A shared grievance gives people real purpose

Power to the people! There’s something very reassuring about seeing ordinary folk coming together to make a powerful anti-parking protest, dig a trench and generally stick up for themselves.

In Manchester, householders in Hulme were so fed up with inconsiderate commuters hogging all the parking spaces and sometimes blocking their drives, that they dragged out all their wheelie rubbish and recycling bins and laid them flat along the kerbside to deter motorists.

Not only has it done that, but it has also concentrated minds at Manchester City Council, which claims it is looking into a more practical solution to the problem.

Meanwhile, in Michaelston-yfedw, South Wales, villagers were so fed up with glacially slow internet connections – it could take five days to download a film and online banking was impossible – that they joined forces to dig seven miles of trenches and laid their own fibre-optic cables.

They had previously been told by BT that it would take “several years” for the area to get superfast broadband; now, even the local pub enjoys faster internet than Nasa.

Moreover, their non-profit internet company called Myfi, which they set up to manage the project, will channel future proceeds into repairing potholes, litter-picking and other schemes to benefit the area.

Villagers say the joint endeavour has brought them all together. Wouldn’t it be nice if more communities, urban as well as rural, did the same?

Ours is such an atomised society that it can be difficult to discern the threads that bind us together. Yes, it’s usually some sort of adversity that persuades people to reach out to one another, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes, a shared sense of grievance can be a first step towards a shared sense of purpose and positivity.