Civitas

Civitas or The Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a London based right-wing think-tank which until 2000 was the Health and Welfare Unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs. In a March 2009 presentation Tim Montgomerie and Matthew Elliott described Civitas as part of the infrastructure of the conservative movement in Britain.

Civitas, 55 Tufton Street, London SW1 - shared with New Culture Forum and next door to the Centre for Policy Studies

Origins and history

Civitas started life as the IEA Health & Welfare Unit of the neoliberal think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs and was spun-off as an independent think-tank in 2000.

The Institute of Economic Affairs was set up in the mid-1950s by Antony Fisher, an Old Etonian who made his fortune by pioneering US battery farming techniques in the UK. Fisher had joined the Mont Pelerin Society, a group of right-wing intellectuals who were highly critical of the post-war consensus around government intervention in the economy. He was advised by one of the Society’s leading thinkers, Friedrich Hayek, that rather than going into politics as he planned, he should spread neoliberal ideas by targeting intellectual opinion. Fisher therefore founded IEA and recruited the Cambridge-trained economist Ralph Harris as director, and Arthur Seldon as research director. Through its promotion of free market theorists like Milton Friedman the IEA provided an intellectual rationale for business friendly political and economic reforms introduced by the Thatcher government in the UK.

In October 1986 IEA set up a Health Unit headed by David Green. The Unit was semi-autonomous sharing Trustees and offices with IEA but with its own advisors and fund-raising operations. It was renamed the Health and Welfare Unit in mid-1989.

In 1991, after Margaret Thatcher was removed from power, there was speculation that the Health and Welfare Unit might break off from IEA and develop closer links with another right-wing think-tank, the Social Affairs Unit, which had previously shared offices with the IEA. The Independent reported that:

Some Matherites [supporters of IEA’s director Graham Mather in an internal feud] claim the head of the Health and Welfare Unit, Dr David Green, might be raising money to split the unit away from the IEA with the help of Michael Novak, the American free marketeer who wrote The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and who visited the unit this summer.

Dr Green said that as an employee of the IEA ‘it would not be proper to pass comment on the general director’. He said it might prove fruitful to ‘co-operate loosely’ with the Social Affairs Unit, but there was ‘no prospect of the Health and Welfare Unit leaving the IEA’.

Neoliberal think-tanks shift to focus on the family

Historically there had been a de facto division between the neoliberal think tanks which concentrated on neoliberal reform and the 'pro-family' movement - sometimes called the 'moral right'. As late as 1993 Martin Durham was arguing that ‘despite a recent increase in interest in family issues on the part of New right think-tanks, the “pro-family” movement continues to be organizationally independent of the New Right and distinct in its political priorities’.

However, the rise of neoconservative ideas and the perceived need to fill the moral void left by neoliberalism seems to have brought the two elements of conservative politics together. One key writer was Patricia Morgan who ‘had been thanked by Lord Joseph for her help with his 1990 pamphlet’ for the Centre for Policy Studies.

She had written on the family on a number of occasions, ‘covering a range of issues from adoption and childcare to unmarried parenthood and divorce. Family and Youth Concern, the Centre for Policy Studies and another New Right think tank, the Social Affairs Unit, have all published her writings, but the IEA Health and Welfare Unit has been particularly associated with her work, publishing her extended consideration of the state of the British family in 1995 (and a second edition in 1999). The rise of single motherhood, she argued, was leading to men’s failure to find their role as husband and father. Without this, “a police state to suppress the men and… a childcare state to manage the children’ was likely to emerge. In 2000, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society published her critique of cohabitation.’ Durham notes that Morgan ‘was often quoted in the enthusiastically “pro-family” (and anti-Blair) Daily Mail.'

Reinventing Civil Society

In January 1994 the IEA published Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics by David Green. In the book Green argued that the New Right had focused too much on economic reforms at the expense of the moral and social aspects of right-wing thought:

Today’s challenge is no longer to show the superiority of markets over central planning, but to deepen understanding of that complex of institutions which makes possible, not only prosperity, but rather progress in all spheres of human existence, whether in art, education, welfare, morals, religion, community service, neighbourly help, or anything else; and, no less important, which allows for human diversity without endangering freedom and the safety of the streets.

Thatcherism had placed ‘inadequate emphasis on the “civic virtues”, such as self-sacrifice, duty, solidarity and service of others,’ Green wrote, ‘The challenge we face today is to identify a sense of community or solidarity that is compatible with freedom.’ In other words it was necessary to develop institutions which could create a sense of moral and social solidarity that would not threaten private property or involve any expansion of the public sector. He therefore advocated the establishment of ‘voluntary associations’ modelled on the Friendly Societies of the 18th and 19th century.

In the Acknowledgements section of the book Green thanked the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust for ‘its generous support of the three-year programme of research and study which made possible the production of this book.’ He wrote that the book had reflected ten years of continuing conversation with Arthur Seldon and Ralph Harris and also thanked Norman Dennis and his friend Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute who he said had ‘become a frequent visitor to the IEA during the last four years.’ Earlier in December 1993, Michael Novak's colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray, had attended a lunch at IEA also attended by the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Murray was known for his argument that welfare policy had created an underclass in Britain which needed to be stemmed through punitive cuts in welfare services. According to Melanie Phillips another influence on Green during this period was Francis Fukuyama's book The Great Disruption, in which he writes of the need for the state to restore 'social capital'.

Independence

The split with the Institute of Economic Affairs was first reported in the Sunday Times by Melanie Phillips in February 2000. She wrote that, 'The new institute could provoke a realignment of thought that reshapes our political landscape again, altering the way we order our welfare state and modifying our social values.' Its website civitas.org.uk was registered on 25 November 1999 and it was incorporated as a UK company (limited by guarantee) on 29 June 2000. It was launched in August 2000 with Ralph Harris as its Chairman and was registered as a charity on 12 March 2001.

Current and former directors

The table below displays information on the current and former directors of Civitas Ltd as registered with Companies House. Nominee directors are excluded. The current directors (i.e. those where no resignation date is provided) are displayed first, followed by the company’s former directors.

The earliest directors were David Green and Robert Whelan who served from the date of incorporation in June 2000. Six further board members were appointed in February 2001.

Name of Board Member	Nationality	Stated occupation	Date of appointment	Date of resignation
Sir Alan Rudge	British	None	9 June 2015	N/A
Tom Harris	British	Financial Adviser	4 July 2019	N/A
David Costain	British	Consultant	7 December 2011	N/A
David Green, Trustee	British	Trustee	1 January 2022	N/A
David Green, Secretary	British	Consultant	29 June 2000	N/A
Justin Shaw	British	Self-Emplyed Writer	6 February 2001	N/A
Kenneth Minogue	British	Academic	6 February 2001	30 June 2013
Silvia Le Marchant	British	None	12 February 2003	15 June 2016
Arthur Myers	New Zealand	Retired	12 February 2003	12 June 2013
Phillip Brown	British	Consultant	9 December 2003	25 March 2015
Lord Nigel Vinson	British	Retired	14 September 2004	1 April 2021
Margaret Allen	USA	Director Dramla SA Geneva	22 May 2007	12 July 2022
Ivan Bradbury	British	Engineer	11 September 2007	10 June 2020
Michael Stone	British	Retired	9 December 2008	14 September 2010
David Green	British	Research, Institute Director	29 June 2000	31 December 2001
Robert Whelan	British	Consultant	26 June 2000	31 December 2001
Ralph Harris	British	Retired	6 February 2001	14 June 2005
Harold Rose	British	Economist	6 February 2001	23 May 2006
Patrick Barbour	British	Director	6 February 2001	15 June 2010
Peter Walters	British	Company Director	6 February 2001	15 June 2010

Political orientation

It has been claimed that Civitas has left-wing staff and a following on the left. At the time that Civitas broke off from the Institute of Economic Affairs Melanie Phillips wrote that, 'Under David Green, the health and welfare unit built up a reputation for work on social issues that crossed party boundaries. People on the left may have hidden behind dark glasses and raised collars when they sidled into this free-market redoubt - but they turned up.' In March 2003 Robert Whelan, then Assistant Director at Civitas, told the Independent on Sunday: 'Most people on this floor are a bit fed up with the way people bracket some of us as left-wing, some of us as right-wing, we just don't see it in those sort of terms.' Adele Blakebrough, founder of the Community Action Network, then based in the same building said she always sees more socialists at Civitas's regular lunches.

Frank Furedi formely leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and currently of the LM network in a pamphlet published by Civitas. The pamphlet also featured articles by moral conservative stalwart Robert Whelan and LM network associate Alex Standish

Civitas set up the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, with funding of £274,669.The Centre's director is Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why we need it.

Civitas on Islam

Anthony Browne highlighted Britain's Muslim community in his November 2002 Civitas pamphlet, Do We Need Mass Immigration?.

As I write this, the UK is heading for war with Iraq, and even moderate Muslim leaders are warning the government of the impact on social relations with Britain’s two million strong Muslim community if Britain does attack another Muslim country (the less moderate leaders are warning that it will bring suicide bombing to Britain). Whatever the merits or demerits of war on Iraq, it is hardly a national strength to have a large minority with such divided loyalties during war.

Civitas published The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? by Caroline Cox and John Marks in June 2003. The pamphlet's methodology was based on a distinction between Western societies on the one hand and 'ideological societies' on the other, a category which lumps together fascism, communism and 'Islamism'.

The propaganda battles of the Cold War, as understood through the work of figures such as neoconservative propaganda theorist Roy Godson and through Cox and Marks' own earlier writing, were cited as a precedent for the struggle with Islamism.

it was the long ideological battles of the Cold War and the massive efforts by Marxists to subvert, and thus to subdue, Western societies from within that was most difficult for the citizens of these societies to understand and thus effectively to resist.

Similar tactics were attributed to Islamists by Cox and Marks, but the possibility they might be used by Western societies was not considered.

The tactics used in the current Islamist attack on Western societies resemble those used by Marxists in the last century —deceptions of many kinds together with the drip, feeder and multiplier effects which enhance the overall effectiveness of the committed ideologists even if their numbers are not large.

The 1997 Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia - A Challenge for us all is cited as an example of the 'drip effect.'

Cox and Marks drew a distinction between moderate Muslims and ideological Islamists, but argued that "the distinction depends in practice on moderate Muslims being more forthright in distinguishing themselves from their ideological co-religionists."

Patrick West's September 2005, Civitas book The Poverty of Multiculturalism criticised local councils for funding Islamic Awareness week while refusing to celebrate Christian festivals. This formed part of a wider critique of multiculturalism as cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism, the philosophy that no culture is superior to another, is one of today’s widely accepted doctrines. In the twenty-first century, to assert the superiority of Western civilisation over any other culture elicits accusations of eurocentricism, arrogance or even racism.

Civitas published A Nation of Immigrants? by David Conway in April 2007. The pamphlet argued that current levels of immigration are historically unprecedented and threaten the reproduction of Britain's political culture.

Of late, there has been a growing realisation of the plausibility of some such claim in light of the discovery that all four suicide bombers of 7 July 2005 were British-born, second generation British Muslims who had grown up in Britain in highly segregated enclaves in which normal patterns of acculturation into mainstream British life have apparently become far harder to sustain. It is particularly in light of how quickly and recently many such enclaves have sprung up in Britain, and are continuing to grow apace, that all those who want to see Britain remain the stable, liberal, and tolerant country it has been for so long need to consider carefully how much truth or falsehood is contained in the claim hat Britain is and has always been a nation of immigrants.

In February 2009, Civitas published Music, Chess and Other Sins, a pamphlet on Muslim schools by Denis MacEoin with the assistance of Dominic Whiteman. It argued that some Muslim schools "are threatening the social cohesion of Britain by promoting a fundamentalist version of Islam that encourages children to despise the British society in which they live and to confine themselves to enclaves.".

In May 2009, the think-tank published the pamphlet Disunited Kingdom: How the Government's Community Cohesion Agenda Undermines British Identity and Nationhood , in which David Conway argued that "the main threats to community cohesion in Britain today come from mass immigration and the radicalisation of young British-born Muslims."

Against the definition of Islamophobia

Civitas drafted an open letter to the Home Secretary Sajid Javid in 2019 opposing the defintion of Islamophobia developed by the APPG on British Muslims.

Signatories

• Emma Webb, Civitas
• Hardeep Singh, Network of Sikh Organisations (NSOUK) | Lord Singh of Wimbledon | Tim Dieppe, Christian Concern | Stephen Evans, National Secular Society (NSS) | Sadia Hameed, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) | Prof. Paul Cliteur, candidate for the Dutch Senate, Professor of Law, University of Leiden | Brendan O’Neill, Editor of Spiked | Maajid Nawaz, Founder, Quilliam International | Rt. Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden | Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters | Professor Richard Dawkins | Rahila Gupta, author and Journalist | Peter Whittle, founder and director of New Culture Forum | Trupti Patel, President of Hindu Forum of Britain Dr Lakshmi Vyas, President Hindu Forum of Europe | Harsha Shukla MBE, President Hindu Council of North UK | Tarang Shelat, President Hindu Council of Birmingham | Ashvin Patel, Chairman, Hindu Forum (Walsall) | Ana Gonzalez, partner at Wilson Solicitors LLP | Baron Desai of Clement Danes | Baroness Cox of Queensbury | Lord Alton of Liverpool | Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali | Ade Omooba MBE, Co-Chair National Church Leaders Forum (NCLF) | Wilson Chowdhry, British Pakistani Christian Association | Ashish Joshi, Sikh Media Monitoring Group | Satish K Sharma, National Council of Hindu Temples | Rumy Hasan, Academic and author | Amina Lone, Co-Director, Social Action and Research Foundation | Peter Tatchell, Peter Tatchell Foundation | Seyran Ates, Imam | Gina Khan, One Law for All Mohammed Amin MBE Baroness D’Souza | Michael Mosbacher, Acting Editor, Standpoint Magazine | Lisa-Marie Taylor, CEO FiLiA | Julie Bindel, journalist and feminist campaigner | Dr Adrian Hilton, academic | Neil Anderson, academic | Tom Holland, historian | Toby Keynes | Prof. Dr. Bassam Tibi, Professor Emeritus for International Relations, University of Goettingen | Dr Stephen Law, philosopher and author

On Immigration

Civitas' work on immigration was criticised in 2004 by journalist Faisal Islam:

The Government's estimate of a £2.5 billion gain to the Exchequer from immigration came under fire last week from right-wing think tank Civitas. It managed to calculate a marginally negative figure, lapped up as proof of mass scrounging by Britain's immigrants.

But the figure was a result of subtracting the cost of running the immigration service from the taxes paid by immigrants. But is it right to count the cost of controlling immigration - essentially our political choice - against the workers' tax contribution? Plenty more arbitrary fiscal benefits, such as the fact that almost all immigrants come ready-schooled by their own state, could be added to counter the Civitas figures.

Healthcare Reform

Civitas advocates market-based reform of the NHS and for a bigger role for the private sector in providing NHS services.

According to its website, the Civitas health unit was set up to 'facilitate informed and impartial debate among key stakeholders, patients, and the grassroots of the medical profession, in order to help build consensus on the future of health care in the UK.

Civitas has been critical of the Conservative's proposed reforms of the health service put forward by Andrew Lansley. As well as criticizing Lanley's plan to hand NHS budgets to GPs, it slammed the Conservatives' plans to open up the NHS market, claiming 'the mechanism does not seem strong enough to drive the required improvements, unless a number of issues are addressed'. These included the inability of private firms to access private NHS pensions and 'ridiculously long' tendering times."

Healthcare publications

• Refusing Treatment: the NHS and market-based reform, Civitas report, October 2010. According to the report's authors, Laura Brereton and James Gubb of Civitas, market reforms are "having significant positive effects on quality, efficiency, innovation and patient-focus." However, it notes that "the market has thus far failed to deliver such benefits on any systematic scale...because it has been stifled and not allowed to bed in." Barriers identified by the study include 'an uneven playing field between NHS and private/voluntary sector providers' and a 'deep cultural reverence for the NHS as something more than a health system.'

• Patients benefit from broadening boundaries of NHS care
, article in the Yorkshire Post, October 2010. This advoctaed "a new public consciousness" away from "the NHS as a culturally revered system of provision" and towards a competitive system with "new entrants with new ideas".

• BMA to shut out independent sector from NHS is misguided. A Civitas press release in February 2010 accused the British Medical Association, the doctors’ trade union, of 'politicising health care on cherry-picked evidence' in its bid to 'stop commercially run firms providing NHS care and end the market in the NHS, to patients.' Civitas responds by maintains that the quality of care is typically higher in Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs) than the NHS, and ISTCs cause NHS providers to drive performance in a way that would not happen without a competitive threat. It quotes a survey commissioned by the NHS Partners Network claiming 74% of those polled said the NHS needed 'to change to survive'; and 74% more closely align themselves with the statement 'I don't mind who owns or runs my NHS services so long as the quality is right' than 'Services on the NHS should only be conducted in a hospital or other medical facilities run and owned by the government'.

• The market can help the NHS, opinion piece by James Gubb in the Guardian, February 2010. This reiterates much of the above press release.

• Markets in health care: the theory behind the policy, Civitas report, December 2009. Authors James Gubb and Oliver Meller-Herbert argue that "Health care, due to its high upfront costs and centrality to humankind, is often considered ‘different’ and best left outside the domain of markets. But such blanket opposition ignores valid reasons for not dismissing the value markets." The report concludes that "The central challenge for policymakers in health care is best framed less as a choice between markets and the alternatives; more as to the optimum balance between them.

Healthcare, People

• James Gubb is the Director of the Health Unit at Civitas.

Accounts

Civitas Accounts 2001
Civitas Accounts 2002
Civitas Accounts 2003
Civitas Accounts 2004
Civitas Accounts 2005
Civitas Accounts 2006
Civitas Accounts 2007
Civitas Accounts 2008
Civitas Accounts 2009

People

• David Green Executive Director
• Robert Whelan Deputy Director
• Stephen Pollard

Academic Advisory Council

• Norman Barry (Chairman) | Brenda Almond (University of Hull) | Barbara Ballis Lal (UCLA) | Peter Collison (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) | Tim Congdon | David Conway (Middlesex University) | Antony Flew | Thomas Griffin | R.M. Hartwell | Dennis O'Keeffe (University of Buckingham) | Robert Pinker (London School of Economics) | Duncan Reekie (University of Witwatersrand) | Peter Saunders | Jim Thornton (University of Nottingham) | James Tooley (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

Trustees

• The Honourable Justin Shaw (Chairman) | Sir Peter Walters (Deputy Chairman) | Dr Philip Brown (Treasurer) | Patrick Barbour | The Hon. Mrs. Silvia Le Marchant | Professor Kenneth Minogue | Douglas Myers CBE | Lord Vinson of Roddam Dene

Patrons and Founder Patrons

• Philip Brown | Lord Craigmyle | Alan T. Gibbs | Thomas Griffin | Douglas Myers CBE

Living Marxism Connections

Several former members of Living Marxism have contributed to Civitas reports. These include:

• Frank Furedi, 'Foreword' in 'The Meaning of Matrimony', Civitas, p.xiii -xiv, June 2013.
• Brendan O'Neill, 'A Liberal Critique of Gay Marriage' in 'The Meaning of Matrimony', Civitas, p.40-55, June 2013.
• Frank Furedi, 'Re‐reading C.P. Snow and His Elusive Search for Authority' in 'From Two Cultures To No Culture', p.61-76, Civitas, March 2009. 
• Frank Furedi & Jennie Bristow, 'Licensed to Hug', Civitas, June 2008.
• Frank Furedi, 'Introduction' in 'The Corruption of the Curriculum', Civitas, p.1-10, June 2007. 

Contact, Affilliations, Resources, Notes

Contact

First Floor
55 Tufton Street
Westminster
London
SW1P 3QL

Formerly of: 10 Storey's Gate, Westminster

Affiliations

• Centre for Social Cohesion – set up by Civitas

Resources

• Laura Brereton and Vilashiny Vasoodaven CIVITAS: Institute for the Study of Civil Society The impact of the NHS market February 2010.
• Civitas and the Media