Levenshulme : the local campaign

I’m not a fan of facebook, which I’ll weblog on at a later date, but it does have its advantages. For one the dominant colour scheme is white and blue. For two it works locally as well as globally.

Levenshulme is the area of Manchester in which I live and which for many years has been called up and coming. What exactly is meant by that is a few trees planted on a few streets, and in the last couple of years a Subway and a Tesco. In the meantime, inbetween time, they knocked down the community centre, attempted to build a couple of football pitches on the local patch of communal land and proposed closing the local swimming baths.

In the grand scheme of things not a big deal, but on a local level Levenshulme has a strong sense of community which has been chronically underfunded for years. Local amenities have deteriorated, there’s been little investment by the council and when the community has organised to try and improve the local area it has faced active opposition by the Town Hall.

An ordinary tale of an ordinary part of Britain. To explain in fairytale terms, the example of the community centre: it was wooden, somewhat dilapidated, but relatively well used, given the state it was in and its lack of resources. Then the council huffed and it puffed and it blew the community centre down. No little piggies inside though.

Because the council was angry at not finding anything to eat it left the land waste, with a vague proposal of selling it off floating around somewhere over the rainbow. In response, members of the local community crawled out from the undergrowth and began turning the space into a community garden. Little Red Riding Hood visited, she was happy with it, but once again the wolf was at the door. The council demanded that as it was council land all unlicensed activity by the community to improve its surrounding be immediately stopped. Following negotiations between Peter, the community representative, and the council, it was agreed that a licence would be granted provided that those working on the garden formalised themselves and sent in a proposal. This they duly did ( in May this year) but the council delayed and until now no licence has been issued.

Peter has so far not succeeded in catching the council by its tail and neither has a woodcutter appeared.

Inaction appears to be the watchword generally in Manchester City Council’s dealings with the community, not only in Levenshulme but across the city. With that in mind a protest was organised at short notice on Facebook outside the local swimming baths to try and publicise the fact that though there has been some money invested most of the repairs and refurbishment needed still have not been carried out.

Again, in the grand scheme of things, its not going to make the front page, the back page, or anything inbetween. But it is exactly the kind of thing that’s important to local communities in established local areas. If you live in the city centre, who gives. The population is fairly transient and has easy access to a range of public and private amenities. In areas with established communities and chronic underinvestment, its exactly the kind of issue that’s important.

I can’t swim so you’re never going to find me at anything with swimming in the name, and the sprogs don’t like swimming either, but I went along to the protest anyway because its important to other local people. I might not know most of them, or only know them in passing. But that’s the nature of a community, you have a concern for others and an appreciation of what’s important to them.

Or to put it another way, you don’t see your neighbours as strangers at the door.