Big Society

Family businesses – the key to the Big Society?

December 25, 2011

Family businesses could be the missing link in Macintyre’s thinking. Done right, they are proper, modern businesses that also foster community. My prediction for 2012 is that as the communitarians get their claws into the politicians, we’ll hear far more about family business in their speeches.

Anybody who has ever drunk a pint in a pub in Kent will know what year the brewer Shepherd Neame was founded – 1698. The number is all over their beer bottles and pub-signs. There’s another number that also tells a story about the business: 1,500. That’s how many people it employs. It also uses hundreds of local suppliers and contributes to local charities. The business is rooted in its local community, and couldn’t be otherwise.