I’m a community organiser working for Citizens UK. I’m based in North London, supporting our growing alliances of civic institutions in Haringey, Barnet and Enfield build power and win change in their communities.
My introduction to community organising came as a student when I started a Living Wage Campaign at the University of Nottingham back in 2012.
I was excited to be part of a campaign that was winning (Citizens UK have now persuaded over 5,000 businesses to voluntarily pay the real Living Wage) but more importantly to have a theory of change that believed ordinary people have the power to be the agents of their own change.
The campaign has always been built on a diverse coalition of workers and community leaders coming together to challenge, and then work with, the state and the market to collectively drive up wages. We now see both major political parties in the UK talking about a ‘Living Wage’ but make no mistake, its been the work of organising that has taken this radical idea to the mainstream and has developed thousands of community leaders in the process.
But we have a saying at the Living Wage Campaign that ‘work is the surest way out of poverty’ and its been bugging me. I don’t think that’s true anymore. We now see the destabilising impact the gig economy has on workers lives, the rapidly changing world of work that automation is already bringing and a welfare system in Universal Credit that not only doesn’t work for people but has cruelty built in to its design. We have a growing crisis of insecurity.
For me, it now feels like ‘economic security’ is the surest way out of poverty. Which led me to Universal Basic Income.
Through involvement with Basic Income UK, I’ve been to conferences, round-table discussions and talks on Basic Income. But what’s consistently struck me is how the basic income conversation is being had by academics, policy experts and a handful of politicians and campaigners. Its been very rare to see people from civil society and the wider population at the table in this debate.
If Basic Income is to ever be implemented, it needs a much broader coalition of supporters than it currently does and it needs a mass movement of people calling for it. That was true of the Living Wage Campaign back when it started in 2001 and I see community organising as the means of us getting there again.
So I’m left with that question… how can civil society advocate for a Universal Basic Income?
That question is taking up a lot of my headspace right now and I want to share my thinking. That’s why I’ve set up this blog. It’s why I’ve decided to travel to take lessons from other countries on this topic. Its why I’m a Churchill Fellow, thanks to the funding and support of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Its why I’m still an organiser with Citizens UK – the best place to learn how to organise civil society for change.
Michael Pugh
Community Organiser
Churchill Fellow
Basic Income Travels 