Club together: How clubs can help solve our connection crisis

Note: The Social Market Foundation has invited parliamentary candidates from across the major parties to contribute an essay on a policy topic of their choice. To be clear, this does not represent an endorsement of any candidate in the election. The SMF remains strictly non-partisan.

When you hear the word ‘infrastructure’, what do you think of? Probably trains or roads, perhaps big capital projects like new hospitals or power plants. You probably don’t think about a room with a dartboard and a dance floor, a place for bingo, birthdays and bands. I wish you would: working class social and welfare clubs are the beating heart of our communities and deserve the same standing in public policy as other bits of key infrastructure.

During last year’s Rutherglen by-election I was speaking to someone whose sister worked in the NHS – she was frustrated that she couldn’t keep her patients well, especially when she knew the right prescription: nights out at the Blantyre Miners Welfare. Medical professionals know the connection crisis is making us sick.

The flipside, of course, is that our links to others are what makes life worth living. As heating bills spiralled, 2.5 million visits were paid to “warm hubs” and organisers found that “people came for the warmth but stayed for the welcome.” The founder of the Relationships Project, David Robinson, makes a compelling case that focusing on these ties that bind us is the single most important thing we can do to change our own lives and the wider world. If he is right, there is no better place to start than a club.

Clubs are, in their understated way, magical settings – one part pub, one part community centre, one part extension of the family home. Unlike most public or private sector facilities, they are generally run as either member-owned co-operatives or membership-based charities, meaning things are never done ‘to’ or ‘for’ communities, but by them. They are somewhere to go together – for weddings and wakes – and somewhere you can pop into alone, knowing the staff and the regulars will say hello. They are places, as Lyndon B. Johnson’s family said of their own Texas Hill Country, where “people know when you’re sick and care when you die.”[i]

Clubs weren’t created to develop social cohesion, but they do deliver it. Public support for places where different communities and generations can “meet and mix”[ii] remains high (indeed “places to meet” is the number one thing people in low-income neighbourhoods think would improve their areas) and findings from HOPE not hate suggest the presence of clubs is a powerful indicator of community health. Likewise researcher Paul Bickley argues that “neighbourhood resilience relies on… social capital (local voluntary action and leadership), physical capital (social infrastructure – common space), and spiritual capital (a neighbourhood’s … identity and meaning-making).” Clubs, of course, provide all three, but people’s first exposure to them will normally be as a place to gather.

That need is particularly acute given the cost of living. Research from Carnegie UK found just over a third of people in the UK have reduced the amount of time they spend socialising with friends, meaning, in the words of the old protest anthem, they are denied opportunities for “sharing in life’s glories.” The song ‘Bread and Roses’ resonates precisely because we know that “hearts starve as well as bodies”, that our dignity is protected not simply by pounds and pence but in the security of knowing we are part of a wider network of respect and fellow feeling.

In Midlothian we are blessed to have several vibrant clubs but, like everywhere, they are under enormous pressure. To give a sense of the pace of decline: fifty years ago, the Club & Institute Union (CIU), the central co-op supporting clubs, used to issue more than seven million membership cards a year. That figure is now one million and declining year-on-year.

That isn’t because people don’t value these facilities – quite the opposite. They are part of the fabric of our communities and we tend to take it for granted that they will always be there. What would it take for our faith to be well placed?

I think the answer might lie in a 21^st Century Clubs’ Charter. The next government could:

• Use its convening power to catalyse private funding. With its ‘mission-based’ approach and promise of a local ‘Take Back Control’ Bill, Labour has already signalled a strong desire to create frameworks for collaboration across sectors rather than strict ‘command and control’ plans dependent entirely on taxpayers’ money. Labour is already planning to convene trusts, foundations and philanthropists to support local arts and heritage infrastructure and clubs should be treated in the same way. Government itself, of course, can issue policy directives (as can devolved governments in each nation) to the effect that National Lottery money can be spent preserving and enhancing clubs as both core community assets (under the National Lottery Community Fund) and heritage sites (under the National Lottery Heritage Fund). This could go some way to answering critics who argue lotteries are regressive.
• Work with broadcasters to offer better TV sport deals. Labour has already signalled the desire to increase and diversify the number of sporting events that are on terrestrial television. Another way to ensure accessibility is to work with paid-for broadcasters to ensure social clubs are charged an affordable rate to screen live sport.
• Create new apprenticeships. Labour has already said it will reform apprenticeships and could explore the creation of a Club Management Apprenticeship, reviving the old Club Management Diploma but updating it to recognise the unique nature of modern club management, encompassing the latest in community work and the new funding environment.
• Streamline training and support. Government has a convening role to help sectors identify synergies and strip out duplication. Bodies like Co-operatives UK, the relevant third sector infrastructure bodies in each nation and the CIU all provide support to their respective memberships but a comprehensive offer would combine the best of each. Imagine a tailored learning offer that allows club committees to share best practice and, crucially, innovation to stay ahead of new trends and better meet the expectations of younger and more diverse audiences.
• Explore channelling existing funds into clubs. Plans are already being worked up to help heritage organisations transition to net zero and clubs could be included in the same programme. More ambitiously, the government could help rejuvenate the role many clubs played in working class education[iii] by brokering partnerships with the relevant skills funding agency in each nation to ensure clubs are considered as priority partners for hosting green skills training.
• Support community ownership. Social clubs are generally either co-operatives or charities, designed as forms of working class self-help. In that spirit, any which are falling into disuse or disrepair are by definition of community benefit and could be offered for the ‘community right to buy’ Labour is exploring. This could be underpinned by the UK-wide Community Ownership Fund which has already supported the purchase of community assets in each of the nations but, in line with recommendations from the Co-operative Party’s Community Ownership Commission, more of this funding should be targeted at the areas in greatest need.

Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour is expressly the party of working people. That shapes each of Labour’s five missions and will determine the path chosen on the economy, public services and national security. This idea for a Clubs’ Charter is not on the same level as those proposals. Instead, it starts with a more modest ambition: ensuring those working class communities hit hardest by the indignities and deprivations of deindustrialisation are able to maintain the collective infrastructure where both memories and plans are made.

Late last year, a new miners’ memorial was unveiled in Dalkeith, bearing the inscription “They Spent Their Lives in the Dark So That Others Might Have Light.” People who worked in our pits, like those who produced our steel and ships or manned our railways and factories did physical, skilled, demanding work. They gave us light and so much more. We are in their debt and at their service.

Working class clubs are at the heart of Labour heritage – with a new Clubs’ Charter they could be at the heart of this country’s future too.

[i] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times (2018)

[ii] Sunder Katwala, Bringing People Together in a Changing Britain (2022)

[iii] Dr Ruth Cherrington, Not Just Beer and Bingo! A Social History of Working Men’s Clubs (2012)