In our previous post, we announced the binning of the At the Grassroots blog – We’re done... 12.6.26. Although that blog has now gone and we’ve walked away from our attempts to promote and support grassroots projects in the Avon region, we don’t intend to stop posting pieces looking at the need to build for radical change from the base upwards. We also don’t intend to stop posting on how a lot of what we need to build that better world is actually already in place once you start to look.
At heart, we’re still anarchists who believe in a non hierarchical society. We know that meaningful change has to come from the grassroots. Any ‘change’ that’s imposed from the top down cannot be radical or sustainable in the long term.
The anarchist conclusion is that every kind of human activity should begin from what from what is local and immediate, should link in a network with no centre and no directing agency, hiving off new cells as the original grows.
A lot of what we’ve been about over the last fifteen years is working out how we can start to build a more equitable, just, sane and sustainable world in the shell of the dysfunctional and increasingly dystopian one we currently have to endure. A fair number of people would cynically dismiss this as idealistic tosh. They would say that people are too selfish to ever make such a world work. They would ask – who would ever volunteer for such a world?
What is a volunteer? It’s someone who gives up their free time, who unpaid, puts in the graft to make things happen in their community. What would happen if everyone who volunteers in their community decided to quit? To illustrate this, I’ll run through what could happen in Keynsham, the town I live in if every volunteer decided to quit. Please bear in mind that this is not a comprehensive list…
Think about the foodbank and the community fridge. Once upon a time, ‘Auntie Flo’ lived just around the corner and would provide a cup of sugar, money for the meter or a few eggs for breakfast. But with the dispersal of family support networks, this is no longer possible, so those who cannot meet all their financial comments have to use the foodbank and/or the community fridge. Those who can, donate from their shopping or from an excess of vegetables and fruits grown in their gardens or allotments. Volunteers collect the donations, sort them into parcels to be handed to those who need them. Without volunteers this vital scheme would not run. And it’s not simply about showing off wealth, it’s about supporting your fellow K-towners.
If no one volunteered to help out Keynsham In Bloom, the town would look drab. There would be no planters, maintained flower beds and hanging baskets. This doesn’t just apply to the town centre – it also applies to the railway station. What they do isn’t just about amenity. It’s about showing that people care for where they live. It’s about the splashes of colour they provide which boost people’s morale – something that’s vital in these troubled times.
The Keynsham Music Festival would struggle to carry on. From the stage managers to the litter picking teams, and many other functions in between, it’s volunteers who put in the work to make the show go on. The same applies to the winter festival that’s held in the town.
If the Keynsham Wombles, who we sometimes volunteer for, gave up litter picking, the town would look a lot scruffier – particularly along certain stretches of the Avon:( Keeping the town as litter free as possible shows that we care about where we live. It sends out a signal that certain standards of behaviour are required from the selfish minority who do drop litter.
The local churches would struggle without volunteers who not only facilitate the services but also undertaken a lot of pastoral and social outreach work. Just one example of this are the coffee mornings at the Methodist Church on the High Street that offer people who would otherwise feel isolated, a vital opportunity to socialise.
There would be no junior football. All of the organisation of football at this level is undertaken for free by people who love the game and can see what it offers kids in the way of bringing some structure into their lives. That applies to all other sports that kids participate in.
The two football clubs in the town – Keynsham Town FC (Jewson Western League Division One) and Fry Club FC (Somerset County League) both rely heavily on volunteers to run their operations, as do many other clubs in their respective leagues. The same applies to the rugby and cricket clubs in the town. If all of their volunteers quit, they would struggle to survive.
These are just some of the many activities and projects in Keynsham that can only function through the goodwill of the volunteers who give up their free time. This commitment shows that they care deeply about where they live. That commitment to the community is a vital part of the foundations of the better world that we want to create. Each of them in their own way are an embodiment of the principles of mutual aid and solidarity. Principles which are a key part of what putting anarchism into action means.
Before we moved from Essex down to Keynsham in 2022, we had been involved in a number of community projects. Some met with success, others didn’t, but we learnt lessons from the failures. One of the successes we were proud to be involved with was the resident run, Hardie Park in Stanford-le-Hope.
Back in the 2000s when I ran as a candidate for the Independent Working Class Association in the Stanford East & Corringham Town ward, one of the issues that often came up on the doorstep was the neglect the park was then suffering plus the fact that an anti-social element of the local youth were turning the place into what some residents described as a ‘no go’ area. After intervention from the residents in the 2010s, starting off with a few litter picks and eventually moving on to be organised enough to take over the running of the park from Thurrock Council, Hardie Park is now a thriving community resource.
The project at Hardie Park is a success because it’s about a lot more than the park. Sure, the volunteers have done an amazing job in physically transforming the park but that’s only part of the story. The interesting part of the project is the role it plays in building community solidarity and cohesion. In an increasingly troubled and volatile world, a project that can bring a diverse range of people together to work with one common aim has an invaluable role to play in building a real sense of community and togetherness.
What I’m trying to get across is that a fair number of the building blocks for the better world we want to create are already there. For sure, a fair few of those involved wouldn’t meet a strict ideological purity test but, with things as bad as they are at the moment, are we seriously going to implement such a test? If the community benefits from this voluntary activity, who the heck are we to impose a purity test?
All of this goes to show that the naysayers, doubters and divide and rule merchants, with their twisted view of what humanity is, have got it wrong. The evidence, as cited above, is there for all to see that us humans are in fact, a co-operative species. It’s this that gives us a degree of optimism for the future…
