By John Hitchin
A friend of mine said to me on Wednesday night: ‘You work in regeneration, you must be so saddened by this’.
My first thought was: ‘I’m a human being, I must be so saddened by this’. But I took her point. And I realised that I hadn’t yet thought about it in those terms.
I live about 2 miles from Tottenham High Road. The primary school that I’m a governor of is in South Tottenham and about a mile from the High Road. I don’t claim to be a member of the Tottenham community – that sort of distance in London means that it’s a bit too far away to get involved in and know well. But I have friends in Tottenham through the Labour party and other organisations. And so my first reaction was one of shock, and then concern on Saturday night. I was kept awake by a combination of sirens, helicopters and scanning my twitter feed until about 4 on Sunday morning. The pictures of the old Co-op building were particularly powerful and saddening. A feeling of emptiness is the most thoughtful thing I can claim at that point.
That night was followed by a succession of other feelings and emotions as I watched events unfold in London and across the country. Shock, and more shock. Anger – lots of that. Surprise at the speed of it all. Frustration at people so quick to overlay their existing views onto events that were far too fluid to pin down, let alone analyse. If journalism is the first draft of history, I have no idea what to call some of those instant responses that I saw on social media and 24 hour news.
And also not a little pride and joy to see my adopted city respond in the way it did. From riot clean ups to the generosity of people towards those made homeless in Tottenham (information on how to donate here). I was constantly touched by the small and simple reactions. I have heard some critical responses to things such as the riot clean up – that it is only one group of society or that it may be an attempt to get back to a normality that benefitted them. But I hold no truck with people who reject our desire for community, safety and cooperation at times of uncertainty and fear.
And with comment of normality and community, I suppose we’re getting to how I have responded as somebody who works in regeneration. Well, for a start, I’ve stopped thinking of myself as somebody who works in regeneration. I suppose that is part of a broader debate for another day, but perhaps illustrates the challenges that a well intentioned sector got itself into. But I have a number of thoughts as somebody who works for a social enterprise that it about protecting, improving and empowering our most deprived neighbourhoods.
- Safety is the starting point. In EC1, South Islington, (admittedly with the great advantages of the New Deal for Communities funding), our success in improving that neighbourhood came from starting with safety in terms of housing, with estate security programmes, increased neighbourhood policing and increased support to local youth groups to run extended hours, detached youth work and positive youth work. This was then followed by improvements to the public realm which considered safety and the community, and also other activities that could only work when people felt safe in their area. The final years of the programme did not need to focus on safety in the same way as fear of crime was so much lower; but it took time to get to that point.
- ‘Normality isn’t good enough. Normality is the problem’. This quote came from comments in a blog by Toby Blume. I don’t mean that we should not try to return to a feeling of safety, as highlighted above, but it is clear that if there is no attempt to do anything about root causes, then we are walking into a recurrence of the same problems. Some of the answers will probably be uncomfortable for many of us, but the question of why this happened needs to be asked.
- Responsibility. Responsibility is a word that has been used a lot in the last few days. This needs to be applied to more than just parents and looters. What are the responsibilities of the state, of businesses, of individuals, of local and national government, of civil society of schools…? The phrase social contract is a good one – if somewhat burdened by a lot of history. It implies a level of reciprocity. I know from experience in interviewing individuals on a variety of research projects how quickly trust and respect breaks down when people do not feel that the contract is honoured. And I’m not talking about a welfare dependency in this instance, but a feeling that responsibility for many of our public, private or voluntary sector services can mean a responsibility to protect an institution rather than the aims of that institution. Whether it is a charity or a business, people spot that and feel let down. If you chase the profit motive alone, they lose respect and chase the product from you and not the transaction. If you protect the local council or the service alone, then they also lose that trust in you being there for their needs. So really, when I say responsibility, I mean a broader integrity.
- Regeneration came from the wrong place. My favourite, if that is the right word, diagram I have seen from the department for Communities and Local Government was one that highlighted the levels of support and the number of public interventions that were supporting ‘deprived neighbourhoods.’ I can’t find it online and am not sure it was ever published. The single most revealing thing about that diagram was that all arrows pointed from the support into the community. It looked like a target under attack. Not a single arrow came out, suggesting autonomy, determinism and power for that community. Things will only get better if we turn some of those arrows around in the way in which we help places. Not all of them, as there are places in this country which need support from the state so that they can get to a point where they might attract other forms of investment. But ‘doing to’ has been pushed as far as it can go.
These aren’t new ideas. Probably not very meaningful ones either. They are early thoughts based on a bit of experience and the collection of emotions I described at the start. They also don’t get into the broader debate about our values that has been broached in other places.
But as I write this I was reminded of a post I wrote in February 2010 about the future of regeneration. It contained the Philippe Starck quote – ‘You’ve got to keep the violence of the original idea’. That might seem inappropriate given recent events, but for me it gets a bit closer to understanding why people have become frustrated by our leaders (whether political or otherwise). We find ourselves as a society in a position that we, collectively, are not sure how we reached. It was nobody’s desire to get to the scenes of this week, yet here we are. For me, the initial desire for change and improvement has been lost along the way. And so we are left standing in the rubble of what has just burnt down, crying out for a new idea so that we can get on with the messy business of creating it. We need some inspiration.
