The UK community anchor model and its challenges for community sector theory and practice

Abstract

Chinese

The growing policy focus since the 1970s in Scotland, the UK and internationally on ‘community’, community development and community ownership and enterprise has facilitated a certain growth of the community sector and therefore of concern for related discussions of theory and practice. This paper positions this turn to community within the shifting global political economic context, in particular the rolling out of the neoliberal state internationally from the 1980s and a related urban crisis management of structural inequality (Brenner and Theodore, 2002). By focusing on the emergence of community anchor organisations – understood in the UK context as multi-purpose, local community-led organisations – within Scottish and UK policy-making since the 2000s, the central dilemma for critical community sector theory and practice of sustaining a local egalitarian vision and practice (Pearce, 2003) given this neoliberal context is explored. A Scottish urban community anchor provides an illustration of this challenge for theory and practice and of how it can be re-considered through discussions of ‘progressive mutualism’ (Pearce, 2009) and ‘resilience, re-working and resistance’ (Cumbers, 2010; Katz, 2004).

Keywords

community anchor organisations community sector theory and practice neoliberal urban social policy progressive mutualism and community ownership Scottish and UK public policy

Introduction

This paper explores community sector theory and practice (CSTP) through developments in Scotland, and the UK more generally, of the community anchor model since its first explicit articulation within UK policy-making in the early 2000s (Home Office, 2004). The scope and roots of CSTP are outlined and positioning the developing community sector within a shifting political economic context and roll-out of the neoliberal state. This is then developed through discussion of neoliberal urban crisis management and the political construction of the third and community sector(s) roles (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Cochrane, 2007; Mooney, 2010).

In turning to the rise of ‘community anchors’ within Scottish and UK policy-making, a limited if growing UK research literature is recognised on community anchor organisations and their like (Baker, 2011; Henderson, 2014; Hutchison and Cairns, 2010; McKee, 2012; Pearce, 1993; Thake, 2001, 2006; Weaver, 2009); and on a related community (asset) ownership (Aiken et al., 2008, 2011; Moore and McKee, 2014). Use of the term is recognised as distinct from that of community/social anchors in North America (Clopton and Finch, 2011).

Given the local egalitarian solidarity often aspired to within CSTP, theorising for a more critical CSTP concerned for progressive mutualism and challenging of neoliberal orthodoxy is then considered (Cumbers et al., 2010; Pearce, 2003, 2009). Such critical theory and practice is further explored and illustrated through the practices of a long-standing Scottish urban community-controlled housing association (CCHA) and community anchor working within a multi-ethnic, largely working-class community in Glasgow.

The scope and roots of community sector theory and practice

Ridley-Duff and Bull’s (2011) critical exploration of social enterprise theory and practice is pitched as two halves: first, considering the historical and theoretical contexts of the emerging social economy; and second, concerned to explore diverse current practices. They support understanding of current debates for theory and practice and critical aspirations for a cooperative, progressive social economy. In exploring CSTP, this paper similarly recognises the pluralism of CSTP while advocating for progressive, critical approaches. Here ‘critical’ is understood as concerned to explore the asymmetrical distribution and dynamics of power across agency and structure, and relative to an ethos of ‘human flourishing’ (Giddens, 1984; Sayer, 2009).

The term ‘community sector’ gained increasing usage in the UK under the ‘New Labour’ UK Government (1997–2010) given the latter’s emphasis on communitarian thinking and a ‘Third Way’ (Haugh and Kitson, 2007). Thake (2006) identifies a community sector of not-for-profit (third sector) organisations and groups working from ultra-local level to ‘borough-wide’ communities of place and ‘sub-regional’ local communities of interest. These vary in size from volunteer-run neighbourhood groups to relatively sizeable community-based organisations with turnovers of millions or tens of millions of UK pounds sterling e.g. CCHAs. Pearce (1993, 2003) similarly articulates a ‘community economy’ of not-for-profit community enterprises; local voluntary organisations; and informal self-help economy. He argues for diverse practice that integrates campaigning for social change; community-led local development; and local service provision. CSTP is then focused on the roles, practices and aspirations of community organisations, groups and networks working across a broad field of social, economic and political activity.

‘Community’ is often presented as the earliest form of human organising, one that coordinates through social bonds and general reciprocity (Giddens, 1984; Harvey, 2009 [1973]). Researchers advocating for the community sector in the UK often articulate a local egalitarian social vision that recognises common ground with 17th century radicals, e.g. the Diggers in England, and the friendly societies, cooperatives and early trades unions of the 18th and 19th centuries across the UK (Aiken et al., 2008; Pearce, 1993; Woodin et al., 2010; Wyler, 2009). Those concerned for the social economy, understood as an alternative to public and private sectors, likewise point to its varied roots: in the cooperative movement in western Europe; moral ‘laissez-faire’ economic thinking; and other social action, e.g. philanthropic organisations and voluntary associations (International Centre of Research and Information on the Public, Social and Cooperative Economy, 2012; Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2011).

Murray (2013) argues that the arrival of mass production in the 20th century halted the growth of the cooperative movement. Post-1945, the economies of western Europe and North America were dominated by the interests of private (capital) and public (state) sectors; with trades unions active in protecting the interests of labour (Atkinson and Moon, 1994; Thelen, 2014). Although, ‘community’ and social economy remained, of course, relevant, e.g. Alinsky’s community organising tradition in the USA (Eversley, 2009). The growing crisis of urban poverty and related racial discrimination in the 1960s and 1970s in the USA and UK sparked renewed interest from the Keynesian welfare state in ‘community’. The US Government’s ‘war on poverty’ in the 1960s led on to a growing role for non-profit community development corporations (CDCs) across the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (Atkinson and Moon, 1994; Cochrane, 2007). In the UK, state funding for community development programmes was initiated in the late 1960s (Atkinson and Moon, 1994; Cochrane, 2007; Craig et al., 2011), while Power (2011) observes the rise of urban community cooperatives from the 1970s.

The shift in the 1980s to neoliberal UK and US governments marked a transition to a focus on service-led economies and declining trades union power and working class activism. Although community resistance and activism in the UK continued as ‘popular planning’; campaigning on gender, race, disability, environmental issues; and urban race-related protest (Atkinson and Moon, 1994; Hoggett, 1997; Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2011). Neoliberal policy-making – UK Conservative Government (1979–1997), then New Labour Government – turned to public, private and ‘community’ partnerships in the 1990s and 2000s to manage urban spatial inequalities. Partnerships leading to increased focus on community regeneration organisations – and now community asset organisations – and their related roles in public service provision across Scotland and the UK (Aiken et al., 2011; Atkinson and Moon, 1994; Moore and McKee, 2014; Thake; 1995, 2001, 2006). More recently, there has been emphasis too on ‘asset-based approaches’ concerned to build a range of community capitals (O’Leary et al., 2011); as well as their critique as adaption to neoliberalism (MacLeod and Emejulu, 2014).

These trends are more widely relevant to developed states in Europe and North America. Aiken et al. (2008) review varieties of community ownership and local public ownership in Europe, and in the USA where the local state often ‘contracts out’ non-essential services and legislation supports investment in community organisations. They also position the land rights movements of first peoples as part of such a community ownership. O’Leary et al. (2011) explore international examples of rural and urban asset-based approaches from developed and developing countries. The re-emergence of social enterprise, cooperatives and the ‘solidarity economy’ in Europe, North America and globally since the 1980s is explored by Amin (2009) and Murray (2013).

Critical accounts of the emerging community sector in the UK and internationally may recognise a language of local egalitarian solidarity that seeks to inspire community ownership and empowerment. Yet, they identify this as being facilitated by the rise of the neoliberal state with its focus on managing communities and structural inequality through partnership (Cochrane, 2007).

Neoliberal urban crisis management

The shift to the neoliberal state during the 1970s and 1980s, its emphasis on the private sector, ‘competition’ and ‘market fundamentalism’, and its rolling-out in diverse forms across the globe is well documented (Cochrane, 2007; Cumbers and McMaster, 2012; Harvey, 2011; Peck, 2008). Such global political economic change has had profound social, political and ecological impacts, including increasing capitalist urbanisation, global migration, political conflicts, pressures on eco-systems, and widening uneven development and inequality (Alperson, 2002; Cochrane, 2007; Harvey, 2011; Katz, 2004).

Further, the 2007 international financial crisis and state policies of ‘austerity’ that seek to reduce public spending and increasing privatisation have sought to shift responsibility and blame, ‘responsibility dumping’, onto the local state rather than holding to account failing international financial structures and central state policy-making (Peck, 2014). Within this context, the neoliberal state continues to seek reductions in welfare spending and services through an urban social policy of partnerships, ‘managerialism’ and control of ‘disorderly’ communities. The political construction by the state of third and community sector roles should then be understood as primarily concerned with urban crisis management of structural inequality rather than the flourishing of working-class communities (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Cochrane, 2007; Gray and Mooney, 2011; Mooney, 2010).

In the UK, the shift from Keynesian welfare state to neoliberal state during the 1980s was characterised by substantially increasing economic inequalities that have since been sustained (Belfield et al., 2015). Shifting urban social policy as a focus on partnership and managerialism through public sector, private sector and ‘community’ has, Johnstone and McWilliams (2005: 172) argue, sustained a ‘dual society’ offering only ‘the participation of the excluded’ to working-class communities. While such partnership can also undermine existing community organisations (Collins, 1997) and offers little prospect of a deeper vision of social justice (Cochrane, 2007).

Most recently under the UK Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government’s (2010–2015) ‘Big Society’ agenda, localism in England has been promoted as an alternative to ‘Big Government’ and solution to the ‘broken society’ (Blond, 2010). This agenda has been widely critiqued as seeking voluntarism and an apolitical civil society over an activist third sector, and providing cover for public spending cuts and privatisation (Alcock, 2012; Coote, 2011; Gray and Mooney, 2011). The key legislation, the Localism Act 2011, aims to support a shift to localism and provides limited community sector opportunities including a community-right-to-bid for land, community-right-to-challenge service provision, and neighbourhood planning.¹

In Scotland, Danson and Whittam (2011) characterise Scottish Government public service reform as tending to a ‘European Public Service’ model with the third sector a key partner within the state’s collective provision. The Scottish Government’s version of localism as community empowerment can, therefore, be viewed as distinctive from developments in England (Moore and McKee, 2014). However, whilst its Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 (Scottish Parliament, 2015) emphasises tackling inequality, the Act treads similar ground to the UK Government’s Localism 2011 Act in terms of community sector opportunities.² Both are seemingly closer to the ‘localism’ that Painter et al. (2011) highlight as a decentralising of state and public sector structure and services, rather than a ‘community empowerment’ as citizen activity that includes independent community action that may conflict with the state.

The Scottish Government’s public service reform agenda, as articulated by the ‘Christie Commission’ (Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services, 2011), accepted the UK Coalition Government’s strategy of reducing public spending. The Commission highlights partnership-building strategies – ‘strengthening communities’, partnership-working and preventative approaches – that aim to improve performance and reduce service demand. However, the Commission’s acknowledgement of the role independent community action and organisations (2011: 34) and the damage to society of inequality (2011: 6) arguably provide leverage for community sector advocacy on inequality and sector development.

The fundamental ambiguity for critical CSTP is then further clarified. The neoliberal state seeks to engage the community sector in its urban crisis management strategies of the consequences of structural inequality. It directs the community sector’s role via policy and funding and therefore generates challenges to the sector’s local egalitarian ethos and solidarity (Cochrane, 2007).

Community anchors and the challenges of policy and practice

Increasing policy focus on the community sector is also fuelling the community sector’s own aspirations. Pearce (1993, 2003) seems the first to articulate the concept of a facilitative, locally controlled ‘core community enterprise’ concerned for local economic and social development; building the local community sector; and working productively with local state and business.

Thake’s (1995, 2001, 2006) research into community regeneration in the UK advocates for multi-purpose neighbourhood regeneration organisations working as a ‘local anchor’ (Thake, 2001) – later ‘community anchor’ (Thake, 2006). Thake (2001: viii) identifies these organisations as possessing a board or committee ‘accountable to local constituencies’. Further, anchors are holistic and undertake local strategic, leadership and facilitative roles; have strong organisational structures that support working with state and ‘the grassroots’; and provide a range of local services and support for local community groups.

Such local ownership and ‘control’ provides a crucial divergence with the use of the term ‘community anchor’ in the USA. There local public sector institutions, private companies, and larger non-profits – sometimes known as ‘anchor institutions’ e.g. universities and hospitals – can be termed ‘community anchors’. Clopton and Finch (2011) develop a ‘social anchor theory’ where these institutions are seen to strengthen social capital and community identity. The UK community anchor model is better understood as influenced by the North American CDC model of often sizeable non-profit community-based organisations leading local economic and social development (Cochrane, 2007; Pearce, 1993; Thake, 2006).

Thake (2001, 2006) explicitly aligned community anchors with UK New Labour Government policy on welfare reform, tackling of ‘social exclusion’ and promotion of communitarian approaches or ‘third way’ (Haugh and Kitson, 2007). Anchors received a limited airing alongside community asset ownership in UK Government policy-making (Her Majesty’s Treasury/Cabinet Office, 2007; Home Office, 2004). However, the UK Coalition Government (2010–2015), in shifting narrative from third sector to civil society (Alcock, 2012), has ignored anchors in its policy rhetoric whilst generating certain opportunities for community ownership through the Localism Act 2011.

In Scotland, the previous Scottish Executive (1999–2997) – a Labour-led coalition with the Scottish Liberal Democrats – pursued regeneration and public service reform through a partnership model (Johnstone and McWilliams, 2005; Matthews, 2013), without drawing on the community anchor narrative. The SNP Scottish Government (2007–present) has emphasised community empowerment, place-based approaches and community asset ownership (Matthews, 2013; Moore and McKee, 2014) and promoted community anchors through community-led regeneration, recognising the potential of CCHAs and community development trusts (CDTs) to fulfil this role (Scottish Government, 2011; Scottish Government and COSLA, 2009).³

Community sector representative bodies across the UK have advocated for community anchors as community-led, multi-purpose organisations that provide local leadership, local development and services. In England, the then Community Alliance (2009) – now effectively Locality – and in Scotland, the Scottish Community Alliance (SCA) – then Local People Leading (2008) – have advocated for community anchors too. A small but growing research literature illustrates the model’s application within urban, rural and remote contexts in Scotland, England and UK (Baker, 2011; Henderson, 2014; Hutchison and Cairns, 2010; McKee, 2012; Pearce, 1993; Sampson and Weaver, 2010; Thake, 2001, 2006; Weaver, 2009). Weaver (2009) stresses the ‘inherent complexity’ of anchor roles and functions, while Hutchison and Cairns (2010) point to their ‘hybridity’ in working across community-based ‘associational’ approaches, public service delivery and social enterprise market-based trading activity.

One particular challenge highlighted by the literature is that of the working relationship between anchors and the state, and how the former can sustain commitment to community interests (local mission) rather than simply become a vehicle of state policy implementation (Cotterill and Richardson 2011; Hutchison and Cairns, 2010; Local People Leading, 2008; Weaver, 2009). Weaver (2009) argues for a ‘sustainable independence’ from the state via robust governance and reliable sources of income generation from community ownership and enterprise. However, Weaver (2009) also recognises the state’s crucial role in enabling or blocking such sustainable independence.

The potential of community enterprise working through the market is likewise explored and advocated (Hutchison and Cairns, 2010; Pearce, 1993, 2003; Thake, 2006; Weaver, 2009). Yet there is also deep unease at the ‘marketisation of society’ (Weaver, 2009) and of private sector intent to colonise social enterprise (Demarco and Henderson, 2014; Pearce, 2003, 2009). Further, Cochrane (2007) argues that the reality of CDTs (UK) and CDCs (USA) as self-sustaining social enterprises is questionable given they often draw on state subsidy and can tend to generate insecure, low paid employment.

Crucially then CSTP must consider political economic dimensions – and relations between state, market and community – in order to deepen understanding of the multi-purpose, leadership practices of community anchors (Henderson, 2014; McKee, 2015; Pearce, 2003). Pearce (2003, 2009) provides the most developed narrative of a community sector concerned to empower ‘ordinary working people’ to challenge inequality and state and private sector interests. He brings together social, economic and ecological goals as a ‘working for the common good’, and outlines political economic aspirations for ‘mutualism as dominant’. Here a socially owned sector or ‘third system’ is positioned as providing alternatives to the public and private sectors (or systems) – each understood as part of a ‘modern mixed economy’.⁴

Pearce (2003) argues that this ‘dominant mutualism’ provides an alternative to a ‘dominant capitalism’. This supports critical CSTP in positioning itself relative to other progressive political economic practices concerned for ownership, inequality, uneven development and ecological sustainability (Jackson, 2009; Reid Foundation, 2013) and the ‘promotion of inclusive and responsible forms of decentralisation’ (Pike et al., 2016: 3). Such deepening political economic dialogue supports the community sector as it necessarily works across tensions between: (1) advocating for diverse local community interests (leadership); (2) developing viable organisations and sector (survival); and (3) sustaining an egalitarian, progressive social vision (commitment) (Henderson, 2014). Given the pluralism of CSTP, such dialogue can support as well recognition of the differences between neoliberal ‘austerity localism’ and a ‘progressive localism’ that is outward-looking and challenging (Featherstone et al., 2012).⁵

Cumbers et al. (2010) offer one such tool for critical investigation of UK practice and context using Katz’s (2004) three-fold framework of: (1) resilience – working class communities working together to ‘get by’ in the face of neoliberalism; (2) reworking – generating ‘autonomous’ spaces relatively free of the interests of capital; and (3) resistance – more fundamental challenges to capital and inequality by developing ‘oppositional consciousness’. Such a framework can be used to enrich discussions of progressive mutualism (Pearce, 2009) and re-think community sector ambitions to integrate community leadership, sector survival and social vision and commitment (Henderson, 2014) in the midst of urban crisis management.

Learning for theory and practice from actual urban community anchor practice

Material from case-study research on Govanhill Housing Association (GHHA), a CCHA in Glasgow, is used here to explore critical CSTP (Henderson, 2014). Initially, the research methodology is outlined, then GHHA is illustrated in the community anchor role. The community of Govanhill and the ‘slum housing crisis’ there is described, and the latter then provides focus for discussion of GHHA’s work to advocate for community interests. This in turn supports consideration of the learning for critical CSTP.

A qualitative case-study methodology

Henderson (2014) presents case-study investigations of three Scottish community anchors – urban, rural, remote. The research aimed to deepen understanding of the realities of community anchor practices, challenges and contexts. A qualitative case-study research methodology (Giddens, 1984; Merriam, 2009; Stake, 1995) provided the diversity of data collection methods and interpretative analysis from which to illustrate such complexity and explore critical perspectives. Given the emphasis of community sector representative bodies on the relevance of anchors across varied geographies, an organisation from each of the urban, rural and remote contexts was studied to enrich discussions of CSTP.

Given this paper’s focus on urban policy, GHHA is considered here, although many of the themes arising have relevance to the other two anchors. The case-study material was developed through: (1) interviews with local staff, activists and volunteers, and others with relevant knowledge about organisation, context and policy; (2) observation and participant observation at local meetings within the organisation, the community and services, and by walking around the community and talking informally; and, (3) extensive study of a range of internal and external documents and local media reporting relating to policy, research, service provision, community activity and GHHA activity. Triangulating across this breadth of material informed the researcher’s interpretative case-study development of GHHA as a community anchor and related learning for critical CSTP.⁶

Govanhill Housing Association as community anchor

GHHA was formed in 1974, one of the earliest of the CCHAs (Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations [GWSFHA], 1999), and has a management committee of local tenants and residents. It owns over 2200 properties, almost all of the social housing in Govanhill, and employs approximately 50 staff. GHHA works with the local public sector as part of Govanhill Service Hub to coordinate housing management, other public services and community development activity in the area. GHHA has had a long-standing role in local regeneration and has developed capacity – through subsidiaries Govanhill Community Development Trust and Great Gardens – to lead and support: community-building activity, tenant and resident participation, community enterprise development, employment training, community sector development, environmental project work and local workspace provision. It also provides welfare and advocacy services, including those developed with Black and minority ethnic residents, and office space for other community organisations.

The ‘community-controlled’, multi-purpose roles of CCHAs in Glasgow are long-documented (GWSFHA, 1999, 2015; McKee, 2010, 2012; Paddison et al., 2008). GWSFHA promotes the community anchor model (McKee, 2011), although not all CCHAs would seek the role. The summary of GHHA’s role above, and the material that follows, illustrates the ‘inherent complexity’ of the anchor role (Weaver, 2009) and the importance of the long-term relationship with the state – Glasgow City Council (GCC) and, initially, the Scottish Office, now Scottish Government. GHHA (2010) is a registered mutual organisation; an Industrial and Provident Society with not-for-profit status, an asset lock, and democratic local governance. Its participation within national umbrella bodies GWSFHA and the Scottish Community Alliance points to its commitment to advocate at national policy levels.

Govanhill and the ‘slum housing crisis’

Govanhill is an urban, mixed but largely working-class, multi-ethnic community of over 15,000 people (Bynner, 2010; Lynch, 2010) positioned a mile to the south of Glasgow City Centre. Nineteenth century industrialisation led to the building of tenements for immigrant workers, in particular Irish people and later East European Jewish people (Thomas, 1999). It has continued to be a ‘first point of call’ for many immigrants including: Pakistani/South Asians settling since the 1960s (Thomas, 1999); in the last decade, Eastern Europeans, following A8 and A2 EU state accession⁷ in particular Slovak and Romanian Roma; and a wider range of global migrants, asylum seekers and refugees⁸ (Bynner, 2010). Bynner (2016) illustrates Govanhill as a ‘superdiverse’ community with complex ethnic and other social relations set within the context of wider dynamics of international migration and structural inequalities.

High levels of deprivation are revealed across most health, income and educational indicators in many parts of the community (Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2008; Scottish Public Health Observatory, 2010) in particular within the social housing neighbourhoods and private rental tenement housing areas. State investment in housing improvement in Govanhill, managed by GHHA, through the state-funded ‘Comprehensive Tenement Improvement’ approach halted in 2004, leaving some 750 tenements in southwest Govanhill as ‘unimproved’ (GWSFHA, 2015). Many private landlords have failed to invest in the maintenance of their properties within these tenement blocks, yet have continued to rent them out in often appalling states of repair and overcrowding to vulnerable immigrant workers and families. The resulting ‘slum housing crisis’⁹ led an initial 2008 GHHA survey to estimate the costs of bringing the tenements back to a safe, liveable standard to be of the order of £187m (Berry, 2008).¹⁰

Many Eastern European EU immigrants, particularly from the Roma communities, have also struggled to find sustained, adequately paid employment – leaving them open to exploitation by landlords and gang-masters – and often lacking access to, or experiencing discrimination from, the UK benefits system (Paterson et al., 2012; Roma-Net, 2011). This, in the context of the Roma escaping discrimination in Eastern Europe (Poole and Adamson, 2008), further illustrates the complexity of social, political and economic factors – locally, nationally, internationally – that are constructing this community and across which GHHA as a community anchor must seek to work.

GHHA and challenging the slum housing crisis (2008 to 2012)

Since 2008, GHHA and its community partners – including Govanhill Law Centre (GLC), Crosshill and Govanhill Community Council and later Govanhill Community Action (GoCA) – have been actively advocating for state intervention and re-investment in the community’s housing. Discussions with interviewees supported understanding of the complexity of GHHA’s role, with one interviewee (1) providing a core narrative:

The Association submitted a petition to the Scottish Parliament in 2008, saying we still had poor housing conditions in the area, because in the south-west of the area there were still a number of tenement blocks that hadn’t had comprehensive improvements or repairs. It’s very much in the private sector and 80% of it is in the private rented sector. So we had lots of issues with rogue landlords, and EU (im)migrants being exploited. We worked with the Govanhill Law Centre to prepare a petition to the Scottish Parliament to complain about the sub-standard housing in the area, and that people were being exploited.

A number of serious challenges are still to be addressed in Govanhill, and we needed resources and changes in legislation to address all these issues. It ran through the Scottish Parliament for about three years and I think it was the longest running petition in the Scottish Parliament. The Director of the Govanhill Group went through to give evidence, along with another committee member at the time.

Their petitioning was influential on Scottish housing legislation (Harkins et al., 2011)¹¹ and provided the central state, local state and community sector with the opportunity to work together: developing a public services hub; investing in the community sector and community building; and developing a regeneration and housing investment plan for the area through Govanhill Regeneration Taskforce.

The work of Govanhill Service Hub has been reviewed through the Scottish Government’s Equally Well initiative and is illustrative of the potential for public sector–community sector partnership-working (Harkins and Egan, 2012a; Harkins et al., 2011). GHHA was also able to support further community sector development, in particular a community sector forum, as interviewee (1) illustrates:

We’ve always argued that regeneration of this community should be community-led. And that is, led by local people deciding for themselves what needs to be done, and how to go about it. So, I suppose GoCA, Govanhill Community Action, has been the start of providing a kind of voice for the people that is recognised within community planning structures. … I think it has now been accepted that the Govanhill Partnership, the new Neighbourhood Management Group, will actually recognise GoCA as a platform for local people to influence …

GHHA and community partners established GoCA from 2010 as a core group of 10–12 local community and voluntary organisations to coordinate local activity; take initiatives, e.g. participatory budgeting pilot; and seek to network widely across the local ethnic and class diversity (GHHA, 2012; Harkins and Egan, 2012a, 2012b).

While the Govanhill Regeneration Taskforce (2010–2012) might have offered expectations of a step-change, the final report lacked actual further investment and related policy commitment (Govanhill Regeneration Taskforce, 2012). By the end of 2012, the area was still lacking housing investment on the scale needed to seriously impact on the housing crisis.¹² More recently, further actual funding of £4.3m from Scottish Government and £5m from GCC has been agreed and is to be used from 2015 to 2017 by GHHA on an ‘acquire and repair’ scheme in the four worst tenement blocks (GWSFHA, 2015).¹³ In the meantime, the community has continued in crisis and levels of local frustration have risen leading to oppositional grassroots community campaigning in the area.¹⁴

State urban crisis management and aspirations for a progressive mutualism

The illustrations above of GHHA as community anchor and its leadership and advocacy on an issue fundamental to local community interests, may highlight the potential of public sector–community sector partnerships to coordinate local services. Yet, in the process, the community sector has been absorbed within state urban community crisis management (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Cochrane, 2007) as part of ‘responsibility dumping’ on the local state and community (Peck, 2014). The management committee and staff were keenly aware of the scale of the housing crisis and the failure of state institutions to invest on the necessary scale. Interviewee (2), for instance, highlighted growing social tension and frustrations with the scale of local state intervention:

Community Spirit is leaving. There’s some parts of Govanhill that are still really lovely. When the ‘right-to-buy’ came in that was a big problem¹⁵. … The over-crowding is absolutely horrendous: cockroaches as big as mice, how can people live like this. People don’t believe that this is happening, until you tell them. Too many people are shutting their eyes to this. Why is the council allowing this to happen? They’ve topped and tailed some buildings but what good is that, as some people wouldn’t open their doors to let them in.

Interviewee (3) pointed to the very real limitations that poverty, deprivation and inequality have brought to peoples’ lives and the capacity for community-led regeneration:

You can’t expect people to give of their time and skills when they themselves are living in poverty. I’m not saying that people in poverty don’t do those kinds of things. Often it’s the complete opposite; those who are most in need are giving the most. But it’s not for us to expect people to get involved in their community or create community spirit or be active in their community when they are living in poverty.

Indeed, this slum housing crisis illustrates the failing private rental housing market in Govanhill with its roots in the policies of neoliberal UK Conservative Government in the 1980s of shifting to owner-occupation and private rental including through ‘the right-to-buy’ (Atkinson and Moon, 1994).¹⁶ Furthermore, the lack of long-term state investment of the necessary scale in public and social housing; and a related dearth of socially controlled (mutual) investment institutions to support this objective.

The persistence, commitment and skills of the activists and staff of GHHA and local community sector – evidenced across interview, observation and documentation (Henderson, 2014) – continue to impress. Many have been working for one or more decades, some now into a fourth decade, as part of a resilience or ‘getting by’ (Katz, 2004). A human solidarity that supports diverse community interests, sustains the organisation and local community sector, and provides the bedrock for any progressive mutualism.

There is, too, a reworking here to create an ‘alternative space’ distinct from the interests of capital and increasing marketisation of society (Cochrane, 2007; Katz, 2004; Weaver, 2009). Not in the current political economic realities where the constraints of neoliberal state and market remain dominant, rather in the commitment of community anchor and sector to sustain the visibility of the crisis and generate leverage to pressure for extended state investment in social housing and the local community sector (GWSFHA, 2015); a shift then of investment to socially owned alternatives to private sector approaches.

Cumbers et al. (2010) argue that resistance to capitalist social relations is little evident in the neoliberal era given it requires ‘oppositional consciousness’; although point to the (UK) Living Wage Campaign as one current example.¹⁷ The advocacy of GHHA and community partners likewise provides material for illustrating and developing such an oppositional consciousness, given the ongoing focus on public and social investment, approaches and solutions in the face of the private sector market failure. For critical CSTP, this gives substance from actual practice to dialogue as to what it can mean to seek mutualist alternatives (dominant mutualism) and in the process to resist the interests of capital and market (dominant capitalism). It offers insights into the democratisation of capital in the interests of labour – those depending on a wage rather than capital – and the ongoing commitment, advocacy and leadership needed to make progress towards such a goal. This is thinking and dialogue that can enrich understanding of community sector aspirations – to provide leadership, support sector development and sustain a progressive social vision – and the strategies needed to pursue them.

Conclusions

The growing international policy emphasis on ‘community’, community sector and social economy, particularly from the rise of the neoliberal state in the 1980s, has led to a limited visibility within Scottish and UK policy-making for community anchors from the 2000s. Yet neoliberal state strategies of urban crisis management of structural inequality contradict the local egalitarian aspirations commonly articulated within community sector theory and practice (CSTP).

Pearce’s (2003, 2009) progressive mutualism offers a re-imagining of relations between state, private sector and the socially owned community sector. The central tension for CSTP of working within such neoliberal crisis management whilst sustaining community leadership, sector development and such a progressive social vision (Henderson, 2014) has been illustrated in this paper through the actual workings of a Scottish urban community anchor. By drawing from Cumbers et al.’s (2010; Katz, 2004) exploration of strategies of ‘resilience, reworking and resistance’, this community anchor’s practice has also been used to illustrate the potential for: community resilience in the face of structural crisis; reworking focused on socially owned and coordinated activity and ‘space’; and narratives of resistance to capitalist ‘market fundamentalism’ through assertion of the central roles of both state and mutual institutions in tackling structural crisis.

In the process, both opportunities and need for further development of critical CSTP are made visible. Ongoing research from a mutualist perspective that explores critically the wealth of community sector and wider socially owned practice in Scotland, the UK and internationally can provide material for deepening CSTP. An increasingly rich practice dialogue can emerge that: engages with the practical realities of community sector practice and aspirations for progressive social change; provides a structural political economic model that reasserts the roles of mutual and state institutions; and, supports development of strategies for change that build from current practice examples of resilience, reworking and resistance.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the crucial contributions to the research informing this article of: the staff, activists and volunteers from Govanhill Housing Association and others locally; the wider community sector including two other community anchors involved in the original research and the Scottish Community Alliance; and Professor Angela Hull who supported the original research. In the drafting of the article, the comments of the three anonymous reviewers provided valuable prompts and challenges. The responsibility for all omissions and errors remains with the authors.

Funding

UK Economic and Social Research Council provided PhD funding for the research that informs this article.

Notes

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