Its the small things that keep communities together

Just imagine you are part of the government. Among your principal concerns are how to hold society together at a time of rapid change. You worry about social and community cohesion and the practical, psychological and economic isolation of the elderly, the disabled, rural-dwellers and the poor. You set up a Department of Communities and spend billions on initiatives to create thriving, sustainable communities that will offer a sense of community, identity and belonging. Sustainability is another key concern. You care about the planet and exhort people to make fewer car journeys and walk or cycle more.

You inherit, all around the country, a network of local offices which happen to provide many of the functions you seek. They give people access to cash, benefits and government services, as well as connecting them through the post. The majority are combined with a shop, which makes them a social hub and meeting point. The postmasters who run them are an informal source of support and advice on everything from benefit claims to what to do in the event of a death. In cities almost everyone lives within half a mile’s walk of one, and frequently their presence is what sustains a small shopping parade. In rural areas they allow people to lead local lives, and are often the last service left in places that have been steadily stripped of buses, shops and schools. So what do you do? In the name of economic efficiency, you take government business out of their hands, and then start closing them down, in their thousands.

Writes Jenni Russell as she argues In the name of supposed efficiency, politicians are destroying a vital social network that helps us live green, local lives

Thats the local Post Office then 

I asked the Post Office press officer what the company’s mission was. “To go into profit by 2011,” she said. What about community needs? “You’ll have to ask the government about that.”What is so outrageous about this strategy is that the government is acting within completely artificial constraints. Separating the Post Office from Royal Mail 20 years ago, removing key functions five years ago, and defining the network as a business, are all political decisions, not a matter of economic fact. In this area the government is acting as if it were a commercial board, for whom making profits is the sole definition of failure or success. It is nothing of the sort. Politicians aren’t running Tesco; they’re providing public services. I don’t see a demand for profits from the army, road building, hospitals or schools.

Post Offices have that important Social Capital that helps Communities work – drop into our local Post Office/Newsagent people stop to chat – etc.

Social capital, referring to connections within and between social networks, is a core concept in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health, sociology and natural resources management. Though there are in fact a variety of inter-related definitions of this term, which has been described as “something of a cure-all” for the problems of modern society, they tend to share the core idea that social networks have value.  

L. J. Hanifan, state supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia. Writing in 1916 to urge the importance of community involvement for successful schools, Hanifan invoked the idea of “social capital” to explain why. For Hanifan, social capital referred to:

those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit….The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself….If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the coöperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors. 

Robert Putnam Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community

In France, La Poste has an explicit social function, connecting people to the government by maintaining a state presence in all areas, particularly rural or disadvantaged ones. It has flourished by diversifying into providing local authority services, finance and railway tickets. Here, as a select committee report warned last month, the government’s attitude means that the long-term future of the network depends on the entrepreneurial flair of Post Office Ltd, “which has not been conspicuous in the past”. Says Russell

 Then we get Blears wants police, NHS and councils more locally accountable
‘Empowerment’ white paper unveiled today  – Proposals include rewards and compensation

So on the one hand we are ripping up the little things that create social capital and community and then on the other try and make others accountable

Ministers regard the community empowerment proposals as potentially the best way to re-engage the public with politics – such as by placing a duty on local government to promote democracy. A new government survey to be published tomorrow will show six-in-10 people do not feel they are given an adequate say on how council services are run, while more than 90% of people believe the accountability of councils could be improved.

One wonders if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing? Because

In 2006, 4 million people signed petitions against closures – that’s four times as many as marched against the Iraq war. Last year the government invited responses to its plans and had an unprecedented 2,500 submissions. Reading the weasel-worded summary of that consultation you would imagine that the majority of respondents sympathised with the official arguments. I suspect that’s sheer misrepresentation. Of a random sample of 40 responses, all but one were deeply opposed to the strategy, and in many a sense of near-desperation was evident. 

Yet even so Post offices face sell-off to rival firm and are Run down and parcelled off

Then we get that great community company WHSmith offering its premises to replace the social capital of the local post office  Go figure

Who does the UK government work for? we recently asked at Communities Dominate Brands

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