100 Years of NCVO and Voluntary Action: Idealists and Realists

320 Pages·4.747 MB·English

by  Justin Davis Smith

1 0 0 Y E A R S
O F
N C V O
A N D
V O L U N T A R Y
A C T I O N
Idealists
and Realists
Justin Davis Smith
100 Years of NCVO and Voluntary Action
Justin Davis Smith
100 Years of NCVO
and Voluntary Action
Idealists and Realists
Justin Davis Smith
Cass Business School
City, University of London
London, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-02773-5 ISBN 978-3-030-02774-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02774-2
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For Julia
F
oreword
Civil society needs to look to the future, and through the Civil Society Futures
Inquiry we have spent time looking at the major changes taking place and pre-
senting us with challenge and opportunity in equal measure. But to look for-
ward we need to look back, and the historic arc of the voluntary sector
illuminates many of our current dilemmas and choices.
Civil society has developed and changed in response to seismic social
change—from the industrial revolution through the horrors of two world wars,
political upheavals, and enormous, seemingly overwhelming social challenges.
Understanding where we have come from is a vital part of understanding where
we decide to go.
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) in its various
forms over the last century faced challenges, dilemmas, and opportunities. Now in
2019 we live in a time when many institutions across public life are questioned.
How can NCVO, formed in the wake of the First World War, find new-found
relevance in the wake of the internet revolution, Black Lives Matter and #metoo?
Three themes in Justin Davis Smith’s fascinating history might hold the
answers.
First, the tension between the local and the national has been felt since the
very start of the National Council. Recognising the crucial importance of local
voluntary action and impulse has always been in tension with the desire for a
national presence.
The need to rediscover deep and effective connections with local communi-
ties arises again and again—what does that rediscovery look like now?
Second, the ‘insider’ status of a sector able to have the ear of government
and business, negotiating on equal terms and representing the power and capa-
bility of wider civil society, is in constant tension with the need to stand with
and for the dispossessed and overlooked, recognise and express their anger, and
challenge the seat of power.
Through every era people rightly ask: whose side are you on?
And equally, thirdly, the tension between leading and representing. All
umbrella bodies in all sectors face the choice between serving their members,
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viii FOREWORD
going at their pace and ensuring that their needs are met—and, from time to
time, leading and challenging the very sector they exist to serve.
What does leadership in a new century mean, and how does it differ from
the past?
Justin reveals these perennial tensions and demonstrates the different ways
they have been reconciled. At the same time, he reminds us of the changing
context in which we always operate. The impact of austerity—after the war and
again more recently. The changing levels of trust in politicians and the political
process. The different ways in which voluntary action manifested itself.
In doing so he shows us how civil society has always been affected by broader
trends—but crucially has also had the power to influence them. He illustrates
the complex choices that need to be made, and the tricky decisions that need
to be navigated. Reading this excellent history I was struck time and time again
by the continued power of civil society to challenge and disrupt other sources
of power, to mobilise money and effort to solve major social problems. And
our capacity for connecting people, bringing people together to maximise their
own power, and at the same time ensuring that those voices are heard through-
out the country, remains our enduring purpose.
We must not be naive of course. Understanding where we have come from
does provide us with a powerful set of tools for navigating our increasingly
uncertain future. But history is never a completely accurate guide, and it clearly
tells us that we can take nothing for granted—and change is our constant
companion.
What is the history of the next 100 years that we want to write?
Chair of Independent Inquiry into the
Future of Civil Society; CBE Julia Unwin
York, UK
A
cknowledgements
Thanks are due to many people for assistance with this project. To Emily
Russell and colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan, for publishing the book and sup-
port during the production process. To members of the advisory group—
Nicholas Deakin, Pat Thane, Diana Leat, and Peter Grant—who acted as
critical friends, offering invaluable advice on content and structure and provid-
ing much appreciated personal support and encouragement. To colleagues at
the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, Cass Business School, especially Stephen
Lee and Paul Palmer, for reading draft chapters and providing expert feedback.
And to a number of other colleagues and friends who have offered advice and
guidance, notably Irene Hardill of Northumbria University.
A big thank you goes to those interviewed as part of the oral history strand,
namely, Tesse Akpeki, Margaret Bolton, Ian Bruce, Sir Stephen Bubb, David
Clark, Dame Julia Cleverdon, Nicholas Deakin, David Emerson, Sir Stuart
Etherington, Adam Gaines, Richard Gutch, Richard Harries, Oliver Henman,
Deborah Hinton, Bharat Mehta, Sir Graham Melmoth, Janet Morrison, Sara
Morrison, Foster Murphy, Baroness Pitkeathley, Baroness Prashar, Andrew
Purkis, Campbell Robb, Bill Seary, Marilyn Taylor, Judy Weleminsky, and Perri
6. Space dictates that I haven’t been able to do full justice to your contribution,
but I hope I have given a flavour of your insights and wisdom.
Thanks to the staff at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), who dealt
with my numerous requests for assistance with good grace and professionalism.
This book draws heavily on the catalogued National Council for Voluntary
Organisations (NCVO) collection within the archives, which provides a thor-
ough record of the administrative work of the Council from the early 1920s
through to the late 1970s. It is unfortunate that the foundation records of the
Council were destroyed in a fire during the Second World War, but I have been
able to fill in some of the gaps by reference to the records of the Charity
Organisation Society (one of the bodies that came together to create the
Council), which are also located at the LMA. For the later period in the
Council’s history, I have drawn on the uncatalogued collection housed at the
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x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LMA and the organisation’s own, largely digitised records. Thanks also go to
the staff at other libraries and archives whose resources I have utilised, includ-
ing the London School of Economics, Senate House Library, British Library,
the National Archives, and my own institution, City, University of London. I
should like to give particular thanks to Iona Birchall for granting me privileged
access to the Birchall family archives, which include private and very poignant
correspondence between Edward and his family and friends while on the front
line in France during the First World War.
Many staff members at NCVO have been incredibly helpful over the course
of the project, but special mention should be made of Tracy Kiernan and
Michelle McErlean, who shared their extensive knowledge of the organisa-
tion’s records, ordered up boxes from the archives at short notice, and pro-
vided me with space to work. Thanks also go to successive heads of research at
the Council, Nick Ockenden, Ruth Driscoll, and Veronique Jochum, for sup-
porting the advisory group and giving valuable feedback on draft chapters, and
to Stuart Etherington and the Board at NCVO for commissioning the project
and resisting the urge to interfere. Thanks also to Julia Unwin for writing such
a thoughtful foreword.
Three final thanks are due. To all staff and volunteers involved with the
Council over the past 100 years, who contributed so much to the health and
vitality of the voluntary movement and provided the raw material and inspira-
tion for the project. To my parents, who have embodied the spirit of voluntary
action during their lives. And to my wife, Julia, who has supported and encour-
aged me throughout. This book is dedicated to her with much love.
P : e V d B
rologue dwArd iViAn eArmAn irchAll
Edward Birchall has rightly been credited as the founding father of the National
Council for Voluntary Organisations.1 It was his legacy of £1000 to his close
friend and colleague S.P. (Percy) Grundy that enabled the organisation to get
started and keep going for its first few years, when few alternative funds were
available. But more than this, Birchall can lay claim as its ideological inspira-
tion, or at least co-inspiration, along with Grundy and a small group of indi-
viduals in the voluntary movement at the turn of the twentieth century.2
Despite his death in France in 1916 at the age of 32, it was the ideas that
Birchall and others had mulled over in the years leading up to the outbreak of
the First World War that led directly to the formation of the new organisation.
Birchall did not live to see them come to fruition, but his vision and generosity
allowed others to realise his dream.3
Birchall was born on 10 August 1884 at Bowden Hall, Upton St
Leonards. His mother died when he was 3 weeks old. His family, originally
from Quaker stock, made its fortune in the textile industry in Leeds before
moving to Gloucestershire in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
where it quickly shed its Quaker roots for the established church.4 Birchall
(known as Thomas to the family) was one of five children, three boys and
two girls, and after attending Eton where he was awarded school colours at
football, he took an honours degree in chemistry at Magdalen College,
Oxford. Like many of his Oxbridge contemporaries, Birchall was attracted
by the idea of community service. But in contrast to most, who saw a year
or two volunteering as a stepping stone to a career in politics or business
(one of his older brothers John, for example, went to Eton and Oxford,
volunteered at Oxford House Settlement in London, fought in France, and
entered Parliament as Conservative MP for North East Leeds), Birchall
decided at an early age he wanted to make a career in the voluntary move-
ment. A contemporary later recalled how at university he had thrown him-
self into social work with ‘most intense humility and great reticence’ and
had pursued causes with ‘a supreme contempt for “money grubbing” and
all forms of speculation’.5
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