My community is far from broken

By Darren Jones / @darrenpjones

On the night of the Marr interview with Blair and the Channel 4 leadership hustings I, perhaps somewhat begrudgingly, had to be in the community public hall for a 7PM Annual General Meeting. Now whilst I have the pleasure of Sky+ to record such programmes, the prospect of a community AGM is never a truly exciting one – a small group of people in a large hall, rich tea biscuits, adoption of an annual report, confirmation of minutes and the like. Hardly as exciting as hearing from Tony Blair after three years of silence, or so I thought.

The meeting I was at was the AGM of an organisation called the Shirehampton Community Action Forum, of which I’m a trustee. SCAF is an interesting organisation that provides a flexible structure based on community organising that supports local residents to group together and campaign on issues as they come and go. We have action groups on the environment (‘Shire Greens’), children’s play areas, community safety and targeted positive activities for young people in need of support. The action group model allows for groupings to form and disband as issues come to our community and go when success is reaped from our campaigning. SCAF also provides an apolitical, independent body from which community opinion can be channelled to decision makers.

The point to this introduction is to show that, in my community at least, the community is far from broken. Yes we have our social problems, yes we have people who need support and yes we need better facilities too, but the community that I was born in and now help to organise in is a prime example of the ‘Big Society’; except, of course, that SCAF has been present for many years and funded and supported by central government money provided by the Labour governments of 2001-2010. The irony we now face is that the advocates of the ‘Big Society’ – namely the coalition government – are calling for major cuts in local spending which may result in cuts to our main income stream from the local authority. The Big Society leaders in Westminster may cause our very own broken Britain in my community – for the young people who will no longer get the support they need, for the organisers who motivate the community who need central support from us and for the community at large who distrust the decision making organisations.

But there’s more besides. During the meeting I had the pleasure of hearing from our community leaders (the heads of our action groups) who lead the community projects and their volunteers “on the ground”. The community safety group reported that crime in the community had significantly reduced over the previous year’s allowing the deployment of resources to tackle other, previously ignored, areas of concern. The young people’s group talked of the numerous young people supported into education, training or employment and the positive relationship they’ve built with the PCSOs who work in Shirehampton. The environmental group spoke of the successful campaign to save a green space for the area and its plans to organise a sustainability campaign in the community. The playgroup volunteers celebrated their success in organising young mums in the community to successfully get funding to install and update new playground facilities for their children.

The list went on and on as I sat in the far corner with my rich tea biscuit and squash, inspired by the energy and the unpaid, driven commitment of the members of the community who volunteer their time for their community and for nothing more; the original concern of missing the Blair interview fading into recent history.

The evening proved one thing for me – regardless of the revelations in Blair’s book, regardless of the factional fighting between the leadership candidate teams and indeed regardless of who wins the leadership of the Labour Party – I’m proud of our record in government over the last 13 years, I’m proud and inspired by the power of the people in my community and I’m very much looking forward to electing our leader and taking the fight to the total con that is the ‘progressive’ and ‘fair’ direction of the coalition government.