It’s 7.30pm on the second Tuesday of the month. I’m sitting in my village’s church hall listening to a lovely woman who lives a few doors down from me talk about raising awareness of hedgehogs.
Later, we’ll discuss ‘the dip’ – as we refer to the section of road that floods during heavy rain – and perhaps off-road bikers, planning permission, and of course potholes and dog poo.
Yes, I’m a parish councillor.
I joined the council two years ago not long after I moved here – a former pit village in Nottinghamshire – as a way to meet new people and get to know the place. What I didn’t expect is how much it’s influenced my thinking on the work we do at Larger Us.
In fact, becoming a councillor has been a personal crash course in the kind of skills that we try to help others to build and that we believe are desperately needed to head off division at a time when forces are trying to pull communities apart.
‘Britain is broken and Reform can fix it,’ declared Nigel Farage. We now know from the local election results that 31% of the voting public think it’s worth giving him a crack at it.
This is of course deeply concerning because underneath the flat cap and behind the pint lies a sinister world view and a long list of grievances designed to whip up division – the first ten minutes of Farage’s campaign speech in Kent runs the full gamut: migrants, Border Force, trans people and unions all come in for a battering alongside the ‘woke left-wing judiciary who have frankly become a complete disgrace’.
It feels personal too as I’m from Mansfield, which just voted heavily for Reform – and as I reflected with my family this week, it just feels unbelievably sad to see our town going in this direction.
But the party’s continued rise is not inevitable. Its fortunes are predicated on our growing intolerance and fear of each other, on mistrust of democratic institutions, and a mounting sense of inevitable decline in our communities.
Each of these is a huge problem in and of itself, but we can’t rely on someone else – like political parties, campaigning organisations or community organisers – to dig us out of them. Community doesn’t build itself. If you want a village, you’ve got to be a villager. Here’s what I’ve learned from being a parish councillor that might help you along the way.
1. Go out of your way to meet people not like you
You have no hope of building solidarity if the only people you’re prepared to spend time with are those with the same views as you. What’s more, you’re probably going to have to actively seek these opportunities out as they don’t come so easily to us anymore.
Modern life conspires to keep us busy servicing the needs of our own little units rather than the collective needs of the communities in which we live. It takes conscious and consistent effort to break out of these patterns, after all there are so many other things we could be doing – a boxset binge, ferrying the kids to activities, training for that triathlon.
None of these are bad, of course, but if they’re all we’re doing with our free time, it’s unlikely we’re getting to know people who are different from us. A litter pick on the local park may not be at the top of your list of fun weekend activities but it’s here that your work begins. Which groups in your area need support or new members? How can you start making time to meet people not like you?
2. Start with people as they are
People are messy. Each of us has our own set of experiences, values and beliefs that can make the idea of building community together feel impossible. People are stubborn, unreasonable, ill-informed, rude, sanctimonious and generally unfathomable, but they are also funny, kind-hearted, generous and dedicated – sometimes in one conversation!
The only antidote to being driven up the wall by each other is curiosity – and this is something we can actively cultivate. Understanding more about why people think and behave like they do is the key to unlocking compassion and common ground. We might never agree with them but if we can understand what makes them tick, it might make being in community with them a little easier. So find out about people. Ask them questions. What or who do they care about? Test some of your assumptions. You might be surprised.
If you’re reading this thinking, ‘this is all well and good, Claire, but are you telling me I have to befriend my local racist/homophobe/misogynist?’ My answer is, yes I am – especially if you’re white/straight/a man. Calling people out might feel like the morally righteous thing to do but expelling people from our company isn’t going to change their mind and makes them easy prey for Farage and the darkest corners of the internet.
In her legendary TED Talk ‘Don’t call people out – call them in’, Prof Loretta Ross shares advice from her mentor, civil rights leader C.T Vivian: ‘When you ask people to give up hate, then you need to be there for them when they do.’ This speaks, I think, to the power of community and connection and why we need to hold onto each other even when it’s really hard.
3. Manage your amygdala
Often when people speak during the public forum section of our council meetings they express their fears – the impact of a new housing development, broken street lighting on dark footpaths or anti-social behaviour near their home. I have to remind myself of this on the odd occasion when they are shouting, being accusatory or rude. In other words, I have to stay in charge of my amygdala – the bit of our brain responsible for our flight-flight-freeze reaction.
If you’re trying to connect with people who are not like you, you need to pay special attention to your amygdala because in times of stress it can override your best intentions and before you know it you’ve either lost your cool, physically left the conversation or mentally checked out.
Being part of a diverse community means coming across people who aren’t careful with their words, phrase things poorly or have never learned how to manage their own emotions and so act out in loud, unpredictable ways. It’s *so hard* not meet these hostile actions with reactions and yet this is what we must learn to do to stay connected.
This isn’t about ignoring poor behaviour; it’s about putting ourselves in the best possible position to address it. Personally I find it helpful to take a few deep breaths, try my best to listen carefully and to think of a question I can ask the other person. Questions are magic. First, they stop you from going on the attack or becoming defensive. Second, they indicate that you’re listening. Third, they encourage the other person to re-engage the thinking – and less triggered – part of their brain.
In my experience this takes a lot of energy and a lot of practice. It’s emotional labour in action. It kind of annoys me when I have to do it because I wish people could just keep their sh*t together but I stick at it because if you lose your rag, you lose relationships and I can’t bring about change in this village on my own.
4. Be who you are and don’t fear disagreement
Building long term connections with people who aren’t like you isn’t about holding your tongue, never disagreeing with them and going with the flow (and thank goodness because that’s enough to drive anyone mad). You can be yourself and be clear about your values without alienating people.
Take my sister, who plays in a poker league. Before the local elections every other player – men she has been friends with for many years – told her they were going to vote Reform. Two things to know about her: she’s gay and she always speaks her mind. ‘But what about all the racist, homephobic things they say?’ she asked. At this point they all went quiet and someone muttered something about ‘good policies’.
Some described Farage as ‘our Donald Trump’ who will ‘sort the country out’. My sister pointed out that some LGBTQ+ people are leaving the US due to Trump’s policies and made a joke about how much they’d all miss her if she were gone. They probably all did still vote Reform but I like to think that maybe some of them hesitated and thought of my sister, their friend, before they put their X in the box.
She’ll be back playing poker with them next week and the week after that. They are a community. If she decided to cut them off, to join a different league, maybe there’d be no-one in their lives challenging the group-think.
5. Be hopeful
One of the most difficult things I find about being a parish councillor is dealing with negativity. I’m a natural optimist but I’m also quite in tune with other people’s energy so ‘mood-hoovers’ can have quite an outsize impact on me.
We have a heritage building in the village that used to be a cafe but it closed last year and has been empty ever since. A new group is now trying to bring the building back to life and has shared plans for a live/work space which I think sound exciting but which have been met with strong resistance from some of members of the community.
I should say here that there were plans a few years ago to turn the building into accommodation for prison leavers. Villagers were fearful of this and in the end planning permission was denied but this experience has left them deeply suspicious. Accusations are flying around the village Facebook group that this new enterprise is trying to house prison leavers in the village by the back door, despite them having nothing to do with the original application.
People often say ‘love is a verb’, well ‘hope’ is too. It’s an action. In this case I’ve met with the people behind the new project, shared my contact details and given them some insight into the fears villagers have and how they might best share news about the project going forward. Being hopeful isn’t about smiling and telling people things will be ok, it’s about doing something to help it be ok.
None of this is easy or a quick fix but it’s the work that needs to be done if we want to keep our communities together, independent of election cycles.
The threat from Reform isn’t going away. The party is building on momentum that has been decades in the making – a nasty, furious stream of political discourse that has seeped into the mainstream via the hard right like UKIP and the far right like the BNP and Britain First.
We have to disrupt these narratives where they’re thriving – not on social media, where interpersonal relationships go to die, but out there in the real world among the groups that are most vulnerable to dark influences. To do this successfully we have to stay in relationship with others and spend time with them in real life rather than rolling our eyes at their Facebook posts. We have to listen to them, understand them, be with them. Start where people are at, manage your emotions, hold fast to your values and offer an alternative, more hopeful vision of the community you could build together.
So look around for your chance at transformation, find people not like you, work out who or what could do with some support, and crack on 🙂