Hope Under Neoliberal Austerity. Группа авторов
but also helping them to change. But what has been its role in relation to agendas of ‘social renewal’ and ‘social justice’?
Social renewal and social justice in a ‘remote rural’ context
It would be difficult to deny that the activities of the GGT have made a difference to the quality of life and opportunities available in Wooler and Glendale. It has: created a multifaceted community hub; provided 18 affordable housing units for rent through conversions, targeted at young people starting out and the needs of older residents; helped to enhance the vitality of the local high street and sustain the visitor economy; become a ‘go-to’ place with a face for many looking for information and advice; and acted as a platform from which to draw down resources from elsewhere and present a voice in larger arenas relevant to the area. In this way, it has created significant value for the ‘public’ of Glendale. This value has been material, in terms of drawing down resources for investment and producing both capital assets and services. However, it has also been institutional, both in creating a presence locally and more widely, and in demonstrating a proactive and entrepreneurial way of working. Along with other initiatives locally – by landowners, farmers, a few firms and the lively array of community groups in Glendale – it is working to help create a sustainable future to replace that based on the traditional labour-intensive agricultural economy.
The GGT can thus be understood as a vigorous agent for social renewal in the area. In this situation, social renewal must be understood in terms of structural adjustment from one economic geography to another. The experience has been of continual existential threats and opportunities. How far will it be possible to retain some of the old sense of a lively working and living community, centred around connections with the land and landscape, while adjusting to the changes in possibilities available to those who live and create a living in Glendale? Is the future, as some fear, to become a ‘retirement’ locale or a haven for those seeking to escape from the stress of an urban world? Does an Internet-based economy offer real potential for attracting a wider range of economic activities into Glendale, or will its impact be to reinforce the closure of shops and services, and the replacement of face-to-face interaction with live-chat, YouTube and email? Will there be enough variety of economic opportunity to support young people entering the workforce, or will they continue to leave? If so, where will the workforce to support existing local businesses and services, let alone staff new enterprises, come from?
The GGT is feeling its way through innovation and experimentation into an unknown future. In this sense, the challenge involves socio-economic reinvention rather than just renewal. It is also about political reinvention, showing a different way of acting for the public benefit to that long associated with increasingly stretched and distant public agencies. Creating a forward-looking and innovative culture of action, prepared to try out new things, means being open-minded and outward-looking, rather than introvertedly focusing on what has always been done. It means encouraging a proactive attitude towards doing things, rather than waiting for some public authority to ‘authorise’ or ‘lead’ a new activity. It means working with others, locally and more widely, to drive initiatives forward.
Not surprisingly, the GGT and its activities are not uncontested locally. Some feel that the Cheviot Centre is not a relevant locus for ‘their’ part of the community. For others, the way the GGT articulates a community voice is a challenge to other possible representations. Elsewhere, agencies such as the GGT have been created from within a local parish council. In this case, though one of the Glendale parish councils was, until recently, represented on the board of trustees, there is always the potential for conflict over who should be the community voice. Many people say the GGT places too much emphasis on Wooler, rather than the wider area of Glendale. Sometimes, the GGT’s legitimacy is questioned, or its priorities. Part of this critique is about competition over ‘who is in charge’. However, it is also fuelled by feelings of nostalgia for a disappearing past and fears for the future, driven by all kinds of misapprehension, which is not easily dispersed.
The trust is aware that its legitimacy, within Glendale and beyond, depends not on who it represents, but on what it does and how it does it. Here, the GGT also has to counteract some local critique that implicitly casts it into a new generation of ‘paternalists’: professionally educated people acting for, rather than with, the fellow citizens of Glendale. Social renewal is no easy process and is inherently conflict-ridden. In this context, the GGT is always taking a bet on how the future may work out. It is committed to finding ways into the future that look as if they can be sustained while that future unfolds uncertainly in front of us. However, one issue that rumbles away under the surface of the GGT’s work is who in the community most benefits from what is done. How do the GGT’s activities stand up to the criterion of social justice, and is that a relevant criterion for activities such as this?
‘Social justice’ is an abstract term. Some definitions centre on the fairness with which life opportunities and resources are distributed. Others link the term specifically to the notion of a hierarchy of classes and income groups, arguing that a socially just policy or outcome is one where the differences between classes or groups are minimised (see Bell and Davoudi, 2016). In the political economy of a country such as ours, the levers for promoting such fairness and redistribution are far beyond the reach of micro-local agencies such as the GGT. Moreover, recent national policies have contributed to the sense that many people locally have of experiencing unfair treatment in the way national resources are distributed. Those on low and often precarious incomes have been badly impacted by welfare reforms. Education and health services in rural areas are not just stretched, but also experience the spatial difficulties of the concentration of services in larger centres, supported by outreach that ignores the time costs of rural geography. As services get ever-more Internet-based, little attention is given to those who find it difficult to engage with the fast-changing practices of technological innovation.
In such a context, what contribution to social justice can a micro-organisation such as the GGT make to promoting greater fairness and supporting those at most risk in rural areas? The GGT has seen its responsibility in this respect, in part, as promoting community vitality and economic opportunity, both materially and through advocacy. The creation of the Cheviot Centre, the provision of offices for small-scale businesses and investing in Wooler High Street all make a contribution here. The Cheviot Centre provides several opportunities for social interaction and activity for older people. An early initiative of the GGT was to create a drop-in facility for young people. The GGT’s housing contribution is specifically targeted at groups whose needs are neglected by the market. The first investments in conversions to flats above high-street shops were targeted at young people. When a local sheltered housing facility for older people was closed, the GGT refocused its efforts in housing provision on the needs of older people. The GGT continues to promote local economic opportunity through providing training courses of various kinds at the Cheviot Centre. Overall, though, the emphasis is less on the needs of particular groups in the locality than on asserting the needs and potential viability of the area as a place with the possibility of a positive future, thereby challenging the urban-centred (and Southern-centred) politics that infuse our national and regional political economy.
In conclusion
The mission that inspires both the staff who have worked for the GGT over the years and the many people who have acted as trustees has been to ‘benefit the people of Glendale’. Our locality is understood as a place full of actual and potential vitality, though at the margin of attention nationally and regionally. We have a strong sense that we are ‘on our own’ and that it is ‘up to us’ as a community to work to realise the potential that will sustain that vitality. The role of the GGT in this context is to act as a micro-local community development agency, aware that economic, social and cultural life are interrelated in how people live their lives in a place such as ours. We give value to direct face-to-face interaction between the providers and users of services. We continually balance the creation of community benefit now with the need to sustain our operation over the long term. We regularly make links with external agencies that could bring benefit to our area, while being aware of the ongoing dangers of being ‘co-opted’ into acting as agents for their policies. Understood more widely, we are one of the many civil society initiatives across the country, and to