People who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s learned community in ways that feel almost foreign now. Not because they had a blueprint but because they lived within repeated ordinary acts that added up into something bigger than themselves. This is not nostalgia trimmed for clicks. It is a claim about how routines, expectations and small social economies once produced durable public life. And yes I think we lost most of that on purpose and by accident.
How community used to arrive without ceremony
There was no single institution that produced community. It was stitched from a thousand modest textures: the corner shopkeeper who knew your father by name, the church that doubled as a place where you learned to organise a bake sale, the union noticeboard which announced a meeting in plain language, the school play that everyone attended even if you were startled by the acoustics. These were not grand events. They were daily governance by habit.
What I find striking is how informal obligations did the work of trust. People showed up because not showing up cost something social. That cost was not transactional money. It was a loss of credibility, a small public shame, a narrowing of opportunity. Those costs made people invest in one another in the same way an investor puts faith in a startup they actually hang out with.
It was practical, not pious
Community then was more than bonding over dinner. It was an infrastructure of obligations that made collective problem solving simple. You needed a volunteer driver for the elderly and someone could be nominated in the pub. You needed a fundraiser and half the street would make pies. It worked because people expected reciprocity in very practical terms.
“It is that social networks have value. In a social network if you cheat somebody other people will hear about it. So the more I lose by cheating the more likely I am to be honest. On a grand scale this creates generalized reciprocity. It is what makes democracy work.” — Robert Putnam Professor of Public Policy Harvard University.
Putnam did not invent the observation. He gave language to a lived reality. And he showed that once those daily small economies fray the large things begin to wobble too.
What the 60s and 70s asked of citizens
The culture asked you to do something with your time beyond personal gratifications. Not because the state mandated it but because social credit required it. That era asked for a balance between private life and shared projects. For many people this blend was imperfect and exclusionary. Not everyone belonged. Yet the mechanics of belonging were knowable. There were rules and places to learn them.
We should be honest. Those rules were uneven. They could exclude on race class and gender lines. But even so the mechanics of participation created opportunities. People learned skills that mattered in public life organising managing budgets speaking in public. These skills were often taught in community contexts rather than formal classrooms. That matters for how resilient communities become.
A contradictory inheritance
When I speak with people raised in this period a pattern emerges. There is gratitude for a reliable scaffolding and impatience at its blind spots. They remember being expected to do things and resented the limits the same time. That contradiction is crucial. It produces citizens who know how to build the garden and also how to critique the gardener.
Why modern replacement models fail
We thought digital networks could replicate what neighbourhoods once did. They don’t. Online platforms create breadth not depth. They amplify attention but do not tax it in ways that produce lasting obligations. The efficiencies are seductive — easier organising faster fundraising better signalling — but they rarely make someone responsible in a local enough way that you will borrow a lawnmower and return it.
My position here is blunt. Contemporary convenience often replaces responsibility. The shift from compulsory face time to optional curated interaction reduced the concrete penalties for flaking out. That change has cultural reverberations. You can see it in civic groups with fewer members and in local campaigns that falter when the person who used to coordinate retires.
Not everything old was good. Not everything new is bad
There are innovations worth keeping. Flexible volunteering for example opens participation to people who were previously excluded by rigid schedules. But I refuse the narrative that new fixes free us from the need for proximate ties. Patchwork solutions without proximate obligations remain fragile.
What the 1960s and 1970s taught us about leadership
Leadership then was often ordinary. It was the person who organised the street fair not the celebrity with a slick campaign. That model decentralised power; it trained people in governance without a degree in management. Losing that is not just sentimental. When power is centralised into fewer hands the capacity of ordinary people to act dwindles.
In practice this means we need to revalue ordinary organisers. We should stop seeing community work as a voluntary diversion for the exceptionally patient. It is a civic practice that deserves investment and professional respect because it produces social returns other kinds of spending cannot.
Learning from mistakes
If we are candid we will copy useful parts of the past and avoid its prejudices. The task is to build obligations that are inclusive not gatekeeping. We need to design rituals that teach participation without policing who belongs. This is not straightforward. It requires friction in the right places and generosity in others.
Small experiments with big returns
There are localities reintroducing things the old generations did naturally. Membership drives that focus on skills instead of donations. Street committees that rotate leadership. Shared tools libraries. These are modest but they rebuild habit. Habits are more potent than policy memos. Policy matters but habit sticks.
I do not pretend this is a full blueprint. It is a scaffold of ideas to be tested. That uncertainty is part of the point. Community that is handed down polished from on high seldom takes root. Community that emerges messy from practice survives.
Conclusion
People raised in the 1960s and 1970s left us a mixed legacy. They taught us how small obligations construct public life. They also taught us how exclusion can look like cohesion. My view is unapologetic. If we are to revive civic life we need to take the practical lessons seriously and abandon the myth that technology alone will knit us back together. Obligations matter. Repetition matters. The old generation showed both the virtues and the vices of that truth.
| Theme | What was learned | Why it matters now |
|---|---|---|
| Everyday obligations | Small repeated acts created trust and reciprocity | Rebuilds practical networks that support cooperation |
| Ordinary leadership | Community organisers were trained informally | Decentralises power and builds civic capacity |
| Practical reciprocity | Non financial social costs enforced participation | Creates accountability that digital platforms lack |
| Contradictions | Inclusion and exclusion coexisted | Shows need for inclusive ritual design |
Frequently Asked Questions
How did ordinary people learn leadership in the 1960s and 1970s?
Leadership was learned by doing. Parents and neighbours pushed you into roles in small organisations. You learned to chair meetings to buy a projector to raise funds. Those experiences taught negotiation budget management and the rules of local accountability. Crucially these were local and repeatable tasks that made mistakes visible and correctable in real time.
Can modern technology ever replace those neighbourhood habits?
Technology can supplement but not fully replace proximate social obligations. It improves coordination and widens access. But obligations that compel repeated face to face interaction produce durable trust. The most successful modern hybrids use technology to lower transactional friction while preserving local responsibility.
What should policymakers focus on if they want to revive community?
Policy should be humble and enabling. Fund local organisers provide modest seed funding for rotating leadership programmes and underwrite shared community assets such as tool libraries. Invest in civic skill training in schools and adult education so that the capacity to organise is widely distributed not concentrated.
Is there a risk of romanticising the past?
Yes. The past included exclusion and harm. The argument is not to recreate everything verbatim but to extract functional mechanisms that produced civic capacity without reproducing prejudice. The goal is a future that borrows useful ritual and rejects its sins.
How long does it take to rebuild these habits?
Habits take time and the time varies. Small repeated practices can show effects within months in terms of participation and trust. Durable cultural change takes years and is iterated through generations. Patience is necessary but so is consistent design and investment.
Community is not a product you can ship. It is a practice you inhabit. We can learn from those raised in the 1960s and 1970s not to duplicate their world but to adapt their ordinary wisdom to a plural modern Britain.
