Overview

We opened this book with a quote from a Mass Observation Project (MOP) writer to the effect that the sheer scale of voluntary effort in Britain was so large that it would surprise ‘even the Prime Minister’. Many efforts have indeed been made to quantify this effort but what is even more important, we argue, is to understand the personal stories behind the aggregate statistics. We believe that the volume and quality of material from our group of MOP writers provides unparalleled insight into people's journeys into and through voluntary action, the nature of their contributions, their reasons for becoming involved, and their attitudes to the place of voluntary action. The material presented in Chapters Four to Eight provides highly novel insights into how voluntary action has changed (or not) in the period covered by this book.

In writing this book we were interested in the extent of continuity and change in voluntary action. The quantitative evidence is clear: our work on survey datasets covering the period from the early 1980s onwards amply demonstrates underlying stability (Chapter Four). Although no individual social survey has been implemented consistently over the period which we have studied, there is consistency within individual surveys over time, in terms of the proportions of the adult population who are engaged in voluntary action, so we feel justified in this claim.

This raises the question of whether, given that the policy environment in the past three decades has been supportive, we might expect to have seen a significant increase in volunteering. Since the late 1970s there has been a consensus regarding the virtues of voluntary action, although specific reasons for supporting it, and the extent of practical steps to do so, have varied. Political discourses have ranged from base imperatives of economic necessity and naive anti-statism, to loftier impulses, such as the desire to inculcate civic virtues, or to promote individual wellbeing and the formation of social capital. Governments and advocates of the voluntary sector have placed different emphases on these arguments at different points in time (Chapter Two); although there has been plenty of supportive rhetoric, there has not been one consistent policy framework in support of voluntary action.