Politics is lurching rightwards and into an ever more dangerous and dystopian situation, with this most clearly and worryingly manifesting in the spate of violent racist riots in the Summer of 2024.
As 2025 commences it’s vital to recognise how the so-called ‘centre’ of British politics is now all too often tracking this shift to the right. And all this is happening whilst the impacts of growing poverty, inequality, alienation, as well as collapsing health care, the rising cost of housing and inadequate availability of social spaces all continue to intensify for a growing number of communities on the ground.
It is this chasm between failing institutions, that aren’t doing anything like enough to address the most pressing political and social problems of the moment, and the unmet needs of many communities on the ground that are increasingly alienated from our institutions, that fuels the seemingly relentless growth of reactionary politics and far-right organising.
It is of deep concern that this increasingly toxic and interconnected set of problems has not yet led to any kind of collective institutional reckoning with the question of what forms of community development may be equal to the enormous task of helping turn this dismal situation around.
As we enter 2025, Municipal Enquiry is therefore dedicating our capacity to highlighting and supporting the forms of community development that we think provide an antidote to the far-right by offering progressive alternatives to the status quo. These forms also hold out a progressive alternative to the ‘centrist’, or Blairite, approaches to community development that currently dominate - approaches that we believe are currently inflaming, rather than relieving, the dangers of the situation.
One example of a failed 'centrist’ approach is exemplified, in our last blog piece, by the elitist, paternalistic, extractive, overly hierarchical and market-oriented multi-million pound Everyone Everyday initiative in East London. A prime example of a institutionally-led but highly dysfunctional community development project and one that Municipal Enquiry has investigated in depth over the last couple of years.
In contrast, we strongly believe it is the sprawling networks of grassroots community development projects that are collectively owned and democratically organised that represent the alternative that’s needed at this critical time.
Some of these alternatives are supported by organisations and funds set up for this very purpose, including the JRCT movement fund, the Civic Power fund, Edge Fund and the Baobab Foundation, as well as others who are also trying to shift the funding landscape into more progressive directions. The money available overall in such funds is nevertheless still nothing like what is currently needed and only represents a minute fraction of the social investment pot overall.
All too often such progressive projects are still less favoured by British institutions than the more Blairite, centrally directed and top-down forms of local intervention. Put simply, the more democratic and collectively-owned community development projects are, the less they are valued and supported by our institutions.
So what is it exactly that is currently blocking this investment and preventing these more progressive approaches from playing a greater role?
The context
There have been periods, at least over the last 50 years or so, when more grassroots-led and democratically driven approaches to community development have received greater levels of political, cultural, economic and institutional support - not just from social movements and community-based organisations but from left-leaning local authorities, trades unions, adult education institutions and central government too.
It is vital not to be nostalgic, however. Any success these kinds of activities have had in the past was always met by a strong and decisive backlash, especially when projects successfully managed to redirect resources to marginalised communities, or brought about other progressive policy change.
In the 1980’s it was the Conservatives that did most to set back advances that had been made by progressive forms of community development up to that point.
By withdrawing vital resources and accelerating the domination of those who were keen to use community development instrumentally and in top-down ways, they worked to limit the scope and ambition of progressive grassroots projects that made progress in the 1970’s. Support for community development was refocused by the Tories onto the delivery of skills training and employability initiatives, after they had brought about mass unemployment through their own policies. After forcing through wide-ranging ‘structural adjustments’, they supported interventions to mitigate the fragmentation, impoverishment and reduction in 'cohesion' that these 'adjustments' caused.
A practice which had historically been connected to a rich mix of community based, mutual aid type initiatives and that had been convened in the main by a diverse set of people with a shared interest in community spaces and grassroots-led action was thereby systematically subjected to forces from above that worked to repurpose or degrade progressive forms of community development.
In these and other ways Conservative policy during this time attempted to choke-off grassroots organising, plural forms of democratic activity and new and emerging processes of political representation. This process also worked to erode connections between community development and progressive institutions such as unions, colleges or co-ops. These changes sought to bring people and communities back into the service of the increasingly extractive and always racialised forms of capitalism that came into favour during this time.
When the Tories left government and Blair took power in 1997 these processes of decline continued unabated. The independent buildings, spaces and forms of provision that still existed remained under resourced. State provision, private and charitable leadership was favoured over community control and many of the remaining grassroots-led projects and spaces were wound-down or shuttered during this time.
This dynamic intensified with the arrival of the coalition government in 2010 and the inception of its Big Society agenda, which coincided with the coalition's brutal austerity programme. This led to the further erosion of institutional funding and support.
During this period, rather than challenging the coalitions retrograde policies, perspectives and agendas, institutions like (the Blairite) NESTA largely embraced them.
And the language of community development was co-opted once again, this time to serve the mantra of ‘doing more with less’.
In the current period, Post-Thatcherite and Blairite approaches of a previous age continue to dominate.
Although the language of ‘community development’ has now waned in favour of 'regeneration', 'community-engagement' or 'local economic development'. And we now have a ‘sector’ led by a group of NGO’s, consultancies and individual sector-leaders which together hoards the precious and diminishing resources still available for community focused interventions.
When analysed the situation back in 2022, in the Municipal Enquiry report of that year, we were able to demonstrate how community development was at a critical crossroads, facing a stark choice between two different ‘pathways’.
The first of the two pathways was represented by the emerging ‘Community Power’ agenda, which was promoted by an alliance of Conservative MP’s and ‘centrist’ NGO’s, who together advocated for a reboot of the ‘doing more with less’ agenda. They were enthusiastic about particular forms of devolution as a way of enabling greater citizen engagement or 'community power' and they trumpeted the potential benefits of highly conservative ideas of volunteerism and individual character-formation. They had much less to say about the increasingly severe impacts of growing economic inequality, racism and the far-right.
This was why this report supported a second pathway that was available for community development. One that would require greater institutional support for more democratic and progressive pathways for community development.
Despite the 'community power' agenda struggling to gain much momentum since 2022, the dominant approach to community development supported by British institutions in 2025 is still overwhelmingly top-down and narrowly focused on ‘integrating’ the ‘left-behind’ into the endlessly failing status quo.
Rather than supporting communities to have more democratic autonomy, address their own collective priorities and build the community owned alternatives that work for them, institutions stick with projects that set out to ‘encourage’ marginalised working class groups to change their behaviour with a view to increasing individuals ‘social capital’. This is a post-Thatcherite and Blairite approach that’s still focused on enabling the ‘left-behind’ to more effectively compete in an ailing economy which is failing more and more people every year. Progressive agendas for community development geared to building fairer, more hopeful and egalitarian alternatives from the bottom-up still remain largely unsupported.
If this situation doesn’t improve in the months and years ahead there could be catastrophic consequences, including even higher levels of unmet need on the ground, even greater alienation from our institutions, even more frequent and serious forms of local unrest and the even the possibility of a far-right party like Reform being elected to lead the British state by 2028.
Far-right groups already understand the seriousness of this situation as well as the power and potential opportunities of organising on the ground. They now routinely work to offer their own 'solutions' and to exert their influence in community and communal spaces across classes, as well as via social and print media and through think tanks.
And when it comes to interacting with marginalised working class people at community level - whether via locally oriented online groups, pubs and clubs, sports facilities or during ad hoc pop-up protests - the far-right are becoming ever more effective at channelling alienation, frustration and anger to energise new recruits.
Conclusion and next steps
Greater support for democratically organised, rather than ‘Blairite’ or ‘centrist’, approaches to community development, is now urgently needed to provide an antidote to the rise of the far-right at community level. Such approaches are the most effective when it comes to addressing the unmet needs and priorities of communities on the ground and when it comes to collectively building much needed alternatives to the status quo.
We are writing this piece as we are deeply concerned that institutions are failing to do anything like enough to support these alternatives, but also because it’s not yet too late for the institutions to change tack and provide greater support for these forms of practice.
Municipal Enquiry intention in 2025 is to further press the case for such action, as we strongly believe that these more grassroots-led forms of community development have a positive role to play in arresting the accelerating rise of reactionary forces, both at community and national levels.
In 2025 Municipal Enquiry will also look for ways it can contribute to the alliance building processes that are needed to help realise this agenda.
Do let us know if you’re interested in talking further about this, or are interested in exploring possibilities for collaboration.
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