Anti-social enterprise

By Erika Rushton for Ethos magazine: issue 13| October 2020

When is a social enterprise not a social enterprise? When it’s an anti-social enterprise, boom, boom.

At Kindred we set out, pre-pandemic, to grow the impact of socially-trading organisations. With funding approval still pending, we hadn’t quite boxed off our definition. We knew what we meant: those people and projects that set out to solve a problem, improve a place, earn a living while caring for kids, or elders, or others; or those who wanted to prove to themselves and their mates that minimum wage, less appreciation, isn’t the only option.

When the pandemic hit, and a £6.5m approval came through, we gained a lot of LinkedIn friends who’d previously run‘commercial’ companies. They thought the post-pandemic era might be a good time to set up a social enterprise. ‘What about your existing business?’ I asked ‘Oh, that’s for profit’ they answered. Pssst, it may be a well-kept secret, but social enterprises make a profit too. The difference is that most share it more equitably and reinvest in their communities.

The pandemic, like an algorithm, accentuated our behaviours. Introverts isolated, extroverts Zoomed, providers stocked up and wanna-be commanders assumed control.

In UK law, a company is considered to be a legal person, with rights and obligations and a unique, corporate personality. And corporate personalities were accentuated by pandemic pressure, too.

If we can issue an ASBO to a person — and, in law, companies are people — does it follow that they should have their anti-social behaviour restricted too? Here in Liverpool, we have form. 150 years ago, when we appointed the UK’s first ever Public Health Officer, Dr Duncan, he joined Thomas Fresh, Inspector of Nuisances. It took the rest of the UK until 1998 to introduce Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, to tackle those ‘persistently acting in a manner that causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons.’

I think we have some pretty persistent antisocial corporate behaviour that’s come to the fore over the last months…

Imagine slapping an injunction on the courier who persists in delivering small items in large cardboard boxes, within boxes, swaddled in multi-layered single use plastic bubble-wrap in an oversized diesel van?

How about an ASBO for the pharmaceutical companies who only test their drugs on men — and then sell medicines known to harm woman, to women? Or an ASBO for the medical practitioners who let 25% more Black women die in pregnancy than white women, or persistently prescribe them 50% less pain relief?

Harassment is in there too. Bosses who consistently require the flattery of younger staff, or the compliance of older ones — who cement their status with overwork and unfair pay. Surely they deserve to be part of an electronic tagging system?

See, also: thoughtless and malicious behaviours. We might consider a restraining order on the supermarket which, having raked in the profits through the pandemic, chose the end of lockdown to end its contracted cleaners, expecting existing staff to absorb the work.

Or the persistent offenders who contract to build hospitals, track and trace or supply PPE? But, when they don’t deliver, are allowed another, and another.

At our most recent Kindred Conversation, we asked members ‘WTF is an STO?’ STOs come in all shapes and sizes and are easy to spot by their actions, but there are many more — the vast majority of small and local businesses earn a living, contribute to communities, reinvest their profits in the business and pay their taxes. We called them Pro-Social.

But there are also those who persistently act in a manner that causes harassment, alarm or distress. We called them Anti-Social.

All businesses should aim to be social. Until then, we’ll be looking for an Inspector of Corporate Nuisance and issuing ASBOs.

Erika Rushton is director of Creative Economist — working as part of the founding team of Kindred, offering new forms of money and peer-to-peer support to socially-trading organisations in Liverpool City Region. She also works with Islington Mill Arts Club and Haford Housing.