The potential of local communities has been neglected in Scotland

For 30 years I was a community worker mostly in the house estates of Scotland. Since the early 1990s, increasingly municipalist Labour administrations north of the border moved against independent communities to bring them back under council control. To its shame, the community development profession up here turned its back on these communities and went to work for the state.

Very few community workers in the field now work for independent community organisations – mostly they act as agents of central and local government policy. The remnants of what was once a proud Scottish community development profession are now mostly academics or administrators – exchanging arcane papers which nobody bothers about.

But during 2008 a new campaign was launched in Scotland for ‘strong and independent communities’ called Local People Leading (LPL). Led by the Development Trusts Association Scotland, LPL is an alliance of community intermediary organisations which act together to give a new voice to our community sector. Our Scottish National Party government says that in the spring it will publish a community empowerment action plan and we’re waiting to discover if they are less hostile than Labour to local democracy.

I am a reader and supporter of New Start since it launched – mainly because it reflects an understanding of the authority and potential of local communities, something which is absent in Scotland. I look forward to the occasional rant on this great new site.