Yesterday I had an encounter with my community, another in a short list of other encounters that have occurred since I began taking the risk of participating. The list is short because the engagement has been short, until very recently I have always tried to survive as alone as possible, which apparently becomes increasingly impossible as our world is manufactured into being increasingly inhospitable. 

One thing became clear in that encounter, I love the place in which I live, and the people I know within it, and the community that we are building and maintaining and existing within. 

Anyway, long story short, I’m tight on money, work isn’t really working out how I’d hoped (funny that, does it ever?), I reached out instead of spiralling, and a couple of hours later I had an extra shift in a gallery scheduled for next week. I wish I’d known what I’m learning now 32 years earlier, that the people around you want to support you if they can. 

When I was reflecting on this this morning 2 things jumped to the forefront for me, both of which need a great deal more unravelling than this post can allow (unless you’re willing to read a 30,000 thesis on trauma, community, welfare, with some rose tinted glasses thinking piercing a learned scepticism frequently (this is my speciality, over-sentimentalism blended together with thorns of nihilism, over and over, it’s quite an entertaining mix, although not unconflicting for me))

The first thought was that we’ve always got something (many things) wrong in the British political left that the people on the ground always knew – where the academic & political elite think they can’t learn from the masses perhaps? That it’s always been about building community, not building structures of help. 

Now, I am as big a fan as anyone of the labour government in Britain 1945-1951. Clement Attlee is my answer to that dumb dead person dinner party question, everytime I think of him I feel his warm sensation that is reserved for the people I love and am grateful for most. His labour (I say his, because what the fuck is this shit show now) party won the 1945 election in the university building in which I graduated, their union meetings ran at the pub cross the road – there is a statue of him next to the library on campus. If you are paying attention it’s hard to be there and not be overcome with the atmosphere this legacy. Before I left London I went to say goodbye to him, as if I would never return. In many ways the 1945 election was won by his years of tireless work in (the at that time incredibly impoverished (and still quite impoverished – despite pockets of gentrification – and the desperate attempts to rejuvenate the area before the 2012 Olympics, in case anyone ventured off the Olympic Park by mistake and got a bleak surprise)) Whitechapel, Mile End and Bow. Our welfare state was built on these streets, boots of workers wore down the same pavements on their way to join together as thousands of university students trainers do today on their way to be taught to think the exact same as their professors. 

But what mistakes were made? Well let’s not appreciate that for many, many families living in dire poverty before the war, and communities obliterated by the blitz life got practically better – families that had been living in unsanitisary overcrowded slum housing in the East End maybe got a chance for something slowly to shift in their living conditions. 

Although, this is true on a wider level, when I moved out of my first house in London 9 people (individuals not a large family) moved in to the 3 bed post-war maisonette, so this way of living driven by poverty was by no means obliterated by 2011 or indeed today. That flat did however have working plumbing, central heating, and was as far as I was aware not a huge health risk. 

Populations that had been living on top of one another, communities forced by extreme poverty, were moved into individual flats, families that had supported one another were separated from one another. The welfare that was provided in terms of housing cemented our modern ideals of nuclear family, one of the key causes in the lack of community especially within the mediocre echelons of ‘working professional’ families. People were taught to turn to themselves, to the state, rather than to one another. 

It’s interesting that architects knew this was happening, and the fascinating community architecture projects that came after designed to address exactly the problem. I used to live in a fancy block of new build flats in Bethnal Green – it was a time where I was living that life, ok job, relationship, in a bubble – it all felt privileged and for me after a childhood of poverty, was not something I wanted to risk interrogating. But every time I walked out the door I’d be confronted by Keeling House – a block built on Claredale Street in 1957, designed by architect Denys Lasdun – go read about it, it’s really interesting. This block is almost built like a starfish, apartments face one another, if you’re on your walkway, and your neighbours in their kitchen, they can see you and you can see them. The hope of such projects was that it would encourage community in living once again. At some point in the subconscious of the nation, we’ve got it, we’ve understood the vital importance of community plays in survival. 

And yet, for many, unless community is about staying alive, it seems so easy to stay in this comfortable individualism. If you can be self-sufficient then why risk having relationships. It’s interesting (to me) that community is so prevalent in any group that is in any way othered, or persecuted for being. The masses deciding someone isn’t human is one of the most evil functions of humanity, and yet it can bring about some of the most monumental and instrumental community driven movements. When people are oppressed they must come together to not be extinguished – survival is togetherness. 

The second thought that popped up when interrogating the first – is along the lines of, ok:

So communities that are oppressed seek community, and yet it’s hard not to see isolation and withdrawal from community as sometimes driven not by personal wealth or affluence, but by trauma. Trauma exists in all its exquisite pain as isolation. How do we square this? Well perhaps this is another thing that by definition cannot be squared, it is in and of itself a complex web in which many things are true at once. Is there something to be explored in collective traumas emboldening a sense of community, whilst individual traumas forcing isolation? Does the removal of community from people, the creation of a toxic nuclear family model, the forcing of family units into ‘independence’ heighten possibility for trauma? 

This whole line of thought make me think of R.D.Laing, and the great Kinsgley Hall experiment of 1960s, (I mean great in it’s boldness, I am aware not everyone who participated had a great experience). another remarkable piece of Bow history. This project attempted to break down the barriers of helpee and helper, leaning into community in a radical, and sometimes in this instance, damaging way. The seemingly inevitable and spectacular breakdown of this particular experiment makes me wonder:

Is there always then a tension within communities between the leaning in and the pulling away? A great big disorganised attachment party. We want and need each other, but when things get tough so many of us run away rather than lean in?

Is the creation of the capitalistic nuclear family actually the greatest violence that can be done to a community on a mass level? Foucault certainly has a lot to say on this, and if this were a different kind of blog post we’d get into it, but for now we’ll park it (I known it’s not cool to read Foucault anymore, but honestly, get over it – it is always a creative experience).

Certainly this requires a whole lot more interrogation, but it seems clear to me that certain ways in which we have had our society set up, – that asking for help is somehow a moral failing – are irreconcilable with the fact that we are in a rigged system where the only way to access care is to ask for help within pre-defined parameters. Community rejects this, and offers a radical, creative form of mutual support. 

‘Help’ is a capitalised, state driven, violent concept. 

‘Community’ is a humanised, care driven, loving concept.

This takes me to what at this point seems like a tangent, but was the initial thought that sparked this post… 

Isn’t what we all need a radical embracing of community rather than institutionalised ‘help’?