Conclusion

In this study we have traced some of the interrelationships between community work, community action, political action, and the broad Labour movement. Over the past decade or so, we have suggested, there have been significant developments, both positive and negative; and even with the harsher political climate of the early eighties there have been gains, however fragile, as well as reverses. The pressures within the Labour Party for constitutional as well as for progressive political changes illustrate precisely the fragility of these gains and the relative underdevelopment, still, of external support mechanisms within the Labour movement and the electorate more generally. The constituency for socialist policies remains to be more widely constructed. The task at the broadest level is, we have suggested, then, to raise socialist values and analysis from being a minority subculture to being the dominant political and social culture. One of the central themes within this book has been the potential of community action, alongside the broad trade union and Labour movement for stimulating the examination of alternative and socialist solutions to the problems of daily living. Even within government-sponsored community programmes, such as the EEC anti-poverty programme, we have shown that local people have become more than ever convinced that poverty, in all its ramifications, will not be removed by these kinds of pilot studies.