"Community gun"

The Independent reports on 23rd September that:
'"Community Gun" used in murder after pub row'. A .22 calibre rifle used to kill a Bristol man was hidden in bushes as a "community gun" to use as needed. This gives a whole new meaning to term "community asset"

Arun Kundnani in his tremendous book "The end of tolerance: racism in 21st Century Britain" sets out the new relationship between the individual and the state better than I have seen it done anywhere else.

If there is a breakdown of society (as Cameron as well as New Labour so often claim) it is because of the ascendancy of a globalised capitalism which fractures the remaining semblance of a welfare state and systematically excludes individuals by creating an underclass who are then blamed for all the ills of society: "the well being of social groups is no longer the responsibility of the state: its responsibility is to maximise the choices available to individuals. Market states engage in a Dutch auction for foreign investment, offering ever-worsening protection for their populations in the name of 'competitiveness'. Public servives shift from welfare provision to a focus on 'enabling' individuals to re-enter the labour market, through 'welfare to work' programmes ....... Welfare rights are diminished while the responsibility of welfare recipients to adapt themselves to market demands is increased... and if markets cannot find a use for an individual, then neither can society. Insecurity and vulnerability are the hallmarks of this new order, in which entire communities can be socially abandoned by the state to poverty, low-level violence and disorder. In Britain, these abandoned communities - whether marked out by race or class - are entirely disenfranchsed by the market-state and can no longer be held together by traditional working-class or immigrant culture. It is the children of this underclass, disdained as 'chavs' and 'hoodies', who are being imprisoned in their thousands under powers to tackle 'anti-social behaviour'.

It is here that we can see why attempts by New Labour and others to make these so-called "communities" cohesive simply miss the point at best and end up blaming the victims at worst. Community development work that (as it so often does) fails to confront the real causes of this fracturing of society ends up with the half baked analyses of "the New East End" where recently arrived migrants and their alleged dependence on a welfare state that preceded and 'was not designed for them' are identified as the cause rather than the result of the problem.

The language of New Labour - substituting "social exclusion" for poverty and setting forward "community cohesion" as a balm for all the (now) unspoken and unmentionable issues of class, racism and economic inequality - may have worked in a time of relative affluence but will no longer wash as we move decisively into a serious recession.

Atlantis revisited

Ever since the Ancient Greeks lamented the loss of the mythical state of Atlantis, humans have been looking to the past with rosy tinted glasses and indeed "harping back to a golden age". Current discussions of the "broken society" (as Mark Lawson points out in todays Guardian) are riddled with this kind of nostalgia for a utopian past that never actually existed. Much modern sociology and political discourse is permeated with this notion that society and community is declining as we lose contact with the essential values of this perfect past.

It is not just Tory thinking that is riddled with this nostalgia for purity or "community". Michael Young's descriptions of the East End of London are a prime example of this tendency. Far from being a forward looking and emancipatory approach to society his approach harbours a deeply conservative ideology (or even theology) similar to that commonly expressed in the Tory hatred of the "permissive society of the 60s". This approach can easily descend into a disdain for all aspects of modernity and a desire whether in Christianity or Islam for a return to the fundamentals.

At its worst this essentialist yearning for a pure and perfect past becomes the engine driving racism and xenophobia. Indeed it is arguable that in Michael Young's last book, the New East End (which I criticise earlier in the blog) this tendency to blame the new-comer is manifest even in a book which purports to come from a liberal left position.

The notion that there is something inherently modern about current issues like knife or gang crime or "social breakdown" (as it is often called) is arrant nonsense. The notion that poor parenting has only suddenly and recently created a generation of children without moral boundaries shouldn't be able to survive even a cursory reading of Dickens or Dostoeyevsky. Were it not for this desire to decry the hard and contingent facts of the present and to prettify and idealise the past we might actually begin to see more of what is actually going on in the world now. Instead politicians and pundits are busy creating a fantasy world where even nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

The notion set out in Maggie Jackson's book "Distracted: the Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age" is as Mark Lawson points out riddled with this "invocation of a lost, and by insinuation better, society". The internet, emails, iPods and other convenience tools are just this - tools. They can be used do a huge range of things, some positive, some negative, some neutral. The notion that it is these tools that are robbing us of the ability to think, converse, concentrate and create is a confusion of the tools themselves and how we use or abuse them. After all, the Catholic Church said exactly the same about the early printing press. Rather it is how we use them and what we use them for - how we organise and understand their (and our own roles) in society that really matters.

I wonder whether the point of this nostalgia, this lament for "community" is that it is a superbly effective way of diverting our attention. It stops us addressing the real relations of power and privilege that provide a rather more sensible explanation for the way in which different societies actually evolve and develop, whether in positive or negative directions.

For a fascinating discussion from a Muslim perspective on the notion of community and Ummah (the global Islamic “community”) see the blogsite Indigo Jo for Feb 12 2007 “an attack on the idea of community”. Having said that one of the punchiest posts in response to the discussions was presumably from a non Muslim:

“What is a community but a bunch of people with a common contempt for people who don't share their common delusions or prejudices?”

John Pitts, the eminent criminologist throws interesting light on the proliferation of youth crime and gang culture (Watching the boys in the bands – Society Guardian 4/6/08). He rightly shows that these developments are actually the result of increasing inequality rather than any fanciful notions of a lack of social capital. Characteristically he abjures cosy talk of a breakdown of communities – indeed he asserts that communities are part of the problem not the solution: “in a society with growing wealth inequality, the disenfranchised are not simply going to lie down and do nothing.” But “who in New Labour dares to say that it requires massive state intervention and may indeed need a redistribution of wealth”? Giving people skills and returning them to the market is not going to work – after all it was the market that caused the problem in the first place. Offered the alternative of pulling in £100,000 a year or more in the crack business or working in McDonalds or even as a lorry driver is hardly an enticing prospect.

The Government’s recurring pledge to “empower” communities to help solve their own gang problems is treated with healthy disdain and as a way of blaming the victim yet again: “I’m not a great fan of community … I think it’s a bad idea. If you live in a community where everybody knows each other, it’s one of the reasons you get shot. The places where I’m doing my research, everybody knows each other. Jesus, that’s part of the problem”. Building social capital is therefore far from the answer and tight nit communities are certainly not the panacea for gang violence that politicians would like to pretend. Pitts argues that the least troublesome places to live – leafy, middle class suburban enclaves – are good places not because of strong community ties but because they are populated by “lightly engaged strangers”.

As Pitts says: “the invocation to community is always about the restoration of … some golden age – but when was that?” Young people who are embedded in the local status and reputation-driven world of gang culture (which sadly gives them more value than they get from the “market”) find it increasingly difficult to get out of their predicament: Pitts tells of interviewing kids who say “I want to do that but I couldn’t round here. I want to step out but can’t”.

Yet again, New Labour’s attempts at answers for these problems lead in entirely the wrong direction because of the way they fetishise this notion of community and seek to avoid any real challenge to the status quo. Inequality and wealth distribution as the real causes are edited out of the picture by virtue of the language of community and cohesion.

Well I'm sorry to say I told you so! If you want confirmation of just how toxic the notion of "community" can be in the wrong hands, just look at the nine BNP councillors recently elected in Stoke-on-Trent who are using classic "community development" approaches to establish themselves in the area. Says Alby Walker the BNP Group Leader: "the BNP Councillors are good hardworking grassroots councillors who are real community champions". according to the Guardian (Labour's lost ground 28/05/08) "community champions" is Walkers favourite piece of vocabulary. Says Michael Tappin, the former Labour Group leader and MEP: "the men and women of the BNP look like your neighbours... they are respectable. It's impossible to demonise them. They wear suits, they look tidy". On the estates where the BNP has established itself, there are to all intents and purposes virtually no black or ethnic minority residents (census returns show just 1.9% from BME communities). Nevertheless in the last twenty years "some say that Stoke's white working class has become and underclass". Labour has effectively abandoned the residents of these areas. As Tappin says: "Labour has not offered people a vision of how to get out of deindustrialisation, how to get its 42,000 residents on benefits back into work. It's put sticking plasters on instead of wholesale reform".

It is the nostalgic and idealised sense of community that has been such a gift for the BNP and that has allowed them a way of "getting into communities". Walker, says the Guardian, "offers a pungent mix of nostalgia and conspiratorial claims about immigrants and Islam". The BNP's most effective leaflet says Walker proudly reads "Hanley 70 years ago" above a montage of photos of the church tower, pottery kilns and smiling housewives. "Is this what you want for our city centre?" its says below, next to a silhouette of mosques and a picture of three women in niqab" etc. etc. Walker confidently expects the BNP to come to power in the city in five years. Tappin from Labour thinks it will be more like three.

It is not easy to see quite how communitarian notions of "bridging social capital" are going to be of any use here - there is virtually no different or minority group to bridge with. What is needed instead is a political camapign that challenges inequalities at national, regional and local level: that seeks to build real and positive solidarity rather than BNP tribalism. A reawakening of the progressive Labour movement of the past might be difficult but at the very least an attempt by local and national Labour to create real jobs allowing for a serious union-based alternative to the currently moribund Labour Party might be the only thing that could succeed. What chance of this under New Labour?

Community cohesion is a con! They don't even believe in it themselves!

Community cohesion is a deeply ideological notion. It is the soft side of the Government's war on terror. However when New Labour tries to explain what they mean by it - vague notions of trust and social bonding and bridging, "the glue that holds communities together", "meaningful conversations for at least 15 minutes with people of a different ethnic group", community anchors in each neighbourhood etc. - the only thing that becomes clear is their own lack of clarity, coherence and consistency.

If New Labour really believed in what they call these unifying and empowering "social anchors" where people can meet as a "community" then how can we explain their mania for closing such spaces down? In fact the only explanation is that they don't really believe in community cohesion themselves - or at least not to the degree that their own definition of it has a real place in their wider policy direction. Simon Jenkins sees this clearly in his Guardian article ("Closure mania ignores the real cost of axing post offices" 19/3/08) where he points out that "the state's pursuit of shortsighted savings is ripping the heart from communities. No wonder Britain is up in arms". He traces the importance of the rural Post Office directly back to that nostalgia for a vanished world, a "sense of community" which is so quintessentially Middle English: "The village post office evokes the age of Hovis and prison mailbags, of bicycle clips and little red vans. It is the Miss Marple public service, the acceptable face of nationalised industry". Whatever one thinks of his nostalgia for a disappearing world or his views of nationalised industries, he has a point about the contradictory approach of the Government. It is not just post offices. In the past 10 years the number of police stations fell by over 20% and a further 40 are threatened, including 13 in London. Local "community anchors" such as district and cottage hospitals and local schools are disappearing faster than ever before. Changes to legal aid funding are about to decimate local advice agencies such as Law Centre and CABx. As Jenkins says: "there is no way of measuring the impact on communities of thus ripping out their institutional memories and meeting places. It must be savage". The Government, he says, is turning communities "into bleak, car-reliant dormitories, devoid of places of casual association". Local people buy into the notion of community even more than the Government do and are quite capable of using this notion against New Labour who are so confused by where they stand on this all. He notes that: "Hazel Blears, the so-called communities minister, has not lifted a finger in protest. Yet having voted for hospital closures, she herself turned tail and campaigned against them when they hit her Salford constituency".

So much for "places of casual association" as a vital part of community cohesion. There are other even more fundamental inconsistencies which New Labour so hates to have drawn to its attention. Quite how private and religious schools promote community cohesion is a question that half frightens them to death. How such "cohesion" can survive the increases in relative inequlity between the poorest and the richest in our society and the increasing death of social mobility is a question that they refuse to discuss. Of course they are very happy to blame this breakdown of "community cohesion" on too many immigrants who refuse to integrate. And here lies the latent xenophobia and racism that lies at the core of this incoherent and dangerous view of the world.

And above all DON'T MENTION THE WAR. You can level as much bile and blame as you like against violent and fundamentalist muslim jihadis. What you are not allowed to say is that the radicalisation of so many muslims (and the "breakdown of community cohesion") is a direct response to our Foreign policy and the millions of dead, injured and displaced muslims in an illegal war.