The ties that bind are fraying. The state must be more assertive in restoring our common identity
source - Daily Telegraph - 29/05/23
You might have heard of a young man named Mizzy, a prankster whose videos are popular on social media. He has approached women late at night asking if they want to die, taken an elderly woman’s dog, torn up library books, leapt onto the shoulders of an unsuspecting Orthodox Jew, and refused to leave a man’s car after pretending to mistake it for a taxi.
After entering a family’s home without permission, last week Mizzy (real name: Bacari-Bronze O’Garro) was arrested, fined and given a criminal behaviour order. Within hours of his release, however, he appeared on television, boasting that “UK laws are weak”. He was accused of breaching the terms of the order, and was re-arrested and remanded in custody.
Mizzy is a case study in what is wrong with our unduly lenient criminal justice system. But more than that, he is a symptom and a catalyst, in his parochial way, of the breakdown of social trust in Britain.
Research shows only one in four people believe they live in a safe area, while half say they feel unsafe walking home at night. This is in part down to trust in the law, with only a quarter saying they have confidence in the police, but it is also down to how we feel about one another.
For the past 25 years, the British Social Attitudes survey has asked respondents if others can be trusted, and the answer has tended to split 50-50. Beneath the headline number, trust is lower among those with lower educational qualifications and with lower-paid jobs. Those who are more engaged in social activities are also more likely to trust others.
The Edelman Trust Barometer shows Britain has one of the greatest gaps in trust, between high and low-income respondents, in the world. Trust in business, government and media is falling and lower in Britain than in most other countries.
We can surmise some of the reasons. The collapse in trust in the police has followed several high-profile scandals: failures to uphold the law and evidence of bigotry and corruption. The long failure, since the financial crash, of Britain to return to healthy economic growth – and the resulting fall in living standards, higher taxes and struggling services – makes people more guarded and less generous with what they have.
Covid has probably played its part, too. If it is true that those who participate in social activities are more likely to trust one another, locking ourselves away from others must have done little to help. While we clapped for carers, admired the risks and sacrifices of others, and supported the collective efforts of lockdown and furlough, since the pandemic anti-social behaviour has grown more common.
And since post-Covid inflation has taken off, the trade unions have shown little of the pandemic spirit. The teaching unions – so concerned about Covid “learning loss” – are striking anyway. Ambulance crews, doctors and nurses have been prepared to risk patients’ lives. Despite the billions spent to keep the industry alive throughout lockdown, the railway unions have remained the most militant.
Deeper forces are at play too. Our society is rapidly becoming more fragmented. Online entertainment and news – available on multiple platforms, streamed when we choose – means fewer shared national moments and more accounts of news and events that reflect and compound the values and biases of reporters and readers. To sustain advertising revenues social media demands our attention for longer by building algorithms that promote polarisation and extreme content. We are divided increasingly by the level of our educational and professional success, which is replicated in friendship circles, marriage and even the neighbourhoods we choose to live in.
There are consequences, too, of our increasingly radical diversity. Research shows there is a negative correlation between diversity and solidarity. Studies find support for redistributive taxation falls as immigration increases, and communities lose trust as they grow more diverse. In the words of Robert Putnam, the US academic, while these trends can be overcome with time and effort, “in the short to medium term, immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital”.
This should worry us, since low-trust societies are far less pleasant than others. Expectations that good behaviour will be reciprocated diminish. Norms of politeness and respect disappear. Anti-social behaviour and crime increase. Bad business practice and the exploitation of customers or workers become more common.
People grow more selfish. Governments become more powerful, and more intrusive, as social standards decline. Compromise becomes harder to achieve, and places, moments and institutions we can all participate in become rarer. Compare modern city life with the countryside, or America with smaller, more homogenous European countries, and the difference is obvious.
As the great sociologist Robert Nisbet argued, where people believe that “community has been lost, there will be a conscious quest for community in the form of association that seems to promise the greatest moral refuge”. It is not hard to see the link today between lost trust, a weakened sense of community and the rise of militant identity politics, populism and polarisation.
We can be passive about these changes, and accept a less happy, more unequal, and less secure society. Or we can start to take this danger seriously.
To address it, the state needs to become more assertive. Communities need to be supported as they reassert norms of behaviour. More deliberate effort needs to go into nation-building than a country like ours – self-deprecating and allergic to pomposity as we are – has been accustomed. More needs to be done to promote our common identity – in schools, in culture, in law – than those things that set us apart.
For if we want more trust, stronger communities and a better common life, we need once more to see familiarity in one another – and not difference and danger.
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