Citizens UK History

Neil Jameson founded Citizens UK in 1989 after undertaking training in the United States in the methods of Community Organising. This approach to politics was established in Chicago in the 1930’s by Saul Alinsky. There he started by organising poor people in a black neighbourhood to fight for their jobs which were under threat.

Citizens UK established citizens groups in Liverpool, North Wales, the Black Country, Sheffield, Bristol, Milton Keynes and London. 20 years later London is the one which has survived the longest – having started in East London in 1996. Milton Keynes is in its infancy. The others had a brief and glorious start lasting roughly 3 years. Why? The main reason was that for community organising to work you need to have a trained and experienced organiser. Jameson was able to train a small number of organisers in each of these cities. But when they left there was no pool of organisers from which to find a replacement. We are addressing this problem by using London as the training ground through our Guild of Community Organisers.

In each city our strategy was the same. Find leaders of key institutions who would be willing to bring their institution into membership of the fledgling citizens’ organisation. So Churches, Mosques, Schools, Trades Union branches and Voluntary Agencies were developed into an alliance in each city with a view to working together for the common good.

This is an experiment in democracy and the exercise of civic power. The analysis behind community organising is that power has been concentrated in the hands of a small and largely unaccountable minority in the worlds of politics and business. Ordinary people feel powerless to influence the decisions which affect their lives. This is dangerous for democracy. It is dangerous for politics. When politics fail, violence is the resort of the desperate.

Our answer is to organise people through the places where they have regular contact with their neighbours – faith institutions and workplaces and educational establishments.  Our experience of practising broad based community organising across the UK has confirmed for us that the threads that once connected the individual to the family, the family to their community and the community to the wider society are fraying and in danger of breaking altogether. We believe these strands, connections and alliances are vital for a healthy democracy and should be the building blocks of any vibrant civil society.

Our leaders are black, brown and white; Asian, West Indian, African, Irish, English. We live in high rise council accommodation and in the semi-detached homes of the middle class suburbs, and in all that there is in between. We are Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and Secular. We are young and we are old, male and female. We are Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Old and New Labour and those with no affiliation.

We believe in building for power which is fundamentally reciprocal, where both parties are influenced by each other and mutual respect develops. The power and influence that we seek is tempered by our religious teachings and moral values and is exercised in the fluid and ever-changing relationship with our fellow leaders, allies and adversaries. We value and seek to operate in the public sphere. We believe that UK public life should be occupied not just by a few celebrities and politicians - but also by the people themselves seeking a part of the action.

What we have done:

• Our organisations are fuelled by thousands of volunteer hours of talented people in local communities. Each organisation works on a range of issues and actions which has come from its members.
• Our organisations are funded in large part by their members through annual membership dues.
• We have trained thousands of leaders through our two day and five day training programmes

Our local actions have included:

• fighting to stop factories polluting neighbourhoods with noise and smell;
• making roads and schools safe for children;
• tackling drug dens and closing them;
• persuading public transport companies and retail stores to change policies which threaten local neighbourhood centres;
• seeking a closer relationship with the police to participate in plans to contain crime in our communities
• opening over 200 safe havens in shops and public buildings in neighbourhoods across London

On a national level we have campaigned for:

• Reform of the way the asylum system treats families and children
• Promotion of the Living Wage as a norm for public contracts and procurement
• An anti-usury requirement putting a cap of 20% on commercial interest charges
• 1% of the £1 trillion used to bail out the banks for mutual lending in deprived areas