Britain's Big Lunch aims to bridge big divides amid Jubilee's good spirits

The annual Big Lunch, in which Britons of all walks of life gather to share meals, has been wrapped into Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee festivities this year.

By Ben Arnoldy,?Staff writer / June 5, 2012

Queen Elizabeth II, in carriage, travels along Parliament Street to Buckingham Palace with Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles, after having lunch in Westminster Hall, London, Tuesday, June 5.

Matthew Lloyd/AP

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Across Britain, neighbors are meeting to share a meal during the four days of Queen Elizabeth?s Diamond Jubilee.

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Known as the Big Lunch, the idea is to foster community with some cucumber sandwiches, curry, and conversation. Local volunteers organize the block parties across Britain, with last year?s effort turning out nearly 2 million people.

?I haven?t met people from Turkey before, but ? I met some at this party and they are nice,? says Clarissa Ihenacho, a Nigerian resident of south London attending a neighborhood Big Lunch today.

Ms. Ihenacho says the Turks offered to volunteer at an annual ceremony in London put on by the African community. Sharing each other?s cultures, she says, "That?s what it?s all about, isn?t it??

By incorporating the annual Big Lunch into the jubilee, the palace joins successive British governments and parts of civil society who have tried to improve social cohesion in the country. However, what?s driving people apart and how to bring them together again remain heavily disputed in Britain, undercutting many but the most uncontroversial efforts like the Lunch.

?We?re a society of ever decreasing circles. Most of us just meet and hang out with people like ourselves, and we don?t cross many class barriers or indeed racial or religious barriers,? says Phillip Blond, one of the intellectual architects for Prime Minister David Cameron?s social cohesion program called the Big Society.

The reason communities are fragmenting, argues Mr. Blond, is that people reach out and rely on the family and neighbors around them less as the state and the private sector have grown larger and more centralized.

?The state has destroyed the indigenous horizontal relationships of those at the bottom and replaced them with dependency, vertical-type relationships,? says Blond. ?Markets have [also] served to concentrate power.?

Is Big Society to blame?

While conservatives traditionally champion privatizing state services, Big Society initiatives try to tap local charities, community co-ops, and volunteer groups to take over some state services. The stated goal: empowering locals.

Some of the initiatives include giving residents in state-subsidized housing and doctors within the national health system more control over how state funds are spent. It also opens up programs like prisoner rehabilitation to charity and church groups.

The program has coincided with deep cuts in government spending in response to the global recession. Labour leader Ed Miliband has criticized the Big Society, saying the government is ?cynically attempting to dignify its cuts agenda by dressing up the withdrawal of support with the language of reinvigorating civic society.?

Some on Britain?s left agree that divisions are worsening in Britain, but pin the blame on weakened trade unions, worsening income inequality, and government cuts that take away possibilities for social mobility.

Recent public spending cuts have also decimated the very volunteer groups that the government hoped would step in to take over public services.

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