Educational Inclusion at Newcastle University. Liz engages in research with a strong social justice agenda, being known for her work on the interaction between communities and schools, the engagement of young people in development and research, and respectful democratic approaches to change (personal and organisational).
Michael Walker drives Gateshead’s anti-poverty approach, working with strategic partners and businesses. He has worked for Gateshead Council for 13 years, including as financial inclusion lead and employment support manager, and is passionate about tackling poverty in the place where he lives and works, aiming to make Gateshead a place where everyone thrives.
David Webb is Senior Lecturer in Planning and also Director of Engagement at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. His work centres on the government of people and places, and the way this unfolds over time to reflect pressures exerted socially and geographically.
Karen Wood has worked in the community for over 20 years supporting those most vulnerable. She is a voice for those who need to be heard. As the Manager of Pallion Action Group, a charity based in Sunderland, Karen has now become a local councillor to help influence decision-making.
This book originated from a series of discussions in 2016, prompted by a suggestion from the Advisory Board of the Newcastle University Institute for Social Renewal (NISR), which led to a project exploring ‘Social Renewal in the North East of England’, funded by NISR in 2017. From the outset, our aim was to work with our non-academic partners from organisations in the voluntary, community and social enterprise, public, and private sectors to co-produce the research and the contributions in this volume. We are grateful for the support given by the NISR throughout this time. We also owe special thanks to Derek Bell (Professor of Environmental Political Theory at Newcastle University) for his invaluable and thoughtful inputs into the early stages of the research.
The book project itself was launched on 2 November 2017 in a workshop on ‘Social Justice and Social Renewal in the North East: The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations’. This included a series of thought-provoking speeches by Jo Curry (Changing Lives), Alison Dunn (Citizens Advice Gateshead) and Professor Emeritus Susan Fainstein (Harvard Graduate School of Design), who also presented a public lecture at Newcastle University organised by the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. The launch was followed by two more authors’ workshops on 24 January and 16 September 2019, in which the structure and content of the book were co-produced. We are grateful to all speakers and participants for their active engagements in the debates and in shaping the production of this volume.
We also owe thanks to those with whom we had insightful conversations during the planning stages of the book: Jo Curry (Changing Lives), Mark Pierce (The Community Foundation), Nitin Shukla (Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner Northumbria), Jane Hartley (Voluntary Organisations Network North East), Steve Forster (Together Newcastle), Abu Tayeb Khairdeen (Islamic Diversity Centre), Lindsay Cross (West End Refugee Service), Sally Young (Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service), Sara Bryson (Tyne and Wear Citizens), Helen Dickinson (Newcastle City Council), Deborah Harrison (North East Child Poverty Commission) and Alison Dunn (Citizens Advice Gateshead).
Our special gratitude goes to Dr Faith Goodfellow, whose editorial assistance and support has been crucial in enabling us to deliver the book on time. As a committed voluntary worker and supporter of civil society actions, Faith has also been a valuable contributor to the debates in the workshops and beyond. We are also grateful to Stuart Hand and Alex Robson from Newcastle University’s Institute for Social Science for their administrative support, and to Emily Watt and Caroline Astley from Policy Press for their support throughout this project.
Just before the book reached the production stage, we heard the tragic and shocking news that Professor Paul Benneworth had sadly passed away. Paul generously supported our book by agreeing to write a reflective chapter on the role of civic universities. We are saddened by his sudden death and feel privileged to have worked with him on what was probably his last piece of writing in a prolific and acclaimed academic career.
Finally, the opinions expressed in the chapters are entirely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors, the funding organisations or those who have taken part in interviews and workshops.
Lord Kerslake
The ‘austerity decade’ between 2010 and 2020 was a unique period in British economic, political and social history. Prior to that, public spending had continued to grow steadily with the development of the state’s role in protecting and promoting the well-being of its citizens, albeit with periodic reining in during economic crises. Even in the Thatcher government, the cuts were borne most by capital expenditure, notably, housing investment, rather than day-to-day spending on services.
The austerity programme introduced by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition in 2010 represented a sharp reversal of that trend. It was born out of the financial crisis of 2008 – essentially a banking crisis – the cost of responding to which had seriously impacted the country’s finances. This was common to most developed nations but was particularly significant in the UK due to the high proportion the financial services sector made up of its economy.
For the then Chancellor George Osborne, austerity was both a political and an economic agenda. The sense of crisis and urgency created – we had ‘maxed out’ on our credit cards and were heading towards becoming another Greece – served to underline a political argument that the previous Labour government had left the country in a financial mess and were not to be trusted on the economy. The reality was more complex than this, of course, but the political argument stuck.
There is an irony that, ten years on, the need to respond to another global crisis – this time, a health one – has resulted in ballooning deficits and total debt exceeding £2 trillion, compared to £1.2 trillion in 2010. Austerity temporarily reduced the rate of growth of our debt rather than paying it down.
The economic impact of austerity was arguably self defeating. In a period when demand and confidence in the global economy was low, severely reducing public spending simultaneously across the developed world added to the challenge of low growth and reduced government revenues. The ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ vaunted by the Chancellor turned out to be a recipe for economic stagnation and led to an easing of austerity and an extension of the timescales to reduce the deficit.
Some, including former Prime Minister David Cameron, have argued that the scale of the spending reductions was not that great and the impact of austerity has been overstated. There is no doubting, though, the massive impact on local authority spending, which fell by a quarter, and the impact that this had on local communities. The reduction was even more acutely felt because of the growing demands on the adult and children’s care budgets, which together make up over half of local authority spending. The consequential impact on other services – leisure, the public realm, early years and so on – was proportionately much greater.
Deprived communities suffered a triple whammy. Being more dependent on government grant meant that the scale of the cuts was even greater. At the same time, their economies were much slower to recover from the effects of the Great Depression than other, more affluent areas. The significant reductions to benefits also had a disproportionate effect.
This timely and important book tells the story of austerity from the perspective of a particular place. There is much to learn from this comprehensive and rigorous piece of work. While the story is a tough one, there are also great positives in the way that the community
