In praise of Vigil Aunties

In Mao's China the Neighbourhood Committees (Juweihui) were a mechanism for keeping tabs on community activities, countering crime and stifling political dissent.

The Gao Ma (grandmas) or Dama (aunties) were elderly women empowered by the Chinese Communist Party to maintain order on behalf of the Juweihui and report back on any infringements. As such, rather like the historic concierges in post-Revolutionary France, they were the frontline of state surveillance, commanding fear and affection in equal (or perhaps unequal) measure. In light of recent well-publicised events in Middlesbrough, I find myself pondering the advantages of such social management at the grassroots level.

I realise that this is potentially a busybodies' charter or, as in the cases cited above, something even more sinister. Where even existing Neighbourhood Watch schemes in this country are often sneered at as "curtain-twitchers" (having been a Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator myself in the past I have firsthand experience of this) I imagine any proposal for a beefed-up network of citizen-based observation and monitoring would be widely lambasted as an exercise in state-sponsored snooping and snitching. Sir Robert Peel faced just such opposition when setting up the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829, a move viewed with great suspicion by the populace following the Napoleonic Wars, by whom it was seen as a nasty foreign concept which had no place in English life. Interestingly, we soon grew accustomed to it, to the extent that most people experiencing crime these days, whatever their views on the police, will still call 999 without delay.

I worry now whether high-profile incidents of threat and intimidation perpetrated by groups of marauding balaclava-clad youths will have cowed certain communities into fearful silence. Media reports of such cases undoubtedly paint a more lurid picture of life in modern Britain than is the generally lived experience but they are nevertheless real and need to be urgently addressed. The knee-jerk reaction is usually to call for the recruitment and deployment of more police officers but where the level of recorded crime in the UK has actually fallen significantly in recent years across all categories excepting fraud and shoplifting, and with government budgets severely overstretched, this is a difficult policy to defend. 

A handful of outbreaks of violent thuggery in some of our towns and villages, however shocking, does not constitute a trend warranting a heavy-handed national response - or not yet at least. To prevent escalation, something much more nuanced, long-term - and far less macho - appears to be called for. It is unquestionably the case that decades of cuts to youth services and youth provision, along with a collapse in employment prospects for young people - with over one million being NEET - has set our society back significantly. The loss of Sure Start centres has been much lamented but, whatever the causes, our youngsters have clearly been comprehensively failed. It is unfair now to blame the victims, which is not to extenuate, much less justify, criminality, violence and intimidation.

But back to those Chinese communist grannies and aunties. With the UK government's commitment to devolution and with the current interest in deliberative citizens' assemblies, maybe this is the moment to revisit the concept of subsidiarity once espoused by the EU but not much discussed these days. The principle proposes that issues should be handled by the smallest or most local organisation possible, rather than by a central authority. While we should be mindful of the darker history of Mao's neighbourhood committees we should not let that hold us back from exploring a workable model of community organisation fit for a modern European liberal democracy. Parish councils used to fulfil this function but something less formal, less stuffy, is probably called for these days.

Whatever the chosen mechanism, local communities need to feel empowered.


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