Citizens UK

Citizens UK is a community organising group in the United Kingdom." It started as London Citizens in 1996, and came to national prominence during the United Kingdom general election, 2010 when all three leaders of the UK's three largest political parties addressed a large meeting of its members in what it billed as the "fourth debate", in reference to the three TV debates. The event was notable for Gordon Brown giving what was widely described as his best speech of the campaign.

Citizens UK has been promoting community organising in the United Kingdom since 1989. Neil Jameson CBE, the Executive Director, founded Citizens after training with the Industrial Areas Foundation in the USA. Citizens UK, formerly the Citizens Organising Foundation (COF), has established citizens’ alliances in Wales, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Leeds and London. Alliances in other cities are in the pipeline. Citizens UK, initially known as London Citizens, has grown from a single city-based organisation to a nationwide community organising institution. Others had a less enduring run lasting roughly 3 years when COF was unable to finance them any longer. Along with its geographical expansion, Citizens UK is in the process of forming increasing numbers of professional community organisers. It has created a Master’s course in Community Organising in affiliation with Queen Mary University, establishing the profession of ‘Community Organiser’ through the Guild of Community Organisers teaching the disciplines of strategy and politics.

Citizens’ brand of community organising is distinctive because it deliberately sets out to build permanent alliances of citizens to exercise power in society. It sees its role in the UK’s political system as determinant of the distinction between Civil Society from the State and the Market. In a totalitarian Society all three may virtually coincide. In a fully democratic society the three will be distinct. Where the state and the market become predominant, even in a democracy, civil society is reduced on the one hand to voting and volunteering and on the other to consuming. This can undermine democracies because the sense of citizenship and agency becomes weak and ineffective. In other words, Civil Society becomes powerless. Community organising and the role of the professional Community Organiser is working out how to take back power from the State and the Market by holding them accountable. The state and the market cannot operate without moral values and direction. It is not the role of the state or the market to determine those values. In a democratic society there has to be a genuine public discourse concerning justice and the common good.

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