The Society Project

How to build a fairer economy, politics and society

Get involved

Engage and Influence

  • Register an Interest – The pathway to a better future and systemic change depends on us being “open to persuasion” that it is possible?  It all starts with you, saying, “yes, it is”!
  • Share with a friend or colleague – Change: Help grow the ideas and build the momentum
  • Be an Influencer / Comment/ Write a blog for us / Share your thoughts, expertise or experiences 
  • Campaigning – Link your social and well-being campaigning to our call for societal reform and also engage with our campaigning. Set up a campaign within the societyproject.org.uk framework and use this website to reach out to others. Help determine our direction of travel

Register an Interest – Share with a friend or colleague

There are many diverse points of interest in the societal framework. Connecting with one or a few is significant, it is a driver of change.

Please use this link and  email, registering your interest. Tell us if you have a particular connection to the project.

Support our call for change by following thesocietyproject on social media.

You can help grow the discussion by talking with friends and colleagues and passing on details of the societyproject.org.uk

Be an Influencer / Comment/ Write a blog for us / Share your thoughts, expertise or experiences – connect your organisations aspirations with our call for societal reform

Then use these links to leave a  COMMENT or GET IN TOUCH and tell us what you think, how you can help or to work together

CAMPAIGNING

We have identified four primary spaces around which our advocacy and campaign for societal reform can be developed.

1. A FAIRER ECONOMY

By building a societal, purpose-led sector, operating for the best-interest of its customers and society. With customers buying from companies whose purposes they believe in

We CAMPAIGN:

That government and the UK Parliament pledge their support for:

  • An ENERGY COMPANY purposed to provide energy to households at the lowest sustainable price
  • Societising the WATER INDUSTRY to ensure ethical environmental stewardship and lowest prices for consumers with sufficient re-investment in infrastructure
  • The NHS to be served by societal companies wherever possible, able to purchase at or near sustainable cost. Through purpose-led companies using profits from other sales to meet social need. Let us start by societising the supply of medicinal cannabis to the NHS
  • AFFORDABLE RENTS, by introducing new forms of tenure. Using the existing housing stock, incentivising owner-occupiers to create independent secure living areas, for keyworkers and others in need. Affordable rents to be inclusive of shared household energy and other household costs. Creating Homes within Homes – driving down the cost of living for tenants, giving a supplementary income to houseowners

2. EQUALITY, RIGHTS and EMPOWERMENT

Recognition of the Rights of Society

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights embeds rights of property ownership, well-being economic outcome, access to public services and work, alongside many fundamental rights. These determine our lived experience and quality of life.

  • Article 16 recognises the family to be the fundamental group unit of society, entitled to protection by society and State. Yet, it vests no rights of society through which people can be protected. Perhaps against their own State. It recognises no direct, primary economic rights similar to those attached through property ownership in Article 17 of the UNDHR.
  • Societal rights, including economic ones, are essential to protect the best interests of populations, societies across the world. Societies require these distinct rights to challenge governments who override the best interests of the populations they govern or of those whose governments they wish to challenge.

Equality, including between nations, rights and empowerment are causally linked. Those which elevate the general population are also those which embed the social and economic rights of those marginalised by gender, race, age and social class. They protect populations from the arbitrary abuse of power.

We CAMPAIGN that RIGHTS OF SOCIETY be recognised and that Societies be identified as a group to which human rights attach, including within the UNDHR framework

3. PURPOSEFUL ENTERPRISE, Societal capital and Steward-ownership

Markets are simply the rail tracks along which our economy travels. Well-being in the market economy is determined by the ethics and purposes of those serving it.

The purpose-led sector already exists, to meet social need, supported by social finance, philanthropy and impact-assessed investment. We just need to recognise its systemic significance and develop it.

Lord Adebowale, Chair of Social Enterprise UK says “We created the limited liability (shareholder owned) company, and this was just as important as the invention of the steam engine”. The steward-owned company, carrying the virtues and benefits of perpetual purpose into the economy, can be equally important.

Our TASK is to create a space for development, encouraging the purpose-led sector to become the driver of systemic change

4. POLITICAL EVOLUTION – Ethics and Values

All the parties in the UK Parliament, other than those attached to the domination of shareholder interest, are committed to the best-interests of the general population and their constituents. They are societal, but lack a system of economy which attaches their values and of those they seek to represent to it, to benefit wider society and stakeholder interest.

We CAMPAIGN that government and Parliament expressly commits to a societal framework for policy making and societises the economy, taking organic steps to build a fairer society through a plural, purpose-led economy, making it work for our common good.