“I was playing in the brass band when I was five years old. That’s all gone. And then school, [actually] used to do a music school on Saturday morning for 11-to-18-year-olds. Yeah, that disappeared, the Sure Starts disappeared. Everything’s just horrible because I’m watching… My kids don’t understand it because they never had it. But it hurts me, because I am like, what am I to do.” Millie, quoted in IPPR report, Places to Come Together
As this summer sees the anniversary of the riots across many parts of England in July and August 2024, and more unrest being stirred up by the far right, how can people feel they are being listened to more and feel more empowered?
Places to Come Together
In July the Institute of Public Policy Research published a short paper about how as a society, we need to rebuild those parts of the public realm where people could come together.
The paper talks about the feelings of anger and disconnection that so many people across the country feel and traces their roots back to the disastrous deindustrialisation that took place under Thatcher in the 1980s. The author also notes that, “in the 2010s, these processes were turbocharged by the coincidence of the rise of social media, which increasingly fragmented the public sphere, and austerity, which bore down on shared spaces that gave life to local community: libraries, community hubs, Sure Start centres. For many people, the deterioration of high streets has become the most vivid symbol of a wider, national malaise.”
Welfare Halls and Social Clubs
The report goes on to detail how there were various attempts in the 19th and 20th centuries to create a social democratic world on the coalfields, with mining villages and towns having a Methodist Church and colliery based labour unions which spawned a dense and important organisational infrastructure, whether it was in response to wage theft, dangerous working conditions or shopkeepers charging more than they should have done for basic food stuffs.
In these towns and villages sports clubs were developed along with social clubs, miners’ welfare halls, mechanic institutes and so on with a wide variety of leisure activities including some which gave people who had had to leave school early the opportunity for further education.
It is also noted that the miners after the First World War demanded nationalisation and while the government did not give them this, they did make a counter offer of an additional shilling a day and Importantly the Mining Industry Act of 1920 included the Welfare Fund Clause. Under this law, coal owners had to transfer one pence per ton of coal into a fund for communities for the well-being and recreation of workers in and about the mines. This led to the development of a huge, complex and very supportive welfare infrastructure in the mining areas.
It has also been noted that in our own region, in County Durham the Durham Miners Association, led by what are described as “progressive, liberal Methodists determined to improve the lot of the working class”, developed a network of welfare and leisure facilities throughout the county, to the benefit of the miners and their families.
After the mines closed
After the mines closed it wasn’t long before much of this important social infrastructure began to close as well. The author of the IPPR report notes that this loss of community spaces has had at least three interrelated and significant effects on social life:
- An intensifying sense of decline
- The displacement of politics the radical domestication of existence
- As people have retreated to their homes and families away from community life, so the author argues that, “the changing relation between self, home and public space is infused with a pessimistic mood, as the loss of shared spaces and public amenities comes to function as an index of decline”.
Consequently, people see and feel a sense of decline around them and are then easy prey for those, especially on social media, who want to provide convenient scapegoats, usually in the form of asylum seekers, refugees or other migrants. Yet it is the loss of community assets which has produced this sense of powerlessness and decline and that of course has nothing to do with people coming here from other countries. Rather it has been a result of deliberate neoliberal government policy over the last 40 years or so, particularly since the miners strike of 1984-5.
What should be done
Having detailed what has been going wrong for the last half century or so, the author helpfully outlines ways in which the situation in many of the old coalfield areas can be improved. Unsurprisingly, this includes a return to the community spirit, community values and community life that was developed over the 200 years from the late 18th to the late 20th centuries.
Consequently, the author argues that “the state should endeavour to create, facilitate and maintain spaces where solidarity might thrive.” It is argued that the provision of democratic space allows for community building to take place. And despite the fact that it sometimes seems as if the state cannot do anything positive today, it can. Indeed, “the state can facilitate this through a mix of legislative change and targeted investments, some of which are already under way.”
In 2011, the Localism Act, gave communities the legal right to nominate places like venues, pubs and grounds which can be recognised as ‘assets of community value’, with the intention of them being taken into community ownership. This could be strengthened by the provisions of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill which will see the introduction of genuine community right to buy, with communities being given a 12-month window to get the money needed together.
Jim McMahon, Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution has argued that as communities have economic and cultural assets, so there should be automatic registration for community assets, and their ancillary facilities should be protected (such as car parks, club houses etcetera). This would mean that there can be real interaction between neighbourhoods and councillors as convenors, to make a list of community assets. Owners will be required to tell the public if and when asset is available and notify the community if they are planning on selling, thus triggering the 12-month notice.
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