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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/oct/06/diversity-is-a-boon-but-were-losing-our-sense-of-community
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| Diversity is a boon – but we’re losing our sense of community Diversity is a boon – but we’re losing our sense of community | |
| (2 months later) | |
| The old Labour party HQ used to be in my parish, on the Walworth Road, just by Elephant and Castle in London. In 1997, Tony Blair moved the centre of operations into a swanky glass tower on Millbank. And from then on Labour began to lose touch with the communities it was set up to serve. | The old Labour party HQ used to be in my parish, on the Walworth Road, just by Elephant and Castle in London. In 1997, Tony Blair moved the centre of operations into a swanky glass tower on Millbank. And from then on Labour began to lose touch with the communities it was set up to serve. |
| Had it remained on Walworth Road the party would have witnessed, right across the street, how the forces of international finance have pushed out ordinary people and destroyed their communities. The postwar Heygate estate is no longer, and shiny new flats are going up that local people will never be able to afford, even at the comically misnamed “affordable housing” rates. Indeed, the very idea of local people no longer implies a longstanding connection. Most of those who were here for generations have gone, priced out. New people come and go all the time. The old Labour HQ is now a backpackers’ hostel. What was once a thick community has become a thin community. | Had it remained on Walworth Road the party would have witnessed, right across the street, how the forces of international finance have pushed out ordinary people and destroyed their communities. The postwar Heygate estate is no longer, and shiny new flats are going up that local people will never be able to afford, even at the comically misnamed “affordable housing” rates. Indeed, the very idea of local people no longer implies a longstanding connection. Most of those who were here for generations have gone, priced out. New people come and go all the time. The old Labour HQ is now a backpackers’ hostel. What was once a thick community has become a thin community. |
| A thick community is one with a high degree of social solidarity and a low degree of diversity. This is the sort of community where people are similar in language and culture, and where, as a consequence, there is a high degree of trust among people. It’s a relatively stable place – not a lot of coming and going. You grow up where your parents grew up. You die near where you were born. People leave their back doors open and know their neighbours’ business. The best thing about a thick society is that people look after each other and have a high degree of civic pride. The worst is that it’s often not good at dealing with difference, or with outsiders. | A thick community is one with a high degree of social solidarity and a low degree of diversity. This is the sort of community where people are similar in language and culture, and where, as a consequence, there is a high degree of trust among people. It’s a relatively stable place – not a lot of coming and going. You grow up where your parents grew up. You die near where you were born. People leave their back doors open and know their neighbours’ business. The best thing about a thick society is that people look after each other and have a high degree of civic pride. The worst is that it’s often not good at dealing with difference, or with outsiders. |
| A thin community is one with a high degree of diversity and a low degree of social solidarity. In this community (which often isn’t really much of a community at all) you can be as different as you like. Nobody cares. People come and go all the time – “citizens of the world but citizens of nowhere”, to paraphrase Theresa May. You don’t always have much in common with people living next door, and often you don’t even know their names. You shop online. Loneliness can be a problem. But diversity is celebrated. | A thin community is one with a high degree of diversity and a low degree of social solidarity. In this community (which often isn’t really much of a community at all) you can be as different as you like. Nobody cares. People come and go all the time – “citizens of the world but citizens of nowhere”, to paraphrase Theresa May. You don’t always have much in common with people living next door, and often you don’t even know their names. You shop online. Loneliness can be a problem. But diversity is celebrated. |
| Generally, big business likes thin societies, because they represent a fluid labour market. Lacking many of the social ties of the thick community, they are more difficult to unionise. Thin communities don’t strike. They sign online petitions and complain on Twitter. The thinnest sort of community is the online community, where you have friends you have never even met. | Generally, big business likes thin societies, because they represent a fluid labour market. Lacking many of the social ties of the thick community, they are more difficult to unionise. Thin communities don’t strike. They sign online petitions and complain on Twitter. The thinnest sort of community is the online community, where you have friends you have never even met. |
| Since the 1960s we have been getting thinner and thinner. Much of that is to be celebrated. The old inward-looking Little Englander mentality, with its bad food and curtain-twitching moralism, has been transformed by the energy of diversity and difference, by immigration. Nowhere has benefited more from this than south London. I must have one of the most multicultural congregations in Britain, and I love it. But in church we are held together by a common story, a common faith. This glue binds a group of otherwise different people, making church an interesting political model of combining diversity and togetherness – Benedictine hospitality for all with jollof rice, difference and solidarity. | Since the 1960s we have been getting thinner and thinner. Much of that is to be celebrated. The old inward-looking Little Englander mentality, with its bad food and curtain-twitching moralism, has been transformed by the energy of diversity and difference, by immigration. Nowhere has benefited more from this than south London. I must have one of the most multicultural congregations in Britain, and I love it. But in church we are held together by a common story, a common faith. This glue binds a group of otherwise different people, making church an interesting political model of combining diversity and togetherness – Benedictine hospitality for all with jollof rice, difference and solidarity. |
| Elsewhere, however, difference creates huge gaps in the social fabric, with many people now unconnected to each other, the rich in their gated communities in the sky and poor youth sitting around on the estates smoking weed. As the thick society has gradually thinned out, it is the elderly who pay the price. People don’t visit as much as they used to. We know each other less and less. | Elsewhere, however, difference creates huge gaps in the social fabric, with many people now unconnected to each other, the rich in their gated communities in the sky and poor youth sitting around on the estates smoking weed. As the thick society has gradually thinned out, it is the elderly who pay the price. People don’t visit as much as they used to. We know each other less and less. |
| Brexit and the new mood in politics is misunderstood as a hostility to outsiders, though it is easily purloined by racists. Rather, it is a cry for community, for togetherness, for the local, for mutuality, for social solidarity. Theresa May, the vicar’s daughter, wants to find all this in a return to the past. That’s the wrong answer. But at least she’s answering the right question. We are still looking for a new – doubtless very different – St Benedict. | Brexit and the new mood in politics is misunderstood as a hostility to outsiders, though it is easily purloined by racists. Rather, it is a cry for community, for togetherness, for the local, for mutuality, for social solidarity. Theresa May, the vicar’s daughter, wants to find all this in a return to the past. That’s the wrong answer. But at least she’s answering the right question. We are still looking for a new – doubtless very different – St Benedict. |