Around late 2012 or early 2013, just as the impact of austerity was truly starting to be felt, social media platforms reached a symbolic milestone. At that point, half of UK adults had become active social media users.
New digital spaces were opening up just as physical spaces like youth centres, community halls and leisure centres were closing down. Between 2012 and 2016, an estimated 600 youth clubs shut their doors for good.
This process is still ongoing, as London has continued to lose almost ten local authority-run community spaces a year between 2018 and 2023. This is one of the key stories of our politics today: the loss of physical spaces where we might come together and the radicalisation of some of the digital ones that have replaced them.
We have lost physical spaces where we might come together and instead have digital ones which are radicalised
By now, we appear to be spending more time alone, while long-running time use surveys have recorded a steady, decades-long decline in time spent socialising. In part, this is about the appeal of the little entertainment machines we all carry in our pockets, and in part about the loss of places to go.
My own work as a sociologist studying post-industrial English towns has made me appreciate just how devastating the loss of shared spaces has been in England’s former mining towns – these were thriving places in recent memory, with lively pubs and miner’s welfares, which are mostly gone now. But no part of the country has been spared.
In south east London, where I live, one of my favourite community spaces also closed when its private equity-backed landlord kicked it out. A pincer movement of abandonment and gentrification means that community spaces are lost in booming as well as struggling places, exacerbating a vicious cycle of closures and rising alone time.
All of this means people are more confined to their private homes, with all of the inequalities that come with that. Older homeowners in declining towns retreat into their homes as their private fortresses, exposed to other sections of the country only through social media scaremongering. Meanwhile, young families and renters in metropolitan areas are stuck in overpriced and overcrowded flats, as they see affordable options for eating and socialising disappear. In both of these types of places, parents have told me about the impossibility of planning an affordable family day out. This is all contributing to a public mood of anger and despair.
But there are solutions. In a new discussion paper for the think tank IPPR, I argue that we might look to the history of the miners’ welfare to revive our community centres and public spaces.
Back in the 1920s, the government forced coal companies to contribute one penny per ton of coal to be put towards social, cultural and medical amenities for coalfield communities. The result was an abundance of lidos, sports facilities and social spaces, which made life much better for ordinary people. After the blows of deindustrialisation and austerity, many of these facilities have disappeared and we need a present-day equivalent – not just for coal communities, but for the entire country.
This could be funded by a tax on large digital retailers like Amazon, just as the original welfare fund got its budget from the coal companies. A 21st century welfare fund could empower local authorities and community groups to jointly revive shuttered community spaces and to reintroduce affordable activities for families, providing spaces where people could meet face to face, enjoy a bit of time away from the daily grind and grow new solidarities.
Matchstick Piehouse, the community space that had shut in my neighbourhood, has now reopened as the Piehouse Co-op. The local community rallied to raise money for this beloved venue, showing once again the immense appetite for affordable, accessible spaces to come together. Crucially, the new Piehouse also received a large grant from Lewisham Council, which is a rare but very welcome contribution in a time of strained local authority budgets.
With greater funding for community groups and community spaces through a 21st century welfare fund, similar reopenings could happen up and down the country. Meanwhile, the Piehouse is continuing to be a space where we show up for one another, sometimes to fundraise for people’s gender-affirming care, sometimes just to drink and dance together.
Every community deserves spaces like this – and our politics would be the better for it.
Sacha Hilhorst is author of the paper ‘Places to come together: rebuilding local solidarities against the far right’ for the IPPR
