XClose

UCL Policy Lab

Home
Menu

A long walk home: how we rebuild Britain together

17 September 2024

As we enter the first conference season following the general election, James Baggaley speaks to Gus Alston, CEO of One Stonegrove, about creating a sense of place and community in a time of social unrest.

Bruce

This interview appears in the latest edition of the UCL Policy Lab magazine. To find out more about Policy Lab and get the latest news events, sign up for their newsletter here

This summer, the American rock star, Bruce Springsteen, rolled back into town for his latest UK tour. A favourite of MPs and Westminster insiders, including the leading Cabinet minister Pat MacFadden, the songsmith of hard times and social movements has spent decades telling the story of men and women who have fought back from difficult odds.

The diner was shuttered and boarded. With a sign that just said ‘gone’,” he sang.

It could be the Rust Belt – it could be a marginal constituency in the Midlands.

Walk around large swathes of our small towns, suburban high roads, and city centres and you will see boarded-up shops, cracked pavements, and the sense of a public realm in decay. For all the lofty political and economic debates, it’s in large part this visible scarring of a country that has propelled Keir Starmer into Number 10. Ask any MP or councillor, and they’ll tell you what comes up on the doorstep; high streets and potholes won’t be far from the top. These everyday markers of decay blur into voters’ experience of public services, leaving them with a general sense that the country isn’t working.

And for all the promises of grandiose technological fixes, it is our day-to-day relationships with public services, be that at the GP surgery, the school gate or the bus home from work that often matters most of all. To understand how we rebuild trust, we must look to nurture and improve these daily experiences, which are often centred around deep relationships, not futuristic abstraction. As the great geographer, Deborah Massey, once wrote “amid the Ridley Scott images of world cities, the writing about skyscraper fortresses, the Baudrillard visions of hyperspace…most people actually still live in places like Harlesden or West Brom. Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the First World, still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.”

It is a theme we picked up time and time again in our recent UCL Policy Lab and More in Common research, alongside a sense from voters demanding real change – not just short-term improvement but a sense politics would
‘do things differently’. This was best expressed as a demand that politics better respect ordinary people. Keir Starmer reflected on just this issue in his recent Rose Garden speech in Downing Street. Amongst the foreboding about the difficult choices to come, there was a reflection on ordinary people’s response to this summer’s riots and how this response could inspire how we rebuild Britain.

“Imagine the pride we will feel as a nation. When, after the hard work of clearing up the mess is done. We have a country that we have built together.”

With these words, Starmer recognised a truth that should be self-evident – collective change has to be done  together. And not just by Whitehall, anyone who has had minimal contact with the British state will know that
relying on targets and bureaucratic changes alone won’t come close to meeting the complexity of the challenges we face. 

This is an argument that UCL Policy Lab’s Ordinary Hope project has returned to time and time again: as writer Jonathan Rutherford often phrases it, it is about the country that sits just beneath the surface. Not some rare breed of community organiser or activist, but those who comprise the majority—the people who work hard to build a place and support one another when times are tough.

It is a spirit you will find alive and well at One Stonegrove, a community centre located not 15 minutes from Edgware station. When I visit, it is just three weeks since the riots that brought racist street violence to communities across Britain. Yet here, amongst the sound of kids playing basketball in the hall and folks wandering in and out, we are in another country, another place. 

“We did this – the community fingerprints are all over it. The thing is, it’s good because we built it. We came together to build initially – but also because the people who use it have shaped what it does from day to day”.

Gus Alston is the CEO of One Stonegrove and has worked in and around local projects all his life. He’s worked for and with councils, the charity sector, and civic society—he’s a walking talking testimony of government initiatives and attempts to support ‘connection’ or ‘cohesion’.

Gus’s work is inspiring. But it is also echoed across the country. The practitioners and social change leaders we work with tell us that there are a thousand Guses in the UK. Charities and governments like to turn them into very special heroes—and in a sense, they are—but they are also there in every community and neighbourhood. This sense of place and community exists in spades in Britain; we see it in our polling and our views on how public services should be run.

It is a fact that researchers including UCL’s Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones say is happening across Britain “In many places, there is not only a desire for change but also a determination to get on with things. People are no longer prepared to wait for the central state to act. Or else they are more cynical now about the state’s ability to recognise the uniqueness of their problems and find the means to eradicate them”.

It’s this work that he and colleagues at UCL have continued to explore and study – helping recognise the immense social and economic value of people like Gus. For all the grand projects call it ‘inclusive growth’ or ‘levelling up’ Tewdwr-Jones believes it comes down to governments willingness to trust and respect those doing the work locally.

“A quiet revolution is happening”. Tewdwr-Jones says. “This is a placebased, people-centred approach to managing change, bringing citizens, communities, businesses and agencies together, finding little local victories, offering hope. Central government doesn’t need to intervene in a hands-on way in these instances or offer money for some glitzy ‘grand projet’. All that central government needs to do is give legitimacy to the activities and learn not to get in the way”.

When you’ve visited dozens of community schemes, you sometimes expect them to feel rundown or falling short. But not here. The One Stonegrove community centre is beautiful. It is not showy or expensive, but it is a place you want to be. It is a place you want to meet and a place you’d be proud to call home. And this stuff matters; you don’t have to be a fully signed-up member of the broken windows theory of policing to think social rot starts with actual rot – be it damp flats or creaking sports facilities (or no facilities at all). It matters when it comes to social cohesion, it matters when you want to create a sense of national mission and it matters when you want to be a healthy growing economy.

When you speak to people like Gus, they often try to avoid national political debates. They are, after all, dealing with the critical stuff, ensuring people are fed or housed, but he offers some ideas as to what type of politics can properly fix and rebuild Britain.

“There seems to be a tendency to bring in experts and consultants into central government. But what about those working in health, education, or youth services in communities? Perhaps if they asked and listened, they might be able to design smarter solutions.” It’s about understanding that grand schemes and centralised systems are well-meaning but too often fail to adapt and use genuine talent and ideas.

“If I’m honest, council-owned community centres are generally a disaster”, says Gus. He is quick to stress that they are well-meaning but fundamentally set up to limit risk and deliver to statutory objectives – as opposed to fostering connection and innovation. Gus provides a small but powerful example.

“We have a group of young people that volunteer every week, and they’re great, and there really is no reason why you can’t do it. But if we were council-run, there’s no way it would be happening.” And it’s not just around young people and skills where councils and public services seem unable to adapt to human needs and capacity.

“Here, a community member can come to a staff member or grab ten minutes with me because I’m not hiding away in some office.” Gus talks of how ideas that come to him in the morning could be implemented by the afternoon. “We can test and adapt and give people a sense of control over their place and community”.

Gus recalls when a big housing association contacted the trust to offer £500 grants to local residents. “They were asking residents to do seven-page risk assessments. Of course, most people don’t know how to write a risk assessment. Luckily, we persuaded them to give us the grants in batches, and essentially, what we’re doing in the end is indemnifying them, and we’re prepared to take the risks”.

The capacity to take on social and economic risks is something that UCL economists such as Wendy Carlin have highlighted as an integral element to restoring the British economy. If we’re to rebuild, a willingness to embrace and trust one another will be key – researchers saw that during the pandemic when local public health teams were trusted they were able to deliver effective local schemes with little funding.

Fundamentally, this approach is about being able to respond and be there for one another. As Gus rushes off to speak to the workmen installing the brand-new solar panels (the panels will make up the largest charity solar power system in London) I start chatting with Akram. She mentions that she’s lived in several areas and has never quite felt like she’s been at home. When she moved into the new estate across the road, she saw the life coming from the centre; a keen baker, she wandered in with some cakes and offered them to the staff.

“In truth, after that, I never left. I’d bring cakes in for the locals and groups, and then they asked me if I wanted to help out”. Akram smiles as she talks about the place that she now calls her community. I ask her if it is genuinely this friendly, is it as perfect a community as it looks – it must have problems.

“Of course, but you know what? I know everyone’s name in the block opposite. We’re from all different backgrounds – some social tenants or some own their flats – but we look after one another. It’s a real place – a home.” I look back across towards the school; another group is arriving for classes and Akram heads off to greet a group of elderly residents dropping by to say hello.

There is a growing body of evidence showing the importance of social infrastructure built by folks like Gus and Akram. These are spaces that bring people together and contribute to community cohesion and wellbeing. Recent work at UCL by Professor John Tomaney and colleagues has demonstrated its contribution in former coal mining communities in County Durham. Their work reads like a story from a Bruce Springsteen song; concluding that social infrastructure takes time, commitment, and care to build but can be quickly lost if it is not well maintained, with harmful consequences for communities.

In his hit A Long Way Home, Bruce Springsteen speaks of a place that’s seen better days, and yet recognises its strength remains, the people who make it so, they have always looked out for one another. Springsteen sings about a brighter future, a belief in the hope that comes from shared endeavour. It may be a long walk home, but if our politics can allow it, Britain has the chance at genuine renewal.