What kind of a future do we want in the conurbs?

Whilst the priorities of city and suburb, country town and village are often the subject of public discussion, those of the conurbs, the small towns and villages that make up a large part of Britain's big conurbations, seldom are.

Labour in central and local government has done something to turn around the fortunes of the big cities, but never got around to mending its decaying urban heartlands, has been fixated on appeasing voters in suburban marginals.

The political history of the conurbs, the dismantling and removal of its local government, has left us with fewer means of defending ourselves, of resisting moves to centralize provision and marginalize us than even isolated rural areas.

This political disenfranchisement, and the economic insecurity that goes with it, is something nobody else but us will reverse - government and business has run out of money now, and we're still at the back of the queue.(cont)

Our economy will carry on declining, our health services will continue to be cut, our public transport will carry on being among the worst in the country, till we give up waiting for business and the state to come and rescue us.

We can campaign, as our 'community leaders' suggest, to get our town councils back, spend years trying to make an official system that is designed not to work deliver, or we can try and do things ourselves, edit them out of the process.

Self-sufficiency was a part of the practice of the early trade unions, one that enabled them to grow strong and able to help each other, it is perhaps something that we are going to have to re-learn whether we want to or not.

That is, if we want a green future for everyone. There is an alternative, of course, that we carry on regardless, destroy ourselves and everything else, return the conurbs to nothingness.

What do you want to do?

NSWF