Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

Arnold I sense we may be neighbours!

This is a fascinating thread - thank you everyone.

I was thinking about the "somewheres" and "anywheres" point and wondered if it also had something to do with the Housing Act 1988 which introduced assured shorthold tenancies (the usual 6 month tenancies). This meant that huge swathes of what previously in many cases had been council housing was lived in for short periods by people who had no ties at all to the area and no interest in growing any. I suspect this has played a fair part in London and other major cities becoming "anywheres" and breaking a community.

People leave for work. The reasons are complicated, in part the demise of old industry was just one of those things. In part it was a collective failure of management and unions to modernise. In part a failure of government to invest in any kind of sustainable replacement. Blame cannot be laid solely at the door of government.

I also think the Scottish psyche has something to do with it. People have been migrating away for centuries, and migrating internally so there is a level of expectation that it's just the way it is.

As for who we need. We need young people. It is the young that have left so we are top heavy with elderly people even by more general western world standards. We need people who have the capacity to set up businesses and provide employment. We need the fit, the able, the entrepreneurial.

Arnold what kinds of people do you need and why are people leaving please?

is this a case of being ignored by government for decades?

Please do AutumnRose we need people, though I must warn you this is ex-industrial, socially deprived central belt not remote, romanticised Highland and Island territory. Can offer stunning views though.

Arnold please can I move to where you are? (I won't ask where you are as I assume posters wish to be as private as possible).

I am happy to hear any information re population - hope Bovary is all right with it, just asking permission as she began this great thread.

is anywhere really experiencing a fall in population?

Hello? I may have mentioned living in the fastest depopulating council on the UK mainland a time or three.

Yes we are experiencing depopulation, have been for decades. My town has fallen from 22,500 in 1981 to around 15,000 today. My authority from around 120,000 to under 80,000. And it's still falling.

Scotland as a whole is around half as populous as it ought to be in comparison to neighbouring countries.

Yes it is a massive, massive problem with many knock on effects.

Stooshie8 I think a lot of what you say is correct, especially on integration.

you mention this about Scotland "One of N Sturgeons policies is to increase immigration to Scotland due to falls in population."

is anywhere really experiencing a fall in population? I think politicians scare monger about it because they want every piece of green land covered with hotels and leisure complexes.

Outer London is like an airport, yes.

Well my care needs are still at the low end, and fingers crossed I've struck lucky with my new area, so could be a lot worse.

As you can imagine, I'm very keenly aware of the issues of good will and unpaid labour of every kind – like Packing having to notify people when someone died. That just doesn't make it onto anyone's accounting sheet or most people's ideas of labour, but if Packing hadn't done it, who would? And as she describes, there's a constant flow of these not-really-a-job jobs.

SAHP, often women, are listed as "economically inactive" when in fact many are doing huge amounts of this community labour. It doesn't get measured – but the economy misses it when it's gone.

ah @PerkingFaintly I am so sorry to hear that. I get very frustrated with the idea that 'community' will magic away the fact that social care in the UK is on its knees and that's before the next round of cuts kick in. I remember the early 90s and days of Care in the Community when lots of people who had been in instututions for years were suddenly sent out into the community with no real understanding of how it would work on a practical level and actually not asking the 'community' in the broadest sense if they were willing to help in the first place.

I worked with people with mental health problems who had been discharged from long stay hsopitals, some of whom had been there for 20 or 30 years. Im not saying living in an institution was right or that they shouldnt have been given the opportunity to move into their own house but a transition of that magnitude takes time. Instead I had people who'd never lived alone out in bedsits with one overworked mental health social worker to support them and if they were lucky a community psychiatric nurse. Everyime people in Government and in the third sector wimble on about community being the answer, i think 'yeah cos that worked so well last time!'

there is no getting around the fact that some people need properly resourced social care to help with personal things like bathing, getting dressed, going to the loo. Sure its nice to have people pop round for a chat or give you a lift to the doctors which a strng community would do but social care is so much more than that.

Kit19 I am living your second paragraph right now (I'm the person who needs social care; I'm also a new arrival in my current area, as my home area became too expensive for me to live in).

Definitely resonates with me Packing in terms of community being dependent on having people willing to pitch in and actually make that community function on multiple levels. The idea that community just happens by magic is compltetely wrong - it takes time and effort.

Its one of the reasons the idea that the Social Care crisis can be solved by having stronger community really worries me. In reality people are more likely to need social care if they are poor and in ill health; in the village where I live which has a strong community there are lots of people to help the people who need it. In poorer areas with transient populations, that community cohesion isnt there and perversely those are places where people are more likely to have chronic health problems, struggle financially and live in poor housing which exacerbates health problems.

Ive been asked several times to get involved as a local councillor and I wont do it precisely because I do not want to be involved with a party machine. Saying that, my village now has an Independent councillor and that is working very well.

And those adult children who moved away for the job opportunities may well be writing romantic paeons to the sense of community in their working class parents' area (provided by my friends' labour), while bewailing the "lack of community" provided by "society" in the area they have migrated to – which is stuffed with in-country migrants who have moved there exactly as the wailers did.

Yes — it’s transience, rather than immigration as such, that is the issue. If someone wants to put down roots, and gets stuck in, their background matters less. In fact, I find that class is also not a major issue either, from what I observe. As long as no one throws their weight around.

I’ve often though about standing as an independent. We have had a few local councillors of that sort. I’m completely out off by party politics. Not sure it is right for local council level. (Actually, I’m not sure it’s right for national level, either, any more... but that’s unlikely to change...)

Nowadays I am also put off by the flak you’d get on social media, too. Especially as a female. But that is a different point.

Of I'm honest packing I quite fancy being in local government myself but have no wish to involve myself in aprty politics again. My stint in the Labour Party back in the 90s put me off for life.

The problem is getting elected as an independent is incredibly hard, even when everyone knows you, your dog and your granny. And if you do get there it is very lonely as my local independent has found out. Everyone around you is too busy towing the party line to support you even when they are privately saying they agree.

He's very frustrated.

Thank you for posting that, Packing – that's a much more articulate and detailed version of what I've been wanting to say about a PP's comment that "lack of community" is caused by immigration, when I feel it's caused by transience of any kind, particularly in-country migration.

The flipside of which is that some of my friends who arrived as refugees have slotted in very well indeed in the working class street where they were settled, because the idea of community they brought with them matched what they found.

They were out there almost immediately mowing lawns and getting in shopping for their elderly neighbours, whose adult children have fecked off somewhere more exciting for the job opportunities.

Also agree about the value of a good bakery. Or any significant cross-over venue.

x-post there, Arnold!

And just to add: by virtue of what those 50 people do in our ward, including me and DH, it is extremely difficult to assign yourself to any political party if you want to support everybody.

In one sense, it is enlightening because we get a very unusual insight into how people in our area feel about national politics but, on the other, it means very few of us can ever go any higher on the political ladder.

I know people who have worked for the community on the ground for decades, and would make fantastic MPs, but they will never get there because they would have to join a political party to stand.

And they can't because, for example, they are in a Labour area and they know that the policies their constituents need are anathema to the left. Or visa versa for a Tory area.

We've even begged people to stand for positions and run orientation meetings for people interested in local government.

I often think party politics gets in the way of this.

There are a handful of people who are politically ambitious in the party political sense, and then there are people who are interested in local governance in the sense of seeing ways to improve their community but who aren't interested in party politics and put off by it.

In the highlands and islands there is a long tradition of independent councillors. I often think they might be on to something.

Packing, your posts are so excellent. Thanks for putting this into words for us. Your area sounds like mine!

Back to the original subject of the thread, I came across this gem in Edmund Taylor's Richer by Asia today:

Myth or reality, our belief in progress, in evolution towards a better world, is an essential ingredient of our psychological as well as of our social well-being. It is more than a personal and collective hope: It is an incentive to co-operative effort, for the belief in a bettering world lays upon the individual the duty to contribute to it, to want the best thing for oneself, perhaps, but better things for all.

The above is a really basic principle, which should underpin progressive politics. It also seems to run counter to the campaigning instincts of the modern Labour party, which doesn't offer a cohesive vision as to how they are going to make the country better, and don't really offer anything much to most voters, except the threat that the other party is worse.

I'd quite like to go back to what we were discussing about "somewhere vs. anywhere", if that's okay.

I think we have to remember something about "somewhere". It means a sense of community. But community takes a lot of work. And someone has to do that work.

I live in a "somewhere" place with a strong community of mixed working, middle and some upper middle-class people. My home is in the middle of the working/lower-middle part with mixed private and social housing. By virtue of the fact that me and DH are involved in local community work and local politics, we provide, as a couple, access to local government and problem-solving for our ward.

So everything turns up at our door from rubbish removal to Xmas lights to dealing with the local social housing landlord to events at the local church to local annual galas to broken play equipment and benches to bus shelters ... even to letting people know about the sudden death of a neighbour when the family cannot. If someone in our ward has a problem, it will be "go and see Packing or her DH".

But fuck is it a lot of work and time.

And it's not just us. Our community is fundamentally supported by a backbone of about 50 people in a population of around 4000 electors. These are the people who do the local plantings, organise the children's day and the local gala, run the football and bowling club, run the local pubs and shops, sit on the town council, are the local borough councillors, run the scouts and brownies, run the local playgroups, organise the annual historical event and the Remembrance Sunday parade ... and only the local borough councillors get expenses.

And every term, we try to get more people involved. We've even begged people to stand for positions and run orientation meetings for people interested in local government. Sometimes, it has been a great success; other times, an abject failure.

When it has been a success, it is because someone has "skin in the game", for want of better phrase. They've been a local family for years, they are passionate about conservation, they want to make new friends, their kids are at the local schools, they run a business in the area, they want their children to experience scouts, they had a family member in the forces and so on. In short, they care about where they live.

But the thing about high transition areas is that you don't get any of this. If you have large numbers of people moving in and out, they have no "skin in the game." So these places become "anywhere" places because there is nothing to root them down, and you don't get those connections or events that create a sense of place. Again, in areas where there is a significant diasporic presence, the disapora itself often creates a secondary community that operates solely within the disapora itself and excludes non-diasporic members in the area (although a good bakery can often ease this situation ).

I think this is why areas of high migration, substantial migrant communities, extraordinary wealth, or student accomodation start feeling a lot like airports because that is kinda what they are, to some extent. Most of the residents aren't actually living their lives there; they are stop-overs on the way to something else. But for those trying to live their lives there, the experience can be extremely distressing.

I agree, Packing. And the idiotic choosey choicey empowerment fools will pretend they never said a word.

I think the niqab will begin to disappear, if it isn't already.

The niqab was always driven by the Gulf. And Saudi Arabia is now undergoing a period of social and cultural reform, which will, no doubt, affect the kinds of messages about Islam that its religious outreach programmes (for want of a better description) will convey to Western Muslim communities.

And Daesh/Isis dealt the image of the niqabi a really devasting blow. It is no longer associated with modern religious conservatism, but a bunch of psychopaths and their wives that everyone across the Middle East, no matter their creed, absolutely loathes.

It has had its day, I reckon.