Social Enterprise: We are all in this together

An expression, attributed in recent times to British PM David Cameron, speaking of the government's response to the riots of 2011. 

There was also an earlier, lesser know source. A voice from the world of social enterprise, drawing attention to the failure of capitalism to address the needs of those economically disenfranchised and excluded. It came in February 2008, before most of the world knew of the looming economic crisis :

"The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not."

Four years earleir in 2004, the same voice had raised the alarm about increasing disparity in wealth distribution with a warning about the likelyhood of uprisings. It came in a business plan, a plan to create jobs in impoverished communities nationally, which said:

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”

He was referring to the self sustaining model of social enterprise we introduced to the UK in 2004, a profit-for-purpose approach.

The expression was heard again on the other side of the pond, when used in 2012 by Bill Clinton to rally support for Barack Obama's second term of office.

In 2008, with Biden and Obama on the Council for Foreign Relations, they were recipients of the 'Genesis' fax, appealing for their support:

"There is increasing congruence and synchronicity in play now, to the point of attunement. What Ms. Fore is describing has been central to P-CED’s main message, advocacy and activity for a decade. That, and helping establish an alternative form of capitalism, where profits and/or aid money are put to use in investment vehicles with the singular purpose of helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. The paper on which that is based is in Clinton’s library, dated September 16, 1996, author yours’ truly. "

After the call was dismissed, we soon discovered the true colours of Joe Biden. 

In 2010 on the day David Cameron became Prime Minister I raised a petition to him to support the practitioners of this new capitalism, in our work focussed on vulnerable children in Eastern Europe. The Abandoned Children of Ukraine.   

Three days after Cameron's speech the author was ignored to death, making it very clear that we are not all in this together.

So much for kinder capitalism and the obvious questions. What kind of leader would try to build reputation on the efforts of others?

The answer would appear to be all of them, since there are very few politicians who haven't jumped on the better capitalism bandwagon since 2008.

They speak of it from the safety of a pulpit and the comfort of a public funded salary, appearing to be clueless when it comes to enabling it.. ,  

It was New Labour in government, however when the warning fell on deaf ears,  It was the leaders of that former government who arrived in Ukraine, not to support our efforts in social enterprise, but to be advocates and partners of the greedy oligarchs who were the root cause of social problems.      

For Ed Milband's New Labour I have some advice. You can't swarm with the locusts and pollinate with the bees.