• The Observer
  Comment & Analysis 11.08.19 45

The good old days?

Look deeper and

the myth of ideal

communities fades

As studies of kinship

show, many people were

glad to escape the strains

of close-knit living

I n the countdown to a

possible no- deal exit from the

EU, there are some who cling to

an optimistic narrative that our

community spirit will get us through.

Indeed, recent experiences in Whaley

Bridge lend some support to the

idea that in a crisis community is

revealed. The irony is that, in part, the

whole Brexit project has been fed by

an inchoate, but powerful, sense of

nostalgia for community lost.

There is nothing new about this

longing for a past “golden age”

of community. For at least two

centuries, writers such as Coleridge,

Ruskin and TS Eliot have compared

their own fragmented, hedonistic

and selfi sh times with an imagined

earlier age of social harmony and

“community” (indeed, a medievalist

colleague assures me that, in the

early eighth century, the ageing Bede

took a similar view of developments

in Anglo-Saxon England).

Stories about close-knit

communities resonate because they

are so much part of the fabric of who

we think we, or our grandparents ,

were. Nostalgia is sedimented into

our consciousness at three levels:

through reminiscences retold within

families , through fi lm and television

plot lines and through public

discourse in its myriad forms.

Romanticised togetherness and

community have been a staple of

British soap operas since Granada’s

fi rst visits to Coronation Street in

1960. Arguably, the blueprint for
      this heart warming story of urban
      community was Michael Young
      and Peter Willmott’s 1957 Family
      and Kinship in East London. This
      classic study bec ame a staple text
      for would-be social workers, selling
      more than half a million copies.
      It contrasted the cosy, tight-knit
      communities of post war Bethnal
      Green with the social anomie that
      supposedly dominated life on new,
      out-of-town housing estates.
      Young and Willmott wrote with
      a laudable purpose: to halt the
      wholesale destruction of urban
      neighbourhoods and family
      networks by postwar slum clearance
      schemes, but their arguments
      helped to codify a deeply unhelpful,
      romanticised picture of “traditional
      community”. The authors insisted
      that “very few people wish to leave
      the East End. They are attached to
      Mum and Dad, to the markets, to the
      pubs and settlements” and argued
      that those who did make the move
      switched “from a people-centred to
      a house-centred existence”, where
      “relations are window to window, not
      face to face”.
      However, my recent research,
      based on re reading the notes from
      Young’s original interviews in
      Bethnal Green, alongside material
      gathered from hundreds of other
      similar encounters across post war
      England, suggests a different
      picture. What we hear, instead, are
      contemporaries testifying to the
      fragile, conditional and at times

coercive sense of lived community.

In 1947, a Bermondsey labourer

told the anthropologist Raymond

Firth that living in fl ats was “like a

country village – anything happens

everyone knows it”. His answer

was simple: “We keep ourselves

to ourselves and then we can’t get

into trouble.” Similarly, Mrs Kimber,

a widow with seven children, told

Young that poverty meant she was

unable to move to the suburbs, but

she insisted that it had nothing to

do with being “afraid of being cut

off from people, as [you are] better

off if you keep yourself to yourself”.

It was clearly a local common place

because Young wrote “Again!” in his

notes. Mrs Quail, a young mother of

two, offered a different version of the

same homily about protecting one’s

privacy, telling Young her motto was:

“Don’t mix up with the neighbours.

Just pass the time of day, that’s all.”

But this did not mean that there

was no such thing as “community”.

Privacy might be jealously guarded,

and relations with neighbours could

be fraught, but poverty and proximity

did encourage people to look out

for one another – it was a type of

informal mutual insurance.

Perhaps the most powerful

account of community in action

I found when researching Me, Me, Me?

The Search for Community in Post-

war England concerned a barman

from Bermondsey explaining the

local custom of whip -rounds to a

New Zealand-born anthropologist.

Speaking in 1947, he described how,

if a local was bereaved or otherwise

in need, everyone would be asked

to contribute two shillings (10p), or

“what they can”, to help. When the

collection was complete, a list of

donors would be posted at the bar

and the money handed over “without

fuss”. My fi rst reaction was: “Eureka,

this is community.” And indeed it

was – complete with its hidden

coercive edge. The list of donors was

not just protection against fraud. As

the barman explained, if someone

declined to contribute, or refused to

be helped, they “wouldn’t belong”.

Wariness of neighbours and

concern for domestic privacy

represented defence mechanisms

against the coercive, controlling sides

of close-knit living. As the British

social and cultural historian Mark

Clapson has shown, millions leapt at

the opportunity to escape the close-

quartered, face-to-face communities

of Victorian Britain, where everyone

knew each other’s business, as soon

as they were able. This was not a

rejection of community per se , rather,

it represented an attempt to fi nd

new ways of living better suited to

the modern world. In the process,

community became increasingly

personal and voluntary, based

on genuine affection rather than

proximity or need.

It is the persistence of this

urge for social connection that offers

some hope that society may ride out

the storms of Brexit. It is important

not to fi xate on the anger and hatred

broadcast daily into our homes

in the name of adding “reality” to

news stories. Yes, we are a nation

divided. But precisely because Brexit

is causing rifts within families,

most people go to great lengths to

avoid it bringing them into confl ict

with friends and neighbours. When

Grayson Perry made the Channel 4

programme Divided Britain , what was

striking was not just that the Remain

and Leave pots he created from

crowd-sourced suggestions had so

much in common, but so too did the

participants from the rival “tribes”.

All is not lost. If we abandon

vague aspirations to rediscover an

idealised vision of community that

never existed and focus instead

on small-scale, practical initiatives

to foster social connection and

understanding, we stand a chance of

weathering the present crisis with

our social fabric intact. But it would

certainly help if politicians on all

sides grasped how high the stakes

are for us all.

Jon Lawrence teaches history at the

University of Exeter and is the author

of Me, Me, Me? The Search for

Community in Post-war England

published by Oxford University Press

An East End street in June 1956

was the photograph used on

the front of the book Family

and Kinship in East London.

Harry Kerr/Getty

Jon

Lawrence

11

4m

1

47:03

The Audit

Abbey

Road

Last week marked

the 50th anniversary

of the Beatles’

classic album photo

It was the group’s

11th studio album

17

tracks on

Abbey Road

The number of copies

sold within the fi rst

two months of release

Position
on the UK
albums
chart and
US billboard
chart in 1969 The duration
of the album
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