There are plenty of good examples of community in Britain today.  Newer forms of community (like social networking), jostle with the more traditional forms to be found at the school gate, at church, through Neighbourhood Watch schemes and through neighbourliness of all kinds.

But there is much less true community than there once was and social isolation is one of the characteristics of our day (see Why Community? for statistics on this).   ‘Local community’, in particular, is more of a phrase than a reality in most people’s lives.   What contact there is, with wonderful exceptions, is mostly superficial.   Often, it is non-existent.

Why has this happened?  What are the forces that have driven us apart?

Doing what comes naturally

It is worth noting that, given half a chance, communities do naturally form and, if necessary, re-form.  The last two hundred or so years, since the birth of industrialization, are the only ones in history in which the traditional village or small town community has not been the all-embracing basis of society.   Yet, even with the onset of industrialization and urbanization, stories abound of the genuine communities formed, for example, in London’s East End slums or Welsh mining villages with their colliery bands and male-voice choirs, where poverty and deprivation actually bought people together.   So, community can more than survive urbanization.

In more recent decades, however, something unprecedented has been happening.  The need for belonging, the fact of living together in neighbourhoods, the things we still have in common – these things have not had the uniting effect they typically did even in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

What doesn’t seem to be the case is that we no longer like the idea of community. In a Uturn UK doorstep survey of 100 homes in Harborne, Birmingham, no less than 98% said they would "welcome an increase in community spirit" in their street.  Many will express sadness that “no one seems to care a toss for anyone else anymore”; and, while shyness reigns on most occasions, there are moments – for example when it starts tipping down with rain at the bus stop – that the mask of reserve slips, people do start chatting to one another and people enjoy, albeit briefly, a momentary experience of community.  Another example is the way in which street parties abounded for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, although less so for the Golden Jubilee in 2002 – partly because of the new requirement of public liability insurance!

But for most of us, genuine local community is now a rare enough experience.  We mostly get on with life, with those ‘with whom we have to do’ – and we are reluctant to ‘impose’ on others if there is no obvious connection.  Why, then, has a natural tendency towards local community largely ceased to produce good fruit in our day?

The community killers

We want to suggest seven key changes to society that have, between them, served to drive us apart.

1.      The weakening of family

Families do still exist and often flourish!  But the family has been seriously weakened, and not just the nuclear family (with 40% of children seeing their parents split up by the age of 15), but also the extended family.  Where once children would have grown up surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, this is no longer the norm.  Children, in this sense, no longer typically grow up in what one might call a ‘crowd of belonging’, being loved and appreciated by those in whose affections they hold a special place.  This base of security helped children to be confident in their identity and easy in their socialising.  It gave rise to the skills of socialising and introduced each member of the family to wider circles, as your cousin’s friend became your friend and so on – and the generations naturally mixed, too.  Our relative isolation (to coin a phrase!) can for the less extroverted plant the seeds of isolation early in life.

2.      The weakening of church

Something similar can be said for the decline in church-going, as the church represented the other ‘family’, to which people routinely belonged.  The idea of a church community as family was supported by the doctrine that all had the same father in heaven and were therefore brothers and sisters here on earth, creating an ‘ethic’ actually helped to induce a sense of belonging and a sense of responsibility one to another, across the local community as a whole.  At the same time, the ceremonies of the church (such as Harvest, Remembrance Sunday, Easter etc) helped to anchor the community in its sense of togetherness, sharing a common life and a common ‘story’.

3.      The strengthening of consumerism

The loss of family and church community has left a vacuum where there was once a ready sense of identity.  That vacuum has been filled in part by consumerism, and its powerful subliminal message that we define ourselves in terms of what we have, rather than who we are – an insecurity fueled by constant exploitation by those who hope to make money from it.  Consumerism brings a competitive spirit to society, where the need to have the latest and the best is all about comparing ourselves with others and hoping to outshine them; as such, it tends to drive people apart.  It is innately competitive.  The ‘me’ society (“because you’re worth it”) by definition puts the spotlight on ‘myself’, while the engine of community was to put the spotlight is on others and on the group as a whole.

4.      The effects of market economics

Economics produces many influences.   Moving long distances to find work or to further one’s career means leaving one’s friends and starting again; a mobile community is a difficult one to make gel.  Meanwhile, economies of scale have often removed the personal touch (e.g. you see a different GP each time, a different person at the supermarket check-out), diminishing the links that would germinate into community.  Most women now work, whereas a generation or two ago most didn’t.  This has massively reduced the amount of routine investment of time into most neighbourhoods.   Meanwhile, in another economic change, the welfare state may have guaranteed a level of economic autonomy, but it has at the same time removed the apparent need for us to look after one-another.

5.      The seeds of distrust

Over the last two generations, rising crime, violence, vandalism and anti-social behaviour have been a high profile back-cloth to society.  Even where some kinds of crime have fallen, the fear of crime has kept rising as the media fueled the sense of threat and indulged the culture of fear produced by violent dramas, aggressive music and video games.  The result has been a loss of trust, locked doors, a fear of going out, anxiety about groups of youngsters, and a general sense that that world is an unfriendly place.  Not the best back-drop for developing community spirit!

6.      The growth of palliatives

The tendency we have to separate off from one-another is aggravated by aspects of modern life that make isolation more bearable.  Television is one palliative (described as their main ‘company’ by nearly half of older people – 4.6 million of them), and with the younger generations FaceBook is another, with these social networking sites for some expressing real friendship but for others often falling well short of the real thing (“not like having a real relationship”[1]).  Constant entertainment and constant busyness (e.g. mobile phones incessantly demanding one’s attention, wall-to-wall music on iPods, computer games etc) can also be an escape mechanism for those who find it hard to face their unhappiness, and a mask to hide it from others.

7.      The loss of social skills

As true local community fades, so do the social skills that it generates.  It is notable how often young people that do get together prefer relative ‘safety’ of watching a movie together (involving a minimum of real interaction); or else many choose the even more distant medium of social-networking (generally operating at a highly superficial and low-risk level on FaceBook etc); or are in need of alcohol, cocaine or whatever other ‘enhancement’ they can find to help them find the relaxation and freedom with others that they otherwise lack.

The search for identity

The growth of gang culture is one sign of a pathological need for identity and belonging, displaced from where they were once found.  These gangs can act as a sort of surrogate ‘family’ and the same need to belong appears to be behind much of the ‘tribalism’ involved in football-team support and indeed in music tastes, where you are into ‘grunge’, or ‘house’, or ‘techno’, or ‘trance’ and are specifically not into the alternatives – and where you position yourself with that group of people, wear what they wear and take on a group identity that is unique to your ‘set’.   These expressions of ‘belonging’ are signs of deep alienation – often a cry from the heart from people who lack a deeper sense of identity that comes from being part of a loving family and a supportive community.

Interest groups have also risen to fill the vacuum and for some people these can replace community and, again, become a surrogate family.  But they will tend to attract the extroverted and the activists, leaving out the shy, the insecure and the house-bound, even though it is they who have the most obvious need of social support.  What was once special about family and neighbourhood was that a kind of community existed where everyone was included.   You owed your place in the extended family to the fact that you were born part of it.  There was no test of looks or charm to earn you admission; it provided a secure context from which you could look outwards.  The same, to a large extent, was true of the local neighbourhood, where everyone was a joint responsibility, and the vulnerable ones especially so.  The ethic of ‘love thy neighbour’ extended to all and “I haven’t seen Mrs Jones today – I wonder if she’s OK”, provided a context of belonging that applied to the weakest members of our society most of all.  It is this core sense of belonging and mutual responsibility that we are seeking to recreate through Street Associations.