Towards A Citizenship Culture

• Expert contributors including Joyce Macmillan, Michael Brunson, Karen Evans, John Maxton, Matthew Taylor, Neal Acherson, Yasmin-Alibhai Brown and Anthony Everitt.

• Asks how a radically more participative citizenship culture could be achieved - one where people think of themselves as citizens and act like citizens.

• Concerned with long-term proposals rather than short-term issues.

• Looking towards the middle years of the new century it offers a practical vision of a more democratic and genuinely inclusive society.

The author of In Defence of Politics, George Orwell: a Life and chair of the official 1998 report on Teaching Citizenship and Democracy in Schools, has gathered together a distinguished team of thinkers and writers for the annual Political Quarterly book. Like the PQ, the book uses expert knowledge but is written for the intelligent general reader. Each of the contributors seek to show how a particular institution can contribute to create a radically more participative culture - one where people think of themselves not just as law-abiding citizens, tax-payers or enterprising individuals, but a s active citizens. The essays are not concerned with the immediate short-term perspective to make Britain a Citizenship culture, but with middle and long-term perspectives.

The question is posed that if the old democratic socialist project seems either halted, stilted or abandoned, how can we at least, possibly at best, achieve a truly democratic and inclusive society - a culture of positive citizenship? The inquiry and advocacy ranges through institutions of government, the parties, parliament, problems of multi-culturalism, the practices of the voluntary sector, education and the arts

Sir Bernard Crick is Emeritus Professor of Birkbeck College, University of London.