by Chris Baylis, The Critic
Strong social norms once helped integration, but not in today’s fractured society
[…] We can draw some parallels to Britain. What remains of the common culture of the British nation was also forged by a period of social flux caused by rapid urbanisation, though in the wake of an industrial rather than a political revolution. It was slower, far more voluntary in nature, but also entailed a substantial degree of cramped and squalid living conditions.
Over the long 19th century, the emerging proletariat attempted to recreate the characteristics of village life in industrial towns and cities. With family networks uprooted by rural-to-urban migration, common institutions were created to replicate their functions.
The British working class may not have endured the kommunalka experience of shared kitchens into the late 20th century, but in the world of back-to-back, two-up-two-down houses in factory and mill towns, they had forged a very real civil society from the bottom up. Voluntary associations built around churches, friendly societies, temperance unions, sports clubs, betting syndicates and ultimately the trades union movement itself, formed the institutional edifice of working class life in Britain.
The workplace, church, the pub, the football terrace and the streets and alleyways between houses were the arena of a communal way of living that endured to some extent until roughly the time that the Soviet Union itself vanished.
This was a world grounded in the economics and human geography of the Victorian era, and it was to disappear as that era itself was slowly eclipsed. First, the crushing experience of the First World War severely damaged the British people’s trust in God. Bombing during the subsequent war, and “Homes for Heroes” saw the world of terraced housing replaced by urban housing estates and tower blocks. More recently, the British economy reluctantly moved up the value chain from basic heavy industries toward modern entreprises such as electronics and aerospace, necessitating lighter, smaller scale manufacturing, with a more dispersed workforce.
Read also: Island of strangers? by JCD Clark, The Critic. The decline of popular aphorisms reflects the disappearance of a shared moral code