Alternative Editorial: Shifting Authority

Week 8 of the lockdown. Is it still a lockdown? We are at the end of a week in which UK anxiety over the worst rates of infection and death in Europe has caused an illogical dash for an exit plan. As if making us more vulnerable will help to ‘flatten the curve’ (a new learning that will no doubt make it into the history books as phrase of the year 2020). 

On Sunday night Boris Johnson addressed the nation with a plan, but what has – or can - that achieve? In anticipation of the leader’s message last week, the newspapers had already caused dangerous confusion. Publishing snippets of what some described as a leak from government but others as a deliberate play for the wishful thinking audience, headlines at the end of last week gave the impression our period self-isolation was over.

Overly optimistic goals for testing which could have played a part in an exit strategy – as they have done in Germany for example – were soon scuppered. As usual in political coverage, one minister was put on the line. Like footballers taking penalties at the end of a match with no winner, Matt Hancock’s failure to hit the target of 100,000 tests per day took the blame for the whole team. Two days after some papers were celebrating our freedom, they were forced to turn back to sending out stark warnings about not breaking the rules again. 

Sadly, nothing Boris said on Sunday has alleviated that confusion. Instead, the already precarious four nation consensus, has now been dangerously breached as Nicola Sturgeon flatly contradicts the PM’s ambivalent messaging.

In the UK this may well be the longest bout of missing governmental authority we have ever experienced. Partly induced by the prolonged absence of the Prime Minister, himself a victim of the virus, through March and April. Only now, slowly recovering. Maybe the vacuum is all the more acute because of the contrast with the previous, brashly confident form that gave him such an overwhelming majority in last General Election (and that in the midst of Brexit, one of the UK’s most economically precarious times in recent history). That clarity and chutzpah now seem like a distant memory.

So much so that, in both the UK and the US, we have a whole new genre of satire, reflecting our indecision even within the strict instructions we are expected to live by during lock-down. Here’s Flattening the Truth by Dave Eggers. Or here’s a YouTube video that extends that distrust to the mainstream news “What It’s Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You”.

But is that loss of top-down authority a bad thing - given the multiple crises we have been facing for decades that show little sign of turning a significant corner? Might this not be a time for actively cultivating new sources of authority? We’re not referring here to different ideologies which will continue to compete or jostle alongside each other – that’s for another conversation. Or comparative belief systems and practices – also highly relevant, but not now. 

Instead, in this editorial, the observation is around different levels and structures of authority appearing in our personal and public lives. Both externally - new, still informal modes of collaboration and decision-making appearing in every aspect of our lives. But also internally - a new capacity for asking ourselves: what do we believe and why? What guidance do we accept from others?

Trapping ourselves in such narrow ambitions for life

We begin with the caveat of our last editorial: most of the data we are referring to here comes from those who have the time to engage and observe. So not those whose lives have been made only faster, more constrained and dangerous. Even so, given the accumulated power of those with more time to think for the first time, we think these observations are relevant to our collective futures.

Through the multiple sense-making channels we have – from on-line collaboratories to the Before&Now App we launched in April – we are hearing a common language of reclamation. Reclaiming space, reclaiming ownership, reclaiming lives. 

It starts in the initially dis-orientating experience of being told to stay at home. Especially for those who are used to daily schedules that draw hard lines between family and work, this enforced integration has been surprising. There was an initial burst of discomfort. For example: how do you keep children, pets, partners – in fact, just too much personal information - out of the picture when we have on-line meetings?

But the rigid boundaries have softened. Social media plays its role by sharing domesticity - how others enjoy seeing a cat walk across the desk, temporarily snatching the screen time from its owner. Executives loosen their collars and smile when a child clambers up. We’re escaping the culture where home was an escape from the real business of work, and giving ourselves the permission to go native.

One close colleague who works in a regularly stressful situation, helping displaced children find the care and attention they need, talks of how being able to work from home has profoundly enabled her own personal integration. She describes how she can now see that going to work in a tall, glass building every day, amongst people obliged to compete and perform to externally imposed targets, meant that she had grown to discount her true self. As if who she was privately could not be seen or respected publicly. In a profession like hers, it resulted in many of her human resources being wasted – she left them at home.

At first, her old behaviour translated quickly into online behaviour: check-ins at the beginning of on-line calls turned into performances of competing articulacy. But even that has calmed down as more and more people have settled into being themselves, just as they are.

Working in this new way, my colleague has been able to reclaim the ownership of her identity. In the context of their home lives she and her colleagues ‘see each other’ as whole people, with multiple layers of personality. 

Rather than being impatient with each other, they are interested and warm about the differences and conditions of each-other’s lives. She feels ‘more like herself’ when she takes part in decision making. It’s not a small thing: for her it has opened up a new quality of life - one she will be reluctant to close down again in the future.

Moving out of the home, we hear about the experiences many have of walking in the relatively empty streets, with the shops closed. It’s striking. Suddenly the pressure to choose, to spend, to take part in the national and international pursuit of belonging-through-consuming has evaporated. 

No more ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO) as you walk past your favourite fashion outlet – or even baker! We’ve been ’let off the hook’ in the race to keep up with others or, for some, the competition to be out front. We’ve saved money. 

These are not uncomplicated observations: the sight of empty office buildings and shops is calling into question the whole structure of agreements we have bought into throughout our lives. Why did we get trapped into this mode of life that now looks so unnecessary?

Not only superfluous in terms of the time and resources required to take part. But also irrelevant – wrong even – in the ways that all these activities have not delivered decent lives for such a large section of the population. 

While that may always have been obvious in observing the divide between rich and poor, in this lock-down that irrelevance has become even clearer to those who are more privileged, talking amongst themselves. How did we trap ourselves in such narrow ambitions for life?

A newly discovered sense of collective agency

In the community aspects of A/UK’s work, this reclaiming of how we organise and act together is generating energy. The phenomenon of the Covid Mutual Aid networks has given people a new experience of autonomy. Whereas many were stuck in a supplicant role with the local council beforehand – unable to make stuff happen in the age of austerity – this has opened their eyes to more simple, direct ways of acting. We hear reports of faster, better connected, more effective action that has helped people to reclaim their idea of where agency lies. 

The consequences of this will be varied. A recent report by Power To Change - entitled Local Heroes - prompts a new respect for community work from the state, which might open up better partnerships between local councils and civil society in delivering care, for example. At the same time, if that results in volunteers simply mopping up the fall out of government failure to properly resource towns and cities, nothing much will change and unhappiness could increase.

In contrast, those new citizen action networks (of all kinds) that see themselves as a genuine new authority in the landscape of power where they live, the future begins to look different. Instead of falling in with the party-political framing of governmental policy, appearing as ready-made decisions in the local council, groups of newly autonomous actors may take it upon themselves to start thinking about the future of their community. 

Of course, that has its dangers. What’s to stop one section of the community from excluding another? In that sense, the Covid-19 crisis has been an unexpected intervention. Instead of opinionated, emotion-driven groups rising up to ‘take back control’, these new networks are care-based, inclusive and relational. They task themselves to act in service to the vulnerable; they prize sensitivity and generosity. In the areas we have been working with, old political divides (Left, Right or Brexit) are never mentioned – instead they talk of neighbourhoods and families. Relationships.

At this moment, these new networks are slowly moving from spontaneous action towards agreed forms of decision making. Some have begun to question the future in new ways: what do we want our communities to look like, what priorities would we set next? It’s a live moment, full of a newly discovered sense of collective agency. 

How problems move into relationship with solutions that have been in development for decades – though minimally available - is yet to be seen. Solutions that have stayed off the radar because they don’t suit the mainstream economic framework we’ve all been addicted to till now. Many of which we have been reporting assiduously in the Daily Alternative. Will they now come to light because groups of newly agentic people are actively seeking a different way to live their daily lives? Reclaiming their authority to get on that path? 

Let’s see – we’ll certainly continue to report from engaging with these multiple levels each week. As ever, our invitation to you to co-create an alternative future, is here.