The End of Solidarity? By Jane Foster

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Recent experiences have spurred me on to write this little piece. In the space of a year or so I've gone from being a community-loving socialist to something resembling an individualist...well in some ways anyhow. I'll start from the beginning. Having been brought up on an estate with definite community spirit in the good old 1970s(?) I sometimes find myself having nostalgic longings for this way of life. Having left there in the late 80s when the estate was degenerating into drug addled ruin, I lived in various places around the Avenues area. I've come finally to rest in good old Ella Street (best street in 'ull, in quite a few peoples' opinion).

I'd heard about Ella Street's famous reputation for being something of a community so I moved here 3 years ago. It was the final year of my Social Science degree and I chose to do my dissertation on communal living. During my research I came across communities that used a system of trade and barter called LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System). Trading skills and items and the like, instead of using money. I decided to try and set one up for Ella Street and the surrounding area.

What response or help did I get? Hardly any. It seems that people are always talking about doing things but when push comes to shove no-one wants to put in the time or effort. This seems to be the case with a lot of things nowadays, but no-one really tries to determine the real cause of this apathy.

I'll tell you one of my theories about this. It's because people put too much of their energy into their personal lives rather than on public issues. There's far too much emphasis nowadays on having the perfect relationship and perfect children - at the expense of wider concerns that affect us all as human beings.

Add to this the fact that people are just too knackered, due to our culture of overwork. And the fact that families and friends are often split widely apart either geographically or ideologically, due to ever changing cultural ideals..and it's no surprise really.

Another experience I had was when I tried to find out if there was a local branch of a certain human rights group in Hull. I finally got hold of a number of a bloke who was the supposed local organiser. When I rang the number it was answered by a woman who told me snottily that he didn't live there anymore, and she gave me a different number. I called, and the bloke who answered sounded about as inspired as a wet flannel. Yes, he said there was a local group of about half a dozen people who met once a week at his house.

I decided not to go. It didn't sound promising. I am always suspicious of groups that don't advertise themselves. It inevitably means that they're cliquey and a bit weird. I had never seen any posters or other publicity relating to this group. I've had this type of experience before with a breastfeeding support group. It was rather extreme, not because of all the members, but a certain few individuals who had their own agenda. They rained fire on anyone who let their baby sleep in a cot or horror of horrors, gave him or her a dummy. It was also riddled with self-righteousness. The children played non-competitive games...in the most competitive way possible of course.

And strangely, competition even crept into conversations, hence : I'm a vegetarian, you know (fingers yin-yang earring). Oh really? Well I've just become vegan (twiddles stray dreadlock). Oh yeah? Well we've just spent the summer in a field, in a teepee made entirely from organically grown fair-trade papaya skin , living off homemade rice pudding made from my spare breastmilk, of which I produce vast quantities (lops out breast and demonstrates...). Scary. Needless to say, any vaguely average people who joined the group left sharpish, leaving a hard core of fringe fanatics to scare off any new members who didn't have Doc Martens and a beard (and that's just the women..)

Back to more recent events. In my exploration of various groups of one kind or another, there seems to be the same problems amongst groups time and again.

It's ether inbreeding or infighting. Inbreeding, in that people in groups get involved with each other sexually. Of course this is part of human nature, if you have a group consisting of people of the opposite sex..

I have had this problem with various creative pursuits of mine. I've been longing to get together with some decent musicians for ages, for example, and get some kind of combo together.

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