The renegades within our communities

I've been involved with community activism in one form or another for over twenty years. The one thing I've learned from that experience is that it only takes a few rogue individuals in a community to have a disproportionate impact on morale and the general sense of well-being. Were it not for decades of neo-liberal ideology and the consequent rise of atomisation and selfishness, it would be relatively easy to deal with these rogue elements. While there is still a yearning among many people for a sense of community and belonging, enough damage has been done to allow these rogue elements to carry on with their destructive behaviour without the fear of being apprehended.

These are the people that back in my Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) days, we called the 'renegades within'. People who have no appreciation of what a community is about, let alone any sense of responsibility or obligation towards it. People who will take what they can get away with but who give absolutely nothing back.

My days in the IWCA were twenty years ago. The question is, have things got worse since then, if so, why? Twenty years ago, social media was in its infancy. Bad news about behaviour and issues on estates didn't spread in the way it does now. Yes, there were plenty of issues to deal with back then as there are now. The thing about now is that it could be argued that issues on an estate tend to get amplified via the means of social media. This amplification acts as a kind of feedback loop where the perpetrators, seeing the impact their actions have on people commenting on social media, are emboldened to do more and worse. When you add the toxic influence of some rogue social media influencers into the mix, it's hardly surprising that things are actually getting worse. It's not just a perception, it's sadly a fact. There's a lot that has been and could be written about the impact of social media - I could go on about this for a long time! This paragraph is just putting a few brief thoughts out there for discussion.

Then there were the impacts of the Covid 'crisis' lockdowns. Impacts we're only just starting to really understand. Impacts that will last decades. As we've mentioned a few times before, the disaffected kids whose lives could have been turned around by intensive, one to one interventions, didn't get that. This was a direct consequence of the restrictions and guidelines all aimed at limiting direct face to face, real life contact. Rather than having their lives turned around, they were left to their own devices. That ranged from absorbing some very dodgy influences on social media through to being left to roam the streets. They had no positive role models to look to for inspiration. As we said in this piece - There's a certain brittleness in the air 30.11.23 - we're starting to feel the impact of this on the streets and on the estates:

A combination of a cohort of disaffected youth, communities that feel they have been left behind and a social and political culture where certain issues can't be openly discussed because of so called 'sensitivities' is a potent recipe for trouble. The blindness of the Left and a number of anarchists when it comes to the need for an open and honest discussion about certain community issues, plus their denial of the adverse impact of the Covid 'crisis' lockdowns and restrictions, is a real problem when it comes to finding a solution. We're talking about an attitude which will not only prolong, but will also serve to exacerbate the situation we find ourselves in.

There's a certain section of the populace who have not only become more self centered and inconsiderate towards each other since lockdown, they've also become less amenable to any form of meaningful engagement with the community at large. Not wanting to go into great detail at this stage but, we've had direct experience of that with certain elements refusing to even acknowledge, let alone respect what we're trying to achieve with the community vegetable plot we're involved with where we live in Keynsham. The same applies to pretty much any community group involved with litter picking as we wrote here a few years ago - The renegades within...again! 27.12.21 - when we were living back in Essex:

The scumbags who dumped this rubbish have no understanding of what community means, let alone any sense of obligation towards it. They’re a product of the times we live in where the sense of community is being undermined by a climate of greed and atomisation. Fortunately, there are still many people who value being in a community and will do what they can to maintain it. However, there are enough people slipping through who seem to think they can do as they please, regardless…

Fly-tipping is a low level assault on the community. There should be no hiding place for the renegades responsible for this action. They need to learn that their anti-social actions will have adverse consequences for them. It’s the only way they’ll learn and mend their ways…

It does seem that over the last four years, there has been further erosion of the bonds that maintain community solidarity and cohesion. Okay, all is not yet lost but, it feels like it's a lot more of a struggle to keep a community project going in the face of increasing atomisation, indifference and sometimes, outright hostility. It would be all too easy to walk away from what we're trying to achieve, keep our heads down and live a quiet life. We could do that but, the shittiness of living in an ever more atomised and brittle society would catch up with us, forcing us to lead an ever more restricted life as terrain is ceded. We have skin in the game and cannot afford to walk away from what we do. Also, we don't do surrender to the renegades within...