John Astley: 'The Making of a community'

The Journal has updated us all on the EDDC’s plans for ‘place making’ in Exmouth, which some of you have been involved with. Is this democracy at work? Putting the needs of ‘the Town’ first?

There are certainly elements here of the guidelines for public life set out in 1995 by Nolan; selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. All values that most of us would sign up to, and expect from a local authority like EDDC.

But of course we have been here before haven’t we, with the Localism legislation of 2011, whose big government led slogan was empowering communities to do things their way. In September 2010 Nick Clegg (remember him?) said ‘This government will transform the State, reversing generations of centralisation. Putting power into people’s hands because the job of government is not to run people’s lives. It is to help people to run their own.’ In effect the legislation was more to do with planning law than anything else, and hardly a veto over the excessive power of the State. But Clegg and Cameron made the same erroneous assumptions about ‘community’ that Blair and Brown had made before them, namely that ‘community’ is a thing, a slogan, a branding, that can be created on a plan, rather than ‘on the ground’. Bottom up and not top down, If we know anything about community, it is that it is organic, made over time from the inside over time, by real people with desires, aspirations, hopes and fears, and a life to lead. A set of cultural values which are SOCIAL capital, not personal capital, that emphasises social bonds as a ‘security blanket’ against life’s everyday storms. One of the most obvious aspects of community making is that to make and maintain any community depends on those people having a secure and reasonably well paid job, for the economy, national and local, to be in good shape. Past experiences tells us very clearly that without that basis any number of great schemes and nice amenities will not be enough, even if they were on offer! Given the near bankruptcy of most local government due to decades of deliberate under funding, where is the funding to come from? If the funding comes from the private sector we know what will be offer in Exmouth and on the seafront in particular. Even more accumulation of private wealth rather than public wealth.

I am very aware of just how difficult it is to get people involved, have a voice, make a contribution, this is mainly because we live in a Nation State ethos that tells them to do this and don’t do that. This is one of the reasons for starting the community education column in this paper.

Of course a great deal of what constitutes community is based on nostalgia, an over-reliance on memories of better days, even if that is true and not wishful thinking. But people do dig in and rely on what they know. It has often been said that in many ways ‘community’ is in the mind that than on the ground. But, what is clear that ideals about community making are essential, drawing in the power of imagination to re-think and focus on alternatives to what we have been offered in the past.