Inside Croydon

Summer ill at ease: last year’s riots across the country have seen researchers look into the lack of cohesion in society

Have we really lost our sense of community? Or are we all just people separated by our mobile devices? Our columnist ANDREW FISHER, right, looks at some interesting data from a piece of academic research
PLUS: Jeremy Corbyn stands up for allotments

It often feels like society is slowly falling apart – turn on the news, doomscroll through social media, or even read some good quality journalism (like Inside Croydon for example), and there are plenty of reasons for despair, locally and nationally.

Last summer saw riots break out in many parts of the country following the appalling murders of young children in Southport. Those riots were inflamed by misinformation on social media, amplified by some prominent politicians, that suggested the offender was a Muslim or an asylum seeker, or both. Neither was true – he was a deeply-troubled, British-born man known to social services and the police.

But those riots have led to some soul-searching and some interesting research by a coalition of academics and social researchers from the University College London policy lab, More in Common and Citizens UK. Their report, This Place Matters: reimagining community cohesion in Britain, has some interesting insights and sobering thoughts for those of every political persuasion.

In June, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, tried to address this sense of dislocation with his “Island of Strangers” speech, which echoed the rhetoric of Enoch Powell and linked a sense of society becoming more isolated with rising migration. Starmer later said he regretted using the phrase. Continue reading →