developed their own consultative mechanism, so as to get NGO and beneficiary feedback. However, international donors work to priorities set in their own country and so accountability to NGOs or people in the receiving country can only be limited. The creation of national NGO forums and associations, with proper representative structures, working groups on issues and standards of all kinds, with their own local offices in the regions, is an essential condition for equal partnership with the other sectors – but has taken a very long time to achieve. Representative bodies like this should not be dependent on any donor or the government. When local NGOs have achieved something like this, indeed the civil society sector will have been institutionalised.

Ragged questions for NGO staff and managers Who is documenting the lessons from success or failure in your organisation? How can you find a way to encourage and reward this work?

FIGURE 4.4  Principles of partnership: (1) equality at the negotiating table; (2) transparency of shared information; and (3) mutual gain from the partnership. Indeed, equality, transparency and mutual benefit form the basis of real partnership between two or more organisations. Unfortunately, when the partners have different size, influence and resources, this is quite hard to achieve. When NGO managers take this seriously, it requires time, care and sensitivity to the partners’ various priorities and needs. Pressed by time and other commitments, many NGOs enter simpler contracting and subcontracting relationships that have little in common with true partnership

Illustration credit: Bill Crooks.

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If you do work directly with communities, where on the five community work continuums are your projects located? Can you define further tasks to further strengthen your grass-­roots work or address any weaknesses? What is your experience of working with external experts or consultants? What lessons would you draw for any further work with consultants? How would you assess your partnerships with organisations that are either larger or smaller, than your own organisation? Three principles that are often cited in NGO work are: (1) equality between partners, (2) transparency in sharing information, and (3) mutual gain, that is, each partner is able to set and achieve something useful for itself (see Figure 4.4). If your organisation is not currently able to implement to these principles of partnership, what can you do about it?

Further reading on NGO capacity building (with particular reference to Central Asia) Adams, Jerry and Anne Garbutt, 2008. ‘Participatory M&E: Lessons Learned from Central Asia’. INTRAC Praxis Paper 21. Bayalieva-­Jailobaeva, Kanykey, 2014. ‘A New Look: Professionalization of NGOs in Kyrgyzstan’. Central Asia Survey 33 (3): 360–74. Choudry, Aziz and Dip Kapoor (eds), 2013. NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects. London: Zed Books. Davies, Anthony, 1995. Managing for a Change: How to Run Community Development Projects. London: VSO. Djamankulova, Kulnara, Nuriya Temirova and Malika Sobirdjonova, 2010. ‘Using Action Learning Sets Methodology in an NGO Capacity Building Programme’. INTRAC Praxis Note 53. Eade, Deborah (ed.), 1999. Development and Social Action, with Introduction by Miloon Kothari. Oxford: Oxfam Earle, Lucy et al., 2004. ‘Community Development in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan: Lessons Learnt from Recent Experience’. INTRAC Occasional Papers Series No. 40. Freire, Paulo, 1970. Cultural Action for Freedom. New York: Seabury Press. Freire, Paulo, 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books. Garbutt, Anne, 2003. ‘Civil Society Strengthening in Central Asia’. In Brian Pratt (ed.), Changing Expectations? The Concept and Practice of Civil Society in International Development. Oxford: INTRAC. Giffen, Janice and Lucy Earle with Charles Buxton, 2005. The Development of Civil Society in Central Asia. Oxford: INTRAC. Hudson, Mike, 1995. Managing Without Profit: The Art of Managing 3rd Sector Organisations. London: Penguin. Howell, Jude and Jenny Pearce, 2001. Civil Society and Development: A Critical Interrogation. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. James, Rick, 2003. Power and Partnership. Oxford: INTRAC. Lewis, David and Tina Wallace (eds), 2000. New Roles and Relevance: Development NGOs and the Challenge of Change. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian. Lipson, Brenda, 2008. ‘Capacity Building Framework: A Values-­Based Programming Guide’, Praxis Series No. 3. Oxford: INTRAC. Mansuri, Ghazala and Vijayendra Rao, 2004. ‘Community-­Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review’. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3209.

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Nazpary, Joma. 2002. Post-­Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan. London: Pluto. Petras, James and Henry Veltmeyer, 2018. The Class Struggle in Latin America: Making History Today. Abingdon: Routledge. Roy, Olivier, 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. London: I.B. Tauris. Wardle, Chris, 2010. ‘Building Capacity of Village Communities to Manage the Provision of Clean Drinking Water: Lessons from Kyrgyzstan’. INTRAC Praxis Note 57. Young, Ronald G., 2006. ‘Mercenaries, Missionaries or … Consultants? Is Administrative Reform TA in Transition Countries a Business, a Religion or Medicine?’, David Coombes and Laszlo Vass (eds), Post-­Communist Public Administration: Restoring Professionalism and Accountability 257–84. 

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Notes   1 For a graphic description and cutting analysis of this, see Nazpary (2002).   2 Another INTRAC project that ran parallel with ours shows some of the complexities and contradictions of neoliberal policies. In this project, the drinking water supply for villages around Kyrgyzstan was put into the hands of local people via the creation of drinking water unions. A major development programme mobilised community groups to take over canals, reservoirs, piping and pumps, with local firms engaged to do the engineering work. World Bank and DFID grants paid for the majority of the work, and once it was done the drinking water unions took on the maintenance of the system via dues collected from villagers (See Wardle, 2010). In theory, this was a great chance for NGOs to ensure that a new system brought water to every household, including the poorest; in reality, managing water provision proved difficult for many poor and remote villages. They could collect basic dues but when major breakdowns occurred or the canal system gradually silted up, ashar was not enough. And after 2010, some of these unions were re-­municipalised, that is, taken back into public ownership.    3 INTRAC called this the Education and Training Support Programme (ETSP) – a rather unspecific name that did not really describe what it did.   4 Tamara Vysotskaya, ОО Ресурсный центр для пожилых: теория и методика разития групп само-помощи для пожилых людей (Umut, 2005).   5 For more detail on these methodologies, see Mansuri and Rao (2004).    6 Together, the NGO partners, INTRAC and the donor agencies researched and produced a report about the social and political impact of self-­help groups, titled ‘From Self-­Help to a Wider Role in the Community’, INTRAC for ECCA, 2007.    7 Several European countries use an approach called ‘development cooperation’, that is to say, the element of discussion and joint decision-­making with national partners as to the aims and objectives of development programmes is emphasised. For the German development agency GIZ, a project is a ‘cooperation system’. In fact, it is two linked systems, each with their own principles and style of management. Inside your own organisation, you can set your own rules and procedures; but with external partners, everything has to  be agreed by negotiation – you can’t simply tell another organisation what to do (or can you?).   8 In this section, we take up several of the points made in Choudry and Kapoor (2013).   9 Radical critics of development take issue with development cooperation as a form of insidious undermining of local sovereignty; see Petras and Veltmeyer, 2018, 1–2. 10 See ‘Control and Effectiveness in Aid Partnerships’, ontrac 39 (May 2008), and the previous issue, ‘Rhetoric and Reality in Aid Effectiveness’, ontrac 38 (January 2008). 11 In 2015, even Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper began to feel there was something wrong with the DFID’s contracting policies. ‘Charity Chiefs are Known to Earn Annual Salaries of more than £250,000’, ‘Firms Allegedly Claim Consultant Costs of £1,000 a Day from DFID’ were the headlines on 24 May. And Jon Hilary, director of NGO War on Want, described the earnings from this consultancy cartel as the worst possible use of the country’s aid budget.

5 Improving services or promoting rights Ideological and practical dilemmas for NGOs faced with cuts to social welfare East and West

Introduction: the external context In recent years, there has been a widely discussed change in international development policy and programmes – from improving services to vulnerable groups, towards promoting and protecting their rights. This is, in many ways, an unnecessary or unnatural ‘opposition’. Providing services is important, since they make a practical everyday difference to people; and at the same time, many public services express a right – to free education and health services, for example; and other rights, for example, the right to vote, also depends on a service or infrastructure being available (voter lists, properly equipped voting stations, etc.). NGOs are active in services provision and rights promotion all around the world. However, when resources are limited, the question often comes up of, where to focus their efforts? On funding critical services (especially services that government may not be willing or able to finance)? Or on arguing for rights that are under threat (e.g. for groups that are not prioritised in government policy)? Some 20 years ago, international NGOs began to make a shift towards advocacy and the rights-­based approach. Many of them had been running huge health and education programmes around the world, offering a service direct to the poorest in the community, with large numbers of front-­line NGO staff plus the premises, equipment and transport to do the job in remote areas. By contrast, rights work tends to be focused at a national level where lawyers, government officials and civil society researchers and experts play a key role. The expectation among development agencies is very often that government will in due course take over front-­line services that INGOs or national NGOs have initiated, once, that is, the argument about rights to these services has been won.

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And all this demands a context analysis where we have to take into account not just what NGOs can do, but two other big players in the social sector – the family and the state.

An experience of two revolutions in Kyrgyzstan In March 2005 and April 2010, Kyrgyzstan experienced two coups that can be described using another term that the FSU region has given political and civil society analysis – coloured revolution. On the one hand, both these events rode on the wave of popular protest against the social and economic policies of neoliberal transition in Central Asia; on the other, most of their leaders were committed to the self-­same policies and their political rhetoric was mainly about free and fair elections. Both coups achieved a change in political power and neither affected social or economic policy to a significant degree. The ‘haves’ and ‘have-­nots’ remained who and where they were before. Nonetheless, there were significant differences between the two revolutions. Perhaps the most important one was that the first was peaceful (President Akayev decided not to resist the assault on his White House, and fled the country), whereas the second was violent (as we recounted in Chapter 1). My own organisation preserved its neutrality and did not make any statements or take part in public discussion of the two events. As I myself saw it, the two years 2005–07 were a genuinely revolutionary period because of the multiple political and civic mobilisations, the range of democratic issues raised by people from all walks of life, the atmosphere of optimism, openness and the desire for real change (Buxton, 2011). Unfortunately, the political leadership of the revolution quickly split and was unable to bring about the deeper changes that people were hoping for.  One of the main discussion topics for political analysts was the role of civil society in these events – in particular the 2005 revolution.1 NGO people had generally supported the movement for free elections, on the other hand, they were acutely aware of the danger of being accused of ‘Western meddling’ in the country’s politics. My own judgement was that NGO activists were not the key players, whether at a local or national level; it was political, clan and business leaders who made the main decisions. But undoubtedly the openness and dynamism of civil society played a role, alongside the more open political culture that Akayev himself had allowed to develop in the years after 1991.

Institutional development of CS in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan During the period 1995–2005, the development of civil society in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan had seemed quite similar. In both countries, NGOs were active and posing important questions for society. Supported by international donors, they carried out a number of useful projects in different sectors. NGOs piloted all kinds of new services, many of them with a grass-­roots or self-­help character, many of them negotiated with and supported by local government.

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The morning after the revolution

FIGURE 5.1A  Outside the White House, 25 March 2005. On the morning after the overthrow of President Akayev, there was an exultant yet peaceful atmosphere. People gathered to swap stories and commentary on the events. A placard in the background has the text: ‘Down with the nest of snakes in the White House!’

Photo: Charles Buxton.

Beta Stores and shops along Kievskaya Street where our office was located were looted in March 2005. So were retail premises across the city. However, around 10 p.m. on the evening of the revolution, we witnessed how stallholders in the central department store (TsUM) ringed the department store hand-in-hand and that way prevented anyone from breaking into the building

FIGURE 5.1B 

Photo: Charles Buxton.

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FIGURE 5.1C  Outside the White House, 8 April 2010. The atmosphere after the 2010 revolution was completely different due to the loss of life. Indeed, this event had a different dynamic from the start and the procession of people that came up from Osh Market the morning before, heading for the White House, was grimly determined and without any of the flags or placards that we saw in 2005; instead many of the protestors were carrying sticks. The issue about who gave the order to shoot at the crowds in the central square and the responsibility of officers in the command chain remains extremely controversial till this day. President Bakiev and his closest associates have been judged guilty of crimes against the people, several of them in their absence, but it proved impossible to complete the trial of officers in elite troops who claimed they were acting under orders to defend the state

Photo: Charles Buxton.

The result of the April 2005 revolution in Bishkek was that much of the political energy was transferred into struggles around or inside the Jogorku Kenesh (national parliament), inside and between political parties, or between President Bakiev and parliament. Unlike in Georgia after its coloured revolution, NGO leaders in Kyrgyzstan didn’t join the new government en masse, but from 2008–10, the radical wing of civil society was deeply involved in the political struggle to remove Bakiev from power, based on their assessment that he had betrayed the movement that created the 2005 revolution. In Kyrgyzstan, the institutional development of civil society was marked, first, by the inevitable difference of opinion between organisations supporting different political leaders; second, by a determination to stay independent of government; and third, among the leading human rights organisations, by a readiness to engage in advocacy using an international rights agenda. None of these three aspects are encouraged in the other four Central Asian countries. In Kazakhstan, the government quickly reacted to the situation in Kyrgyzstan, the main media all criticised

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the ‘anarchy’ of revolution and most NGOs hurried to declare that they were not preparing a revolution, too. President Nazarbayev had begun a process of institutionalising civil society back in 2002, when discussion papers defining the ‘concept’ of civil society were published. The next year saw the launch of a government-­sponsored Civic Forum that has met every two years since then, providing an opportunity, albeit official, for CSOs to contribute to national policy and strategy planning. In 2005, the government launched a new system of ‘social orders’, that is, state social services contracted from NGOs. Alongside the Internal Affairs Ministry, a national Citizens Alliance came into being, aligned with government, and its branches began to offer NGO resource facilities alongside those that had been provided in US-­funded civil society support centres coordinated by ARGO in Almaty. Social order contracts up to one year in length were awarded each year from 2005 onwards. The contracting system had many weaknesses in both the prioritisation of topics for financing and the procedure for awarding of contracts and monitoring work done. However, pressure from NGOs over the next ten years gradually saw improvements and a gradual increase in the money routed through social order. In 2014, the government agreed to award two–three year grants to NGOs with a good record of work. The system was quite similar to the one operating in the Russian Federation, which in turn owed much to lessons learned in partnership projects with European NGOs and local authorities from the mid-­1990s. Thus, the situation in Kyrgyzstan after two coloured revolutions was rather paradoxical. On the one hand, NGOs were active and unafraid of criticising government; their rights-­based approach found favour with many international donors so they were guaranteed further funding for their campaigns. They had long championed more power for parliament vis-­à-vis the president and now, following the changes in the constitution adopted in 2011, had a chance to turn this into real reforms that would benefit the wider population. But there was no government funding for NGOs, no national association of NGOs, and civil society’s influence on national strategy documents seemed to have weakened not strengthened during the previous decade. The new political leaders that took power in 2005 and 2010 displayed a tendency to immediately dissolve consultation mechanisms, sometimes formal, sometimes informal, set up for vulnerable population groups like old or disabled people by the previous regime. Re-­establishing them inevitably took considerable time and energy. Wider developments. By 2010, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation had enjoyed almost a decade of economic growth based on high oil and gas prices. Russia was now at political loggerheads with the Western countries on a number of issues and foreign funding for NGOs was no longer welcomed by the Putin regime. As Kazakhstan moved into middle-­income status in the global economic charts, the international agencies gradually reduced their support for civil society. Despite protests from civil society leaders, most key NGOs including all INTRAC’s partners lost  their international funders; for example, almost all Moldir’s grant funding disappeared and only their microcredit agency saved them from closing shop

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completely. Kazakhstan’s middle-­income status did not mean much to poor communities, rural or urban, who saw little direct benefit in their pockets from the country’s oil wealth. In Uzbekistan, the situation had changed much earlier and what remained of foreign funding was now strictly controlled by the government.

Civil society and government relations  All this means that the experience of Kyrgyzstan shows the difficulty of translating grass-­roots civic activity into social movements that could create real social change. Some of the issues that arise between CSOs and government at a national and local level are discussed in Case Studies 5.1 and 5.2.

C5.1  Building self-­help as a social movement When we began our work strengthening NGOs to support the self-­help movement in Central Asia (P2), our colleagues in the donor agencies referred several times to the history of social movements in South Asia, where organisations representing landless or poor peasants have played a major political role, organising against the big landowners and forcing policy concessions from governments. Could self-­help groups set up within their programme – by now numbering over 1,000 groups across three countries, many of them organised in geographical clusters and federations – play this kind of a role, demanding more government support for agriculture and better public services in the villages? Could they raise the property and gender rights issues that affected many families? The self-­help groups themselves usually consisted of 10–15 people, mainly women, who were relatively poor and gained from the training and group lending schemes that the programme offered. The main economic purpose of the credits was to boost livestock husbandry and agricultural production, develop small-­scale food processing and crafts and access to local markets; while other credits were used to develop cultural, children’s or youth activities in the villages. The NGOs ran year-­round training programmes in self-­help group organisation, leadership development (encouraging the annual rotation of leadership in the self-­help groups), microcredit and finance management, new agricultural practices and techniques and so on.  The leaders of self-­help groups, clusters and federations were in the main experienced community activists; some of them were elected local deputies (councillors) or heads of village institutions like schools, health points and local government departments. But while NGO staff met regularly (e.g. during the training workshops we organised), there was little attempt to unite these local leaders at the wider national or regional level. During our programme, we organised two meetings that provided an opportunity to bring them together – a self-­help fair in Bishkek in 2008 and a similar event in Dushanbe in 2009. Besides stalls promoting local produce and crafts, discussion sessions were held with self-­help group and federation leaders and senior government officials were invited to address the meeting on

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agricultural and social policy. However, these and other events of a similar kind never resulted in the development of a social movement. Why didn’t a social movement take shape despite the great hardship of rural communities in the three countries? Why weren’t local organisations more ready to demand their rights? It seems to me that there were three main reasons. First, the development of a political movement would have taken NGOs out of their comfort zone into new political risks. It is not that they were indifferent to politics – indeed, in this period many of them stood successfully for elected positions at local and provincial levels. However, to stand for office as the head of a successful NGO with a well-­established client group is one thing – to head an oppositional social movement is quite another. Meanwhile the perspectives and political ambitions of the self-­help groups and federation leaders stayed on the local level. Second, the self-­help groups were focused on very basic needs – economic subsistence, survival of families and support to children – and our capacity- and consciousness-­building programmes had not moved further than this. We saw this clearly in relation to women’s rights. On the one hand, 75 per cent of SHG members were women, indeed 75 per cent of their leaders were women; on the other hand, they were weighed down by household responsibilities, especially with so many working-­age men in migration in Russia. It was difficult to change the balance of power between men and women, whether in their own families or in the local community. Significant advances were made but a united movement did not emerge. A third reason why the self-­help groups did not transform into a radical social movement has been referred to already. The external context was not the same as in South Asia or Latin America. In Kyrgyzstan, land privatisation in the early 1990s had resulted in each family getting a small plot of land as their own. Just a few collective farms managed to hang on as associations of independent farmers. In Tajikistan, the collective farms had largely stayed in place, producing cotton or wheat for export, with self-­help and family groups focusing their attention on small vegetable plots or orchards attached to their house. There were no big private or aristocratic landowners in Central Asia. While poor, most villagers did not suffer from the extreme poverty seen in India. The opportunities to receive credit were quite new in Central Asia, since in Soviet times money-­lending had been illegal. Self-­help groups were keen to take up these opportunities. The drawbacks and weaknesses of microcredit schemes had not yet become as obvious as they have in India or Bangladesh. All these are reasons why no general social movement emerged from P2 and similar programmes for the rural poor in Central Asia in the 2000s. Resource nationalism and community activism against mining companies. Having said this, we must immediately qualify our conclusion. When in 2010 Kyrgyzstan experienced its second revolution, like in 2005, underlying social and economic issues played an important role in the protests. The crucial mistake made by the Bakiev regime was to implement an increase in charges of electricity and other basic services too quickly and without sufficient consultation or attention to their potential effect in rural and high mountain areas of the country; it was mass

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mobilisations in far-­away Naryn and Talas oblasts that lit the fuse for the clashes in Bishkek.  Across Central Asia, energy and mineral resource issues have a potential for political mobilisation that is likely no less than in Latin America. That is, people have realised that hydropower, electricity and water supply, the mining of minerals like gold, uranium or coal, are key resources for national development. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the question about whether to build a new hydropower station high in the Pamir Mountains is extremely sensitive politically. In Kazakhstan, a strike of oil workers near the Caspian Sea lasted almost a whole year before the tragic shooting dead of miners by police in Zhanozen. In Kyrgyzstan, the Kumtor gold mine produces around 10 per cent of GDP and nationalist politicians have from time to time argued for the state to take control of it. Other planned gold mines around the country have been physically blocked by local protests for years.

Case study 5.2  Women with disabilities fighting for their rights My work with INTRAC in Central Asia had gradually changed in character. From being a regional programme manager with a big budget, three offices and a dozen staff to manage, I gradually made the transition to a mixed role – keeping my management responsibility for our work in Central Asia, but spending more and more time delivering projects as a consultant or even as a trainer. Some of this work was within programmes that we designed and fundraised for ourselves, but an increasingly large part was in response to requests from different agencies: for a training workshop, project evaluation, management review, piece of local research, and so on. Thus, the Central Asia programme made a gradual transition from being a very big operation with just one donor (P1); to a medium-­sized programme focused on NGOs and self-­help groups (P2): and then to a smaller operation with around ten contracts or projects each year (P3). The funding was more diversified, the content of the work more varied, and for me the chance to work directly with NGOs was both interesting and satisfying.2 One such request for collaboration came up at the beginning of the 2010s, from a Kazakhstan NGO Shyrak, representing women with disabilities and based in Almaty. In the five years that followed, work with disabled people’s organisations became a regular feature of our programme – including elements of training, consultancy, evaluation and research. The work began with a project funded by the European Union to strengthen disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and help build disabled women’s networks. This took place over an enormous geographical area – with sub-­networks in the Western region (around the Caspian Sea), in the South (centred in Almaty and reaching as far as Shimkent on the border with Uzbekistan), and in the North-­East (from the capital Astana to the Altai Mountains bordering Russia and China). For me, this was an opportunity to return to the issues of disabled people’s rights and services that had been a priority in the VSO’s programmes in the 1990s, and also to resume acquaintance with the Kazakhstan organisations I had met in earlier phases of INTRAC’s work.

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We began with an organisation self-­assessment carried out with the help of the three regional coordinators, themselves leaders of DPOs, for each of the four–five organisations in the region. They were very varied in focus and character. Some worked with adults, some with children. Some groups focused on particular disabilities, for example, wheelchair users, people with visual impairment; some were very well-­established NGOs and others much newer. A particular feature of DPOs is their membership base. This makes them one of the most representative subsectors in civil society and few of the accusations about lack of legitimacy that are made about NGOs apply to these organisations. They have credibility with the general public and responsibility to their target group – both in large measure. On the other hand, activating the membership is a constant struggle, especially when you consider how many people with disability are home-­bound because of lack of disabled access to essential public facilities in rural and urban areas in Central Asia. The main activity of our two-­year EU programme was organising a women’s leadership programme in each of the three regions. This aimed to build leadership on three levels: first, individual knowledge, confidence and awareness; second, organisational and management skills that would benefit their DPO; and third, leadership in society, that is, skills in communication, negotiation and public speaking and lobbying.3 Mostly it was the leaders of the organisations who attended. Shyrak’s policy is to support organisations where people with disabilities themselves play the lead role – not voluntary helpers, nurses or social workers. These were leaders with enormous energy and commitment to their members and the movement. The programme was aimed at women but, in some cases, men with disabilities took part (e.g. where an organisation working with women had a male leader). Once we had completed the leadership programme, we brought all the organisations together again to make a strategic plan for their network. In the meantime, Shyrak staff had done a lot of work on email lists, internet pages and networking, so that essential information for people with disabilities and their organisations was placed weekly on a joint platform. All this meant that there was a real chance of a continuing liaison between organisations located hundreds of kilometres away from each other. The network strategy focused on plans to increase women’s participation in public and political life and Shyrak’s leader, Lyazzat Kaltaeva, provided a great example, standing for election to the city council in Almaty twice over the next few years – and being successful on the second attempt. Following the EU project in Kazakhstan, INTRAC organised a second women’s leadership programme in Kyrgyzstan, working with Shyrak’s network partners led by NGO Ravenstvo in Kyrgyzstan, and made useful contacts with their DPO partners in Tajikistan. This led eventually to a participatory research study on how the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities is being implemented in the three countries. Working with government. One of the biggest issues in Case Studies 5.1 and 5.2 is  how CSOs should relate to the authorities. In the Shyrak project, we used a rights-­based approach to disability issues. That is to say, we considered access to

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education, culture, employment and other facilities as a right held by people with disabilities; and government as the agency or agencies that should make these rights available. Key factors included not just what money is available in the government budgets, but also public awareness of the issue and the readiness and capacity of disabled people to put the issues on the political agenda. Rights are almost always a political issue. If we take the example of the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we can illustrate many of the problems around identifying and implementing rights in the Central Asia region. Of the three countries we studied, only Kazakhstan had ratified and begun implementation of the UN Convention. The government had signalled its intention to do so a few years earlier and, in January 2015, it formally signed the necessary documents. In May that year, Shyrak presented their report in Astana in the presence of the United Nations officials responsible for the monitoring of implementation of the convention. In previous years, many pieces of the machinery necessary for implementation of progressive social policy had been put in place. The Education, Health and Social Protection Ministries had clearly benefitted from the years when Kazakhstan had a good income from oil and gas sales. The social contracting mechanism was benefitting DPOs and their target groups, albeit the situation was far from perfect. Meanwhile, many social policy activists had moved from the CS sector into government, and were now holding key positions. In 2015, city administrations across Kazakhstan took on special disability advisors and these people were well placed to help monitor the new UN Convention. A risk remained that the advisors would be overburdened with issues and complaints coming in, turning into a scapegoat for the continued failure of the system. However, national DPOs like Shyrak and Namys had fought long and hard for this reform and they were determined to get the best out of it. In Tajikistan, by contrast, DPOs were fighting hard for the adoption of the UN Convention, but the country was so poor compared to Kazakhstan, its social services so woefully inadequate, its system of social contracting hardly begun, that to conceive of quick progress in this area was unrealistic. In 2015, the government hadn’t yet signed up and disability organisations were still fighting one-­off battles for their clients without an all-­encompassing rights framework to help them. And yet, in our period of collaboration with the Tajikistan network led by NGO Ittifok, we saw some progress. For example, I carried out an evaluation on the development of a day centre for younger age children with disabilities set up in the grounds of a residential children’s home in Dushanbe. Each year there was more contact between NGO staff and experts, the management and staff of the residential home, and the city authorities responsible for early child development and care issues. A big success was charted when local government took on responsibility for the salaries of the social workers in the day centre. Across Central Asia in all kinds of social sector projects, this is the key moment: international donors fund physical improvements and innovations in care, but can the government take on responsibility and run the facility thenceforth? Sadly, many donor-­funded projects go into decline at this point.

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In Kyrgyzstan, a similar situation with shortage of funds exists, but the government had anyway signed the UN Convention. Here the key success factor was the greater confidence of DPOs – ready to mobilise their members for a lobby or flashmob at any moment – and their better bargaining position with a new government regime after the events of 2010. Civil society leaders and organisations were playing an active role in advising the Ministries of Education, Social Development, Youth and Employment. But signing the convention and recognising rights does not automatically mean delivering rights or better services. This is one of the bitter lessons of the last 20 years in the region. In almost all sectors, successes in signing conventions or adopting new laws have not delivered the results that were hoped for – at least, not immediately. In reality, DPOs in Kyrgyzstan have many years of lobbying ahead of them before the promises of the UN Convention will fully come true. And the same goes for other groups engaged in the struggle for rights – implementation of rights, once they are signed up to, is in itself a long struggle.

NGOs, governments and the welfare state  It is hard to deny that elements of civil society promotion in the former Soviet Union from the 1990s amounted to what Freire called ‘cultural invasion’. That is, this was a very powerful example of insistence by external agencies (colonisers) about the need in the receiving (colonised) countries for a new set of values, principles or practices. In the rights field, one set of rights – the right to employment and free basic services as promoted in the USSR, was removed and replaced by another set of rights, that is, individual, mainly political freedoms. Cultural invasion or imperialism means an attempt to impose our own view of the world and how people should behave in it on other people. At the same time, the receiving country is made to feel that its achievements, culture, traditions or understanding of the world are inferior. The invader does not have to be aggressive; he or she can offer themselves as a helping hand – as someone who ‘knows better’. We saw this in the 1990s where civil society developers assumed they were setting up voluntary, civil or socially organisations from scratch, where none had existed before. They hardly recognised organisations or practices emanating from the pre-­1917 period and were firmly set against the achievements of the Soviet period. Indeed, among neoliberal NGOs to this day you can hear comments to the effect that, for example, that the Soviet period prevented people from getting organised or being able to think for themselves. As if the shift from 5–95 per cent literacy could be achieved without people thinking! Or that roads, schools, hospitals and factories could be built without the population getting organised, on the very extensive scale that this occurred! In the same neoliberal analyses, we can read comments to the effect that people rely on government too much. They expect too much from government. All this is a bit laughable when the next moment the same development agencies are bemoaning the existence of what they call, insultingly for people in the region, ‘fragile’ or ‘failed’ states. In fact, the commitment of people to their government is

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a huge plus factor in any country. Added to which, during the transition period, it was discovered that donor agencies simply cannot cover all the needs in a poor country, nor are they accountable to the host population in the same way that a locally elected councillor or a front-­line local government official is. One commonly used model of CS–government relations defines the options as ‘confrontation, consensus, or collaboration’. The present-­day policy of most donors in the FSU is mostly to encourage collaboration. Indeed, an increasingly large proportion of their budget now goes into training government servants, experts and policy makers, not NGO staff or activists. Over the period of my involvement in the region, we see a situation where: (1) government suffered a head-­on assault, after which, seriously weakened, it was administered first aid by the donor agencies but in no way allowed to return to its previous positions; (2) NGOs were encouraged to take on government responsibilities; until (3) the point when the international situation, coloured revolution and the threat of real social transformation worried international donors and national governments so much that the resource tap to NGOs was turned off. A few sectoral or symbolic causes are still supported actively but the chances of them seriously engaging the general population are quite limited. Postscript. Shyrak’s Lyazzat Kaltaeva was not the only NGO leader who found a way into politics and policy-­making. INTRAC’s long-­term partner in Kyrgyzstan, Asiya Sasykbaeva, founder of the advocacy oriented NGO Interbilim, became a deputy in the parliament elected in 2011 (in fact, she was for several years the deputy speaker, working with the very complex issues raised by coalition government). The head of Mehr Shavcat, Maharam Tildigazieva, became a local deputy in Osh. And Svetlana Bashtovenko, leader of Resource Centre for the Elderly, became one of Kyrgyzstan’s most prominent experts in pension and social policy. Many other examples could be sited here, if space permitted. Mostly, NGO leaders tried to keep their own political and personal networks separate from their role in external funded activities. And who can blame them? This was the safest strategy.4

The role of self-­help and voluntary organisations in the welfare state In Chapters 1–2, we saw the situation in Europe when the post-­1945 welfare state began to run into trouble. On the one hand, people’s expectations of welfare services had significantly increased during the 1960s and new demands were being made (e.g. in relation to immigration and multiculturalism); on the other, economic and political problems were piling up and a series of governments were finding it difficult to maintain the levels of spending that they had promised. The upshot: a new Conservative government abruptly brought in the policy of neoliberal reduction in social welfare. Twenty years later, the processes that were set in train then, still hold. In a number of countries, the slogan is much the same, encapsulated in the words ‘Big Society, Small Government’. That is, social, voluntary and civil society activists were asked to step in and fill the space left by the shutting down or reducing of state services.

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In essence, the analysis made in this book shows that a similar process took place in the 1980s and 1990s in the USSR and Eastern Europe, too. Economic and social rights and expectations were radically reduced. Neoliberalism was developed under the slogan of perestroika. So while the collapse of the USSR seemed to many to indicate that one system – capitalism – had won, and the other system – socialism – had lost, in reality many similar processes were taking place in the Eastern and Western blocs. The crisis of existing welfare systems was one of the similarities.

BOX 5.1  MARXISM AND FEMINISM ON THE WELFARE STATE In their work Welfare and Ideology (1993), George and Wilding describe how Marxist analyses of the welfare state tend to see it as a set of palliative measures, aimed at propping up a bankrupt system or hiding its real (exploitative and unequal) character. This critique runs parallel to the criticisms of NGOs described in Chapter 4 – as allegedly deflecting social protest and engaging social activists in activities less dangerous to the state than radical political activism. Nonetheless, the Marxist attitude to the welfare state is more complex than that, because socialists recognise that it has been created in response to working-­class and citizens actions. Socialist and social democratic governments in Europe have traditionally increased spending on education, health and social services – and conservative governments, as we noted above, have tended to cut them back in times of economic difficulties. Indeed, though the welfare state helps legitimate the capitalist system, it is also a problematic element for the system because demands for social spending can outstrip government income – as we saw at the end of the 1970s in the UK. At the same time, writers on both the left and right of the political spectrum realise that the welfare state can become a bureaucracy. Thus, even Marxists are divided between those who see the welfare state as an enduring institution, and those who question its long-­term survival. If we look at the history of Marxist thinking, we see that few theorists anticipated the extensive, centralised form of public ownership and service provision that emerged in the Soviet Union from the late 1920s. Early socialist thinkers like William Morris placed more emphasis on cooperatives than state formations. And early trade unions leaders in Russia never imagined that so much social provision would be placed on their shoulders as occurred in the USSR. In fact, this was quite a revolutionary approach to the question of state social provision – organising so many services in the workplace: childcare, healthcare, volunteering systems, adult education, and handing over to trade unions so many administrative functions, for example, the national system of rest and vacation homes. Feminist critiques of social welfare. How do we combine the rights and services approach in the social sector? Here it seems to me that the women’s

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movement has a lot of arguments and lessons to offer. Women are key players in the maintenance of social support and safety net services in traditional societies like Central Asia and they are among the fiercest critics of the failings of social policy and social work systems in modernised societies like Western Europe. While it is important to note the different views and trends within the women’s movement – sometimes described as liberal, socialist and radical feminists – there is a fair degree of agreement between them in relation to the welfare state. They generally accept its potential to improve women’s lives, particularly at critical stages like childbirth and during child-­ rearing, but are deeply critical of much of social services provision. And it is clear that social policies have a big influence on women’s place and opportunities in society. On the more theoretical level, a debate continues as to the relation between capitalism and patriarchy. For socialist feminist historians like Heidi Hardmann and Nancy Fraser,5 both capitalism and patriarchy are historical constructs, but patriarchy existed before capitalism and takes a very particular form within it. They define two main kinds of demands being made by women and other discriminated groups – for the redistribution of society’s resources, and for recognition of particular groups. In this analysis, welfare payments alleviate the position of poorer groups but are not enough to transform the system or root out its injustices (for a short account of the complex issues referred to above, see Arruzza, 2013).

Trade unions, services and rights Trade unions are another key subsection in civil society. In the Soviet time, they became ‘transmission belts’ for the provision of social welfare and participation of the workforce at an enterprise level. And when suddenly the system collapsed, the unions were left with huge infrastructure empires but much less funds – since the state subsidies were quickly reduced or removed. At this point, more than half the nurseries in USSR closed down, the system of prophylactic health went into crisis, male mortality jumped due to violence and alcoholism; and as we have seen, tens of thousands of pensioners were forced into begging or selling their household treasures on street corners. The trade unions had to divest themselves of much of their service empire and go back to the business of defending workers’ rights in the capitalist economy.6 They found this quite difficult to do. In reality, a closer analysis shows that there are many similarities between the provision of social welfare by trade unions in the USSR, and by NGOs today. Development NGOs today work in a very different way from trade unions, despite many potential areas for collaboration. As Eade and Leather (2005) have shown, the focus of trade unions on their members’ interests can lead them into a defensive, rather immobile mode of action; whereas the flexibility and mobility of NGOs allows them to respond quickly and raise very broad issues around rights.

134   Improving services or promoting rights TABLE 5.1  Trade unions and NGOs as service providers

Trade unions as service providers under state socialism

NGOs as service providers under neoliberalism

Very wide range of social, health, educational, cultural and leisure services, organised by economic sector within central planning

Very wide range of social, health, educational, cultural and leisure services, provided by independent NGOs in a more chaotic/varied/flexible way

Huge investment by the state in built infrastructure for services (e.g. the system of rest and health prophylactic homes for workers run by trade unions)

Less commitment by the state to fund homes, nurseries, clinics run by NGOs. The private sector often does this and the units become profit oriented.

Trade unions become state social policy implementers

Public funded NGOs become state social policy implementers

Trade unions take part in socialist competition for productivity, the results of which can help boost the resources they receive from government

Competition between NGOs for grants (based on the quality of their ideas for social welfare provision) is the order of the day

Wide use of voluntary labour in trade unions Location of activity in the workplace

Wide use of voluntary labour in NGOs Location of activity in the community Dominant ideology: capitalism

Dominant ideology: socialism

However, trade unions have a clearer legitimacy in political actions (due to their mass membership and role in the workplace) and can represent particular social groups more powerfully than NGOs.

The role of the family in social welfare Understanding the role of the extended family in Central Asia was one of the most interesting aspects of living in Bishkek, but a difficult one for me, coming as I did with the different expectations of a nuclear family (though actually quite a large family) in the UK. The standard sociologist’s explanation says a lot that holds true: that in pre-­industrial societies the three-­generation family unit is as much a work unit as an emotional unit, based in the home – where production as well as reproduction is focused. All members of the family have their responsibilities in a hierarchy where elder women as much as elder men play a big role. The main events in a life are remembered and celebrated among this large group of people – births, birthdays, coming of age, marriages, ups and downs at work, deaths and memorial events. The extended family forms a social support net and money relations can very much be subject to its rules in a complicated lending and paying back system.7

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In Central Asia, it turned out that these traditions had not been destroyed by Soviet modernisation and they quickly re-­asserted themselves post-­1991. But not fully – in fact, men and women often live hybrid lives, a traditional one at home and a modern one at work and with their friends; and the battle between the two kinds of life goes on all the time. All this was quite complicated to understand. Table 5.2 shows some of the family policy and services issues that, in my experience, come up very frequently in Central Asia. This is deliberately not an all-­ inclusive list, but rather one that makes a connection with previous issues and experiences described in this book. The position of young wives in the extended family was noted as problematic in an INTRAC study of community dynamics in Chapter 4. There is a lot of debate in Kyrgyzstan about this issue – particularly in relation to wives who come to live with their in-­laws according to the Central Asian tradition that one of the sons (sometimes the oldest, sometimes the youngest) should set up their new family with his parents. Often this is done by building a new house or extension in the plot of land or courtyard where the parents live. TABLE 5.2  Social issues and NGO responses in Central Asia

Family and social policy issues

Response of NGOs

Isolation of old people whose children went Targeted support (see Umut case study 4.2) back to Russia in the 1990s, 2000s Promotion of foster care as an alternative to children’s homes Increasing number of children living in residential homes Major campaigns supported by international agencies against child labour in agriculture Child labour, especially in family farms/ (especially cotton) plots Early marriages sanctioned by Islam or Kyrgyz national tradition

Educational activities and tightening of the law on religious marriages

The role of young wives living in their husband’s family

Promoting equal opportunities and the right of young people to make their own work, culture and lifestyle choices

Families broken up by process of internal and external migration for work Primary health services in crisis due to lack of funding, incomplete reforms and privatisation of many functions Crisis in schools due to lack of funding, incomplete reforms, privatisation of many functions Effect of unemployment on men’s health and motivation

Information campaigns on rights of migrants, indeed some groups have campaigned against migration Health promotion campaigns NGOs active in launching pre-school units and enhancing education provision for school-age children (including through social enterprises) Health promotion campaigns Very limited work with unemployed people

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Fundamentally, changes in the family are being driven by the new market economy. As recent studies show, the demands being made on young wives – to do the lion’s share of the extended family’s housework as well as produce children on time – reflect economic processes. The Soviet egalitarian family type, whereby both husband and wife went out to work full-­time, but the wife had the double burden of being simultaneously responsible for the housework, has been replaced by a partial return to traditional gender models. Thus, women have been forced out of the labour market by high unemployment levels while conservative ideology exalts their role as mother and wife. In rural areas, subsistence family farming has replaced a regular wage (in money or in kind) from the Soviet collective farm. But the family farm needs hands to work it and these may be in short supply – especially with the process of internal and external migration. Hence, the young wife comes in very useful as a source of unpaid labour, in the kitchen and in the fields.8 Despite re-­traditionalisation in society, women’s needs and demands in relation to the welfare state are quite similar in Central Asia or the FSU to Western Europe or the USA. They include support to families facing poverty; helping women achieve a balance of work and home responsibilities; provision of services that reduce the price that women pay for parenthood and as carers; and the demand that social policy should not be subordinate to economic policy. Note that many of these demands are very pragmatic and that many women argue for the need for men and women to share home tasks too (but men’s consciousness has not changed nearly as fast as new opportunities have emerged for women).9

Social workers in the welfare state Question: What happens to isolated, alienated, oppressed individuals within the advanced countries? Answer: they get offered a social worker (not a socialist worker, as we joked in Chapter 1). We cannot complete our analysis of welfare services without a consideration of the role of one of the main groups of providers – social workers. The promotion of social work has been one of the main themes in development provision across the FSU since the 1990s. There are significant similarities between social work and NGO or community work, both being oriented on the poorer and vulnerable groups in society. Both types of work involve a close relationship with the state at a local level, however, social work is more focused on individuals and less on organisations. As with community work, there is a battleground in social work between radical and traditional approaches; and a tension between social work theory (the principles) and practice (the individual social worker’s ability to communicate with clients). According to a standard text on social work in the UK, two of the big conflict areas are, first, the approach based on ‘treatment’ (a medical model) versus an approach which does not work like treatment – this issue looms large for disabled people’s organisations like Shyrak and Ravenstvo, fighting hard against the medical model (which was quite dominant in Soviet time). Second, the market approach to delivery of welfare

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services versus non-­market (i.e. state) services (Coulshed and Orme, 1998). Here, NGOs are basically in favour of the market. In the social work projects that I have observed in the former Soviet Union, a number of issues and process seemed to be important. In the early 1990s, local authorities had to build social work departments from scratch. At first, the delivery of money benefits dominated; this is what social workers mostly spent their time doing. Gradually and very unevenly, however, other types of work opened up, for example, individual case management and inter-­departmental approaches (e.g. linking the input of social protection staff to education or health workers). VSO volunteers contributed a lot to the transfer of skills by Western organisations in precisely these areas. But is the system going in the right direction and will Western models suit Central Asia and the former Soviet Union? In Western Europe, a complex and bureaucratic process of assessment of client needs and eligibility for care services has taken place. The issue of how to commission the required services from a variety of potential providers (including NGOs) is equally complicated. And many categories of social work clients have begun to resist the rules, procedures and restrictions of the social work systems, for example, those with mental health problems, ex-­offenders and ethnic minority groups, who in very different ways come into contact with social workers. Not infrequently, these groups accuse the social work profession of discrimination and oppression. This shows how sensitive the power relations are in this area.

BOX 5.2  RADICAL SOCIAL WORK? The book Doing Radical Social Work by Colin Turbett (2014) is interesting as an attempt, by someone from a comparable background to myself, to consider how possible it is to preserve some basic political principles in his profession. The book has a lot of good advice for social workers – using case studies and discussing practical issues. However, the overwhelming impression is that there is very little room for manoeuvre for social workers given the tightness of government regulations. This is a problem in the voluntary sector too – often we are simply tied down by donor conditionality. Coulshed and Orme (1998) are in agreement that official guidelines set such boundaries on social worker activity as to make a creative approach virtually impossible. But a creative approach is often vital to achieve a successful intervention that really makes a difference. They show how often the social worker needs to ‘fight for justice’ for his/her client, or combat abuse of power in the system of social welfare.  Many of the skills of daily practice are about negotiating with different parts of the wider system, whether this concerns stimulating voluntary sector community care, welfare rights work, persuading schools to cope

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with disruptive pupils, constructing appropriate community sentences for offenders, inducing policy-­makers to fund new projects, or helping to resolve staff disputes in day and residential centres. (Coulshed and Orme, 1998: 50) The authors argue that the social worker can be a ‘change agent’, negotiating with different service providers and agencies for his/her client. However, my own question is: to what extent can this be empowering, when the social worker does this for the client? Added to which, an increasing amount of time is now spent on inter-­agency negotiations to set up and monitor care services; this is time lost to face-­to-face work with the client himself or herself. In the UK, the neoliberal approach to social policy initiated by the Thatcher government was continued under the ‘third way’ strategy of Tony Blair’s New Labour government, and then in David Cameron’s Conservative government with its so-­called ‘big society’ idea. Government partnership with civil society under these regimes has gradually turned into a system of contracting and tendering where market mechanisms are used to allocate public resources to service delivery by ‘non-­profits’. However, as many critics have noted, the ‘non-­profits’ that contract for service delivery are now very large organisations operating with ‘for-­profit’ market approaches. Finally, the financial crisis of 2008–09 and subsequent recession further squeezed resources for the social and civil society sectors in many European countries. Large-­scale austerity measures were introduced and local authority run welfare services were cut by around 25 per cent in the UK. In this context, more and more questions began to be asked about government funding for both domestic and international civil society.

‘Social order’ in the former Soviet Union  At the beginning of this chapter, we described the institutionalisation of civil society in Kazakhstan via a series of reforms including the launch of funding for NGOs carrying out socially oriented contracts. Social enterprise and innovation are increasingly a priority for government policy in the post-­Soviet countries.10 This process started in Russia some 15 years ago and Kazakhstan is following a very similar path. Interestingly, the rapid increase of social enterprises in Russia is supported not just by major funding from government, but also from private sector sources. The leader in this field is a foundation called Nashe Budushche (Our Future), set up in 2007 by one of the Russian oligarchs. The activities of the foundation are quite impressive and cover a wide range of social issues and problems. Financial support is provided via an annual social enterprise competition in which the prizes are in the form of interest-­free loans. By early 2018, they had given out almost 200 loans

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to enterprises from 52 regions in Russia for a total of 499 million roubles (more than US$7 million). The foundation also awards an annual prize ‘Impulse for Good’ in several different categories. A social enterprise laboratory develops new kinds of training and support to social business and a form of certification has been worked out with the help of a British company. Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development leads on social order issues and reported that in 2015 the federal budget for ‘socially oriented non­profit organisations’ (SONGOs) had increased to 7.2 billion roubles (US$108 million) and the number of NGOs in this category had grown to 140,000 organisations.

Case study 5.3  Learning from the experience of NGO social sector initiatives in Russia One of very earliest Russian regions to experiment with NGO inputs to social policy and care services was Perm city and oblast, located slightly to the west of the Ural Mountains. I first visited Perm in the late 1990s when VSO volunteers were working in important new fields like hospice care, work with drug addicts and the promotion of foster care. At the same time, a local government twinning project existed between the city and county of Oxford and its counterparts in Perm, dating from citizens’ efforts to find common ground and counter the Cold War. This arrangement has prospered and stayed active until this day. When I visited Perm several years later for my book Russia and Development (2014), one of the things I looked at was the establishment of council-­funded community centres; the city had opened ten of them and they were developing gradually. Another change that had taken place was the development of a NGO grants system. By 2010, the system had been in operation for ten years. The questions that interested me were: What new and old problems were tackled? What were the main or most striking results/successes of the grants programme? Which social group participated/benefitted most? What lessons were learned and acted on? How did the programme grow – in size, theme, locations? This process had been carefully documented by staff from the city’s NGO Support Centre – itself originally set up with money from a US agency, the Eurasia Foundation (in fact, the first grant competition was funded by the same agency). But then, local government stepped in to fund the programme, supported by a handful of local companies. In 2000, the programme got support from Sergei Kirienko, governor of the Volga region, and in the next year the city authorities announced that the competition would be an annual event tied in with the social order process. The authors of a history of the grants programme note that its aims were, first, to strengthen citizenship ‘in the active solution of a wide variety of city problems’; second, to involve ever wider groups of citizens; and third, to use the best Russian and international experience. Here are some examples: in 2003, funds were concentrated on renovating the city cemetery; in 2004, an All-­Russia Social Forum (a country version of the global

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social forums held in Brazil and other countries) was held in Perm; in 2007, priority was given to a single integrated project and the winner was a new City Information and Leisure Centre. Perm was a standard-­bearer of liberal values in Russia in the 2000s and this programme was just one of many examples of their innovative and learning approach.11 It is a good example of what we called social learning, that is, initiatives to learn from the experience between organisations and in networks.

The mutual aid tradition in Russia – and a conclusion In the Russia region, there is a rich tradition of collective and community problem­solving. One of the main texts on this topic, Mutual Aid was written by the anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin back in the nineteenth century. Another key text is the work What is to be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. This work had the same resonance among radicals and socialists in Russia as Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has had among trade unionists in the UK. Describing the attempts of men and women to take control of their lives through the creation of small-­scale cooperatives, it became the main text for the populist movement in the 1870s and 1880s. Indeed, Lenin so admired Chernyshevsky that he used the same title for his own work on vanguard party organisation later.12 As noted above, the British anarchist writer Colin Ward is sceptical about the modern welfare state. For him, everyday social problems have now become a ‘plaything of central government financial policy’ (1996) and the answer lies in more voluntary-­led efforts, in mutualism, local and self-­help approaches to social problems. One of the conclusions of my analysis is that, indeed, a state-­led approach cannot on its own provide decent, human, sensitive services. The role of the voluntary sector is essential here, even if this means contracting for services or competing for grants. While grants competitions and commercial tenders increase competitiveness among those bidding for them, this is not an inevitable process. There is nothing to stop NGOs from forming alliances and joint positions that reduce the harmful effects of competition for resources. Without processes of this kind, it is hard to see how different NGOs can be invited to propose projects that can enhance and extend government policy. The experience of Perm shows how a system of social order can be built up gradually, with incentives for innovation and NGOs in a consultative or watchdog role. Indeed, creating a fair and transparent system is essential. And voluntary services should not undermine state provision. Another conclusion from my analysis is that the more political approach to social issues continues to be important – often including an element of advocacy based around the rights of individuals and groups. It is better if people themselves can argue for their rights. Thus, in the UK, group approaches to lobbying and representation of patients’ interests in the disability and mental health field are supported by NGOs. The example of Shyrak given above shows that groups of this kind are increasingly ready to take on a rights-­based and advocacy approach even in traditional Central Asia society.

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For ragged trousered activists: the ‘parallel track’ A good analysis and set of suggestions for practitioners is made by a Canadian health promotion expert who spent some time working in Central Asia as well as many years in Indonesia and other countries on community and health programmes. In his book Health Promotion Practice: Power and Empowerment (2004), Glenn Laverack begins with a historical introduction showing how political action was necessary to solve health problems in Silesian mines in the nineteenth century and contrasts top­down and bottom-­up health promotion. For example, many government-­led health education campaigns are top-­down. Laverack’s argument is that top-­down health promotion cannot succeed in itself. There needs to be a level of emancipation, empowerment and social justice, otherwise the mass of the population will not take part and benefit. In considering the political dimension that is always present in work around technical improvements in health standards, Laverack uses a phrase which seems very relevant to many NGOs and social projects – the need for a ‘parallel track’. This means the need to keep alive a long-­term political, social, cultural or economic agenda despite the other pressures operating in NGOs (the problems of fundraising, management, delivery of project and programmes). This political agenda will normally be linked to the original idea of the NGO, its original mission and critical value. Maintaining the parallel track means recognition that, alongside daily activities and the meeting of basic needs of the target group, we must not forget the more distant goals we originally set ourselves, or indeed the basic unmet needs and ultimate aims of the people we work with. In fact, it is a strategy. How can the parallel track be organised? In different NGOs, this is done in different ways. In some organisations, an information section or advocacy department can keep political or rights issues on the agenda. In other NGOs, listening to the grassroots, giving local community leaders a voice in the management of activities will provide this function. Appointment of key staff with a political understanding is very important. Learning programmes are vital to bringing new staff a better understanding of underlying issues that affect the work of the NGO. Recently, some of these ideas have been summed up in the phrase ‘theory of change’. Indeed, what is our theory of social change or transformation? We know social change is affected by high-­level factors, often external ones – so what are we going to do about them?

Questions for activists Does your organisation, or do you individually, need to open a parallel track? If so, what would be your line of inquiry? Would it require self-­study – or collective action? How much time and effort does it need? How will you sustain it (you will likely need support at some point)?

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Further reading on NGOs, social policy and development Arruzza, Cinzia, 2013. Dangerous Liaisons: The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism. Pontypool: Merlin Press. Bebbington, Anthony J., Samuel Hickey and Diana C. Mitlin, 2008. Can NGOs Make a Difference? The Challenge of Development Alternatives. London: Zed Books. Beck, Ulrich, 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage Publications.  Buxton, Charles, 2011. The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Cornwall, Andrea, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead (eds), 2007. Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations & Challenges. London: Zed Books. Coulshed, Veronica and Joan Orme, 1998. Social Work Practice: An Introduction. London: British Association of Social Workers. Eade, Deborah and Alan Leather, 2005. Development NGOs and Labour Unions: Terms of Engagement. Oxford: Oxfam. George, Vic and Paul Wilding, 1993. Welfare and Ideology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hemment, Julie, 2007. Empowering Women in Russia: Activism, Aid and NGOs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Johnson, Erica, 2015. ‘Non-­State Health Care in Central Asia: Cooperative or Competitive?’ In Charles Ziegler (ed.), Civil Society and Politics in Central Asia’ Lexington, KY: Kentucky University Press. Laverack, Glenn, 2004. Health Promotion Practice: Power and Empowerment. London: Sage. Mandel, David, 2004. Labour After Communism: Auto Workers and their Unions in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Montreal: Black Rose. Silova, Iveta and Gita Steiner-­Khamsi, 2008. How NGOs React: Globalisation and Education Reform in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Turbett, Colin, 2014. Doing Radical Social Work. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ward, Colin, 1996. Social Policy: An Anarchist Response. London: Freedom Press.

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Notes   1 A full discussion of this is available in Central Asia Survey No. 7, September–December 2008, edited by Sally Cummings.   2 About half the 100 projects we ran over the period 2009–18 had a training elements of some kind; just over a quarter had a research or evaluation focus, and around the same amount involved some form of longer-­term organisational development for local NGOs. There were also small grants and contributions on publications and conferences of different kinds.   3 Advocacy strategy on rights issues in development programmes is often represented as a triangle where three different elements have to be addresses: (1) the content of the issue being argued; (2) the structures in society that need to be changed; and (3) the behaviour issues related to this topic.   4 See a study by Konstantin Kovtunets (INTRAC) on NGO leaders’ networks for the ICCO consortium, 2009.   5 To the classics of socialist feminism like Aleksandra Kollontai, Klara Zetkin and Angela Davis, we can now add more recent writers like Michele Barrett, Kimberley Crenshaw and Ruth Pearson who have studied the ‘intersectionality’ of feminism with race, class and labour issues.   6 For an interesting as an account of trade unions in the transition period in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, see David Mandel, Labour After Communism: Auto Workers and their Unions in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (Montreal: Black Rose, 2004). The book is focused on union activism in the car industry but has excellent background analysis and a good discussion of one of the favourite themes in NGO work – social partnership – but in a very particular sense: the three-­side relationship between employers, trade unions and the government.   7 A historical and contemporary account of village and family organisation in Tajikistan is provided in Sergei Abashin, Советский кишляк: между колониализмом и модернизацией (Novoye Literturnoye Obozrenie, 2015).   8 An interesting early study on changing patterns in social relations was by Kathleen Kuehnast and Nora Dudwick, ‘Better a Hundred Friends than a Hundred Rubles? Social Networks in Transition – the Kyrgyz Republic’, World Bank Working Paper No. 39 (2004).   9 In Risk Society, Ulrich Beck points out that many of the gender inequalities and challenges facing women in the West emanate from the market economy and increasing individualisation (like in Central Asia but expressed differently). Women’s expectations of advancement in the labour market and in society generally have been disappointed. Men observe the rhetoric of equality without matching this in deeds. ‘Families become the scene of a continuous juggling of diverging multiple ambitions among the occupational necessities, educational constraints, parental duties and the monotony of housework’ (Beck, 1992: 91). Women suffer more from unemployment (often unregistered) and divorce (an ever-­increasing risk) becomes a ‘trap-­door’ through which they fall back into poverty. 10 A useful account for five countries is given by Gulnara Dzhunushalieva, ‘The Establishment of Social Entrepreneurship Movements as a Response to the Transformation of Governments’ Social Policies’, Journal of Business and Economic Review (2017). 11 Vladimir Vyuzhanin, Энергия социального партнёрства – городскому конкурсу социально значмиых проектов в Перми 10 лет (Perm, 2014). 12 For a good short account of nineteenth-­century Russian populism, see Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (London: Penguin, 1978).

6 Working in Conflict A Gramscian and world systems analysis of NGO responses in the new hot and cold wars

As we approach the year 2020, we can look back on 40 years of war and civil war in Afghanistan, almost next door to where I write these lines in Bishkek. We can count almost 20 years of war and civil war in Iraq, one of the most ancient centres of human civilisation, and almost a decade of war and civil war in Syria and Turkey. There have been bombings almost every month in Baghdad, Kabul and other cities in the Middle East where 10, 20, 40, 80 people may be killed or injured for life. Less well advertised airstrikes by US or Western coalition forces or drones incur military or civilian casualties whose number is unknown. There is unsolved conflict between Palestine and Israel, in Korea, Kashmir, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Columbia, Nepal, Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia. There is unceasing ideological and class conflict within the ‘advanced’ countries, poorly expressed in their political party systems but evident in the strained relations between rich and poor, liberals and conservatives everywhere. There is conflict, restrained but visible, between greedy and power-­seeking elites and official or alternative religions proclaiming they are against the individualism and materialism dominating life in these countries. A wide variety of barriers and boundaries have been set up to reduce conflict and maintain inequalities, among them: fortified borders, exclusive identities, high prices on quality goods, paid educational and health services, and so on. But it turns out that these actions only feed divisions within societies and between countries and build up resentment, leading to more conflict. Many people, maybe the majority of people worldwide have been long ago in a state of resistance, passive or active, against the system. That is to say, we don’t agree, we don’t participate, we don’t vote. Agents of the system may categorise them as troublemakers – and will find other social categories to explain to themselves why so many people are in a state of poverty, exclusion or resistance. The tags are very familiar – welfare scroungers, single parents and broken families, political misfits, people with

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overweight or mental health problems, inner city communities. But against this, our analysis of community work in the UK says that people are prepared to participate where their actions can have an effect and where they have some measure of control. Our analysis of social work says that client empowerment and negotiation between all parties is essential to successful case work. Civic and social activists, voluntary organisations can help to achieve this. From my vantage point in the FSU region, over the past ten years, one can see how a global polarisation of opinion is developing, driven by international political and economic factors but also reflecting significant cultural forces opposed to Western-­led secularism, commercialisation and modernisation. That is to say, just as the media in the UK continue to promote modernising, neoliberal values, in the FSU and other regions affected directly by Western military adventures or economic imperialism, official and social media are just as active in debunking them. And this affects the environment in which civil society and social movements work very significantly. On all sides of this gradually emerging global divide, restrictions on civil and social action are growing while the inequalities and structural problems in the political and economic situation remain or worsen.

Searching for a new framework  In trying to bring together experience from two very different regions of the world – Western Europe and the former Soviet Union – over a period of 50 years into this book, it was necessary for me to think about what frames and terms of discussion would be most useful. In considering social activism, I used the analysis of community work, civil society and social movements, and a summing up of this will be presented in the final sections of this book. It is built around an acceptance of diversity but recognising structural conflict. As regards the external context, which has such a great impact upon any local initiatives, I was determined to stick to a Marxist account, but one that would recognise gender, race and national divides alongside class. However, most of the period described in this book was a time of crisis for the Left, in particular because of the fall of the USSR and with it the vision of socialism that had bolstered so much that communists or socialists argued for during the twentieth century. The alternative to neoliberalism or twenty-­first-century capitalism is not so clear these days. Here I was lucky: the organisation I was working for didn’t just work within one of the key sectors of the neoliberal order – civil society – but it aimed to make a link between civil society, social justice and sustainable development. So  I  could access theoretical or descriptive material relevant to the question about why development in the North and South, East and West, is not working as it should. I started my work with the analysis of civil society development in Central Asia and then moved on to Russia. In both books, I attempted a re-­ evaluation of the Soviet and post-­Soviet experience from left as well as civil society positions. 

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In the West, the pace of social and political change, and the level of violence seems much less than in the ‘developing’ regions of the world, but there is a wealth of political, economic and sociological evidence that shows this is not true. In the UK, conflict and violence is simply placed under constant surveillance, controlled, ‘cared for’ and driven inwards into people. Meanwhile, cultural products routinely celebrate violence: politicians and public figures being ‘aggressive’ has become a positive characteristic; even sexuality (male and female) is celebrated in its aggressive forms. From the left perspective, the dramatic events of the 1980s and 1990s in the FSU seemed to have ‘turned the world upside down’ again – and this time against the Marxist scheme of things, so capitalism now comes after socialism instead of before it. This demanded a huge rethink in the FSU. Reading Russian, post-­Soviet historians and political scientists, I discovered that many of them now adopt the position that the Soviet period was simply one of modernisation, parallel to capitalist modernisation but under a different kind of regime – undertaking industrialisation, improving transport systems, developing science, health and education like in other countries. In this way, they place Russia’s development path parallel to the Western path – rather than in contradiction to it, as the communists always argued. Theories of state capitalism, détente and the convergence of the two systems – communism and capitalism – can fit into this scheme quite easily. Moving further, more left-­oriented Russian analysts refer to a ‘world systems’ theory that defines the centre and periphery of global power, showing how the exploitative centre demands an exploitable periphery, in which it can make its profits or try out its new weapons and ideologies of domination. Russia in this analysis becomes a raw materials extraction zone (oil, gas, gold, timber) for the core advanced countries. And Russia has its own traditional periphery – the Caucasus and Central Asia, Siberia and the Far East, supplying the same minerals, also cotton and labour power. Some of these territories achieved independence in the 1990s; others remained in the Russian Federation. There were strong centrifugal tendencies but also a lot of reasons to stick together and try to consolidate themselves as a region so as to compete with other regional powers – China, the EU, Iran, the Arab world – and stand up to the globally dominant USA. Since the simple sequence feudalism–capitalism–socialism seemed to have broken down in the case of the USSR, another scheme seemed to be necessary. For a while, the powers-­that-be successfully promoted twenty-­first-century capitalism (the ‘New World Order’) as the end-­goal of human history, but this argument has broken down now. Who still believes that the current international system will solve the problem of poverty, social injustice and inequality? Not very many people, I would suggest. The advocates of softly-­softly or slow change may argue that this is not a fair question. Why is it not fair? Why isn’t the system fairer? Why are so many people dying or living in lives ruined by poverty or violence? These people, victims and opponents of the system, will ask this question, whether or not we consider it is fair. That is the nature of class and national conflict.

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BOX 6.1  INSIGHTS FROM WORLD SYSTEMS ANALYSIS In the research for this book, I found in the works of Immanuel Wallerstein and Robert Cox an overall theory that, first all, continues the analysis of centre and periphery at international level; second, recognises the importance of labour and power relations in production to wider social relations. Another author who has received a lot of attention in Russia is Samir Amin, an expert on underdevelopment in Africa but for whom the analysis of the USSR as a country that tried to break out of the capitalist system was always important, and who still wrestles with the question of what the FSU region can do now.1 There are three aspects of the world system analysis that seemed particularly relevant to me in the FSU region.  First, Cox (1987) moves on from the simple feudalism–capitalism–socialism scheme to a more detailed analysis of labour and power relations at a national and international level, identifying ‘modes of social relations of production’ that have succeeded one another in various parts of the world over the past 150 years. These regimes fall under three ‘world orders’: Pax Britannica (in the nineteenth century); the era of rival imperialisms (identified by Lenin at the start of the twentieth century); and Pax Americana (post-­1945). All this is important both as an explanation of recent history and as an account showing that the transition from capitalism to socialism may turn out to be as long, uneven and contradictory as the transition from feudalism to capitalism. As noted in previous chapters, in Central Asia, we are seeing the first real attempt to establish a modern capitalist order across the region, while many traditionalists clearly still hark back to aspects of the old feudal order – all this after a 60-year experiment with socialism … And within this historical process, we can see the creation of a welfare state (or socially oriented state, as it is sometimes described in the FSU) as a way of meeting people’s demands and finding a new balance of forces and benefits between employers and workers. Cox (1987) calls these inter-­sectoral negotiations and settlements bi-­partism or tri-­ partism.  Second, Cox’s theory challenges the orthodox ‘realist school’ of international relations in which competition between states (e.g. USSR–USA, Russia–China) determines events, irrespective of the internal structure and nature of the states themselves. Working as I do with a Gramscian model of civil society – that is, a model that says civil society is an arena where class, regional, ideological and other interests compete with each other on the level of ideas and alliances – it was attractive to me that the world systems analysis also used the Gramscian concept of hegemony to explain the influence of certain countries or political blocks on one another. We can all see that civil society organisations and activists are being used by the promoters of global Western hegemony, now under serious attack. Where Western hegemony is negative, it is our duty to expose or oppose it. However, at the same time, my account

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has shown that citizens’ activism is self-­generating in societies at very different levels of development and in any society it has to find its own voice. Third, this account helps to show the place of regimes that have emerged out of popular dissatisfaction with international power relations. For example, another mode of production and power relations that developed between the First and the Second World War was the state–corporatist model that we call fascism. In Germany, Italy, Portugal, Brazil and Spain – in significantly different ways – a model developed under which the state ‘assumed the tasks that a non-­hegemonic bourgeoisie could not perform on its own’. Cox argues that any form of corporatism is based either on capitalist hegemony or on the acquiescence by labour to the capitalist organisation of society. The deal is that under fascism the state will ‘promote social harmony and eliminate conflict’ (1987: 78–80). Tragically, the fascist state failed to do this in Europe and millions died in war or concentration camps.  Another response was the Soviet ‘redistributive model of development’, emerging with the second or Stalinist revolution (around 1930) based on collectivisation of agriculture and rapid industrialisation. This model was extended to Eastern Europe after 1945 and emulated in China under Mao. It is non-­ capitalist in that it ‘substitutes consciously chosen social goals for the unconscious process of welfare promotion purported to lie in the market.’ Thus, redistributive states have ‘autonomously determined developmental goals’ and ‘do not subordinate their own national economies to a development dynamic determined by the world market’ (Cox 1987: 83–103).

For students of various possible alternatives to the current system, it is most likely necessary to undertake the kind of re-­evaluation that I have attempted in my own area. Luckily, the theory of centre and periphery, which shows how dependence of some countries on others is a key element of the world system, has been around for a long time. Authors that I became acquainted with at different times included Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy on monopoly capital, Andre Gunder Frank on dependence in development, and on the Caribbean region – Walter Rodney and Richard Hart. In the search for alternatives, it is important not only to look at theory but also at the practical attempts of progressive leaders and regimes to stand up to imperialism and pioneer new social and economic policy, for example, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Michael Manley in Jamaica, Tito in Yugoslavia, Mao Zedong in China, even Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. We shouldn’t let anyone put us off; we need to go ahead and study these things. Bringing the regional analysis up to date, we can see that in the 1990s another form of redistribution took place across the FSU and Eastern Europe: this time from workers to employers, from the public sector to business, creating the new rich and new poor that have been described in earlier chapters of this book.2 However, in Russia at least, the state retained significant power and resources and under Vladimir Putin it re-­established its dominant position.3 Putin’s regime is now anathema to the

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neoliberals, but it is worth remembering that in the first period of his presidency from 1999 its policies were quite acceptable to mainstream opinion in the West. Putin maintained and developed the market economy and even gave his predecessor Yeltsin immunity from prosecution. However, Putin’s confrontation with the new oligarchs of Russian industry gradually brought him into conflict with Western investors (e.g. in the oil and gas sectors) with whom the oligarchs were working hand-­in-hand. Putin eventually re-­nationalised some key energy companies, which was not to the taste of Western investors. David Lane calls his economic system ‘market state capitalism’, a system ‘legitimating private property and the market with significant state control’ (2013: 1–3). Russia has not yet created a viable form of capitalism and hence the state still has a developmental role to play (Lane 2013: 1–3). The challenge posed by countries like Russia, Brazil and the Asia tigers to US global hegemony is described by Cox as ‘neo-­mercantilism’ – an alternative strategy whereby a country attempts to make a bargain with global capital to further its current interests and priorities. This often involves a populist phase when a nationalist agenda contributes to political cohesion of a bureaucratic–military type. Cox cites states like Indonesia, Algeria, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan as examples of this tendency. Applying this model to Russia, we can see that the Putin regime is not in conflict with international capital per se, but it is trying to gather the population around itself to force better conditions from the global centres of power (1987: 236–44).

Civil society at the crossroads ‘Think global, act local’, the ecologists advise us. Indeed, that is what many of us are trying to do, in our NGOs and community projects, in a ragged or non-­ragged way. However, thinking global also requires some stimulus, some communication and even some action in the end. And after working ten years in Central Asia, with the danger of becoming not just regional but even parochial (!) in my thinking, I got a chance to take part in an international study of civil society. Of course, I jumped at this opportunity. The study was titled ‘Civil Society at the Crossroads’ and it was a project conceived and carried out by a group of partner organisations: PRIA (India), PSO (Netherlands), INTRAC (UK), EASUN (Tanzania), CDRA (South Africa) and ICD (Uruguay), all of which had a civil society capacity-­building function. The country and case studies undertaken within this project showed what a wide variety of actions and movements have taken shape recent years so as to challenge continuing global inequalities and injustice in both developed and developing countries. The studies covered a variety of regions – Latin America, Western Europe, Asia, and Eastern and Southern Africa. Some papers focused on the civil society sector as a whole in a given country. Other accounts were devoted to campaigns such as Occupy! in the UK or the Syntagma Square demonstrations in Greece, or protests organised by particular coalitions or interest groups – like city traders in Uganda, equal marriage activists in Argentina, or squatters in Cambodia. These were selected from an even larger number of cases proposed by the study partners and were

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intended to show as vividly as possible the dilemmas of official and unofficial action and the range of citizens’ struggles being undertaken at the present time.4 Despite this variety, it was possible to identify several main issues raised by civic activists around the world. First was the gap between the expectations that citizens have from governments and the actual performance of public authorities. Second, many of the protests were against privatisation and the distorting effect of market approaches. Third, there was a big focus on campaigns against corruption. Indeed, CSOs are clearly facing many similar problems right across the world; the distinctions that were once easy to make between the global North and South are less obvious these days. In the study of Russian civil society that I wrote for this project, one key dilemma for civil society was summed up as ‘collaborate or protest’. Collaboration includes the joint work of NGOs or social enterprises with government and the private sector to improve services; protest means street actions and social movements. ‘Civil Society at the Crossroads’ highlighted this dilemma in other countries, indeed, studies of the UK and other European countries noted the dangerous tendency for civil society to become over-­dependent on service contracts and hence subject to government policy. Civil society in conflict situations. Gramsci called state power an ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’, in which civil society is the glove covering the ultimately coercive role of the state. In the international development field, we can see the combination of the velvet glove and iron fist in the succession of armed ‘humanitarian interventions’ that the USA, the UK, France and other NATO countries have organised over the past 25 years since the Cold War. Here we see a situation in which insurrection, inter-­ethnic strife or civil war in poorer or weaker countries is taken as a signal to invade, sort out immediate humanitarian crises and re-­establish a type of order that suits the interventionists and their global visions. Noam Chomsky has looked at these events in detail in his critique of US foreign policy. Civil society agencies are often requested to play a role in the pacification and rebuilding of societies affected by conflict. Thus, some writers make a strong case for CSOs in resolving the ‘new wars’ that have erupted around the world since the end of the Cold War. Mary Kaldor (2012), for example, urges policy makers in conflict and post-­conflict situations to put more emphasis on the role of women’s organisation and community elders, and to put more money into the reconstruction and strengthening of local government agencies.5 Indeed, our experience in Kyrgyzstan shows that local involvement in – and even control of – conflict prevention and resolution activities is crucial. However, the influence of NGOs and community groups is limited compared to army, political and business leaders. Personal, organisational and political. I myself always refused to go to Afghanistan to take part in civil society capacity-­building programmes. On the one hand, there is a serious personal risk and the necessity of living in small enclosures protected by  soldiers from the surrounding community. On the other, there is surely an ideological contradiction when the UK is simultaneously carrying out military actions and supporting the development of civil society – which should take place

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in a voluntary, self-­generating way.6 Sadly, huge amounts of international aid money are now routed to military or paramilitary organisations carrying out humanitarian, infrastructure and social programmes in conflict-­driven societies. This is a good example of an issue where NGOs have to make a moral and political analysis: Does our organisation work in such situations? How do we justify it to our constituencies and ourselves? What are the thematic areas we should work in? How do we relate to the military (whether they are under orders from our own government or the receiving country)? Do the immediate benefits to the population (food distributed, roofs repaired. etc.) justify the level of force exerted? Here, the strongest case for practical and financial support is probably made by politically neutral organisations like the Red Cross/Red Crescent, also the work of various United Nations agencies. Compared to emergency aid, the case for civil society work at the point of a gun is quite weak. In countering military adventures and conflict, it is important to build up our analysis of possible alternatives and, wherever possible, to link this with our own experience as responsible citizens. It is with this in mind that the following case studies are offered. They are all related to conflict, albeit in different ways.

Case study 6.1  ‘Stop the War’ and ‘Respect!’ in Tower Hamlets Soon after I left the UK to take up my job in Bishkek, the anti-­war movement back home expanded significantly. During the late 1990s, protests had taken place against the NATO bombing of Belgrade and, in 2001, against the new war in Afghanistan. But the decision of the Bush administration to ignore the evidence from UN inspectors that there was no nuclear threat to the international community from Iraq, and to begin war preparations despite the absence of a UN resolution legalising this, led to a mass mobilisation in the UK and around Europe.7 Two million people marched against the Iraq War in London in March 2003. However, the Labour government chose to ignore this civil protest and the party voted to support Tony Blair’s decision to go to war. Among those who later came out against this was Claire Short who resigned as Minister for International Development. This was an extremely important example of both the strength and limitations of civil society action. The protestors included those with a civil intent (a moral or legal case) and those with a political intent (from different parties and groups who opposed the war on political grounds). The line between civil and political is always hard to draw. But when the vote to go to war was taken in parliament and the war lobby won, we have a political decision and a clear win for the political elite over civil society forces in the UK. Then something rather surprising happened – one of the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition, the Labour MP George Galloway, a political maverick who in the past had not been afraid to meet Soviet leaders and even Saddam Hussain, resigned from the party in protest against the decision to go to war and set up a new party called Respect! And at the general election of 2005, he won the seat of Bethnal Green and Bow against Labour. Respect’s co-­founders were the environmentalist

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George Monbiot and a radical anti-­war activist from the Midlands, Salma Yaqoob. The party gained a following not only in East London but also among the Asian community in Birmingham and Bradford; in local elections, in 2004–05, they won more than 20 per cent of the vote in Tower Hamlets and in next-­door Newham. The political allies of Respect included the Muslim Association of Britain and the Socialist Workers Party, and the new party developed a clear position against imperialism and neoliberalism. This was the first time that a party to the left of Labour had gained a seat in parliament since the Communists did so just after the War.8 According to Class, Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengali East End by Sarah Glynn (2014), the alliance between the Muslim Association of Britain and the Socialist Workers Party was from the beginning a kind of marriage of convenience. However, her own close analysis of the development of left politics in the Bengali community in the East End from the late 1960s shows a steady radicalisation of young Asian people. Bengali community leaders had already gained important leadership positions in the local Labour Party, long before the arrival of George Galloway. As traditional left parties and movements faltered in the 1990s, many local radicals took up the emancipatory elements of Islam. Glynn explains the attraction of revolutionary political groups like Hizb ut-­Tahrir, operating legally in the UK (though banned in Central Asia); these groups mobilised young people protesting against social exclusion and unemployment, they had an attractive internationalist agenda and they used the alliance with left groups in the UK to their own advantage (Glynn, 2014).  Looking back on the history of Tower Hamlets and the communities that have arrived there over the past two centuries, three reflections occur to me. First, the level of political activism of the Bangladeshi community was always very high, right from the time that immigration increased significantly in the late 1960s, and this can be linked to the traumatic but successful independence struggle that created the state of Bangladesh – and indeed the major political battles that continue there until this day. Second, the anti-­racist and anti-­fascist struggles of the 1970s and 1980s provided another political mobilisation opportunity – this time to the younger generation (so-­called second generation immigrants) that had been born or had grown up in the UK. The types of alliances promoted by Respect were not so unfamiliar to them; we saw them on the streets 20 years earlier. Third, while the political opponents of Respect claimed that the party was anti­Jewish, in reality, it was anti-­Zionist. The reality is that while the Israeli–Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, this is a political mobilisation issue for young people from the Muslim community around the world. Respect was a ‘wake-­up call’ for those that support the status quo in the Middle East that the powers-­that-be did not listen or respond to. Here, we see another important stage in the passing of the torch of progressive political struggle from one immigrant community to another: leftist Irish leaders from the late nineteenth century, leftist Jewish leaders of the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, to leftist leaders from the Muslim community from the 1980s till this day. However, these forces were not able to stop the war in Iraq. Indeed, soon after US, UK and coalition forces left Iraq in ruins, they were back in action in Libya and Syria and with the same disastrous results.

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BOX 6.2  KEN LEECH, SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS RADICALISM Ken Leech’s book Care and Conflict (1990), which I referred to in Chapter 1, was interesting for me not just because of its acute comments on working-­class and elite racism in British society but also because it lays out, in the urban UK context, many of the positions employed by progressive community and international development workers. The 1960s saw the beginning of outreach work among the ‘outcasts’ of modern London, the author notes. It was necessary to develop a mode of street ‘loitering’ and to immerse oneself in the city environment. The focus of his work was drug-­users, homeless, and later HIV-­AIDS vulnerable or infected people. One of the key lessons of his ministry was: time is not on your side (people are in crisis and something has to be done to address this crisis). There were three types of wrong response to the misery and suffering that could be seen on the streets and in the sex industry locations of Soho. First, fear – that is, the fear of sexuality; second, a crusading approach – that is, the reaction that we need to clean this up as quickly as possible; third, ‘liberal-­professional’ caring – that is, the adoption of formal social work case-­management approaches (see Chapter 5). Ken Leech worked from a religious and moral standpoint, but he comments that Christianity is not a series of foregone conclusions but a ‘principle of questioning and struggle’ (1990). Like Freire, he writes about development work as posing, not solving, problems. Like Ivan Ilych, he writes of the need to ‘unlearn’ the normal procedures of thinking and working. Ken Leech’s own affiliation was to the Jubilee Group – an informal network of progressive Anglo-­Catholics whose 1974 manifesto proclaimed: ‘We cannot feign neutrality or remain uncritical in the face of a society based on the ruthless pursuit of private gain and unlimited consumption.’ But he also refers to other movements active in caring for the very poor, for example, the Simon Community and the Diakonia movement. Ten years after my last meeting with Ken Leech, I returned to Tower Hamlets to attend an annual meeting of the Davenant Centre. The meeting was broken up by young radicals from the Progressive Youth Organisation – which the Islamic forces had just taken control from the secular forces. On my way home, I bought a book in an Islamic bookshop that had opened up in the East London mosque. The book was titled To be a European Muslim and it interprets the Koran, just as radical Christians interpret the Bible, for the modern context. The book identifies key aspects of Islam that, according to the author, can and should be promoted in Western society. These are mainly in the area of faith and spirituality. By contrast, many daily rituals and practices are closely related to the society in which people live, and can vary from time to time and place to place. These do not have to be zones of conflict, particularly when broad alliances are vital for the fight for rights (Ramadan, 1999).

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In Central Asia, we can see how socially oriented activities have gradually taken on importance for Muslim communities alongside the spiritual canons. Indeed, social themes are central to shariah law and both social and political activism is important in Islam. The practices of Islamic charity have grown in scope and variety alongside the increasing number of people undertaking the Hadj. Like with Christianity, we see on the one hand the official Muslim clergy, now liaising closely with the governments of the five countries, and on the other hand, Muslim NGOs and foundations, national cultural centres and associations that are increasingly able to apply for international development funding (e.g. Muslim women’s organisations). While some Muslim NGOs earlier focused on collecting money to build mosques and now carry out humanitarian and social work on a non-­confessional basis, other groups (e.g. the Salafites) are more concerned with theological issues and religious self-­ education. The situation is very complex because different national groups in the region – Kyrgyz, Tajik and Uzbek communities – tend to visit different mosques, some of which are more modern, some more conservative; some are rich and others are poor.9 Another book we recently found in Russian is Anne Norton’s On the Muslim Question (2013). If we compare this analysis of present-­day multiculturalism, secularism and religion in the West, we can see how seriously the environment has deteriorated since the 1990s and the description of community relations and culture in London quoted from Baumann (1996) in Chapter 2. Islam is now separated out from the other religions that operate in the UK and described by right-­wing ideologues as a threat to British culture. Rightly, the author charts the huge interpenetration of different cultures and voices in London and other major cities; also the political and civic solidarity with Muslims shown by progressive people across Europe and the USA. Anne Norton places the ‘Muslim question’ alongside the ‘Jewish question’ about which Marx wrote an important essay 150 years ago – as the test for a modern, inclusive society (2013). This kind of analysis is very important in the Russian Federation where so many work migrants from Central Asia are now settling down permanently, with old or new families and a new generation to bring up.

Case study 6.2  Visits to Ukraine during Euro-­Maidan INTRAC works with a variety of international development agencies and some of its closest allies in promoting an autonomous civil society around the world have always been from Northern Europe – Holland, Denmark, the Scandinavian countries. In 2011–12, INTRAC conducted a global review of Danish agencies’ work to support civil society and soon after that we won a tender to work with Danish government funding in Ukraine. Our role was to conduct an organisation ­assessment of NGO partners in the Democracy and Human Rights Programme (DHRP) in Ukraine as it entered a second four-­year phase of activities. The main institutional

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partner and implementing agent was the United Nations Development Programme office in Kiev. The aims of DHRP were to support civil society and human rights activists to influence government and defend rights, and the main focus was on provincial and city level NGOs, viewed as potential ‘hubs’ for networks of local democracy and human rights NGOs. Our work began at the height of the political crisis in Ukraine, as President Yanukovich hesitated about concluding a new Association Agreement with the European Union and eventually reneged on his promise to sign up. Yanukovich was the leader of the Party of Regions in Ukraine, uniting among others those parts of the country that were more Russian-­speaking or Russia-­oriented. He had long been  the main political opponent of the Ukrainian nationalist and pro-­European forces, led by the previous President Yuschenko and Prime Minister Timoshenko. In post-­2010 Kyrgyzstan, after the second of our two revolutions, it appeared to many NGO people that Ukraine had accomplished its transition to multi-­party democracy more successfully than us. Not only had the main political parties in Ukraine to some extent alternated peacefully in parliament, but the presidents had ceded power to each other peacefully, too. However, it turned out we were mistaken. Like in Kyrgyzstan, where a relatively peaceful ‘tulip’ revolution (2005) was succeeded by a violent second revolution (2010), after the relatively peaceful ‘orange’ revolution (2003), a violent revolution was about to break out in Ukraine. The NGOs involved in the democracy and human rights network were a very mixed group. Each of them had just been chosen as a regional hub for activists in their own part of the country: from the Carpathian Mountains in the West, to Odessa and Crimea on the Black Sea coast; Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk in the East; Kharkov, Kiev and Chernigov in the central/northern region. There were a dozen main NGOs in the network and we had to design and initiate an organisation assessment and development process for them. We discovered that these organisations shared a large number of characteristics that could be seen around the FSU region among foreign-­funded CSOs. One group of partners had long been involved in election monitoring at national and local level – this was the more political end of the spectrum. Other groups specialised in different social issues. Thus, a NGO in Lviv had for years worked on gender policy and women’s rights; a NGO from the North worked with children and youth in trouble with the law; a NGO from Crimea worked on inter-­ethnic and diversity issues. Finally, a number of partners had developed close relations with local government and had set up community foundations and various watchdog mechanisms monitoring local services. In autumn 2012, during the initial meetings for our project, the situation in Kiev was already getting tense. Over the autumn and winter, barricades were set up by protestors in the main square (Maidan). The NGO participants in our programme were almost unanimously in favour of the Association Agreement with the European Union and several of them joined the demonstrations. After we had done the training, UNDP asked us to carry out two pilot organisations assessments with our

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local experts. The first was in Simferopol, Crimea, the second in Donetsk. We carried out these two visits in December 2012. In Simferopol, we met staff, members and supporters of Top Kaya, an NGO set up in 2008 and specialising in democracy, cultural and social issues, initially with rural communities and now across the whole Crimean peninsula. We travelled to Bakhchisarai, the capital of the Crimean Tatar community, and then to Sevastopol to see the enormous harbour and Russian naval base there, the town fully rebuilt after major destruction in the Second World War. This was quite a small NGO but with an active young woman leader and good prospects. In Donetsk, we met a much bigger staff team in the Donetsk branch of a national organisation, the Committee of Voters that focused on election monitoring and democratisation. Set up in 1996, this was an advocacy NGO whose original focus on election procedures had widened considerably to include campaigns with a ‘soft power’ or democratic character, usually involving the mobilisation of citizens and close work with local government agencies, for example, anti-­smoking campaigns and lobbying for bicycle tracks through the city of Donetsk. The visit came at a time when the Committee of Voters was considering major changes in the organisation. The question was how to develop new and improved systems and strategies and to maintain progress in a constantly changing external environment. Donetsk is a city sitting on a coalfield, with several coal mines within the city limits; like Sevastopol, it was impressive for its level of investment, with a smart new city centre and football stadium. The methodology that INTRAC had put forward to the DHRP partners, based on a participatory self-­assessment rather than a top-­down management approach, proved very popular over the next year as the NGOs in the network used it to review the development of their organisations. Indeed, at a national NGO forum held in Ukraine in autumn 2013, it was voted the ‘best new capacity-­building tool of the year’. Amazingly, it had stayed relevant despite the huge changes in the external situation! Summing up but not attempting to draw all the political lessons from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we can see that CSOs were drawn into two main camps defined by their international allies: the EU and the Russian Federation. Each camp had developed very clear and determined political positions. Both the EU and the Russian Federation were seriously involving themselves (i.e. meddling) in the affairs of a sovereign country and had been doing so over an extended period of time. The NGO partners in our programme were mainly in the pro-­EU camp (though such is the complicated situation in civil wars that it is best not to assume this 100 per cent), but the mission and the agendas of the organisations themselves had a mainly civil not political character. Like in Kyrgyzstan at the time of the second revolution, the violent overthrow of President Yanukovich took Ukraine out of the realms of legality and a number of other illegal actions ensued – including the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Both sides – pro-­European and pro-­Russian – could claim the support of the people as a political justification for their illegal actions. Indeed, the demonstrations in

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Kiev that led up to Yanukovich’s departure had wide support from extreme right­wing and nationalist forces. And the vote in Crimea was similarly very clearly for inclusion in the Russian Federation. Events in larger Ukraine and in Crimea subsequently confirmed the popular nature of these coups.  And then the consequences that should have been foreseen by political leaders began to unfold. In Donketsk and Lugansk, citizens took up arms to gain autonomy from what they saw, justifiably in my opinion, as a fascist-­oriented and anti-­Russian coup removing a president that they had voted for. Within a very short time, the leaders of the Donetsk Committee of Voters fled the region with their families, becoming refugees in different parts of Ukraine alongside many thousands of others. The new regime in Kiev proclaimed at the start that it would continue the democratisation and government decentralisation processes that DHRP had been fighting for. However, one thing had not changed with the revolution – the hold of the oligarchs (in Marxist terms, the class nature of the regime) on the economy. Added to which the civil war in the East required huge funds – as indeed did the waves of refugees – so the efforts of civil society for a new Ukraine as outlined in DHRP had to compete with other, very different priorities. Instead, NGOs, as so often happens, had to focus on a humanitarian role, helping refugees, old people and others cope with a very harsh situation. This was a quite different set of tasks from the ones they had set themselves just one year before. Uncivil groupings like the Ukrainian nationalists and fascists continued to play a very active role in political life and on the streets; liberals and internationalists found that the situation was not very easy to work in.

Case study 6.3  Protest movements and ‘foreign agents’ in Russia The outbreak of civil and armed conflict in Ukraine had an immediate effect on civil society in the Russian Federation. Alongside state actions – the sending of troops to Crimea, now pronounced part of the Russian Federation, and manoeuvrings around Eastern Ukraine – a large number of refugees fled from Ukraine into Russia and local volunteer groups were soon in action to help support them. To a large extent, what happened in Russia mirrored what was going on in Ukraine: the organisation of reception centres for refugees; the activities of volunteer militias in Donetsk and Lugansk; and a massive surge of patriotic support for the government faced with an armed enemy. In Russia, no less than in the USA and Europe, the war on terror and security issues are never long out of the news. The events in Ukraine, when added to Russia’s involvement in Syria and the wider Middle East, further strengthened the hand of the military in continuing the arms build-­up that President Putin had presided over since the early 2000s. On the ideological front, the dispute with the EU and the USA over the future trajectory of Ukraine strengthened the resolve of the Russian authorities to reduce Western influence within civil society, and in particular with regard to issues that concern ‘conservatives’ – excessive democracy, challenges to ruling classes, sexual

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freedom, secular competition with the Church and traditional morality. The dividing line came to be expressed in the phrase ‘political activities’ and by late 2015 the Ministry of Justice, the Human Rights Commission and various others were engaged in an analysis of what ‘political activities’ means and which ones should be stopped or restricted by the new law on ‘foreign agents’ funding these activities. The new law affected not only well-­known international and national human rights organisations operating in Russia, but local ones too, for example, some of the leading NGOs in Perm. All this caused a hiatus in the development of social and political movements in Russia. The year 2012 had seen a peak in civic activism, many of the largest campaigns and demonstrations taking place in the lead up to the Duma elections and the presidential elections where Vladimir Putin returned to power. But alongside this, there were a whole range of locally generated struggles where the increasing confidence of citizens and social groups was felt. In a study of urban civil and social movements in Russia during 2009–12, some interesting examples include mass campaigns against office development and road transport projects in Moscow and St Petersburg; small town struggles against pollution from factories and corrupt practices of housing management companies; and a city-­wide campaign to remove an unpopular governor.10 Several of the movements had strong local leaders and a network of local groups behind them. However, as they came into conflict with the higher levels of government, patriotic and pro-­Putin propaganda by the ruling United Russian party weakened their impact. Weaknesses in their methods of social and political mobilisation, along with the surge of patriotic support for the Putin regime ensuing from the Ukraine conflict, meant that Russian NGOs were forced onto the defensive. Nonetheless, many organisations continued activities and several human rights NGOs stayed open or even successfully appealed against the ‘foreign agents’ label that had been stuck on them. For example, by late 2015, key national NGOs like Memorial (human rights) and SOVA (rights of national and racial minorities) had successfully defended their right to exist and were even able to gain some government funding. The Putin government’s attack on democracy and human rights organisations was balanced by an offer for increased collaboration with what was called ‘socially oriented’ NGOs (see Chapter 5). As well as committing new funding for ‘SONGOs’, the government suggested that the Public Council system could take over the administration of social programmes from the ministries and agencies running them at the present time.11 One of the big worries among NGO activists in Kyrgyzstan in 2015 was whether their own parliament would pass a new law on foreign agents. The law had been drafted by a previous ombudsman with a conservative, patriarchal agenda, and public discussion focused on the so-­called danger emanating from democracy, human rights and minority groups. This seemed like a test case for Russian political influence in Kyrgyzstan after recent set-­backs for the USA – in summer 2014, the US air base at Manas was closed on the insistence of the Kyrgyz government and in summer 2015 the government cancelled a number of USAID projects after a row

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about US officials’ comments on violations of human rights in the country. The law on foreign agents passed two readings in parliament before finally being voted down by deputies in early 2016. The proposed law on foreign agents in Kyrgyzstan threatened religious associations as much as secular ones. However, NGOs opposing the law never attempted to make common cause with religious groups on this issue. In fact, they had considerable trouble even holding together the secular coalition, with moderates opposed by radicals on tactics. A key factor in the eventual success of their campaign was the support from socialist and social democratic parties in parliament. But the issue about the transparency of foreign funding for NGOs and particularly those involved in human rights and political activities had been put on the agenda and was likely to remain there.

Commentary: populism versus human rights There are several observations that one can draw from these three case studies on the role and potential of NGOs in a political context of international and national conflict. First, the case studies show how US global hegemony is under threat from new players on the international scene. This hegemony came about through growth in productive power in the USA itself during the Second World War years and after. It was expressed in the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank, IMF and so on) that were set up after 1945. And, at the same time, the Marshall Plan helped rebuild Western Europe and counter the attractions of communism; and in the East, Japan was brought into the new set-­up. But as noted at the start of this chapter, US global hegemony has come under challenge from China and Russia, who now also offer significant funding or political support to developing countries. One conclusion that we can draw is that what we normally refer to as ‘international development’ is in many cases just one camp – the Western camp – out of several in an increasingly competitive aid-­giving environment.  Second, the three case studies all show how in crisis or war situations, political expedience or calculation tends to overrule civil or ethical factors. Thus, the massive civil society mobilisation against the Iraq War was ignored by the British political establishment, in particular by the prime minister who had promised the US president to support the invasion. In the case of Ukraine, civil war fractured civil society, removing some NGOs from the civil space and rewriting the priorities and strategies of others to deal with the emergency. In Russia, the deteriorating international situation has been reflected in the description of foreign-­funded NGOs working in the political realm as being ‘foreign agents’. In conflict situations (such as revolutions), civil society activists often move into different spheres – political, government, military, etc. – leaving their organisations behind. This results in a much changed, often weakened, civil society. Violence changes the rules of the game for individuals and organisations alike. In war, it becomes much more difficult to maintain a neutral stance, but on the other hand,

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outcomes based on violence very rarely gain full acceptance by society. In the early 2000s, conflict hardly existed in civil society programmes in Central Asia; now it is crowding out other issues. Countries in conflict like Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine eat up international development budgets – and usually go to one side in the conflict (e.g. the Ukrainian government). So conflict turns out to be a very important factor in development. On the other side of things, the Russian case study shows how a populist regime may attempt to limit the power and resources available to civil society, particularly if funding comes for NGOs comes from outside the country. We can see this clearly in several countries in Latin America in recent years, where a left or populist government has attacked NGOs felt to be supporting international capital or US interests. In situations like this, most NGOs have to take sides – there is little room left for the so-­called ‘win–win’ decisions. A final issue is what Cox calls the ‘internationalisation’ of the nation state. This means that the state has to adjust itself more than ever to external/global pressures and priorities. We see this in many different areas – from the demands to implement international security measures, to limit and channel migration, or to adopt ‘universal’ human rights conventions. Cox argues that ultimately this is all built around the needs of international finance (and thus derives ultimately from production processes). The weaker countries – like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Central Asia – are highly susceptible to internationalisation, indeed many of their governments’ basic functions (including research, policy development, new infrastructure, and any new initiatives that require loans) become dependent on decisions made by international partners (e.g. banks, foreign governments). Literally, they are not master or mistress in their own house. The system of Sustainable Development Goals is part of the internationalisation process. In 2015, 17 goals were set by the United Nations Development Programme and each country has to decide which ones they will prioritise, with implementation to be managed by coalitions of international and national partners (multi-­stakeholder partnerships).12 There are many positive aspects in this programme. However, one of the main risks of the internationalisation process is the tendency of the finance sector to become more and more autonomous and powerful vis-­à-vis the political system or other sections of the economy. Hence, the domination of Wall Street, the London Stock Exchange and the foreign currency markets – which led to the economic crash of 2008–09. Human rights. In Chapter 5, we noted above the criticism of many social service providers – running a huge bureaucratic apparatus and dehumanising clients. Different but important criticisms are also made in relation to human rights organisations – including the very big ones like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and NGOs focused on particular rights – for children, women, people with disability, old people and other groups. The argument has several main angles (see Tsikata, 2007: 214–26). First, it is argued that human rights groups have traditionally focused far too much on political and civic rights – and much too little on economic and cultural

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rights. In this, they reflect the priorities of the Western neoliberal establishment. Certainly, this was true of post-­1990 developments in the FSU where social and economic rights were removed as political rights and freedoms were brought in. Second, human rights groups often lack a significant membership in the countries whose citizens’ rights they are advocating or defending. Sometimes this is understandable – the issue may be so sensitive and people so oppressed that they are unable to speak or organise openly. But the result is that while international human rights organisations are able to make bold statements on television in the West, these television stations have less coverage or influence in other continents and their campaigns may be almost invisible to the people whose rights are under threat. Third, there is a question about the legitimacy of standards set in the West and campaigns largely funded by the European Union, British Foreign Office or US State Department. As Tilley and Tarrow (2007) noted in their work on social movements, including the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, civil society activists who rely on international donors to support their campaigns are very vulnerable once the political situation hots up. It will always be difficult for them to defend themselves against the argument of complicity in foreign interference. Thus, we seem to have arrived at a situation in several countries where populist leaders are felt to be speaking on behalf of the majority of the population, while human rights activists are defending minority interests chosen by external players. We can conclude, perhaps, that human rights organisations based or funded in the West or North can raise important issues, but they themselves cannot take the place of truly indigenous and national organisations in the East or South representing and led by people whose rights are being abused. If foreign intervention does succeed, for example, in achieving regime change in the targeted country, the results can be disastrous – as we saw in Chile after President Allende in the early 1970s, or in Iraq and Libya more recently. We can put this together with an important conclusion from Chapter 5, that is, for NGOs work on rights goes best if it is closely linked with work on basic services and everyday issues. Programmes that focus entirely on advocacy run a considerable risk in the long run.

BOX 6.3  POPULISM, CORRUPTION AND ANTI-­CORRUPTION Soon after becoming president, Donald Trump stated his opinion that Vladimir Putin is a good leader. This infuriated the liberal wing of opinion in the USA and Europe and therefore was not really helpful in reinstating some kind of normal relations and understanding between Western countries and the Russian Federation. Many Russian citizens clearly agree with Trump on this point (though perhaps not on many others), judging by the polls and results of elections. One of Putin’s main themes since re-­election in 2012 – bolstering

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his popularity – has been the fight against corruption. The state media keep the president constantly in the public eye as he makes statements about the need to eliminate corruption, admonishing public officials, responding to complaints from individual members of the public. Official and fringe political parties also prioritise this issue – and a similar picture can be seen in other countries of the Eurasia region. However, two points can be made about this. First, citizens’ complaints provide the main source of information about corrupt practices and therefore an open and free civil society is a necessary condition for anti-­corruption campaigns – success cannot be achieved by a single heroic individual or even a government administration led by a hero. Second, anti-­corruption drives are no substitute for economic and social policy. In Central Asia, there is a lot of talk about corruption but very little about the underlying policies and mechanisms that were used to take wealth from the people. There is very little media coverage of the need to develop progressive taxation policies (e.g. to correct the low level of income or property taxes) or to halt and even reverse privatisation, bringing key economic sectors and services back into public, cooperative or municipal ownership. When agencies publish figures about the public’s view of the level of corruption in their country, it is a fair bet that many of them are thinking about the deeper issues of social and economic inequality, not just the incidence of individual bureaucratic abuses. In reality, the international financial institutions are using anti-­corruption policies in the transition countries so as to correct or bolster the neoliberal order. Thus, Swain, Mykhnenko and French (2010) show how these policies are used to exert pressure on governments so as to fine-­tune policies based on privatised services and the ideology of individual wealth accumulation.

Developing a counter-­hegemonic kind of knowledge In his work on orientalism, Edward Said subjected the work of generations of Western scholars of the cultures and peoples of the Middle and Far East to detailed analysis. His famous book, Orientalism (1978) shows how ‘knowledge’ and ‘hegemony’ are constructed through the choice and repeated use of key terms, descriptions and words – until they become accepted without question in the academic, professional and wider community. He refers to world-­renowned Western experts on the languages, literatures and cultures of the Orient from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries onwards up to today, showing how they adopted a deeply patronising, biased and ultimately unsympathetic view on many issues – in particular on the religion and culture of Islam. In modern times, the tenor of academic and expert studies of the Orient is a bit different, Said explains. Now it is less about culture, more about sociology – written from an increasingly technocratic-­economic angle but with the same patronising, selective approach. As someone working in the field of Russian and Soviet studies

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for many years, I am sure I am not the only person who recognises this picture. During the Cold War, we saw the same deeply political and selective approach from Western experts – anti-­Soviet ‘sovietologists’ just as we have anti-­orient ‘orientalists’. And now, the situation is little better. As the attitudes to post-­1990 Russia and in particular to recent political events show, there is a backlog of anti-­Russian opinion among the very people who are responsible for maintaining diplomatic, political and cultural relations at all levels with that country. With all the predictable stereotypes, omissions and half-­truths that are seen in the mainstream media when the topic is Russia or the Eurasia region.13 David Lane (2015) describes this as a combination of soft power and dark power exerted by Western agencies. Capturing the academic field with regard to the direction of post-­communist studies is a task of soft power, that is, soft power uses Western values and ways of doing things and persuades others to adopt them. A very good example here is the use of Freedom House criteria, based on American values of electoral democracy, marketisation, consumer choice and individual rights to define the policy agenda. States that fall short on these US-­chosen values are said to require policy change. Dark power, by contrast, is used to discredit and de-­ legitimate foreign adversaries and Russia becomes the ‘devil’ in international relations (Lane, 2015). This can be seen in what many call a new Cold War and the use of the Russia ‘bogey’ by the US establishment before, during and after 2016 American presidential election. Now Russia is fighting back, using some of the same methods, which complicates the situation still further. As one of INTRAC’s founders, Peter Oakley wrote, in the field of international aid, knowledge is concentrated in the hands of those with power. The external or local context for many aid interventions is poorly, incompletely understood by the general public and attempts by Southern countries to challenge the knowledge and media domination of the richer countries, for example, through UNESCO, have had limited success. While the Internet opens up new channels of information, it is by no means clear if the divisions between knowledgeable and less knowledgeable communities have narrowed. Many of us suspect that they may in fact have widened, as the wealthy and powerful have access to immediate and detailed knowledge at their fingertips, on their keyboards. In this scenario, social media-­based exchanges of information and opinion may become just a sideshow.14 In Chapters 1–2, I described the situation after the outbreak of inter-­ethnic violence in June 2010 in Osh and Jalalabad, South Kyrgyzstan, and our ‘research in action’ programme to help prevent further conflict. This can be described as P3 – the third major capacity-­building programme I was involved in during my time in Central Asia. It aimed to produce ‘counter-­hegemonic knowledge’, that is, facts, evidence and arguments that build the ground for progressive political and economic transformation. Our main tool was action research – a form of local research that focuses on problems identified by local people and searches for collective solutions. How can local knowledge be best used? There are two answers to this question. The first says that local knowledge is for local use, as quickly and practically

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as possible. If the results of our studies were used to improve rights and services in the locality, this is enough. This is certainly the position of many staff, supporters and beneficiaries of NGOs – and perhaps the majority of the sceptical population too, who spend little time thinking about grander policies or achievements of NGOs and their external donors. Nonetheless, there is a second answer: that we have to try to correct national policies and programmes and this can only be done by the relaying of up-­to-date local information and views to those in power.15 In P3, we organised national round tables and conferences each year, at which the results of local research were presented and discussed. There was much more interest from local government than from national government. The donors were quite weakly represented and, in retrospect, we can see that our messages were not the most important ones for them. In internationally funded conflict prevention programmes, many donors want sensational information about conflict, not details about how government and CSOs are working together (even if this is to deal with its underlying causes, e.g. youth unemployment). Donors and their friends in the security agencies want to know about radicals, revolutionaries, third forces and so on. So structurally, there is a real problem here. And sometimes, donors may have adopted political positions that make information from development projects not so attractive for them. For example, in Kyrgyzstan after the 2010 revolution, the Western agencies decided to support the new regime and its reforms to the parliamentary system, headed by a president with a liberal image, Roza Otunbaeva. Our work with local authorities in the South brought messages that did not fit, because the political regime in Osh was in opposition to the new temporary government. So it was not of special interest to the donors. But still, in P3 we collected the information, people acted on it, we documented the process and the lessons, and the results are very relevant. South Kyrgyzstan is one of the success stories of post-­conflict work in the community. After the tragic events of June 2010, the inter-­ethnic violence was not repeated for a period of over five years.

Ragged activist exercise: consider the following statements by authors quoted in this book and answer the questions below Mary Kaldor in New and Old Wars: ‘All sides are engaged in a mutual enterprise that  is dependent on continuing violence.’ The main victims are civilians (2012: 171–5). Gabriel Kolko in The Age of War: The United States Confront the World: A precondition of peace is for nations not to attempt to impose their visions on others, adjudicate their differences, and never to assume that their need for the economic or strategic resources of another nation warrants interference of any sort in its internal affairs.  (Kolko, 2006: 176)

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Ulrich Beck in Risk Society: One key quality of modern society is its ‘reflective’ abilities – that is, the capacity to learn from experience and mistakes. 1 2

3

To what extent are NGOs (especially NGOs known well to you) taking the realities of conflict into account? Do these calculations affect their strategies? Or their practice? How could they help to reduce conflict or keep communications open between warring parties? At what stage and how can or should NGOs take sides in the examples you have identified?

Further reading on international conflict and civil society Amin, Samir, 2016. Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Cooley, Alexander and John Heathershaw, 2017. Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cox, Robert W. with Michael G. Schechter, 2002. Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization. London: Routledge. Evans, Alfred B. jnr., Laura H. Henry and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom (eds), 2006. Russian Civil Society: A Critical Assessment. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Freeman, Alan and Boris Kagarlitsky, 2004. The Politics of Empire: Globalisation in Crisis. London: Pluto. Glynn, Sarah, 2014. Class, Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengali East End: A Political History. Manchester: Manchester University Press. L. Jakobson et al., 2011. Civil Society in Modernizing Russia. Moscow: Civicus and Higher School of Economics. Kagarlitsky, Boris, 2008. Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System. London: Pluto. Kaldor, Mary, 2012. New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kolko, Gabriel, 2006. The Age of War: The United States Confront the World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Lane, David, 2013. ‘Vladimir Putin and his Policies’. Information Digest, Society for Cooperation in Russian and Soviet Studies (SCRSS), (Spring): 1–3. Lane, David, 2015. ‘Soft Power, Dark Power and Academic Cooperation’. Information Digest, Society for Cooperation in Russian and Soviet Studies (SCRSS), (Spring). Leech, Kenneth, 1990. Care and Conflict: Leaves from a Pastoral Notebook. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Mac Ginty, Roger and Andrew Williams (eds), 2016. Conflict and Development, 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge. Mawdsley, Emma and Peter Oakley, 2002. Knowledge, Power and Development Agendas. Oxford: INTRAC. Norton, Anne, 2013. On the Muslim Question. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Prevost, Gary et al. (eds), 2012. Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America. London: Zed Books. Ramadan, Tariq, 1999. To be a European Muslim. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Said, Edward W., 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Swain, Adam, Vlad Mykhnenko and Shaun French, 2000. ‘The Corruption Industry and Transition: Neoliberalizing Post-­Soviet Space?’ in Kean Birch and Vlad Mykhnenko (eds), The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? London: Zed Books. Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow, 2007. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Tsikata, Dzodzi, 2007. ‘Human Rights, Feminists and Rights Based Approaches to Development’, in Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead (eds), Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations & Challenges. London: Zed Books, pp. 214–26. Wallerstein, Immanuel, 2015. The World is Out of Joint: World History Interpretations of Continuing Polarisation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.

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Notes   1 Robert Cox with Michael G. Schechter, Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987) is the basic text I am referring to in this section. Other works are shown in the Further Reading list.   2 A book by Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), puts a slightly different slant on the question of core and periphery in the world economy. The authors argue that far from being an economic backwater, living to traditional norms, Central Asia’s rules have been integrated into the mainstream of unequal and corrupt practices. From the early 1990s, its leaders consolidated their new-­found wealth using offshore zones like Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands. Their families became part of the cosmopolitan elite, owning property and sending their children to school and university in Europe and the USA. This could not have taken place without the connivance of transnational companies that competed with each other in offering bribes to officials in these emerging markets. It turns out that the ‘traditionally minded’ elite of the region were in most cases highly educated Soviet cadres, very comfortable with Western secular culture and well capable of using the latest corrupt practices to throw investigators off their tracks (Cooley and Heathershaw, 2017: 24). See also Giorgio Fiacconi, ‘Kyrgyzstan: 20 Years of Independence’, Times of Central Asia, 2012, a businessman who took part in this process.   3 The state-­led model of development is often described by the Western media as ‘authoritarian’. In my opinion, the use of this term is quite misleading in many contexts and calls out for re-­examination by left political scientists. In Central Asia, for example, it is often used to refer to regimes that are extremely weak and hardly hanging onto their sovereignty. Russia, of course, is different.   4 ‘Civil Society at the Crossroads: Eruptions, Initiatives and Evolutions in Citizen Activism’ was published as a special issue of the journal Development in Practice, August 2013.   5 ‘The analysis of new wars suggests that what is needed is not peace-­keeping but enforcement of cosmopolitan norms, i.e. enforcement of international humanitarian and human rights law’ (Kaldor, 2012: 133). Reconstruction means ‘rebuilding of the formal political economy based on accepted rules, and the reversal of the negative social and economic relationships’ (Kaldor, 2012: 145).   6 These factors outweighed for me a third one, that is, development workers and their agencies can make a lot of money in these locations. NGOs working in Afghanistan or Iraq argue that they are supporting communities that will benefit from aid, which may indeed be the case, but the question is whether military intervention is ultimately speeding up or holding back development or the emergence of locally determined civil society.   7 For a detailed ongoing critique of the UK’s role in the Iraq War, see the journal Spokesman issued by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.   8 The name Respect! was an abbreviation for respect, equality, socialism, peace, environment, trade unionism.   9 Malikov K. and Usubaliev E., Мусульманская община Кыргызстана и политический процесс: подходы к гармонизации отношений между государством и религией (FES, 2009). 10 Carine Clement, Городские движения Pоссии в 2009–12 годах: на пути к политическому (Moscow: Novoye Literaturnoye Obozrenie, 2013). 11 See issues of the BEARR Trust Information Bulletin, 2015–17. 12 The new system aims to avoid the forcing of particular international priorities on countries. Hence, there are many more options in the SDGs than in the system that they replaced, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 13 Beck writes about the ‘reflexive modernity’ of post-­industrial society, but it seems to me that reflection by elites is usually caused by pressure from the people. Added to which, our society is much better at reflecting when it recognises what it is looking at, when the

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object of reflection corresponds to its own frames of understanding and value systems. The historical record shows it is a lot worse at reflecting on other experiences and systems, for example, the USSR, or the Muslim world. 14 Emma Mawdsley and Peter Oakley, Knowledge, Power and Development Agendas (Oxford: INTRAC, 2002). In fact, via their research studies and reports, NGOs are crucial suppliers of knowledge to the decision makers in international agencies and foreign governments. 15 The chapter on ‘Mass of Sense: Knowledge, Power and Democracy’, in Wainwright, has a lot of useful ideas on these topics; see Hilary Wainwright, Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (London: Verso, 2003), 1–29.

7 Theories of change New agendas of civil society, social and political activists at the international, national and local levels

One problem, many solutions? The analyses made in this book show that today’s environment for social action is very problematic. Neoliberal policies predominant in the system allowing for civic action and the development of CSOs, but the overall economic and political situation tends to prevent their ‘theories of change’ from fully working out in practice. As the ‘Civil Society at the Crossroads’ studies showed, governments around the world are not delivering what they promise or what the public expects. There is a widespread feeling among citizens that supposedly democratic institutions have been taken over by elites and professional politicians, many of them corrupt. Interestingly, three of the countries where we examined the civil society sector as a whole belong to the BRICS group of emerging economies: India, Russia and South Africa. Here the tension between state­led and market-­led strategies for development was seen clearly, with civil society organisations being supported by government but mainly in a service-­provision role. The banking and financial services crisis of 2007–08 hit the advanced countries hard, so that they almost all now have lower growth rates than developing countries. Faced by chronic economic problems and new competition for investment and influence from the BRICS countries or the Asian economic ‘tigers’, policy makers from the advanced countries are being forced to look inwards at the state of affairs within their own society. Meanwhile, the rhetoric used against feared competitors, whether religious or political, gets more and more extreme and irrational. When international conflict is added on top of domestic problems, the opportunities for development are further reduced. Or maybe a different kind of strategy will be forced on us – with many of our previous assumptions cast aside? In this chapter, I analyse the prospects for political change or social transformation at three levels – international, national and local – trying to better take into account the war or conflict situation that we find ourselves in.

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BOX 7.1  THEORY OF CHANGE Why do so many development projects fail to deliver their long-­term objectives? Why does good practice and democratic, inclusive and participatory process at a local level so often fail to change the situation at a district, province or national level? For example, why does active lobbying on women’s or disability issues not lead to better results in government programmes or social policy? Why does seemingly successful capacity building for a given NGO not lead to better results in its work? Why do so many human rights conventions adopted formally at a national level remain unimplemented? In their search for answers to these questions, many NGOs have been forced to question their assumptions about development. The theory of change (TOC) methodology helps them to do this. First, programme or project teams are required to define or describe clearly the long-­term change that they are aiming to achieve. If this is a big change – for example, better access to economic opportunities for women or young people – the forces working for or against the change should be clearly spelt out and their relative weight estimated. Very often tools for a power analysis are available for those designing new projects and programmes. Second, the team should draw up a step-­by-step pathway to the achievement of the planned results. Any ambitious programme is risky – there are so many factors at play – but the TOC at least helps an organisation to see at what fence it fell. This will help when the next project is being planned: maybe some key political figures had been overlooked, maybe the timescale for improvements had been over-­optimistic. TOC helps projects to analyse and document what went right or wrong. In this way, it is useful for organisational learning.1 Previous sections in this book have suggested reasons why the current development theory of change is not working, albeit very schematically and from the point of view of a development worker. The political and economic problems are too serious. The local organisations and activists are not strong enough. National governments are at odds with their people and with other governments. And at a more general level, there is little agreement about what kind of new system should replace global capitalism. The development and aid system exists to bring about policies and priorities defined by the richer, more powerful countries, but these agencies and policies have been discredited by a number of very bloody ongoing wars, the closing of borders to migrants, and the general crisis of continuing injustice and inequality around the world. The theory of change is an analytical tool for NGO workers: the kind of tool that practitioners can use, even for higher-­level questions. Why not try? Most of us have internal bulletins, intranet or websites in our own organisations, where we can begin to express our views and create a wider analysis based on

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the work we do every day. For example, I had contributed a series of articles to INTRAC’s bulletin ontrac before I started my own independent analysis. I should admit that it was sometimes hard to square the views I began to develop for myself, on the one hand, and my practical work in development projects, on the other. However, the research and opening up of new information and questions did affect my practice gradually.

TOC-­1  War of position in the international development sector The ‘war of position’ is a term coined by Gramsci to help explain the strategy of political forces challenging the hegemony of national and international capital. In the early 1920s, the optimism of socialists and communists that revolution in Russia would soon be followed by similar upheavals in Europe began to wane. A key moment was the defeat of the workers’ uprising led by Rosa Luxemburg in Germany in 1919. In Italy itself, the newly set up communist party faced the increasing influence of Mussolini’s fascists – soon to take power, leading to Gramsci’s own arrest and imprisonment. The war of position was proposed by Gramsci as an alternative to attempts by socialists and communists to win power by direct assault (he called the latter a ‘war of manoeuvre’ – much of his language and thinking is taken from Marx’s analysis of the French Revolution). Key aspects of the war of position espoused by Gramsci include: first, a good situation analysis; second, the development of ‘organic intellectuals’ (like today’s social and political activists, community or development workers); and third, the search for a ‘historical bloc’ of forces sufficiently strong to push through changes. In Marxist terms, this can only come about if the economic system as a whole (the social relations of production) is ready for change, in other words, has outlived its use. However, if we pose the issue of social transformation or some other form of radical change today, it is not at all obvious that this will take place soon. Many countries in the West seem to be in slow decline but not ready to take any substantial decisions. And in the countries of the former Soviet Union, we can see that capitalist regimes are still consolidating themselves – through populist government (Russia) or coloured revolution (Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan) as the case may be. In Central Asia, the process of capitalist economic development is still at quite an early stage. The work of international and national NGOs is now highly institutionalised and bureaucratised – as we saw in Chapter 4. Much of this work is done via contracts from government or intergovernmental agencies like the EU, national governments and the development banks. Business associations and individual entrepreneurs usually have very clear ideas about what they want or do not want to support. They like supporting charity, health, education and social enterprise; they don’t like trade unions or human rights advocacy. The strategies of larger, official development NGOs are almost always long term, focused on gradual policy changes

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and improvements in services. International development budgets – just like domestic social services budgets or grants to local NGOs – are under constant threat as large-­scale austerity measures are introduced. Social movements undertake some of the same activities, for example, membership development, networking and information campaigns – but with different modes of confrontation or contention such as direct action, strikes, occupations and sit-­ins, and through an equally wide range of organisations as NGOs. As we saw in earlier chapters, some call NGOs ‘insiders’ compared to social movement ‘outsiders’, since they have won places at the negotiating table with local and national governments, international finance institutions and other bodies (Tarrow, 2006: 24). So the world of transnational activism is a very complex, and often contradictory one. Successful campaigns require the development of links between different kinds of actors in widely differing countries, for example, the alliances between NGOs in the global North and trade unions or informal workers groups in the global South (Eade and Leather, 2005). Sometimes CSOs may make common cause with international institutions (e.g. the United Nations system) for development goals; sometimes short-­ term political alliances are entered into, in order to advance complaints or claims against oppressive regimes. This is the complex, high-­level war of position in the international development field. The analysis of ‘contentious politics’ is an indispensable addition to the normal civil society theory, predicated as it is on people being ‘civil’ to each other. That fact is that they are often not very civil.

Practical and organisational strategies in the development field What are the change strategies – elements of the ‘war of position’ – being proposed or in some cases conducted by international NGOs? Here are a few. One of the main changes in recent decades is a new division of responsibilities between ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ NGOs involved in development. Whereas in the past major NGOs based in the Western countries used to manage and implement aid and development programmes through their own offices in the receiving countries, now these functions are devolved to local NGOs. The advantages of this are obvious: from the better local and cultural knowledge, better contacts with local and national government, to efficiencies in spending (less international travel costs, better bargaining with local suppliers). What the northern NGOs have kept for themselves is the advocacy function – making the case for aid, development and the rights agenda with Western and international donors and policy makers.2 However, as we noted in Chapters 4–5, this strategy is quite risky. First, the Northern NGOs can lose their direct contact with the situation on the ground, repeating general slogans but less confident about complex local issues. Second, the staff of Southern NGOs may have their own opinion of issues around poverty and national strategy – which by no means always correspond to the Northern NGO’s or back donor’s official line. They may be well-­educated city people, not much more attuned to the issues facing the rural poor than the foreign aid worker. Or they might be more radical, with a different regional perspective.

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In recent years, much has been written about the worsening environment for civil society – and not only in Russia but also in other major countries like India, and in the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America generally. However, a blog by Oxfam expert Duncan Green, ‘What is Really Going on Within “Shrinking Civil Society” and How Should International Actors Respond?’ (28 June 2017) takes issue with this. He argues that we should not overreact to the regulations on NGOs being imposed by some governments, since this may even increase NGO accountability. And we need to recognise that INGOs feeling the pressure from regulation are not the only kind of CSOs, there is a whole range of more local, sometimes informal organisations moving into the vacuum when the big donors move out and their partner NGOs downsize. As Araddhya Mehtta, Oxfam International’s Influencing Advisor, wrote in the State of Civil Society Report 2016, it may be necessary for organisations like Oxfam to ‘reinvent themselves’ and increase efforts and resources for small and fragile citizens groups at the grass-­roots level. Another tendency in the aid sector is the reorganisation of NGO work. Instead of Southern partners or branches reporting to a HQ located in the West, they are encouraged to register an independent organisation that joins a network on equal terms. Thus, Oxfam and Save Children are now big networks or ‘families’ of independent national organisations (like the Red Cross/Red Crescent alliance), with a complex system of mutual funding arrangements and support (Oxfam UK, Oxfam Russia, Oxfam Tajikistan, etc.). However, since the majority of funding and policy decisions are still made in the sending countries, the equality of national partners is only partially achieved.3 On the other hand, independent national partners will likely be better placed to respond to and support new informal modes of action. Another key area is collective resistance by INGOs to unreasonable government or donor demands, based on the need for a better situation analysis. Almost all INGOs these days face the dilemma about what to do to counter the demands for ever more detailed development results. As the aid industry runs into crisis – with governments threatening to spend aid money on domestic programmes, and the development agencies in cut-­throat competition with each other – the question of what project, programme and advocacy ‘results’ one can show becomes ever more crucial. To guard themselves against these escalating pressures, INGOs argue – quite correctly – that without a constantly updated context analysis, the problems in delivering change will never be understood; and what is more, the successes (often local, affecting individuals and small locations rather than whole systems or sectors) will go unacknowledged.4 Finally, for INTRAC another set of strategies has always been important. This is the focus on values and the process of development (how the work was done, who was involved, what kind of spirit was generated), rather than just the statistical results. For example, a recent multi-­country programme called ‘Consultants for Change’ takes a clear moral stance, defending consultants against the charge of a technocratic approach and arguing for a deeper commitment to their work in organisational change. Many of the examples of values-­driven consultant work are

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NGO headaches. This cartoon eloquently shows the complex environment (chaos?) of international development, where so many outside forces and events impact on NGO managers and staff. This is sometimes called ‘multiple accountability’ – where NGOs are accountable in all directions: to the donors, government, their management, staff, members, partners and beneficiaries

FIGURE 7.1 

Illustration credit: Bill Crooks.

taken from programmes run by faith-­based development agencies, with their longer-­term commitment to partnership with local NGOs living alongside the poor. The aim here was to support national consultants with this kind of approach against the dominant business-­oriented or technocratic model that we see in many regions including the FSU.

Case study 7.1  Dutch international NGOs resisting donor demands In 2010, the Dutch INGO ICCO that funded INTRAC’s capacity-­building programme P2 organised an international exchange of experience on what they called the ‘programmatic approach’, that is a long-­term strategy involving a wide range of local partners to tackle the causes of poverty and inequality. I myself contributed a case study from Central Asia about an ICCO project to promote democracy and human rights; other case studies were taken from different continents (West and South Africa, South Asia, Latin America) and different sectors (agriculture, environment, etc.). ICCO’s main reason for exchanging experiences in different countries

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was to build a case with which to lobby the Dutch government, which had just begun a review of its international development programmes.  The Central Asia case was in the sphere of democracy and human rights. It was quite a problematic one at the time when I wrote it because ICCO’s NGO partners had quite different work priorities and different political positions on domestic policy in Kyrgyzstan. Organising their work into one coherent programme was never going to be easy. However, ICCO gradually gained their support for joint work and the NGO partners identified a theme around which they were prepared to unite and work together. It was migrants’ rights – internal migration from rural areas to cities like Osh and Bishkek, and external migration to Kazakhstan and Russia. In this way, a five-­year programme took shape that eventually gathered partners in the migrant receiving countries and had a big impact on the work of the Kyrgyz and Tajik consulates, for example, in Russian cities, as well as on Kyrgyzstan’s migration policy at a critical moment when the country was just about to join the Eurasian Economic Union. As part of the same campaign, ICCO and other Dutch development agencies came together in a conference called ‘Big Push Forward’ to tackle the danger they saw to their complex, long-­term approach from official donors demanding simple, quick, marketable results. We can perhaps call this the ‘evidence war’, where donors take decisions about what constitutes ‘success’ and how this should be measured – and the stronger and more influential international NGOs try to influence them. Indeed, a lot of effort is spent by everyone – up and down the aid chain – doing data collection for the monitoring and evaluation systems set up by governments, donors and international NGOs. INTRAC’s approach emphasises qualitative assessments (not just statistical results) and the involvement of CSOs and activists at all stages. We argue that ‘downward accountability’ to communities is just as important as the ‘upward’ direction to donors.  The ‘Big Push Forward’ was a good example of collective action to establish joint positions and lobby government policy. However, in 2012, there was a change of government in the Netherlands resulting in cuts to agencies like ICCO and major changes to development programmes. So the struggle goes on.5 In the UK, a similar and very important role is played by BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development) and in domestic policy, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, in lobbying government policy in development issues.  Risk analysis. Despite these carefully thought out and often well-­implemented strategies, some risks remain. The first has already been mentioned – a commitment to long-­term change that is vulnerable to external events (e.g. war, conflict or government decisions in the sending or receiving countries). The second is the risk of human error, weakness or corruption in bigger and bigger programme structures. A third is the failure to come to terms with the overall neoliberal nature of the world political economy and its structural reliance on unequal centre–periphery relations. This means that longer-­term aims are not achieved, people become ­disillusioned, and more and more effort has to be spent on making and remaking the case for development.

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One of the high-­risk strategies for international development organisations is involvement in so-­called ‘humanitarian interventions’, that is, actions undertaken to solve humanitarian crises with military back-­up from the USA or United Nations agencies. While these actions may be understandable from the human point of view – as relieving suffering or preventing further violence – they infringe national sovereignty and often lead to the development of an artificial, unsustainable political regime in the places that are receiving the assistance. Humanitarian interventions are based on the idea that some nations have the right to take decisions for other nations, irrespective of the will of the latter. In an earlier chapter, we noted that the involvement of civil society groups – for example, peace groups, traditional elders – can play a role in tackling conflict. But there is also the risk that such actions will have a staged character, clothing the forced, military nature of the main actions being taken by international agencies and their armed forces. In other words, civil actors are being used to try to lessen or break the power of political players against whom the humanitarian or peace-­keeping process is being aimed.

TOC-­2 Resisting the consequences of hot and cold war at national level Preceding sections of this book have described the situation of increasing political conflict and ideological competition around the world, often leading to military actions: the wars in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Ukraine included. Global civil society was not only unable to prevent these wars breaking out, or stopping them once they are in progress, but it also is itself weakened by conflict. This can be seen in Western Europe where religious and national elements are increasingly at odds with the previous liberal consensus, for example, over issues like multiculturalism and immigration, social policy, gender issues and sexual rights. The same divisions confront liberal or progressive civil society activists in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Increasingly, NGOs have to focus on the political agenda within their own countries rather than simply appeal to international standards and conventions, if they are to take at least the minimum action that the situation calls for. Indeed, we may be on the threshold of a time when international and national CSOs will reduce in importance compared with plainly political movements. This happened at the end of the nineteenth century, notably in Russia where the intelligentsia that had launched civil society in the period since the Great Reforms of the 1860s, gradually radicalised in the lead-­up to the 1905 revolution and then the February and October Revolutions of 1917; but also in Western Europe in the period of increasing nationalism leading up to the First World War and then fascism in Germany and Italy. The main features of today’s warring states are, first the continued strength, even dominance, of the military–industrial complex that was such a feature of the major powers in the Cold War period. As Gabriel Kolko (2005) has shown, the US military will not easily give up on its technological or political illusions about world

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supremacy or forgo the budgets that presidents (Republican or Democrat) and congress have been prepared to give them. While out of power, politicians make gestures to the American public’s exhaustion and disillusion with endless war, but once in power both main parties renege on promises made, make deals with the military top brass and arms firms, and so the wars go on. Indeed, the problem is structural: military spending underwrites the economies of many of the advanced countries. The Western military–industrial complex has since the fall of the USSR been in search of new enemies, whether inside or outside the boundaries of its own country. This search is accompanied by pressure on allies to follow the same political line as the USA and to contribute forces to war or peace-­keeping operations. It inevitably provokes counter-­measures from those against whom it is directed; leading to new spirals of political tension and military spending. As another recent report points out, the military strategists have contrived to create a war that can never be won, because it has no clear targets or objectives – and no clear time limits. Abroad, there are countless potential targets in the countries with, for example, long-­term refugee camps, victims of previous wars or a Muslim population, and it is well-­nigh impossible to make an analysis of whom exactly to target. At home, the establishment of new surveillance mechanisms and restrictions on freedom threatens not just ‘terrorists’ but potentially any other social or political activists who might attract the attention of the security agencies (Boon-­kuo et al., 2015). As we showed in the case of Ukraine and Russia, the intensive daily bombardment of the population with security and terrorism related news in the end has an effect. Ordinary people begin to feel they are under threat from so-­called enemies, and so politicians who propose active measures against the enemy gain in popularity. Unfortunately, recent experience shows that liberal and social democratic parties in the West have been as willing as right-­wing parties to sacrifice good relations with Russia or China in pursuit of their own political gains. And in Russia we see the same vis-­à-vis the USA and Europe; a hostile attitude to the West gains the current regime in Moscow popularity at a time of economic and social difficulties – partly caused by Western sanctions, partly by low oil prices and the imbalances of the Russian economy.

BOX 7.2  THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEFT ANALYSTS What Noam Chomsky wrote back in the 1990s about the responsibilities of intellectuals is quite relevant to what we write about international development today. The paramount aim, he says, is ‘to tell the truth and expose lies’ (Rai, 1995: 141). Beyond that, to focus on what is important, avoid topics about which you know little, and address the audiences that might listen to you. ‘The proper focus of concern for us lies in the areas where we have a responsibility for what is happening and the opportunity to mitigate or terminate suffering and violence’ (Rai, 1995: 142).

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We should not do things, he continues, that ‘entrench current ideology and thereby strengthen the popular basis for harmful policy’ (Rai, 1995: 144). His later studies on humanitarian intervention and, above all, the illegal wars in the Middle East, make clear the difficult choices facing those who work in countries or with issues that are directly or indirectly affected by military and geopolitical ambitions. The most common dilemma facing those analysing or reporting on developments in countries where development programmes operate, is how to describe the harmful consequences of neoliberal economic policies or political imperialism. This is particularly difficult when reports and analyses are being paid for by the self-­same neoliberal agencies or imperialists; and when partners up and down the aid chain are tied into the same system. For Chomsky, intellectuals, academics, teachers and NGO workers are among those most vulnerable to state propaganda – because their role is in part to develop and disseminate it. Only the conscious development of an ‘alternative track’ for analysis and action can counter this. Meanwhile, it is important not to give assent or encouragement to policy makers and decision makers with whom development workers fundamentally disagree. They should not risk doing harm to victims of oppression. They can try to speak out in a language that ordinary people can understand. They can make impossible or difficult the exploitation of their information material by the mass media. They can refuse to accompany troops or high-­profile politicians and provide laundered accounts of war or aggressive economic or cultural actions. The challenges for development analysts are especially sharp in the human rights field, because the USA, while being as Chomsky puts it ‘the global sovereign’ since 1945, ignores rules laid down by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, does not belong to the International Criminal Court. What credence then do these judicial structures and standards really have? It is important to realise that while human rights activists rightly point to the breaches of international laws and conventions, for many people around the world this agenda is hypocritical and has lost its force. In reporting these matters, it is necessary to do least harm, report what it is most important, and consider what audience one is writing for. It is important that our message be heard by the people whose cause we are trying to support. How can we ensure this?

Strategies for NGOs operating with populist regimes As we noted in Chapter 6, the Western media recently rediscovered the term ‘populism’ and it is much used now in respect of right-­wing or nationalist regimes that are able to drum up popular support, often against the previous liberal consensus. Indeed, populism triumphed in the UK with the Brexit vote in 2016 and the election of President Trump in the USA in the autumn of that year. The world system analysis shows how populist regimes can try to rally their populations

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round a ‘pro-­people’ programme aimed at getting a better deal out of the global political or economic elite. We noted that there are left-­wing populist regimes as well as right-­wing ones. From the Russian perspective, populism has an important history as one of the main strands of the revolutionary movement in the second half of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century. In fact, in the elections held soon after the October Revolution, it was not the Bolsheviks who won the most votes or seats – it was a party in the populist tradition – the Social Revolutionaries. Hence, populism is an important part of the national political tradition. One of the consequences of the narrowing political space is that contacts between NGOs in different countries become more difficult or even dangerous to maintain. Today, the vision of a global civil society is increasingly under threat. In reality, this global civil society was always fragile, discontinuous and concentrated in particular continents and centres of population. However, it held up a hope of peaceful coexistence on this planet. How can NGOs best operate in the limited space that many of them have nowadays? The analysis of recent developments in Russia by Karine Clement and her colleagues over the past ten years can be quite useful in answering this question. The series began with the ground-­breaking book From Bystander to Activist (2010), written in collaboration with activists from the Institute for Collective Action, and has continued with volumes on urban social movements (2013) and the ‘politics of the apolitical’ (2015).6 First, NGOs and social movements can apply pressure on social and bread-­andbutter issues very effectively. The analyses produced show the pressure that has been put on the government by a series of high-­profile social movements – starting with the pensioners’ struggle against monetisation of benefits in the mid-­2000s; continuing with the mobilisation of residents associations in old Soviet-­built blocks, which has forced new reforms and increased investment in the housing sector; and a wide range of environmental campaigns to preserve green spaces in the city, prevent illegal logging in the forests, and for preservation of Russia’s unique natural habitats. The government had to respond. So, while restricting ‘political’ activism, as we saw in Chapter 6, President Putin brought in a new term – ‘socially oriented’ non-­commercial organisations. Many NGOs previously funded by Western donors were able to adapt successfully to this situation, while rightly protesting all the time about the new restrictions on political lobbying. This demonstrated a second vital strategy – flexibility. In reality, working on social questions very soon brings us back into the political realm. A third priority is for NGOs and social movements to hang onto their international links and networks. For example, another Russian organisation that VSO and other British-­based NGOs have long had links with is the Association for Social Information (ASI), which specialises in collecting and disseminating social and civil society news and views from around the Russian Federation. Despite the political crises, ASI has kept its position as a leading specialist in social and civic activism, with a seat on many of the official bodies connected with the Civic Forum; and at the same time it preserves old international ties with, for example,

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the BEARR Trust in the UK. During the 2000s, ASI’s director has continued to visit London almost every autumn for the BEARR annual conference to update partners on the progress of Russia’s civil society sector. The Civil Society research unit at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics is pursuing a similar strategy. The unit maintains close links with Lester Salomon and the civil society analysts at Johns Hopkins University in the USA, meanwhile producing a stream of detailed sociological surveys of volunteerism, philanthropy, community development and the links between NGOs and local government across the Russian Federation. For human rights organisations, transnational links like this are no less, in fact, even more a necessity to ensure relevance and legitimacy. Maintaining and renewing the human resources within our sector is no less important. A report by the director of the NGO Resource Centre in Perm, a few years ago, noted a reduction in the number of active NGOs because of hard to fulfil reporting requirements; solid but ageing leaders of NGOs; short-­term service contracts making it impossible to employ properly qualified staff – and hence the public’s low opinion of many NGO services. On the other hand, the opening up of municipal services for tender by non-­profit associations has offered some opportunities for innovation and attracting younger staff. While I agree with commentators who are critical of the potential commercialisation of NGOs in service contracts, the other side of the coin is that people in remote areas and disadvantaged communities can use this mechanism to do something positive; it can have a job creation and training function as well as providing services demanded by vulnerable groups. We have seen this in our own work in urban and rural Kyrgyzstan where disability groups have led the way.7 For links with the international donors, an increasingly heavy burden lies on the shoulders of a few national NGOs in Central Asia. Many of them were originally INGO projects that were gradually ‘localised’ in the pursuit of sustainability, and they are now the bastion for international aid efforts. These NGOs have become adept at applying for EU or USAID funding and often the grants that they receive allow for an element of re-­granting or subcontracting to smaller NGOs or community groups. They have become development or neoliberal forts in what is increasingly uncertain territory. 

Case study 7.2 Changes at the national level – examples from Kyrgyzstan As globalisation becomes gradually less attractive for many people around the world, so the importance of the state for NGOs and social movements wanting to push through development or political objectives increases. Two examples from Kyrgyzstan after the 2005 and 2010 revolutions show this clearly.  First, after the March 2005 revolution, environmental and development NGOs successfully argued against the adoption by government of a new debt-­relief scheme called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries), then being promoted by the World Bank. The active, innovative and radical campaign against HIPC would not have

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been possible without the countrywide social and political mobilisation that characterised the years 2005–07 in Kyrgyzstan.8 Some development specialists argued that HIPC was a progressive scheme compared with many other debt-­relief arrangements. Maybe it was. However, by rejecting it, NGO activists and political leaders in Kyrgyzstan made an important point about not wanting to be perennially in debt to the international financial institutions. Furthermore, in acceding to the pressure from civil society, the government hoped that instead it could access bilateral loans with Russia and China – which indeed it did. This tendency has steadily strengthened: Russia has opened a major Development Fund that small and big business can apply to, and China has become by far the biggest provider of loans and credits in Kyrgyzstan today. Its new ‘Belt and Road’ programme to create transport and industry corridors through Eurasia to the West will take this process forward even further. So the HIPC campaign contributed to a major change in the development direction that the country was taking. Now the country has to make the new strategy work for it … Second, after the April 2010 revolution, several important new reforms were introduced. The biggest change was a new parliamentary system created after a referendum on changes in the country’s constitution. The new parliament has been filled by deputies elected by proportional representation in free elections. While the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan has gradually become the party of power (dominating the political agenda in a way that the opposition is highly critical of ) neither it nor any other party has yet received more than 35 per cent of the seats in parliament in a general election; thus, government since 2011 has been in the form of various coalitions made up of three–four parties. At the same time as the new parliamentary system was adopted, the President Roza Otunbaeva instituted public advisory councils in all the ministries – thus giving civil society and independent experts a chance to oversee and support the work of public officials. The appointments to the advisory boards are made by a special committee with clear terms of reference, in which civil society has a lead role. Like the new parliamentary system itself, this reform is still experiencing many problems, but it shows what kind of advances for civil society are possible through political changes at the national level.9 The role of civil society in and after the Kyrgyzstan revolutions can be compared with recent experience in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela or Ecuador, where a leftist government came to power and entered a difficult struggle with the forces of global neoliberalism. The example of participatory processes in local authority budgeting as a means of increasing public support for a left-­leaning regime is well known from the Porto Allegre model in Brazil at the turn of the century. Brazil’s successes in participatory budgeting were promoted for civil society and left movements in other countries through the meetings of the World Social Forum in the early and mid-­2000s; and have been trialled at a local level in Kyrgyzstan with reasonable success too. Risk analysis. Social change brought about by political processes at a national level has the advantage that it can be cemented in law and implemented by government

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agencies. On the other hand, those who opposed the change at the outset may continue to resist it on political or ideological grounds. Policies adopted at a local level may contradict those being adopted at a national level – as we saw in the case of London in Chapter 2. While local NGO leaders and staff often get involved in politics at all levels, this is risky for reasons already mentioned (it can compromise the impartial position and hence security that is important for the organisation). For international NGOs, it is simply very difficult to keep up to date with the complexity of local politics in other countries; to be fully engaged from day to day would take much more time, energy and sensitivity to local context than most INGOs have available.

Strategies for national NGOs Faced with political hostility or restrictions on their activity, national NGOs have a number of more internal options. These strategies are also important for resisting a twin risk – the danger of over-­professionalisation or bureaucratisation that was highlighted in Chapter 4. The first priority for many NGOs is to regularly review the organisation’s original idea or mission. For organisations with a good local base of support, they need to take determined measures to maintain their community base. This may involve setting conditions when employing staff, deciding on which groups can benefit from services, and how their membership should develop. In Central Asia, there are many NGOs that adopted a strategy in times when Western funding was abundant and the horizons for future development wide open. They need to review these strategies and find new objectives and resources, no less important and inspiring than the old ones. The disability groups have a good slogan: ‘nothing for us without us’, that is not just to say ‘hands off ’ to the experts, but also that we will proceed in our own way using our own strengths and resources wherever possible. NGOs in general need to think carefully about involvement of donor, business and government representatives on their boards. Sometimes a good option is to co-­opt influential people but on a non-­voting basis; such was our practice in East London. In this way, we may go slower but we will go our own way, and in thus doing, we will remain open to the communities that are most important for us. And the bigger changes may become more attainable, gradually. A third strategy is to deliberately develop and maintain the organisation as a school, self-­managing or learning organisation. Partly this responds to the inevitable turnover of staff, especially young people, in NGOs – and tries to make a virtue out of necessity. Partly it helps to identify and promote good practice. Partly it helps maintain flexibility and openness to changes forced on us or chosen in order to tackle new problems. Fourth is a respect for representative and democratic structures within the NGO, for example, elections at the Annual General Meeting. If these events are treated not as a formality but as an opportunity for increasing participation and benefitting from new ideas, this can help us return to the politics and values that led us to start up the organisation in the first place.

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TOC-­3  Partisan tactics and radical localism The partisan is a defender of territory against occupiers or invaders. Well-­known examples are the partisan actions in Belarus, Slovakia and Yugoslavia during the Nazi occupation of those countries in the Second World War. Post-­war examples include the successful campaigns of the mujaheddin against the USSR in Afghanistan and the Vietcong against the USA. Today, partisan actions continue in Afghanistan, indeed news reports tell us that the Taliban controls 75 per cent of the country (at least at night). In his book Theory of the Partisan (2007), Carl Schmitt shows how the politics of partisan movements is very often conservative in character. An appeal to traditional, well-­understood images, stories and ideas is vital for a movement calling people to arms against a much better armed foreign power. By contrast, ‘radical localism’ and ‘small is beautiful’ are strategies proposed by many environmentalists and practised in a range of civil society and development projects. Somehow, we need to combine these two things. 

Protest strategies Recently, a number of activists and academics (including some that were involved with the ‘Civil Society at the Crossroads’ project) have posed the question as to whether the ‘2010+’ wave of protests – ranging from the protests during the ‘Arab Spring’ to the anti-­capitalist actions around Occupy! – represent a new kind of ‘citizen-­led socio-­political change’. Central to this argument is the idea that new technology, particularly the Internet, can significantly enhance protest actions and the development of alternatives by civic activists – enabling a kind of collective, borderless consciousness of globally disaffected groups and populations. This kind of activism, they suggest, not only challenges wealthy elites around the world, but all those who are involved in the ‘old politics’, that is, political parties that are part of the official system of national and local governance; and the privately owned media empires that support them (Biekart and Fowler, 2013). A second key aspect of the 2010+ actions was that they were very often spontaneous. In a sense, this is nothing new: in the voluntary sector, we have the phenomenon of initiative groups taking up all kinds of issues, and in the labour movement, many of the most successful struggles have been led by unofficial action. From the late 1960s, social movements have developed a range of new tools of discussion, debate and struggle that rely heavily on spontaneous mobilisation alongside a more organised core.10 The emphasis on spontaneity or self-­generated struggle was a common element in the wave of protests across the Arab World and in the USA and Western Europe after 2010. This approach has sometimes been called DIY (do-­it-yourself ) politics and it is a very wide sphere indeed. Thus, for example, a recent analysis of small-­ scale campaigns of resistance to neoliberalism from East London includes a campaign by ‘E15’ (postcode) mums to resist rehousing outside London; efforts to revive the cooperative movement in new models that bring together freelancers

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and try to develop safeguards for those employed under ‘zero contracts’ or in the self-­employed sector in the UK; and recent attempts to develop better conditions for care workers, 80 per cent of whom are women, many of them migrants (Filar, 2015). A third aspect is that local protest actions are often quite short-­lived (e.g. one year, two years). The anarchist poet Hakim Bey had a good description for the mode of organisation that many local campaigners opt for – ‘temporary autonomous zones’ (1991). This term reflects the difficulty of holding onto autonomous spaces in the face of the powers-­that-be. For example, a tent city in the central square is under continual threat from the police. Radical activists often have to settle for local or small-­scale actions in the realisation that their gains will likely be short-­ lived. The DIY aspect of localist strategies is reinforced by an emphasis on shared, collectively managed use of resources – in particular new technology. This can be seen in the discussions about ‘Commons’ or ‘P2P’ (people-­to-people) systems, where open source technology and networks of computers enable exchanges of information and skills without payment of fees for access. Commons encourages new social processes and ultimately could lead to new modes of production.11

Case study 7.3 Social media and environmental activism in Kyrgyzstan While Internet access and use in Central Asia lags significantly behind Russia and the advanced or metropolitan countries of the West, it is growing fast and urban communities and young people are leading the way. In a recent collection of articles on new trends in civil society in Central Asia, an interesting case study by Nargiza Ryskulova (2017) looks at use of social media in two environmental campaigns. In the first campaign, activists trying to save the Botanical Gardens in Bishkek from encroaching redevelopment got hooked up with an urgent action to try to stop the cutting down of trees to make way for a new road through the centre of town. The Botanical Gardens site is managed by the Academy of Sciences, devoted to studying and preserving plants and trees from mountainous and semi-­desert territories and is one of the largest reserves of this kind in Central Asia. Funding has dwindled since 1991 and the few remaining staff have a real problem in maintaining this unique resource, so the question of its future strategy both as a scientific and public resource is urgent. In summer 2017, the city authorities stepped up their programme to make Bishkek more ‘car-­friendly’ – widening streets to allow more vehicle transport and parking, which clearly threatens the green and leafy character of the old Soviet layout of the city centre. One of the streets where tree gangs suddenly appeared was Dushanbinskaya and local residents were forced to tie themselves to tree trunks to halt or at least delay the action. Social media as well as phone and email networks were used to call for help from environmental, youth and city networks. In the second campaign, activists trying to save the country’s iconic snow leopard lobbied parliamentary deputies to support a general moratorium on hunting in the

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high mountain regions of the country where the snow leopard hunts its prey. This was a high-­profile campaign supported by Leonard di Caprio and featuring posters showing the snow leopard on large billboards around the city. The battle to preserve the high-­mountain habitat for the snow leopard, the Marco Polo sheep, Siberian ibex and Tien Shan brown bear in the various state reserves is by no means new, but faces a serious adversary in the shape of foreign hunters and local intermediaries who enable them to hunt these rare species. After analysing the progress and results of the two campaigns, the authors of the case studies came to the conclusion that the impact of social media could not be proved. There had been a lot of media coverage and public discussion in both cases, but both campaigns had been lost. In the case of Dushanbinskaya, social media contacts had not brought sufficient people onto the streets to stop the cutting down of trees, indeed, an organised core of determined activists who would stay in touch with each other and operate in a coherent way had not yet been created; the campaign for the Botanical Gardens still goes on and its fate hangs in the balance. In the case of the snow leopard, those against the moratorium on hunting had gone ‘door to door’ with parliamentary deputies and that way achieved a majority of votes against it. Sharper, more focused methods of gathering political support had proved successful. However, in both cases, the authors considered that social media and other networking activities had boosted public support for environmental causes, providing a base for better organised actions in future.  Risk analysis. While there was a lot of initial euphoria about the Arab Spring, subsequent events showed how largely spontaneous local civil actions, while supported from outside by international agencies, were opposed by equally determined forces inside the Arab countries. In some ways, this was quite similar to what happened in the FSU some 15 years earlier, that is, the new shoots of post-­1991 civil society were challenged by those who wanted to return from a secular modernising regime (the USSR) to the old ways of organising society and the family. In Egypt and other countries of the Middle East, the long-­established, well-­organised networks of the Muslim Brotherhood prevailed on the streets and at the elections over social-­media disseminated spontaneous civil actions. And finally, violent pre-­ emptive actions – the counter-­revolution carried out by the military in Egypt and the Western bombing of Libya, the slide into all-­out civil war in Syria – rendered civil, non-­violent protest or social movement activism suicidal in many cases. A second point concerns new technology. Here we return to the influence of hot and cold war, because it is naive and dangerous to consider the mobilising potential of social media or other ITC applications without taking into account the almost universal surveillance of the Internet by state security authorities in the USA, the UK, Russia and other countries. Indeed, technology provides an easy way for activists to unite in the ether. This mechanism can be compared with a more traditional model – international and national events such as the series of World Social Forums (WSF ) that enabled the emergence of an alter-­globalisation movement in the early 2000s. In fact, the WSF meetings – first, in Brazil, and then in other countries and continents (Europe, Asia,

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Africa) – developed a critique of the current world set-­up that was largely proved correct by the 2007–08 economic crisis. These open discussions between left and libertarian participants – deliberately ending without a vote or a set of recommendations or priorities – were mirrored ten years later in the tent city meetings of Occupy! where again, there was no attempt to reach consensus or develop a common set of demands.12 How can these open discussions lead into more focused social and political campaigns? In several countries, one can trace the process by which citizens mobilised by local protest actions or new technology discussion platforms have decided to create new parties, for example, in Spain, Italy and Chile. However, the experience of the UK – including the Liberal Democrats and Respect! experiments – as well as the USA have shown how difficult it is to shake the current party system. In Russia, new political parties were launched in the 1990s for women and environmental issues (the Greens) and encountered similar difficulties. In Italy, Spain and the UK, conservative or neo-­conservative parties have regularly won back power at the ballot box as citizens are blackmailed by the media and political classes to vote for technocratic candidates who would, allegedly but not in fact, manage the economy better. When the Greek left broke through with Syriza, it proved insufficiently organised or determined to maintain the government’s opposition to austerity or the signing of new loans that will hold back radical social and economic reforms for decades.

Summing up on social, political and civic activism If we compare the experience of civic and social movements in 2010+ Europe, the USA, the countries studied for Civil Society at the Crossroads, and Russia, we find they have many similar elements. Here I will just mention some of these challenges that affect struggles that begin in the grassroots. The challenges that Clement and her team identified in Russia included: first, poor organisational work within the coalitions for change; a lack of clear rules, division of responsibilities and functions, a weak organisational structure. Second, the difficulty of moving from clearly defined local problems into much broader campaigns. Third, a steadily widening gap between the leadership of campaigns and their followers. And fourth, the lack of a global idea, a social project capable of giving the movements real sustainability, for example, long-­term demands, a clear policy, a political platform. For ragged-­NGO analysts like myself, Clement’s definition of key terms is quite useful as well as being an interesting contribution to the debate from the FSU region. This analysis helped me to resolve one of the problems in reading the academic literature on social and political action: the use of different discourses. Thus, writers on ‘social movements’ avoid using the term ‘civil society’; writers on ‘civil society’ don’t use the term ‘social movement’, etc. etc. …  The social level is somehow in the middle here and social action is perhaps a key term in what I have been trying to discuss in this book. Here the definition

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BOX 7.3  SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND CIVIC MOVEMENTS A social movement, writes Clement, is a network of initiative groups, public and political organisations and individuals united by a determination to solve a common problem. If its sphere of activity (territorial, social or thematic) that widens and brings in more forces, the movement can become truly public (obshestvenny) in its character, expressing a common cause (blago), for example, environmental safety, or social justice. The activities of a social movement affect social groups differently, that is, some groups will find that their interests are promoted by its activities, while others’ interests may be threatened. A political movement is a group of people or organisations united by a world-­view or ideology and determination to change the social order or rules of domination of one group over another, including influence on power relations, on behalf of a wide social category that it aims to represent. A civic movement is a group of people or organisations united by the determination to make organs of power more accountable to citizens or to change the pattern of relations between them. Civic movements are motivated by ideas about the rule of law and very often their starting point is that existing rules and laws are OK but not being observed. Many of these campaigns (e.g. the anti-­corruption movement) do not set out to represent particular vulnerable social groups, but they can be radical in that they identify the powers-­ that-be as their main opponent or enemy (because power refuses to be controlled, doesn’t recognise citizens or their rights). Initiative groups, social and political movements are located on different locations on the continuum whereby an idea is generalised and develops a social base. But the transfer from one level to another is by no means automatic.

of social movements by Tilly points to some of the key components of successful campaigns and movements in different political contexts. A social movement, he writes, must:  evince a minimum degree of organisation, though it may range from a loose, informal or partial level of organisation, to highly institutionalised and bureaucratic structures … [It must be] founded on the conscious volition, normative commitment to the movement’s aims or beliefs, and active participation on the part of the followers or members.  (Tilly, 1978: 7)  We need to go back to these essential elements. Finally, our analysis of the risks and weaknesses of radical local activism should not ignore the periphery position of regions like Central Asia. This means that they

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are often completely absent from the discussions being held in the global centres of civil society. Battles at the metropolitan centre may be won or lost, but without some mechanism for the inclusion of distant regions, the structural divisions between North and South or East and West are not being reduced – and civic action is not significantly changing the power balances.  Only by taking issues like these into account can multilevel, multifaceted movements for change develop a powerful, realistic theory of change. Many local activists, the author included, have a tendency to ignore the higher levels of policy and government in their daily work – preferring to create and develop their ‘islands of civility’ or ‘temporary autonomous zones’. But if we want to bring about society level change, we will need alliances and new friends of all kinds – and we will therefore have to consider TOC 1, 2 and 3.

Ragged advocacy NGOs engaging in lobbying and advocacy activities are advised by development agencies in the FSU and elsewhere around the world to consider three main aspects of their strategy:

1 2 3

The content of the laws, programmes or budgets that they want to change or improve The structure of institutions or actors that implement the laws, programmes or budgets The culture of society with its habitual ways of adopting, implementing or reacting to laws, programmes or budgets.

If we compare the Occupy! model with these ground rules, we find that Occupy! was strong in two aspects: first, the modelling of new behaviour (culture); second, the focus on economic and social inequality – the 1 per cent of the super-­rich against the 99 per cent of the rest of the population (content); but in terms of challenging the structures of society and proposing new structures – it had no strategy at all. It is unlikely that this kind of ‘no-­solution’ approach can be pursued indefinitely. It risks creating disillusion and, eventually, reaction. Do you agree with this criticism of Occupy!? What is your own analysis of the strategy employed in this and similar protests? How can the advocacy ‘triangle’ help to clarify the issues and options?

Further reading on change strategies in NGOs Bebbington, Anthony J., Samuel Hickey and Diana C. Mitlin, 2008. Can NGOs Make a Difference? The Challenge of Development Alternatives. London: Zed Books.  Bey, Hakim, 1991. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.

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Biekart, Kees and Alan Fowler, 2013. ‘Transforming Activisms 2010+: Exploring Ways and Waves’. Forum 44 (3): 527–46, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech. 12032. Boon-­Kuo, Louise, Ben Hayes, Vicki Sentas and Gavin Sullivan, 2015. Building Peace in Permanent War: Terrorist Listing and Conflict Transformation. London: International State Crime Initiative; Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. Burns, Danny and Stuart Worsley, 2015. Navigating Complexity in International Development: Facilitating Sustainable Change at Scale. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Buxton, Charles, 2011. The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Buxton, Charles and Reina Artur Kyzy, 2017. Reimagining Civil Society: Articles on Civil Society in a Time of Change. Bishkek: American University of Central Asia. Clement, Karine, 2015. ‘Unlikely Mobilisations: How Ordinary Russian People Became Involved in Collective Action’. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 2 (3–4): 211–40. Clément, Karine, 2018. ‘Social Mobilisations and the Question of Social Justice in Contemporary Russia’. Globalizations 6 (1): 155–69. Eade, Deborah and Alan Leather, 2005. Development NGOs and Labour Unions: Terms of Engagement. Oxford: Oxfam. Eyben, Rosalind, Irene Guijt, Chris Roche and Cathy Shutt (eds), 2017. The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Filar, Ray (ed.), 2015. Resist! Against a Precarious Future. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Green, Duncan, 2016. How Change Happens. Oxford: Oxfam. James, Rick, 2017. Consultants for Change. Oxford: INTRAC. Lewis, David and Tina Wallace (eds), 2000. New Roles and Relevance: Development NGOs and the Challenge of Change. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian. Mason, Paul, 2016. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Nyamugasita, Warren, 1999. ‘NGOs and Advocacy’, in Deborah Eade (ed.), Development and Social Action. Oxford: Oxfam. Rai, Milan, 1995. Chomsky’s Politics. London: Verso. Ryskulova, Nargiza, 2017. ‘Case Study: Role of Social Media in Civic Engagement in Kyrgyzstan’, in Charles Buxton and Reina Artur Kyzy (eds), Reimagining Civil Society: Articles on Civil Society in a Time of Change. Bishkek: American University of Central Asia. Schmitt, Carl, 2007. Theory of the Partisan, trans. G.L. Ulmen. New York: Telos Press. de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, 2006. The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond. London: Zed Books. Sullivan, Stefan, 2002. Marx for a Post-­Communist Era: On Poverty, Corruption and Banality. London: Routledge. Tarrow, Sidney, 2006. The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wainwright, Hilary, 2003. Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy. London: Verso.

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Notes   1 Good materials on TOC are available from INTRAC and Oxfam websites.   2 See David Lewis and Tina Wallace (eds), New Roles and Relevance: Development NGOs and the Challenge of Change (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian, 2000) and Anthony J. Bebbington, Samuel Hickey and Diana C. Mitlin, Can NGOs Make a Difference? The Challenge of Development Alternatives (London: Zed Books, 2008) for a wide range of contributions on these themes. And on advocacy roles, Warren Nyamugasita, ‘NGOs and Advocacy’, in Deborah Eade (ed.), Development and Social Action (Oxford: Oxfam, 1999).   3 A recent article by the Executive Director of Civicus makes this point very clearly. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah and Mandeep Tiwana, ‘Why is Civil Society Power Still Located in the Global North?’, Thought Leader, 1 June 2015, www.thoughtleader.co.za/ mandeeptiwana/2015/06/01/why-­is-civil-­society-power-­still-located-­in-the-­globalnorth/. The answer, they argue, lies partly in restrictions in the Southern countries, partly the historical cultural and institutional capital of NGOs and international agencies in the North, that is, power.   4 Some examples of this kind of analysis can be found in Danny Burns and Stuart Worsley, Navigating Complexity in International Development: Facilitating Sustainable Change at Scale (Rugby: Practical Action Publishing, 2015). However, this very intensive kind of engagement seems to assume an almost endless development intervention, which may not always be possible or even desirable.   5 See Rosalind Eyben, Irene Guijt, Chris Roche and Cathy Shutt (eds), The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development (Rugby: Practical Action Publishing, 2017). See also an online conference, ‘Decolonising Development: Whose Voice, Whose Agenda?’, organised by Leeds University Centre for Global Development (CGD) and INTRAC, 22–24 May 2017.   6 These three books are in Russian. Karine Clement et al., От обывателя к активистам: запождающиеся социальные движения в России (Tri Kvadrata, 2010); Karine Clement et al., Городские движения России 2009–12: н пути к поличическому (Novoye Literaturnoye Obozrenie, 2013); M. Alyukov et al., Политика аполитичных: граджанские движения и России 2011–13 годов (Novoye Literaturnoye Obozrenie, 2015). A journal article by Karine Clément in English is given in Further Reading.   7 In 2017–18, INTRAC carried out a national survey of social enterprise in Kyrgyzstan, funded by the British Council. The report covered NGOs seeking greater income through sale of services or products; the cooperative sector; and private companies with a social or environmental mission. For a short account, see my article in the SCRSS Bulletin autumn 2018, www.scrss.org.uk.   8 For a detailed account of the anti-­HIPC campaign, see my book on civil society in Central Asia, The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2011), Chapter 8.   9 In Kazakhstan, a similar measure was adopted in 2015. This was a moment when the government wanted to bring in land reform including elements of privatisation – a big risk, so some new mechanisms to ‘take the steam’ out of the opposition would be  useful. Public advisory councils were created at city and local level, also in some ministries. However, this was much more of a top-­down process and hence there was limited public participation and less pressure on civil servants from the new council members. 10 The Grany Center in Perm carried out a similar study on ‘non-­political’ activism in 2012. They found a huge range of informal discussions, actions and flash-­mob type protests. Some were using new technology, others were raising new topics, often using new terms and images to spread their messages. The study team tried to analyse the life cycle of an average initiative, that is, what resources it needed and what results it might achieve. They distinguished ‘productive’ (i.e. more rational, regular, results-­oriented) activism from ‘situational’ (i.e. more spontaneous, protest or charity-­oriented) activism. And they

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found sets of people who they describe as being ‘in a practically constant state of mobilisation’. www.grany-­center.org. 11 The possibilities of new technology lie at the base of Paul Mason’s optimistic prognosis in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2016). 12 For an analysis of the WSF approach and results, see Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (London: Zed Books, 2006).

Conclusion Towards 2020

Dear Reader As I came to the end of this book, my own feelings were largely positive. I recognise that this is as much a professional stance as a proper judgement. In the NGO sector, there is no other way to work: we have to be upbeat, prepared to listen to people, ready to support new initiatives. Maybe this unremittingly positive inclination is a weakness of ours? Anyway, here are a few more considered conclusions from the analysis presented in the book. First, it seems to me that many of my starting hypotheses were borne out. The book aimed to examine NGO work at different levels and I think it has shown how we can learn and achieve useful things at any point in our working lives, in small or large organisations. Outstanding achievements that were featured in the case studies included the leader of women’s disability organisation Shyrak, the old people’s resource organisation Umut; and collectively, the achievements of community groups in Kyrgyzstan avoiding further violence after 2010, and our own coalitions in Tower Hamlets in fighting racism and launching successful local projects based on equal opportunities. There were many more examples of effort, struggle and success in the pages of this book. Another hypothesis was that the various decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s, could be compared with each other in terms of the neoliberal assault on the post-­ 1945 welfare consensus in the West and on Soviet socialism in the East. Again, I think this was borne out. At least I didn’t have too much difficulty in describing the situation or making comparisons – and it is up to the reader to agree or disagree with my analysis. Today, threats like individualism, commercialism, nationalism and shrinking political space can be seen in all the countries that I looked at; and positive responses like the continuing vibrancy of civil society and protest movements, the attempt counter neoliberalism via economic initiatives for poorer and excluded groups can be seen on both sides, too. Much of my argument was tied to

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case studies, and while I think they support my conclusions, they were written in an open fashion and could perhaps be used to support other arguments, too. In the later chapters of the book, we were being driven to the conclusion that the current model or phase of civil society and international development has exhausted itself. So a new political idea is necessary. Without a new political idea, it will be difficult to achieve radical reform or a revolution in the way we do these things. Indeed, civil society was a political idea in Eastern Europe of the 1980s, but it has been compromised by association with capitalism in the region where I work; and my analysis of recent protest movements in the West suggests that much sharper demands and tougher ways of organising are required if they are to have a hope of achieving major change in society. This is where the concept and practice of social movements was shown to be essential alongside civil society. Another conclusion was that old methods of organisation are still valid alongside newer ones. In the political arena, we can see that membership organisations with a clear structure are still vital for maintaining a mass, popular movement. When organisations are threatened by the state, a tighter, more formal structure is often necessary to protect us and our supporters. The problems identified in Chapter 7 in relation to urban movements in Russia apply to many other countries and campaigns. Generally, these movements aim to change national policy or power relations, since it is at national level that the structures of representative democracy are focused and the main political decisions are made. Hence, the importance of understanding what kind of a movement we want to build – that is, what our aims are and who is with us or against us. A third finding from the case studies showed was that some of the best things in development work – participatory methodologies, the creation of new alliances or provision of voice to marginalised groups, are highly vulnerable to the political process. We saw how new government regimes at a local and national level are happy to abolish initiatives undertaken by their predecessors and start again from scratch. This might be very good for their egos, but it is not so good for the general public. How can we protect gains made by community and social projects of all kinds as society goes into crisis and the political struggle heats up? Ideally, progressive community and development work would be seen as what is called ‘prefigurative politics’, that is, attempts to create the kind of collective life or behaviour we would like to see ‘after the revolution’. But will institutional mechanisms set up with such care survive radical political change or will they be drawn into the fight and simply be used by one side versus the other? Reading modern history will make us quite cautious on this point. In fact, my study has indicated several times that we can’t see civil society or the development sector as one unified set of approaches or views. They themselves are an arena of debate and dissension. We need urgently to define a left civil society, just as we need to define and develop socialist-­oriented feminism, environmentalism, anarchism and so on. Luckily, clever people have been working on these lines for many decades, albeit confusingly and in fragments, under all kinds of different terminology and banners; it needs to be brought together, discussed together.

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In the development field, clearly our political positions will include a strong role for the state. Some NGOs will not be with us in the political struggle; they are already too tied into the neoliberal establishment. On the other hand, if we look at the organisational dynamics of social movements – their mode of popular mobilisation, leadership and so on – we find that time and time again, successful political campaigns were ones that were able to draw on the knowledge, skills and resources of NGOs alongside political groupings. After all, NGOs have an official status, usually an office and paid staff, the experience of organising events, producing and distributing information. They may even have special funds that can be quickly mobilised in case of an emergency. All this means that they are vital allies for social movements, sometimes even more useful than other less flexible bodies like trade unions and political parties. If any readers decide to pick up and read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, this will be a special success for me. As regards working-­class action and the ideal of socialism, Tressell still has a lot to tell us. The reference to his book in my title was, I think, vindicated. Translated into the world of NGOs, the questions he raises are indeed some of the most crucial ones. Have we as NGO workers turned into a new breed of ragged trousered philanthropists, helping the capitalist class gain legitimacy via our assistance in the amelioration of social problems? Are we exploiting ourselves, especially those in the movement, who do most of the hard slogging (e.g. female activists at a local level)? How can we maintain our ideals and standards? In the search for collective efforts, are we asking poor communities to pay for things that the government or the rich should pay for? What should our response be in situations where those with resources refuse to contribute them? In earlier chapters, I presented the various civil society development programmes I have worked on in Central Asia from 2002 – P1, P2 and P3, as I called them. In fact, there is a P4. From around 2014, I began a fourth phase of work based around quite small, sometimes unfunded initiatives that were as close as possible to my developing political ideas. The first was the launch of a voluntary book project with my wife Anara, buying social, civil society and political literature – plus modern children’s books – in Russian at radical bookshops and book festivals in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities and bringing them back to Bishkek. The aim was to promote new, alternative ideas by selling books at conferences, festivals, meetings and events of other kinds. The second was a continuation of the youth and employment study we carried out in P3 – a series of dialogue events between NGOs and trade unions, exploring positions on workers’ rights and promoting joint work on communications strategies, employment contracts and fighting discrimination at work. The third initiative was again undertaken with my wife, the launch of a residents’ association in the block of flats where we live. Our block was built in the late 1950s and it was literally falling to pieces in a dramatic parody of the decay of so much Soviet social and material infrastructure. No external repairs had been carried out since 1991; many residents were not even paying for the communal services. Odd bits of the block had been privatised in an unclear way.

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BOX C.1  ON POVERTY, CHARITY, RELIGION AND RIGHTS In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Tressell sees poverty and charity as two linked phenomena. That is, due to chronic inequality in modern society, the opinion takes hold that ‘the poor will always be with us’, and that ‘poverty is inevitable’, or ‘the poor are to blame for their low status in society’. And the next step in the argument is that we should feel sorry for them, that charity is the way to help make their lives a little less harsh. And so charity becomes institutionalised alongside poverty, the two feed off each other. We can see this process clearly over the past 25 years in the FSU, since the equalising aims of the USSR were abandoned. At first, almost everyone was in danger of falling into poverty and millions did. Then the situation began to ‘sort itself out’. Poverty levels remained very high – still 30–40 per cent in parts of Central Asia – and certain population groups fell into extreme, long-­term poverty. At the same time, philanthropy, in particular religious philanthropy, has emerged to fill the gap by the state. The Orthodox Church and Islam both operate right across the Russian Federation and Central Asia. Regular charity giving is encouraged in both, and this is highly visible around churches, mosques, hospitals, rail stations and the like. Some population groups have taken to begging, others to garbage picking, as a way of life. Other people are still working way below their educational attainment level in taxi driving, market trading and other precarious jobs in the informal sector. My book has taken a less hostile view of religion than Tressell did, largely because of my own experience of important alliances with religious leaders in the anti-­racist and anti-­war movements, plus the long-­term and well-­thought out development programmes funded and organised by faith groups. Another reason is our need to collect a broad coalition against capitalism, just to have a chance of success. The charity approach to poverty is one way of tackling this problem, while the other is a rights approach. The central figure in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Frank Owen, makes a case for socialism which was very similar to the main ideas promoted by Bolshevik and Menshevik agitators in early twentieth-­century Russia; basically, it was about cooperation and the right to decent employment and public services, an end to exploitation of man by man – a programme that lay at the heart of the new Soviet regime. But we see from the experience of both the UK and the USSR that political, social or economic rights exist only as long as they are actively fought for or defended. You can call them ‘universal’ if you like, but actually they are quite temporal and geographically limited, and you have to be committed to them.

196   Conclusion

In these initiatives, we are in a sense ‘going back to square one’, but I think this another lesson from my analysis of civil society, that is, about the cyclical or wave movement of citizens’ actions: how new initiatives grow up alongside existing ones and eventually replace them. Sometimes it is a clear advance, at other times it may represent a reverse. Thus, on a recent visit to East London, I discovered that the Jagonari Centre had now, like the Davenant Centre beside it, fallen into new hands. Jagonari’s front building had now become an alcohol and drugs rehabilitation centre (a very traditional function in a corner of London dominated by Salvation Army institutions), while the Davenant front building had been taken over by a college within the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association). The Davenant’s courtyard was derelict and overgrown and its back hall and downstairs crèche space empty and unused. It seemed that political developments and funding cuts in the UK had thrown these two centres back in time and somehow the cycle of progressive change has to begin again. Knowing the vitality of community groups in East London, this is likely happening already in other ways and places. By contrast, it was great to attend the 30-year anniversary of THATT’s founding, a few years ago, and see that it was still going strong, finding jobs for unemployed local youth and adults: a shining example of NGO sustainability. Different strategies at different levels. For organisations with major resources and a lot of influence, obviously the strategy must be to try to continue the ‘war of position’ that I described as TOC-­1 in Chapter 7. Here international contacts, platforms and alliances are all important. For organisations working at a national level – which in my analysis demands more and more attention from NGOs – work with the government and national political agenda is the priority (TOC-­2). As far as local organisations are concerned, the worsening political situation and tightening economic crisis in many countries seems to force us into shorter-­term, ad hoc strategies. We will still have a political or organisational strategy (TOC-­3) – otherwise we lose the direction or even the meaning of our work – but it becomes impossible to deny the importance of the present moment, that is, the work that has to be done for the next event in our campaign or in the current project we have resources for. Indeed, many NGOs have been living in this way from the time they came into being. Here we see that popular power is not just in the people as a mass, it is in their flexibility, mobility and readiness to take on different things, to risk a little or all. In sociological terms, this is our precariat, that is, our people living precariously (raggedly) and to a large extent depending on more experienced cadres and organisations in the movement. We have to find a principled, fair and realistic practice for working together. On the organisational and sector level, the logic of my argument in this book could lead to some quite stark conclusions. First, in countries where civil society is dependent on the international development sector, it may be necessary or even best for local NGOs to gradually wean themselves off this kind of funding. Undoubtedly, it will be difficult to find local or national sources to replace foreign funding completely, but on the positive side, their organisations will have more legitimacy

Conclusion   197

and in the longer run may gain more resources locally. Actually, development agencies have been arguing for this for a long time already. In the West, too, the rules under which NGOs operate are getting gradually tighter. For example, in the UK, it has become increasingly difficult for NGOs to campaign openly against government policy during election campaigns. As a development worker coming back regularly to the UK, I am frequently shocked by the rapidly increasing bureaucracy imposed on voluntary action within government contracts and by the Charities Commission. This accounts in part for new modes of activism outside NGOs (via social networks, etc.) and that is fine. But organisations need to consider their strategy too. Indeed, one option for advocacy-­oriented NGOs would be to try to wean themselves off charitable status. It is important for NGOs to keep involved in politically controversial issues like the Tobin Tax, the situation of sweat workers and slave labour internationally, in support of besieged communities in Palestine and so on. Here is a challenge as tough as the ones we are recommending to NGOs in other countries! Unfortunately, many Northern and Western NGOs are doing the opposite, keeping their heads down and not taking risks with lobbying work. Many or even most of the readers of this book are not in control of or taking  strategic decisions about the organisations where you work. At an individual  level, it can be just as hard to maintain your ideals and keep alive your hopes. In this respect, maybe one of the most practical strategies that I put forward was what Laverack called the ‘parallel track’. That is, individuals as well as organisations working in an environment that is indifferent or hostile to their ultimate, most valued aims, may need to work consciously on a parallel set of objectives. Some ways for organisations to do this were suggested at the end of Chapter 4. For individuals, the answer must be in keeping open a space for the development of your ideas, preferably with other people who share them. People with radical ideas should expect to have to develop or practise them autonomously, in different collectives. And you need develop realistic expectations and plans about how to realise these ideas. Perhaps this is really what this book was about.

A ragged reflection This little word came to take on a large significance in the final stages of writing this book. Like a little subversive worm, it started eating away at different issues … At one point I had to write down what I meant by ragged, or ragged trousered/skirted. This is what I came up with:

Ragged = hard-­working, rough and ready, part of the modern proletariat Ragged = exploited. Ragged workers give their labour at less than its true price. Ragged is a mass phenomenon, a mass occupation. Tressell’s account gives dignity to building trades. They are described in loving detail, with a craft person’s care, and become un-­ragged.

198   Conclusion

Activists try unavailingly to rouse ragged proletarians to political action. The latter often prefer to take part in staged events such as fake elections and democracy; and they fight among themselves constantly. Ragged women workers, wives and families live the same tough existence, and relations within the family are often placed under great strain. Ragged = rude, unruly, radical. Some radical workers – like Barrington and Frank Owen – are still spreading the socialist message but Tressell’s book itself lay hidden for many years before his wife could get it published. It seemed to me that these ideas were indeed telling us something quite important. Do you agree? Can my thoughts be better expressed or even significantly modified? Maybe you can produce some better arguments of your own …

Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables, those in italic denote figures. accountability 50, 112; public advisory councils 181; upward and downward 116, 175, 187; watchdog bodies/NGOs 112, 173 activists 1–4, 10, 13, 17; human rights 83, 94, 155, 178; social 4, 11, 18–20, 169, 171, 177; transnational 62, 66, 82 Adair, A. 50 advocacy 45, 84, 100, 110, 115, 120, 123, 140–1, 156, 161, 188, 197; advocacy triangle 188; risks of 171–3 Afghanistan 144, 150–1, 160, 167, 176, 183 Africa 65, 69–70, 98, 147, 149, 160, 173–4, 186 aid chain 2, 93–4, 111, 116, 175, 178 Akayev, A. 92, 121–2 Alliances 23, 48, 51, 55–7, 140, 152–3, 172–3, 188, 193–5; see also coalitions Almaty 64, 79–80, 88, 92, 97, 105, 107, 116 alternatives 4, 34, 55; alternative strategy project 40–1; to neoliberalism 55, 59n5, 148, 151 Amnesty International 160 anarchism 18, 40, 140, 184, 193 anti-racist movement 18, 21–5, 53–4, 61, 68, 78, 152, 195 anti-war positions 25, 54, 61, 151–2, 195 Arab Spring 183, 185 ARGO, NGO association 124 ashar 8, 38, 62, 114 Association for Social Information, NGO 179

Astana 79, 100, 102, 127, 129 authoritarian regimes 167n3 autonomous organisations 22, 39, 45, 54, 154; autonomous spaces 6, 21, 184, 197 Bakiev, K. 9–10, 123, 126 Baltic States 77, 88–9 Balykchy 99–100, 108 Barnett, S. and H. 23–4 basic needs 110, 126, 141 Batken 11–12 Bearr Trust 84, 180 Beck, U. 34–5, 143n9, 165, 167n13 Bengali community 17–19, 22–4, 49–53, 152 Berger, J. 25, 36 Beyond the Fragments 68 Big Push Forward conference 175 Bishkek 3, 9–12, 15, 89, 92, 97, 105–6, 116, 123–7, 134, 175 Bolsheviks 11, 40, 90, 179, 195 BOND, NGO association 175 Bretton Woods institutions 36, 159 Brexit 178 Brick Lane 22–4, 42, 53 BRICS countries 3, 169 Bucharest 79 Bukhara 89, 100 business associations 103, 171; Business in the Community 43 business sector 4, 57, 67, 77, 94, 100, 115, 148; small business development 15, 37, 69, 98

200   Index

campaigns 1, 12, 26, 28, 48, 97, 100, 104, 135, 149–50, 156, 158, 162, 172, 179, 182–3; solidarity 61, 82, 84; see also environmental activism capacity building 3, 82, 87–117, 111–2; INTRAC’s capacity building programme 91–117; training NGO support staff 99–100, 100; women’s leadership programme 128; see also consultants; organisation development capitalism: capital flight 80; Marxist analysis 5, 132–3; moral crisis of 13; see also neoliberalism, market economy, world system Central Asia Water Alliance, NGO 16 Central Asia: capacity building 48, 52, 87–116, 163–4; civil society and government 125, 141; in world system 146, 147–9, 160, 179; youth projects 9–16, 36–8 central government 16, 26, 34, 41, 77–8, 140 centre and periphery 146–8 Centre Interbilim, NGO 11, 16, 103 Change: at individual level 99, 107, 113–14, 136, 173; see also cultural exchange; economic development; theories of change; transition charities 1–2, 9, 18; charity giving 38, 195; charity law and registration 49, 115, 197; national charities in UK 51, 56; part of the establishment 171, 195; see also philanthropy Chernyshevsky, N 140 Child Protection Centre, NGO 15 children 12, 65, 99; activities/care for children 37, 44, 88, 125–6, 128–9, 135; at risk 76–7, 80–1, 100, 155 China 79, 127, 146–8, 159, 177; Belt and Road programme 181 Chomsky, N. 150, 177–8 Church of England 18, 23 Citizens Alliance, NGO association 124 citizens’ initiatives 6–7, 13, 132, 139, 148–54, 158, 173, 196; expectations disappointed 169; see also civic activists City of London 23, 45 civic activists 4, 10, 13, 21, 23, 27, 145, 150, 158, 169–70; civic education as liberation 97; civic movements 105, 121, 183, 186–8 civil society 4–7, 23–4; agendas 5, 37; as arena of ideological struggle 5, 121–2, 147–9, 193; coalitions 128–30, 151, 181, 192; in East Europe and FSU 38–40, 78,

130, 140; institutional development 9, 27, 70, 78, 82, 87–98, 123–4, 154–5; mainstream and alternative 55–7, 59; need for a new political idea 114, 130, 193, 196; reduced funding 124; relations with government 121–4; worsening environment for 145, 157–60, 173; see also NGOs, voluntary sector Civil Society at the Crossroads study 149–50, 169, 183, 186 civil society organisations 6, 10, 50, 124; see also NGOs class 33–5, 84; class divisions 10, 15, 39; middle class 28, 38, 87; working class in UK 18–19, 26–8, 41, 49, 67, 73–4, 84 Clement, K. 179, 186–7 coalitions 22; see also alliances Cold War 1, 72, 75, 83–4, 163, 176, 185 collective action 63, 88; see also citizens’ initiatives colonial territories 39, 61, 82, 89–90 coloured revolution 121–5, 131, 155, 171; see also Kyrgyzstan 2005 and 2010 revolutions Committee of Voters, NGO 156–7 Communist Party: communist strategies 18, 68, 82, 99, 145–6, 171; of Great Britain 5, 152; of Soviet Union 40, 72–3, 86n7 Community development 33, 38–9, 52, 98; in Central Asia 100–5; see also power relations affecting NGOs; women in the community Community work 15, 110, 117, 136, 145; conflict or pluralist model 38–40; focus on process or results 110, 117 Community: community arts 17; community elders 29, 63, 150; multicultural 29, 33, 42, 52, 131, 176; traditionalist groups 103–5, 133–6, 158, 167 conflict 5–6, 27, 32n7, 37–8, 100, 104, 106, 169, 175–6; between state and civil society 87, 150–1, 159–60, 163–4; class or national conflict 144; conflict prevention 150, 164; see also war Consultants 55, 93–4, 100, 109, 117, 119n11, 173–4; relations with clients 113–14 context analysis 121, 173 cooperatives 6, 33, 38, 140, 162, 183 corruption 150, 175, 187; anti-corruption measures 161–2 cosmopolitans 63, 167 Council of Citizens of Tower Hamlets 19, 24

Index   201

cross-border problems 9–11 cultural action 25, 38, 40, 125, 134, 154, 178; cultural exchange 52, 66, 68–9, 72, 90, 163, 170 Davenant Centre 41–2, 48–57, 153, 196 Decision-making 15, 27, 33, 41, 57, 66, 67; openness in 111, 119n7; participatory 29, 43 democracy NGOs 98, 111, 158, 174; in Ukraine 154–7 democracy: captured by elites 74; representative 93, 192 demonstrations see direct action; protest Department for International Development (DFID) 70, 88, 92, 98; Russia strategy 70, 86 direct action 2, 17, 21, 25 disability 11, 77, 81, 140, 160; disabled peoples organisations 37, 84, 88, 100, 127–30, 180, 182 docklands: Joint Docklands Action Group 41; London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) 43 donor policy to CS 88, 90–2, 109–10, 124, 131, 161, 172; consultation with stakeholders 116, 164; demands and conditionality 4, 68, 98, 115, 173–6; granting systems 60, 134, 139, 172, 180; Paris Agreement 116 East European Partnership see VSO; international volunteers East London 62, 77, 84, 88, 151–3, 182–3, 196; in 1970s 16–30; in 1980s 40–57 economic development 36, 88–9, 110; economic crisis of 2008–9, 186; grey (informal) economy 36–7, 172, 196; see also business sector; employment education: in Russia/USSR 40, 74, 89, 104; provision in Central Asia 120, 130, 134–5; in UK 7, 11, 17, 29; vocational education 45, 55–6; see also civic education; development education; Jagonari Centre Ehio Farhang van Tariqot, NGO 32 elites 36, 63, 169, 183 emergencies 13, 194, 151 employment 96, 141, 145; employment centres 12, 15, 19–20, 37; employment rights 12, 196; flexibility, deskilling 35, 114; job creation 14; loss of jobs 26, 33–5, 41, 45, 77, 79, 143n6; see also unemployment empowerment 96, 141, 145

enterprise 33–4, 40, 59n6; social enterprise 45, 135, 138–9, 150, 171; in USSR 33, 73, 133; see also business sector; employment environmental activism 68, 82, 179–80, 184–5, 187, 193 equal opportunities 20, 28, 40, 43–57, 111, 135 ethnicity 51–3, 72, 74, 152; discrimination faced by black and Asian people 19–21, 52; ethnic divisions 9–11, 16, 19–21, 40, 150, 164 European Union 36, 78, 80, 92, 98, 127, 155, 161; European Social Fund 45, 56, 60; European Voluntary Service 70 experts see consultants; knowledge exploitation: by employers 36, 40, 59n5, 74, 82, 114, 198; colonial 63, 98 fair trade 82 faith based organisations 106, 174–5 family 4, 12, 17, 108, 112, 126; affected by market economy 69–70, 107, 136, 198; role in social welfare 134, 135, 136; Soviet egalitarian type 136; traditional roles in 5, 34–5, 89, 185; young wives in CA 15, 104 fascism 148, 176; in East London 21–5, 28, 54; in Ukraine 157 feminism 132–3 Fergana Valley 10–12, 37, 105 former Soviet Union (FSU) region 2, 6, 79, 83, 98, 137–8, 177; conflicts in 87; new world position 145–6, 147; see also Russia, transition fragile states 130 Freire, P. 97, 130, 153 Friedrich Ebert Foundation-Kyrgyzstan 64, 103 funding for NGOs 6, 12, 43, 54, 88–9, 112, 114–15, 138–9, 173, 184, 196; funding crisis as a rallying point 46–7, 51, 56–7, 60, 105 Galloway, G. 151–2 gays and lesbians 40 gender 39, 143, 145, 176; Gender Inequality Index (GII) 95–6; gender roles 40, 74, 89, 104, 133–6 global civil society 62–4, 124–5, 176; transnational activists 62–4, 66 globalisation 82, 94, 180, 185; anti-globalist actions 62, 183 GONGOs 59n6 Gorbachov, M. 33, 61, 74

202   Index

government sector see state sector government see also central government; local government; NGOs and government; welfare state government: citizens’ expectations disappointed 150, 169–70, 180; effect of regime changes 5, 10, 24, 26, 92, 164, 175, 193; effect of reorganization 13, 77, 81, 150, 157, 180; policy to NGOs & business 6–7, 12–13, 28, 33, 37, 54, 75, 78, 106, 112, 120, 173 Gramsci, A. 5; on hegemony 59n5, 147, 150; war of position and manoeuvre 171 Greater London Council 27, 40–5 Grunwick strike 25, 51–2 Happy Planet Index (HPI) 95–6 health services 4, 10, 26, 74, 82, 92–3, 120, 134, 144; health promotion 134, 141 hegemony 23, 39, 148–9, 159, 162 HelpAge International 100, 115 Higher School of Economics, CS research unit 180 Human Development Index (HDI) 95–6 human rights 63, 82–3, 123, 160; focus on political and civic rights 82, 130, 163 human rights NGOs 155, 158–61; Human Rights Watch 160 humanitarian aid 16, 38, 79, 98; humanitarian interventions 150, 176, 178 Hungary 78 ICCO, Dutch INGO 106, 175 identities 52, 68, 144 imperialism 61, 82, 130, 145, 147–8, 178 individual activism 1, 3–4, 63, 187, 197; individual responsibilities and roles 29, 46–7, 93; see also change at individual level individualisation in society 4, 34–5, 39, 140 industrial society 34–5 inequality 6, 18, 34–5, 38–40, 70, 82, 94, 104, 146, 170, 195; in country indicators 95–6 informal groups 1, 6, 38, 62, 104–5, 112, 173, 187, 190; see also initiative groups information technology 14, 15, 35; see also new technology 45, 55, 183–6, 191n11 infrastructure projects 13, 43, 98, 105, 110, 134, 160 initiative groups 8, 43, 50, 90, 103, 183, 187 injustice 6, 18, 40, 47, 82, 97, 146, 170 innovation 4, 14, 70, 129, 140, 180

institutional development see civil society institutional development intelligentsia 7, 40, 178 intergenerational dynamics 29, 68, 100, 135, 154 International Criminal Court 178 international development 5, 7, 36–8, 79, 93–4, 105; country indicators 95–6; development cooperation 82, 109, 119; development education 82–4; history 81–2; policy changes 120–1, 154, 159–60, 171–6, 193; project manager role 91–4; see also economic development; theory of change International Labour Organisation 36 International Monetary Fund 160 International NGO Training & Research Centre (INTRAC) 7, 55, 127–30, 140, 154–62; Central Asia Programme 90–110; community development 100–6; NGO training 99–100; postconflict projects 10–16, 37 International NGOs 63, 73, 115–16; local staff of 92–4; organisational strategies 120, 172–5, 182 international relations 82, 163; see also world systems international solidarity 41, 61–70, 81–4 international volunteers 66–70, 100; definition of 66, 83; see also VSO internet 14, 21, 94, 183–5; surveillance on 163 Islam 38, 135, 153; Muslim associations in FSU 90, 154; socially oriented activities 154 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 82, 144, 152 Ittifok, NGO 129 Jagonari Women’s Education and Resource Centre 41, 42, 49, 53–4, 59 Jalalabad 9–16, 163 Jalalabad Civil Society Support Centre, NGO 11, 103 John Hopkins University 180 Jones, D. 25, 28, 42 Kazakhstan 75, 89–90, 95–6, 124, 175; INTRAC programme 90–110; Ministry of Internal Affairs and Culture 92, 124; oil wealth 127, 129; social order 138–9; VSO programme 79–80, 88 Khojend 10–12 knowledge 7, 19, 97, 194; counterhegemonic 162–3; local 44, 163, 172 Komsomol 8, 40, 72, 99

Index   203

Kropotkin, P. 40, 140 Kyrgyzstan 2005 and 2010 revolutions 9–16, 27–8, 121, 122–3, 124–5; constitutional changes 164, 181–2; employment crisis 36–7, 175; environmental issues 184–5; Ministry of Youth, Labour and Migration 13; postconflict situation 9–16, 150, 155–6, 163–4; see also INTRAC Central Asia Programme Labour Party in UK 23, 27–8, 40–1, 79, 152; municipal socialism 26, 41, 162 labour: labour market 35–6, 62, 77, 96, 143, 175; labour movement 1, 23, 25–7, 41, 54, 183 Lansbury, G. 23, 26, 41 Latin America 82, 97, 126–7, 149, 160, 173–4, 181 leadership 14–15, 52, 97, 107, 112, 186, 194; boards of directors 112, 115, 150, 182; democratic, shared 50, 57, 125; see also NGO management committees Leech, K 23–4, 153 left-wing politics in UK 20–1, 28–9, 40–1, 68, 82–3, 152; in civil society 180, 193; left-wing populism 160, 179, 181; post1990 crisis of 145–6 Liberal Party in UK 40 linkage of personal and political 4, 14, 68–9, 94, 150 Livingstone, K. 27, 40 local government 8, 20, 27, 33, 37, 41, 43, 50, 54; ayil-okmutu, mahalla 94, 100–7, 121, 129, 131, 137, 164; budgets 138, 181; direct labour force 23, 26; local services access 10–11, 16, 22, 110, 128; Oxford-Perm twinning project 84, 124; see also social services local history 17–18, 49 London 18, 20, 24–7, 29, 40–1, 45, 51–2, 54–5, 151–4; see also East London London Voluntary Sector Training Consortium 48, 56 management: management committees 1, 3, 15, 43–6, 49–50, 57, 60, 62, 114; management of NGOs 45–6, 47, 54, 66, 100, 115–16, 156; management of NGOs in CA 107, 111, 127, 137, 153; management skills 4, 46, 128; see also NGO strategies, sustainability market economy 5, 62, 66, 69, 80, 136, 149; see also economic development; employment; neoliberalism

Marxism 5, 27, 35, 39, 68, 132–3, 145–6, 154, 171 media 34, 93, 123, 145, 162–3, 178, 186; media empires 183; social media 145, 163, 184–5 Mehr Shavcat, NGO 107, 131 membership: of NGOs 7, 49, 56, 62, 82, 114, 128, 161, 182, 193; of social movements 134, 172 Memorial, NGO 158 microcredits 16, 100, 107, 124, 126 middle income countries see BRICs countries migration: immigrants in East London 17–19, 24–5, 28–9, 51–2, 152, 184; migrants in FSU 84, 135, 154, 170, 175 military organisations 151, 159; militaryindustrial complex 176 missionaries 82 modernisation 135, 146; see also international development, world systems analysis Moldir, NGO 106 monitoring and evaluation 175; monitoring of local services 12, 48, 91, 100, 129, 155 moral views 13, 15, 23, 151, 153, 158, 173 Moscow 2, 30, 52, 70–5, 89, 158, 180, 194 multiculturalism see community Muslim Association of Britain 152 mutual help 28, 140 narod, narodnik 8, 140 National Enterprise Board 26 National Health Service 36 nationalism: nationalists 12, 27, 111, 127, 149, 155–7, 176, 192; nationalist-religious movements 11; resource based 126 nation-state see state neoliberalism 5–6, 33–5, 38, 114–15, 145, 162, 169, 178; anti-working class policies 33, 41, 74; austerity policies/ measures 2, 138, 172, 186; NGOs and 161, 175, 180, 194; reforms in FSU 92–3, 100, 121, 130; reforms in UK 131, 192 networking 34, 84, 98, 100, 128, 172, 185 new technology see information technology NGO management see management NGO sector 6–7, 15, 37, 45, 47–9, 79, 130–1; see also civil society; voluntary sector NGO support organisations and resource centres 98–9, 100, 106, 109, 124, 180 NGO workers 1–2, 17, 33, 94, 99, 102, 107, 111, 153, 171, 178, 194, 197–8

204   Index

NGOs 1–7; allies for social movements 172, 179–80, 194; as foreign agents 124, 157–9; importance of unity 173–5; international NGOs 91–3, 105, 115–16, 120; leaders of 15, 50, 99, 103, 121, 131, 156; national forums and associations 116, 124, 154–5, 159; NGO-isation 111–2; northern and southern 84, 88, 93, 172; as service providers 120, 131, 134–5, 138–40; strategies 25, 51, 63, 111, 115–16, 126, 133, 141, 149; sustainability 173, 180 non governmental organisations see NGOs non-profit organisations see NGOs Novosti news agency 70–5 Occupy! 149, 183, 186, 188 October 1917 Revolution 17, 39–40, 64, 89, 171, 179 old age pensioners 22, 99, 108, 133, 179 organisation development 106–9, 113, 155; “3 circles” model 55; see also consultants, management of NGOs, NGO strategies Osh 9–16, 104, 107, 131, 163–4; city administration 16 Otunbaeva, R. 10, 16, 181 Oxfam 63, 84, 115, 173 Pakistan 17, 19, 52 participation 106, 110, 112, 115, 133, 182, 187; in local affairs 16, 43, 92; as a tyranny 67 partnership 7, 43, 70, 81, 88; between NGOs and government 12–13, 37, 124, 138; between Northern and Southern NGOs 84, 115–16, 174; principles of 116; in Sustainable Development Goals 160 patriarchy 133 Peace Corps 100 peace movement 84, 176; women’s camp at Greenham Common 61 peace-building programmes 13, 63, 177 Peach,B. 25 peer support 64, 107–8 perestroika 5, 33, 82, 132 Perm 139–40, 158, 132, 180, 190n10 philanthropy 6, 18, 180; ragged trousered 1, 62, 140, 194–5 political action: DIY (do-it-yourself) 183–4; mobilisation toolbox 18, 20; political movements 111–12, 126, 158, 176, 186–7; prefigurative politics 193 political activists 1, 4, 10–30, 66, 132, 152, 158–9, 171, 178

political parties 1, 21–2, 25, 28, 52, 68, 123, 183, 186, 194; party of power 8, 181; pluralism 155 populism 8, 39, 149, 159–62, 171, 178–9 post-socialist analytical school 81 poverty 146, 172, 174; in FSU 79–82, 96, 195; in London 18, 38, 54; poverty reduction 100, 106 power relations 5–6, 10, 20, 39, 50, 52, 126, 137, 146–9, 160, 171, 177, 183, 187; as affecting NGOs 2, 6, 89–94, 104–5, 111, 188; power analysis 170; soft and dark power 150, 156, 163 private sector see business sector progressive politics/policy , 40, 53, 94, 111, 129, 152–3, 162 Progressive Youth Organisation 49, 153 protest 18, 25, 54, 62, 121, 126, 149–52, 155–7, 183–4; strategies 186, 192–3 Putin, V. 114, 148–9, 157–8, 161 QANGOs 59n6 race issues see ethnicity radicalism 82; secular or religious 153; transformational demands 29, 98, 141, 163, 169, 171 Ravenstvo, NGO 128 Red Cross, Red Crescent 63, 151, 173 refugees 38, 100, 157, 177 Regional Humanitarian Forum 16 religion 20, 52–3, 144, 153–4, 162, 195 residents associations 6, 43, 73, 179, 184 Respect! Party in UK 151–2 revolution 25; see also October 1917 Revolution; Kyrgyzstan 2005 and 2010 revolutions rights promotion 3, 24, 28, 120, 141; economic and social 132, 160–1; women’s 40, 66, 104, 125; workers’ 133, 135, 175, 194; see also human rights risk society 34–5, 38, 56; risk reduction 37; risks in NGO work 150, 161, 175–6, 181–2, 185–6 Roma population 78 rural development 93, 100–4, 107, 134 Russia: civil society in 150, 173, 176, 179–80, 186–7; in Central Asia 89–90, 99–100, 108, 135; mutual aid tradition 38, 140; Russia-Kyrgyz Development Fund 181; social services development 124, 132, 138–40; use of Russian language 11, 61; VSO programme 67–70, 75–81, 84, 91; in world system 146–9, 159–60

Index   205

Russian Federation see Russia Russian Orthodox Church 195 Samarkand 89 secularism 53, 63, 82, 145, 153–4, 158–9, 185 self-help groups 105–6, 108–10, 126; as a social movement 125–7 self-help see mutual aid sexuality 146, 154 Shyrak, NGO 127–31, 136, 140 Slovakia 78, 183 social action 17, 21, 56, 145, 169, 186 social classes see class social mobilisation 107; see also social action social movements 20–1, 61–2, 98, 112, 125–6, 145, 150, 158, 161, 186–7; old and new 27–8; repertoire of actions 25, 39, 183; wave pattern 20, 196 social partnership see partnership between government and NGOs social policy 39, 110, 126, 133–9 social services 40, 75, 98, 124, 129, 132–3, 172; social order in FSU 138–40 social work 4, 38, 69, 77, 81, 133, 137, 145, 153–4; medical model 136 social workers 75, 77, 128–9, 136–8, 184; as change agents 138 socialism 24, 56, 147–8, 194–5; see also municipal socialism, Soviet socialism Socialist Workers Party 5, 22, 152 Society for Cooperation in Russian & Soviet Studies 83 Soros Foundation 78, 115 South Asia 17, 91, 98, 106, 125–6, 174 Southall 25, 51–2 Sova, NGO 158 Soviet socialism 2, 73–4, 86, 192; collapse of 145–6 squatters 17, 29 St Petersburg 158 state sector 5–6, 40, 62, 87, 93; state violence 5, 150, 193 state-led development 71, 73–4, 134, 140, 194–5; corporatist model 147–9 stereotypes 15, 17–18, 93, 163 Stop the War Coalition 151–2 students 12, 17, 72 Sustainable Development Goals 13, 145, 160; see also United Nations Tajikistan 9–12, 36–7, 89, 126–9; civil war in 88, 100; INTRAC programme in 103, 106–7, 109, 160, 173 Tashkent 11, 92, 100, 105, 116

taxation 162 temporary autonomous zones 184, 188, 196 Thatcher, M 24–5, 27, 33, 40–1, 54–5, 138 theories of change 141, 169–88; see also international development; NGO strategies Third World First 61 Top Kaya, NGO 156 Tower Hamlets 18–20; civil society in 23–4 Tower Hamlets Advanced Technology Training (THATT) 43–8 Tower Hamlets Movement against Racism and Fascism (THMARF) 21–5, 29 Tower Hamlets Trades Union Council (THTUC) 26–7, 30 Toynbee Hall 23–4, 38, 54 trade union activists 50, 67, 172 trade unions 2, 6, 11–12, 46, 56, 61–3, 194; in FSU 77, 132, 134 training for NGOs 99–100; see also capacity building; INTRAC transition 2–3, 60, 81–2, 88, 98–9, 121, 131, 147; strategy of 80–1, 87–8; see also international development transnational companies 7, 63, 167 Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU) 23, 46 Tressell, R. 1–2, 140, 194, 197–8; see also Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Trump, D. 161, 178 Turkmenistan 16, 88–9, 92 UK 1–5, 17, 79, 81, 84, 93, 149–52, 154, 178, 195; in 1970s and 1980s 27, 33–6, 53, 61, 66; Charity law 115 Ukraine 154–7; Maidan demonstrations 159–61 Umut/Resource Centre for the Elderly, NGO 99–100, 106, 108, 135 UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disability 128–30; see also disability unemployment 2, 13, 26, 33–5, 37, 40–1, 45, 152, 164; in FSU 77, 79, 81, 88, 135–6 UNICEF 12–13 United Nations 94–6, 129, 151, 172, 176, 178 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 100, 155, 160 Urals region 72, 75, 77, 79 USA 82, 84, 136, 157–9, 161, 178; military power/actions 84, 146–7, 150, 176, 183, 185; USAID (aid programme) 81, 88, 92, 158

206   Index

USSR 33, 36, 40, 61–3, 84, 89, 99, 186; heritage of 16, 111; practice of state socialism 73–4, 130, 132, 195; volunteer experience in 70–4; in world system 145–7 Uzbekistan 9, 11–12, 89–90, 100–4, 107, 125, 127, 154 values 48, 66, 94, 110, 140, 163 village development plans 102; see also rural development; self help groups Village Investment Programme 102 Viltis, NGO 77 violence 80, 146, 160, 176; ethnic 10, 12, 16, 164 vocational training 37–8, 43–8; policy 41, 55 voluntary sector in UK 2–4, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30, 43, 46–7, 49–51, 53, 55, 60, 115, 137, 145, 183, 197; history 38–9; relation to government 40–3, 48–9, 54–6, 137–8, 146, 197; see also NGOs, East London, civil society VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) 61–2, 65–70, 75–80, 100, 137, 139; international volunteers 1–2, 13, 15, 62, 76; returned volunteers 83–4; selection and placement of 65–9 vulnerable groups 36, 38, 70, 153, 180, 187 war 16–17, 19–20, 26, 64, 73, 150, 159–60, 183, 185, 1st and 2nd World Wars 28, 39, 78, 80, 82, 148, 156; civil war 80, 88–90; Cold War 1, 72, 75, 83–4, 163, 176; partisan tactics 183; war

on terror 5, 157; wars in Middle East 144, 185 Ward, C. 40, 140 welfare state 5, 35, 38, 130–3, 147, 192; attacks on 55–6; as a bureaucracy 136–8; Marxism and feminism on 132–3; see also social services Western Europe 6, 25, 28, 62, 82, 84, 106, 112, 133, 136–7, 145, 149, 176; relations with Russia 155, 157, 159 Whitechapel 17–24 women 18, 21, 40, 44, 47–9, 55, 63, 66, 74, 80; with disabilities 127–9; returners to work 56 women’s movement/associations 28, 40, 66, 68, 82, 103, 132–3, 154–5, 160, 186; in Central Asia 104–8, 126; leaders 15, 131; relation to left-wing groups 68 Workers Education Association 38 World Bank 36, 88, 105, 119; Highly Indebted Poor Countries programme 180–1 World Development Movement 61 World Social Forum 181 world systems analysis 146–8; internationalisation of nation-state issues 63, 160 Yanukovich, V. 155–7 Yekaterinburg 75–6 youth activism 1, 9–15; youth associations 15, 27, 37, 50, 54, 81; youth centres 12–13, 27–9, 37, 65, 70; youth workers 4, 12, 16, 42, 49, 51 Yugoslavia 61, 84, 183