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The New Right Conception of Citizenship and the Citizen's Charter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Richard Bellamy  and
John Greenaway
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Extract

MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE VIEWED THE CITIZEN'S CHARTER programme as a cynical exercise, having little to do with either the political participation one associates with citizenship or the establishment of a general bill of rights in the manner of the great Charters of the past. Although these criticisms possess some force, they fail to recognize that a distinctive conception of citizenship and rights underlies the initiative. In section one, we give an outline of this view of the citizen and trace its origins in the New Right critique of the social-democratic theory that predominated during the post-war period. This exercise forms a necessary preliminary both for understanding the objectives of the policy, the task of section two, and for assessing its coherence and plausibility, the aim of section three. We shall conclude that the scheme fails because it either substitutes the market for the state where it is inappropriate or omits to do so where it might provejustified. In these respects, the combination of politics and markets from the mixed-economy perspective of the social democratic conception of citizenship may well be superior.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1995 , pp. 469 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1995

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References

2 Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1950 Google Scholar.

3 ibid., pp. 10–11.

4 ibid, p. 28.

5 Although a canonical New Right text is hard to find, N. Barry, ‘Markets, Citizenship and the Welfare State: Some Critical Reflections’, in Plant, R. and Barry, N., Citizenship and Rights in Thatcher’s Britain: Two Views, London, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990 Google Scholar, offers a concise application of the writings of Nozick and Hayek to this issue.

6 Stewart, J., ‘Change in the Management of Public Services’, Public Administration, 1992, 70, p.507 Google Scholar.

7 Some might argue that Hurd is a ‘wet Heathite’ rather than a member of the New Right. Whilst it is true that he belongs to the centre of the party and is no New Right ideologue, he was Mrs Thatcher’s longest serving minister and so cannot be regarded as totally at odds with such ideas. Hurd’s ‘one nation’ past may have made him keen to link the new neo-liberal economic and social policies with traditional conservative moral concerns with the family and nation. However the assumption that the two can fit together is common to most New Right politicians. This is the thesis, for example, of David Willett’s book, Modern Conservatism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992, in the conclusion of which he maintains that ‘Conservative thought at its best conveys the mutual dependence between the community and the free mar ket. Each is enriched by the other … The tension between market and communities is resolved because they help to sustain each other’, (pp. 182, 186). The weaknesses of this attempted marriage form a sub-theme of the recent writings of John Gray, a thinker who in the past had also sought to emphasize the conservatism of libertar ian philosophers such as Hayek. See his After the New Right, London, Routledge, 1993.

8 Hurd, D., ‘Citizenship in the Tory Democracy’, New Statesman, 29 04 1988 Google Scholar.

9 Hurd, D., ‘Freedom Will Flourish Where Citizens Accept Responsibility’, The Independent, 13 09 1989 Google Scholar.

10 Powell, Enoch, Freedom and Reality, Kingswood, Elliot Right Way Books, 1969, p. 33 Google Scholar.

11 Hurd, ‘Freedom Will Flourish’.

12 These tensions are especially in evidence in Hurd, ‘Citizenship in the Tory Democracy’.

13 Burke, E., Reflections on the Revolution in France, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 96 Google Scholar.

14 See Smith, A., An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976 Google Scholar, Book V, Ch. 1 and the even more trenchant remarks ofj. Mill, S., Principles of Political Economy, 1848, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970 Google Scholar, Book V, Ch. XI.

15 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971 Google Scholar. The links between Marshall’s account of citizenship and that implied by Rawls’s account of justice is brought out by Raymond Plant in his Citizenship, Rights and Socialism, London, Fabian Society, Tract 531, 1988.

16 Connolly, M., McKeown, P. and Milligan-Byrne, G., ‘Making the Public Sector More User Friendly? A Critical Examination of the Citizen’s Charter, Parliamentary Affairs, 1994, 47, pp. 25–27Google Scholar; Bruce Doern, G., ‘The UK Citizen’s Charter: Origins and Implementation in Three Agencies’, Policy and Politics, 1993, 21, No. 1, p. 19 Google Scholar.

17 Citizen’s Charter: Raising the Standard, Cm 1599, London, HMSO, 1991, p. 4.

18 ibid., p. 2.

19 Public Finance Lecture, July 1993, quoted Connolly, McKeown and Milligan- Byrne, p. 35.

20 The Citizen’s Charter Second Report, 1994, Cm 2540, London, HMSO, 1994, p. 89

21 Memorandum by the Cabinet Office (OPSS): The Citizen’s Charter, HC 27, 1993–94, London, HMSO, 1994, p. 17.

22 Competing for Quality, Cm 1730, London, HMSO, 1991; Kieron Walsh, ‘Quality and Public Services’, Public Administration, 1991, 69, pp. 503–14.

23 The Citizen’s Charter. First Report, 1992, Cm 2101, London, HMSO, 1992.

24 Treasury and Civil Service Committee, 1992–93, Sixth Report: The Role of the Civil Service: Interim Report, Vol. II, Minutes of Evidence, HC 390–11, London, HMSO, 1993, pp. 22, 32, p. 9.

25 Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1994.

26 Doern, p. 24.

27 As an example see the Harrow and Hillingdon Benefits Agency, ‘Modern, Improved, Efficient’, Charter Mark Application, Benefits Agency, n.d. but 1993.

28 Financial Times, 14 March 1994.

29 Diana Goldsworthy, Deputy Director of Citizen’s Charter Unit, speaking at Public Administration Committee of JUC’s Conference, York, 7 September 1993.

30 The Guardian, 26 March 1994. Diane Abbott, a Labour MP on the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, described this omission as ‘an astonishing lacuna’: she declared ‘what really matters to ordinary people and to my electorate in Hackney is that they get the benefits they are entitled to . . . The fact that that target is missing gives the clue about these targets, they are not about the essence of the Agencies, they are targets which are convenient for the Government’; HC 390–11, qq. 947–50, p. 224.

31 Peter Kemp, Beyond the Next Steps: A Civil Service for the 21st Century, London, Social Market Foundation, 1993, p. 24

32 Treasury and Civil Service Committee, 1993–94, Fifth Report: The Role of the Civil Service, HC 27—11, Garrett, Memorandum, ‘Government Dismembered’, London, HMSO, 1994, pp. 99–105, para. 14.

33 Financial Times, 14 March 1994.

34 Norman Lewis, ‘The Citizen’s Charter and Next Steps: A New Way of Governing?’, Political Quarterly, 64, 1993, pp. 318–22.

35 Walsh, Kieron, ‘Citizens and Markets’, paper presented at JUC Public Administration Committee Conference, University of York, Sept. 1993 Google Scholar, p. 15; see also Kieron Walsh, ‘Citizens, Charter and Contracts’, in Keat, Russell, Whitely, Nigel and Abercrombie, Nicolas (eds), The Authority of the Consumer, London and New York, Routledge, 1994, pp. 189–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Lewis, p. 320.

37 The Guardian, 8 February 1995.

38 These problems are explored further in Bellamy, Richard, ‘Moralising Markets’, Critical Review, 8, 1994, pp. 341–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 See Hirschman, A. O., Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1970 Google Scholar.

40 See Elster, J., Sour Grapes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the educative value of public dialogue. This Rousseauean aspect of politics was appreci ated both by new liberals such as L. T. Hobhouse and J. Hobson, and Fabian social ists such as G. D. H. Cole and H. J. Laski. On the former, see Plant, R. and Vincent, A., Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: The Life and Thought of the British Idealists, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984;Google Scholar on the latter see P. Hirst (ed.), The Pluralist Theory of the State: Selected Writings of Cole, G. D. H.,Figgis, J. N. and Laski, H.J., London, Routledge, 1989 Google Scholar.

41 Spiers, J., ‘Model Mantras’, The Guardian, 8 02 1995 Google Scholar.

42 For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Bellamy, R., ‘Citizenship and Rights’, in Bellamy, R. (ed.), Theories and Concepts of Politics, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993 Google Scholar, Ch. 3.