“People power will become an explosive force in history”

The UK is buzzing with social enterprising and social innovation. It is a country that’s definitely happening. The good news comes just in time, when the world needs working prototypes of better ways to organize commerce, governance, and civil society action. The global society needs successful models of working and learning together at increasing scale, to meet its multiplying crises, more than ever. The living laboratories where those models are experimented with, are rapidly multiplying all over the world, and in some countries more so than in others.

I share the belief that “the UK is a global hub for digital development, futures thinking and the promotion of social innovation.” So are as diverse counstries as the US, the Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, and Spain. By the way, the quote about the UK is from the creators of 2gether08 that was a lively, high-energy unconference in London, July 2-3. I blogged about it in the Potential revisited .

On the 2gether08 website, I discovered and watched the vid of a keynote given at a Google hosted "Zeitgeist" conference of European business leaders in England, on May 19, 2008.The speaker was Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of UK. The purpose of the event was “to inquire into the spirit of our times.”

Here is your guide to the juiciest morsels of the vid featuring his talk:

01:00 I think everybody recognizes that we’re in the biggest economic and social and change since the industrial revolution… [W]e are seeing a shift of power from state to people that is propelled by the new technology…

01:38 [W]e are in the throes also of creating the first truly global society, people able to communicate with each other, organize with each other, and at the same time find that they have common cause with each other.

11:00 And think of “Make Poverty History,” millions of people round the world, linked by the internet, galvanizing their efforts together to bring about substantial social change.

Answering questions (not on the video), Gordon Brown also said:

"If we look at the potential for the web it is about transferring power to people as individuals. And if the social networking, and the blogging, and everything else that is happening, it gives people power directly to influence change. And I think what is going to happen round the world is we used to say if only people could communicate with each other, if only people could connect, if only people could find that they had common ground with each other then things would change. Now people are in a position to do that.

And I believe that once people recognize, not only that they can communicate with each other but just how much common ground they share with each other, how much across the different religions, there is a similar view of the world, how much across the different continents, people have common interests that they want to develop, then I think that people power will become an explosive force in history, perhaps the most potent power in the hands of the world for the future, and I think it will start changing not just domestic policy in individual countries, but change the way we run foreign policy.

The problem however is that our international institutions are not strong enough to cope with the global changes that are taking place and we will have to reform the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations if they are going at a global level do what the people of the world will increasingly demand them to do, and that is to act in situations that people find unpalatable."

Mick Fealty wrote about the speech: “Powerful stuff from the most powerful politician in the UK. Yet…, delivering the fruits of that visionary statement is likely to prove much more difficult.”

Some of my friends in the UK are skeptical of the rhetoric but Mr. Brown doesn’t seem to be all talk only. A year ago, he created a Council on Social Action, saying:

“This Government's social change agenda must go beyond the traditional to embrace the new and diverse ways in which individuals, organisations, communities and business engage in social change. And so it requires a whole new approach from government: new kinds of support and a new style of inclusive leadership. To bring social innovators together to generate ideas on how the whole of government can support the efforts of all those striving for change, in all their diverse ways, I am creating a new Council on Social Action, led by David Robinson, which will advise the Government on new initiatives to celebrate, connect and inspire those working for social good.”

There's also the British government's Office of the Third Sector that “leads work across government to support the environment for a thriving third sector (voluntary and community groups, social enterprises, charities, cooperatives and mutuals), enabling the sector to campaign for change, deliver public services, promote social enterprise and strengthen communities…Vision : To support the environment for a thriving third sector, enabling people to change society.”

Among other things, the Office invests in programmes to support the sector's development and promotion. It is certainly not the driving force of, but a significant source of nourishing the social creaitivity that is generating the mushrooming of social innovation initiatives in the UK.