I recently moved back close to where I grew up. Thanks to the pandemic-induced change in working culture, I'm now able to live a two hour commute from my employer's London office. Everyone is different of course but small market towns in rural England are absolutely my vibe and it feels great to live a slower, more peaceful existence. To leave London's sphere of influence feels so freeing and I'm the happiest I've been in years.
During the process of moving, my parents revealed familial connections to the town that I had no idea about. I'd unwittingly chosen to live a stone's throw from the house my step-grandad grew up in, and he sang as a choir boy in the church I had begun walking past in my lunch-break. My dad pointed out the high-street shop his dad used to own in the 1980s, with me realising he must have taken the same walk to the train station that I now take. Further down the same high street is the WHSmiths that my brother and I used to buy comic books from every other weekend.
I do not expect this to be interesting for anyone else but me, however these details serve as evidence of my connection to the area, and a sense of belonging that would otherwise have taken years to arrive at. I feel a part of the town in a way I've never felt before at my previous addresses. It took moving away, then moving back to really appreciate of the area. The churches, the parks, the cotswold stone, the 15th century town hall, the trees, the birdsong, the train station, the war-memorial, the local museum, the cafes, the antique shop, the charity shops, the florists. - it's idyllic.
At first I worried that I was becoming patriotic, that the pride I had for the town would eventually morph into a general love of country. As someone on the Left, I'm against Nationalism: It has been used to justify colonialism, illegal wars, and at the time of writing is being used by Israel to commit a genocide on the people of Palestine. Nationalism also acts as the basis for fascism. Unfortunately in many counties the Right embolden national pride by stoking division and fear through blaming a country's woes on migrants. In the coming decades this will only get easier as the number of climate refugees climbs into the hundreds of millions.
With Nationalism out of the question, I recently discovered the somewhat-similar concept of Localism: a political philosophy that is largely concerned supporting the local economy, and advocating for local forms of government. I'd like to expand Localism a little bit as a contrast to Nationalism.
To explore Localism through a Marxist Lens, it can be seen as somewhat analogous to the Class Struggle. Where the Class Struggle arises out of a conflict between workers and the ruling class, Localism arises out of a conflict between localities and the ruling nation (or corporations). Class Conciseness is an awareness of one's place in a system of social class. Local Conciseness can be seen as an awareness of one's place within their locality, and e.g. how they have common interests with other members of their locality. Local conciseness is raised through agitation, and I have to admit, is usually expressed as what we know as NIMBYISM. Some examples of expressions of local conciseness could be concern for any of the following:.
Local Consciousness is not an established term, but I hope it makes sense. It is a distinct from the property owning democracy, originally conceived by Tory MP Noel Skelton in a 1923 issue of the Spectator, and later popularised by Margaret Thatcher. Local consciousness shouldn't be borne from "having a stake" in the local area, on account of owning property and wanting its price to rise. Rather, It comes from the permanence and security of home ownership, and the mental-bandwidth, reflections, observations, community etc. that that allows for.
Having experienced local consciousness for the first time in my life, I'm now concerned about its absence in the younger generations. Clearly, those who have moved to an urban population centre for higher wages daren't cultivate a sense of connection with an area given the instability of renting. The housing crisis is understandably the main driver of the dearth of local consciousness when most renters are a matter of months away from being kicked out by their landlord by way of a rent-increase. As affordability gets worse and the proportion of renters increases, there will be fewer and fewer people who see themselves as part of the area they live in. With the average age of first-time home-ownership rising too, it means that feelings of connection to a local area are being deferred to a later-and-later point in one's life. Conversely, the housing crisis can force younger people to keep living with their parents, possibly engendering a feeling of resentment for one's local area as a result of feeling trapped in it.
Expanding on the work aspect for a moment: In the industrial age when work was demarcated along cultural, idealogical, and geographical lines (i.e the dockworker, the miner, the factory worker), a shared sense of identity with colleagues was an inevitable byproduct of the job. This fostered local consciousness and class consciousness at the same time. The same cannot be said for today's world of work, which skews to the metropolitan information-economy. The housing crisis means workers often live and work in completely different areas, with commutes growing ever-longer as house prices rise. This makes the workplace as unlikely place for local consciousness to grow, as employees in a modern day office will all likely live many miles apart. Working from home is a double edged sword as it can free employees from the obligations of living close to the office, but local consciousness is most likely to be zero sum. For the affinity gained in one area is that which is lost from another - for me for example, moving to rurality has pushed my dislike of central London to new heights. It feels almost inevitable that urban city centres will continue to decline as those who care for it are pushed out by monopoly rents and gentrification.
More and more young people are going to University now too. Of course the first taste of unadulterated freedom is not a time I would expect 18 year-olds to reflect on their place within their university town/city but it's true that the typical Student Mindset completely obliterates any sense of reverence for the city one is studying in. The shitty halls of residence, the focus on clubbing, the HMOs etc. This lack of local consciousness students process undoubtedly contributes to the friction between the student and indigenous population. Possibly, Universities should teach students on how to see themselves as part of the fabric of the city a bit more, despite the poor accommodation and explicitly temporary stage of life students are in. Maybe they already do this in Oxford or Cambridge, or the history and aura of those academic institutions adequately enables the social reproduction of local consciousness.
The decline of religion to in the UK has most likely led to a decrease in local consciousness. Christianity very clearly signals the important of the local area and its people. A Sunday Service would bring local residents together, to pray and reflect as a distinct townspeople. Like the workplace, the shared identity was clear. Values of humility, empathy, compassion etc. surely played a role in the cohesion occupants in the church's catchment and fed into local conciseness.
The results of less and less local consciousness in any given area should be clear to everyone. The death of community, litter being dropped, distrust of strangers, a switch-off from politics, demise of third-spaces, tragedy of the commons, vandalism, death of the high street etc. Basically: contemporary society, and all its ills. Without local conciseness, Capitalism prevails and you get something like a retail park: a lifeless, concrete, car-dependent, commercial hell scape. In keeping with historical materialism, the intersections of capitalism and our housing crisis loom large in any commentary about the state of the nation. However, I hope the idea of local consciousness is a useful one, and helps make us aware that being a part of where we live is incredibly important.