Citzenship Foundation
You recieved an OBE for you role in founding the Citzenship Foundation, what is it?
The Citizenship Foundation is a charity that exists to try and help all young people, of all abilities, to take their place in society, with a positive sense about what it is to be a citizen of that society. Given that we've constructed a society of byzantine complexity, where now, not merely young people but the majority of the population feel disconnected from what's done in our name in Westminster and Whitehall. We feel, in some sense, even alienated from it because nobody asks anything except at election time, and some times when they're are asked, the answer they give is not heeded, and so on. It was long ago I conceived the notion that if I got on in the world, I'd like to try and do something about that. I remember when I was in Sudbury here, my father used to run some of the local magistrates courts on a part time basis. I used to flog around with him to Longmalford and Boxford and Hadley and Sudbury. Very often then these juvenile offenders, pretty small boys in those days, might have given someone a punch in the jaw after a Saturday night beer-up. You'd always get this sort of pervasion report giving us their background. I always used to think, there but for the grace of god go I. And what is more, even then, I thought, how on earth do they develop a respect for law and order? How did they get on the right side of the tracks? So when I "got on" and had set up my practice, I decided, first of all, I got the Law Society, god bless them, to fund a really major experiment to see whether you can develop teaching materials for all abilities to, so to speak, get across to teenagers the idea of what the law was. This included what the values underpinned the law were, roughly how it worked, roughly how you could change the law, and how it affected them, and how they affected others. I actually had a class in one of the schools in Sudbury for a year, once a week, to see what I could do with them in 1969. I found I could do a lot. It was naturally of interest to them, because it's real. So I got the Law Society to put up a third of a million pounds in 1983 for a national experiment working with the teachers body. That was a huge success, for 3 years, and it was a huge success. On the back of that in 1987 or 1988, I founded the Citizenship Foundation as an independent charity. Fortunately it's thriving. We have to raise 3 million a year now to continue it's work. We have a full-time staff of 40 and an army of volunteers, most of them solicitors and barristers. We work right across the UK education spectrum, including primary schools, incidentally.
Do you still play a big role in the charity?
Not a big role. I am president, and one of the reasons for stepping down from the Lords was to give more time to the citizenship foundation and some of the other charities I have been heavily involved with. I am doing more, and will be doing more still.
How can the charity help the youth of today?
Well, the charity is very much at the heart of what we try to do, which is to get young people - particularly if one can put it in the sort of bottom end of the social spectrum, the ones that are supposedly the least successful and have the least expectations for themselves, and stuff - to get them to believe in themselves as autonomous, moral beings. So, a lot of our work is about getting young people to take themselves seriously in terms of their own values and beliefs. Not to just be phased by this awful celebrity culture, but to realize that they are equal in worth to any other person in the realm, and that they should have more esteem for themselves, because if you haven't got that you won't have esteem for others. And one of the things I want to try and do very soon - is because we don't just deal in law at all, we deal very much in sort of a broad value structure - one thing I'd love to do is a sort of a unit or a project on manners because the issue of manners is one that affects a lot of people, with unmanly behaviour, sometimes with anti-social behaviour. And to just go right back to square one on that, "What are they? And, why are they important?" Because we've got into this awful situation where a lot of youngsters who think they're shit, come from, often, broken homes or no homes, no jobs, no complications, no hopes, and no expectations, and all of that. They've completely lost sight of the fact that the way you are treated and the way you treat others, are two sides of the same coin, and that part of the oiling of relationships is in the superficials of how you treat people, in terms of manners. And, I think a huge amount could be done in that direction because it's a sort of window onto other things. I have a sense of this sort of going down this corridor, and pushing a window and air rushing in, and pushing another window and more air rushing in. And so, I'm a silly old fool, but I think something can be done with these lads.
What other charities do you work with?
Well, the other two that I've founded. The first one I co-founded, which is, the legal action group in 1970. That charity was founded by four of us, all solicitors, who felt that the legal aid scheme was undernourished and in danger of being further cut. So, we formed this charity to provide a powerhouse to champion legal aid, and to provide legal aid lawyers with the tools for their job. And that really was very successful. And then the other one that I formed was about seven or eight years ago, with a young woman solicitor. This was called the Solicitor's Pro Bono Group, and it tried to really revive in the legal profession, the old tradition of doing pro bono work; work for free. I mean, when I was in Sudbury, my father and the other managing clarks, as they used to be called then, the other solicitor in the firm, they would spend huge amounts of their time acting for nothing. Just helping people who couldn't afford to pay for their services, but you know, you just didn't turn people away from the door at the office. Well, in today's highly commercial world, where the bottom line is the new God, I'm afraid an awful lot of solicitors were just shunning anything but top paying work. And, to be fair to my profession, they're essentially a decent lot, and even though they may be doing nothing but commercial work, most of them do understand the law is about justice, and that we're the gatekeepers of justice, and in a world where religion has fallen back, and legislation has lept forward, if you can't get access to legal advice, or you need it, you're at a permanent disadvantage. So we've worked at it, and we're now making real headway, particularly with the big firms, as we've got about fifteen of them with full time pro bono coordinators now, within their firms to organize, you know. So it's going on alright.
What is your next charitable project?
What is your involvement with Gainsborough's house?
I'm lucky enough to be on the board of governors of Gainsborough's house, which is the home that Thomas Gainsborough was raised in. I think that it's the only such surviving home of one of Britain's premiere painters. It is a great place, an independent charity that has just raised a million and a half to improve it. We've got an extraordinary collection, and it is a model of community involvement which has led to a place that is not just of local or regional significance but national and international significance. Arts in suffrage has certainly been very strong. You've got an astonishing concentration of artists because it was within striking distance of London. Yet, the property was affordable. Unfortunately, the first of those conditions prevails and the second no longer does. That is a drawback because often these young and struggling artists of today are the stars of tomorrow, but it is still a wonderful part of the world for art and artefacts. I'm a complete nut for all of that.
What other Arts do you do support?
Yes. I've got a particular interest in Applied Arts; Ceramics, in particular. And, for ten years, I was on the board of Contemporary Applied Arts in London which is the charity and the showcase of Applied Arts in the U.K. I'm sort of a life picture of that. So, I keep my oar in more than one pond.
