Regulars at the Stubshaw Cross Community and Sports Club may be looking forward to a return to business as usual. Since late May, the venue has doubled as Andy Burnham’s centre of operations, as he seeks to plot a path to Downing Street by winning Thursday’s byelection in the Makerfield constituency. But the back bar will soon be free of visiting ministers and attendant media, and the bingo, pizza nights and quizzes will again proceed undisturbed.
At their peak in the 1970s, working-class institutions such as these were an integral part of the fabric of social life in Britain. Since then, more than half have disappeared. Of the 1,800 or so that remain, a recent survey found that many were under severe financial strain. Deindustrialisation and the digital revolution have created a more atomised culture and weakened habits of association. At the same time, scholars such as the American academic Robert Putnam have diagnosed a crisis of belonging – or of not belonging – in western societies.
It is therefore welcome news that national lottery money is to be used to promote the revival of social clubs in some of England’s most deprived and neglected areas. Organisations that grew out of the working men’s club movement have often been overlooked by councils and charities seeking to regenerate communities. Yet these are places that offer a ready-made social and physical infrastructure, and a proud collective memory of self-organisation and conviviality.
The campaigning group 21st Century Social Clubs, which led the successful bid for funds, intends to use the windfall to pay for business support and dedicated local organisers, particularly in coastal and post-industrial areas. It points to intriguing examples of what an inclusive modern revival might look like. In Stretford, near Manchester, Metro’s Sports and Social Club – founded in 1906 – has teamed up with a local DJ collective that now uses it as a base. The Clacton Railway Club in Essex, which starred in a BBC documentary a few years ago, gained 700 additional members last year.
In Clubland, a history of working-men’s clubs, Pete Brown suggests their historic strength lay in “a framework that allowed ‘people like us’ to get on with each other and, when needed, to help each other out. It wasn’t about altruism or paternalism, but solidarity.” As well as offering a launchpad to singers and entertainers such as Vera Lynn and Marti Caine, the clubs gave members organisational experience and confidence, and often acted as welfare hubs for the wider community.
Promoting that ethos in a way that reflects the modern, diverse realities of working-class life can make an important contribution to the common good. Clacton Railway Club members, for example, give over their space for the hosting of free wakes and organise hospital visits. In an era characterised by widespread political anomie, and a sense of disempowerment that is helping to fuel the rise of the Faragian right, this is a legacy which deserves to be cherished.
The fictional Bolton Club in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights sitcom was an affectionate caricature. But the value of institutions that allow people to come together and create a thriving common space is real. If the national lottery money can become a catalyst for their revival, it will be money well spent.
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