This is a blog that just a couple of years ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to write. In fact, until recently I would have thought that a lot of what I'm going to say completely contradicted my beliefs about human society. I still hold the same beliefs I did before, which is why I need to make something very plain before we start.
I lived with more than thirty different people, many of them foreign nationals, at various different times before I was twenty. My secondary school was in a very urban area, with an enormous amount of diversity between the ethnicities and cultures of the pupils (to the extent that in some of my classes, I was in a minority as a white person). I found this an amazingly positive experience, although it did give me the impression that racism was more a thing of the past than it actually was, and that was quite a bitter pill to swallow later. I don't believe in the exclusion of anyone from our social groups based on personal characteristics. I would like the entire world to have an open borders policy, where anyone can if they wish leave the place they are living and go to live anywhere else without much hassle. I was appalled by the amount of racism we saw in the mid- to late-2010s, and deeply offended when then Prime Minister Theresa May said 'If you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere'. I've been disturbed by the Government's Rwanda policy, and furious that the Labour Party has not taken a firm line against the constant rhetoric that there are people who 'deserve' to be here and people who don't. The position that we all share this planet, and that no one has any more right to a particular part of it than anyone else does, is probably the most core of all my beliefs. Please keep this in mind as I write about communities; the argument I'm going to make is an important one, but I think is often misused by people who actually want to stir up conflict. This is not what I'm doing.
Although it's important to always bear in mind that we're all ultimately citizens of the world with equal rights, it has occurred to me over the last year or so that being part of your own group, which reflects your feelings and your ideals, is important as well. I'd never quite realised this before - in the past I've always been a fairly individualist person - but there are two things in particular that have caused me to think more about these things: moving from one of England's biggest cities to a small town in the Welsh countryside, and my work with OCISA.
OCISA is a campaign group that I've been engaging with frequently over the past year. The name stands for Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance (you can take a look at their website here). It's more than a single issue campaign, but they were founded to focus on one key aim - to unseat Keir Starmer at the next election. I won't go into detail here about exactly what my issues are with the current Leader of the Labour Party (I've written about that in other blogs, such as this one and also this one) but the subject of this blog is not so much why it's being done, but how it's being done. The majority of the work being done by OCISA is taking place in the London constituency of Holborn St Pancras, which is Keir Starmer's Parliamentary seat, and the idea is to select an independent candidate that represents the feelings of the local community better than Starmer. Not living in that constituency, I have no idea how this is going or what the locals' feelings are towards their local MP - but I've heard from hearsay that there's been a fair bit of interest, so maybe it could happen. Who knows?
The point that interests me is that this is pretty much the first time that I can remember where a major political figure was discussed at all in relation to the values held by the constituents they represent. Given that electing one's local MP is the entirety of our constitutional democracy, you'd think that this would be the most important factor in discussing these people, but strangely it very rarely seems to be so. And thinking about this made me think about constituencies more generally. Until a couple of months ago, I lived in Bristol West, which is perhaps the most radically left-wing constituency in the country (it's where the Colston statue came down, and the Tories don't even bother to campaign properly there as they know they have no chance). And yet, the incumbent Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire is nowhere near as left-wing, was heavily involved in the 'chicken coup' against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, and is now part of Keir Starmer's Shadow Cabinet. You can find a lot of my indignant emails to Thangam in the backlog of my blog - truthfully, I really regret voting Labour in 2019, in spite of the fact that I hoped they would win nationwide, because it resulted in an MP that absolutely does not share my values, or even the reasons I supported her own party at the time.
I've heard quite a lot of people, many of whom share my political views, saying that the constituency system is outdated, and that we should directly elect the Prime Minister in the same way that US citizens directly elect the President. Although I partially agree and would like to see a more democratic means of selecting a Prime Minister, I'm not sure the solution is to abolish constituencies entirely. When I lived in Bristol West I felt that there really was a strong community spirit that I felt a part of - these were people who shared my feelings, my values, my fears and my desires, and were willing to listen to me when we differed (and I them). It was the establishment that didn't respect these things. I actually think that the problem is that constituencies have been undermined, and I think the key to that is in our party setup. Whichever party your MP happens to belong to, the feelings in your own community are unlikely to be the main criteria for their decisions on how to vote, who to meet with or what speeches to make - this is more likely to be determined by their party, which likely will not have very much association with the community in which you live. Even worse, a lot of parties put forward the people they want to be elected into the party's 'safe seats' where they're highly likely to get enough votes - they may not have even been there before, let alone understand the community's values. What, then, is the point of creating a constituency and electing someone to represent that, if they aren't really going to do so?
With all the talk about trying to elect an independent in Holborn St Pancras, I've started thinking about other constituencies. In 2019 I found it really hard to decide who to vote for, because I wanted to support Labour and Jeremy Corbyn but I also really didn't want to re-elect Thangam Debbonaire - in the end I did vote Labour, but in hindsight I think it was the wrong decision. I haven't lived in my new place long enough to have decided yet who to vote for or even to be quite sure who's standing, but if there is an independent candidate I may well consider voting for them (only if I like their views, of course). In fact, I think it would be good if every constituency elected an independent candidate. An entire House of Commons filled with independents dedicated to their own constituencies would, in my view, be far better for representing the overall mood of the UK. This is an idea that a lot of people immediately dismiss, citing that it would lack stability, be harder to create a Government of continuity, and so on. Perhaps it would. But in the end, isn't that the whole idea behind the Parliamentary set-up in the first place? If it's not for the values of individual constituencies to be reflected independently of one another, what actually is the point of any of it? We may as well have an entirely new system if we're not going to do what I'm suggesting.
All this comes back to the fact that individual communities of people (not just within the boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies) have very distinctive personalities. I think it's important that these are nurtured, and that the people within them talk to one another and establish what they hold dear. How does this square with my strongly-held beliefs that we are global citizens that shouldn't segregate ourselves? Well, just because a community link exists between people, that doesn't mean that they're closing themselves off to newcomers. I've experienced this myself in my recent move. I've been absolutely blown away by how welcome my partner and I have been made to feel in this Welsh town we've moved to. Although we've only been here a few months, we already have loads of new friends (still keeping in touch with the old ones, of course) and we're really getting a feel for the vibe of this new community. My partner has set up a charity to campaign for the rights of the most vulnerable (particularly those with learning difficulties and mental health problems); we've already had many people telling us how much this project fits into the town, and how grateful people are for it.
Finally, I think that communities have been under attack, and it's not hard to see why. For the whole of my lifetime, and probably a lot longer, there's a strong emphasis from the capitalist class on making people individual and competitive. I don't believe that this is how human beings are designed to be. Moreover, I think that the nature of community, the concept of ordinary people being there for one another and supporting one another, is a threat to establishment rule. We can only fight that by allowing our communities to grow stronger. If anything, I feel that the 'citizens of nowhere' rhetoric of right-wing politicians is entirely designed to suggest that feeling safe and secure in your community is equivalent to being afraid of new people coming in and ruining it. The opposite is true. Communities exist, but they're fluid; people come, people go, and newcomers bring their own ideas which contribute. I think that every community benefits from people coming in from outside and deciding to call it their home.
