A short history of community organising

Saul Alinsky coined the term ‘community organising’ in the 1940. Saul Alinsky was a Jewish American criminologist based in Chicago who after becoming disenchanted with social work in the 30's set about developing a method to mobilise low-income communities to build power in order to demand better wages and push corporations and the government to take more social responsibility. Alinsky began his quest by organising communities in Chicago, launching an organisation called 'Back of the yards'. During the 50's and 60's he worked with African American communities setting up the Wood Lawn organisation. Alinsky gained great notoriety as an agitator and communist- something that he denied.

Saul Alinsky established the (Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940. The IAF was set up to train community organisers and develop affiliate organisations across the US and the world. IAF aimed to build organisations with the purpose of power and the product of social change. To date the IAF has 57 affiliate organisations across the US, in Germany and the UK. Although the organisation was founded by Saul Alinsky the modern methods of the IAF were developed by Ed Chambers an ex seminarian who had worked closely alongside Alinsky. Echo's of Alinsky ideas can still be heard in the teachings of the IAF but the raw organising antics of Alinsky have been quietly put to the background.

After Alinsky's death in the 1970's Chambers began to move the organisation towards a systematic training programme and the professionalisation of community organising and began shifting the focus towards congregation based organising. Chambers worked to develop Alinsky's method and formulated the model of organising that influenced Obama as a young community organiser in Chicago and is the model that IAF affiliate organizations and London Citizens work with.

London Citizens grew out of the Citizens Organisation Foundation (COF) that was set up by the organisations executive director and lead organiser Neil Jameson, and a collection of religious leaders in 1989 after Jameson travelled to the US to undertake training at the IAF. COF styling itself on the IAF attempted to build organisations in Yorkshire, Liverpool and Bradford but was unsuccessful eventually they struck gold with the formation of The East London Community Organisation (TELCO) in 1996. In London the COF started to put more emphasis on training organisers and leaders and began to hold regular training sessions; organisations were started in South and West London that together became the pan London organisation London Citizens. 

London Citizens is described as "a powerful grassroots charity working with local people for local people". It describes its goal as "social, economic and environmental justice" and claims to meet that need by "training people of all ages, faiths and backgrounds to take action together for change" 

In recent years COF, LC and TELCO have all been brought under one banner as Citizens UK. Citizens UK is described as "the biggest community alliance in Britain, bringing together more than 160 faith congregations, schools, universities, trade unions, and community groups with a quarter of a million citizens in our network. We work to end poverty, improve housing and make London safer".

London Citizens has launched numerous campaigns across London; the biggest being the living wage campaign, a campaign to pressure employers to pay staff a living wage rather than the legal minimum wage, the argument being that the legal minimum wage does not secure workers a life above the income poverty line. The organisation worked with economists to find out how much it costs to secure a decent living in the city. In 2004 this was agreed at £7.05 and was adopted by the mayors office, which also set up a living wage unit to examine the issue, annually set the rate and encourage other employers to adopt the policy. London Citizens campaigned against HSBC one of the world's largest banks getting the executives at HSBC to raise the wages of its cleaning staff. London Citizens have also successfully lobbied the London School of Economics and Queen Mary University to implement the policy. The organisation has also launched campaigns for a community land trust, and campaigned for an amnesty for migrant workers amongst other things.

The model of organising utilised by Citizens UK offers an innovative method that can provide answers to re-organising and re-conceptualising the political practice of Progressive politics with a more effective political model.