Open any newspaper, or skim through any website, and you will quickly learn that Britain’s ‘third places’ are in trouble. Youth centres; gymnasiums; cinemas; libraries – places to engage in one’s social life, rather than work or home life – are all slowly vanishing from the nation’s map. Whether being crowded out by private interests and private dough, or turning hypoxic as dwindling public funds serve to suffocate, many community spaces are either closing, or facing closure.
In the last month, the high-profile example of London’s Prince Charles Cinema has demonstrated just how quickly (and unexpectedly) even popular spaces can come under threat. But it’s not just a matter of businesses like the Prince Charles, rowing with their landlord; it’s charitable organisations facing eviction by their council; it’s tough decisions being made as energy and maintenance costs rise; and it’s shrinking attendances, as more people opt for Netflixing rather than networking.
Close to where I live, I learned that the historic Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club could be moved out of their premises by Tower Hamlets Council. With the Council providing a dearth of reasons for closure, you’d at least expect them to target a spot that is little frequented. But after paying the Club a visit one week-day eve, I found the place was actually bustling with gymgoers, as hulks and hulk-ettes lifted and then clanged their dumbbells to the ground, with a steady stream of background chatter filling the room. That is to say, this weightlifting club was not a dead space. And as I worked my way round, asking people why they chose “here” rather than perhaps a more up-market, commercial gym nearer to their home, the most common answer I got back was: “community”.
There were people there that had come to London to escape war, and had found a home at the Club; there were others who said they enjoyed the competitive spirit of weightlifting in a gym where trophies lined the walls; some came for a pressure drop, and many came to improve their mental health. Whatever it was that had initially enticed them, the reason they stayed was because of the connections they’d made. And go to any similar community hub and you’ll find the same thing: people joining together to fulfil that universal need to be with others.
But if trends continue, a simple right – the right to be with one another – will undoubtedly be eroded. Of course, that is not to say that all spaces for communal gathering are disappearing; here in the capital, a Pret cafe seems to open every minute. But these places – coffee shops, restaurants, theatres – require an exchange to take place between you and a business – ahem, money. And normally, loitering is not promoted by them either.
Now, I am not on some quixotic mission to destroy all meeting places which require some kind of fee. But I do think free-to-access spaces, and too, non-for-profit groups, need further protection by government. For, there would be something disturbingly hyper-capitalist about a society which can only engage with itself by paying for the pleasure.
In the city I’m writing from, almost 50 community spaces were lost between 2018-2023 – that’s according to the Foundation for Future London. And it requires no tweed-suit-spectacled analyst to explain why this is happening, because the basic answer is local authorities are skint. A report by UNISON – showing that two-thirds of council-run youth centres have closed in England and Wales since 2010 – found that the main reason for closures was funding cuts. That reason would go for many community centres more generally in this country.
Now, is the Labour government responsible for Britain’s depravation of shared spaces? Mostly no; Austerity with a capital “A” is what looms highest here. But repairing the UK’s scarred social fabric will need more than a top-up of funds by the new government. Instead, a much more active process must be pursued. As local authorities try to rebalance their books after a decade of financial famine, I would bet that community spaces do not find themselves atop the list of spending priorities. This is mostly because there is no statutory duty for councils to do so; whilst there might be a legal requirement for the provision of youth “facilities” under the Education Act 1996 – and even then, that obligation is vague – there is no other law which explicitly compels councils to provide community spaces in general. And so naturally, councils will take the path of least resistance when planning their budgets.
So what lengths are Labour willing to go to? When, in December, they shut down the Community Ownership Fund with £15m left in the bank, there was reason for consternation amongst community groups. However, the English Devolution white paper, published at the start of this year, has confirmed that the government now plans to resurrect that Fund, whilst also introducing a community right to buy scheme for “valued community assets”. It’s nothing to sniff one’s nose up at, but with very little other messaging from our Westminster overlords, it’s perhaps fair to think that things (for now) might be colloquially stuffed.
But third places must be protected. Regardless as to whether local and national government regard them as a secondary issue, they serve a crucial civic function: they facilitate democracy.
When talking of third places, the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg is often brought up, and for obvious reasons (he coined the term). But for our purposes here, an earlier book – Richard Sennet’s The Fall of Public Man – might be more pertinent. As Sennet identified in 1977, if we lack the spaces in which to: share ideas; debate them; laugh and cry about them; if we are wanting for public places to see each other as individuals, warts and all – then our capacity for empathy will fundamentally suffer. And democracy in its purest form is, perhaps, nothing more than political empathy. No wonder then, that a recent Channel 4 survey has shown that the majority of young people now support the idea of a quasi-dictatorship in this country. Scoff at the headline whilst eating your breakfast if you like, but its serious stuff. As such, more must be done to look after those third places which don’t require some kind of payment. Doing so will ensure all members and levels of society have access to them.
Encouraging the existence of spaces which promote discourse should be a government priority, not an optional extra. Some might say that the internet now fulfils this democratic need, and that the internet has become society’s new congress; Indeed, Elon Musk once described Twitter as the new “town square”. And how did that pan out? Democracy is under threat the world over, and in the West, it’s pathological individualism which is driving the trend. Is the simple solution then to just “love thy neighbour”? Maybe so. But if it is, it might be a good idea to keep a place to meet them too.
