Reflections
after five years in
Successful Community of 50

Exhausted by all this, we understood, possibly incorrectly, that the Public Health Act was not a very powerful act, so we waited for nearly a year until they began to put the pressure on once again. This time we negotiated a solution acceptable to them which was quite expensive, but probably very sensible. While accepting that we were forced to undertake fire work very much in our own interests, and which would not otherwise be done, many of us still resent the power of such authorities to intrude into our private home. We are only just finishing this fire work, which together with dry rot work has dissipated our energies away from basic community objectives, thereby losing our cohesive impetus.

What were our expectations and have we lived up to them? It was clear before we came that different individuals put a different emphasis upon the different reasons for coming together. My expectation and hope was that our aspirations would prove to be complementary rather than conflicting. Ecology, Liberty, Egalite, Fraternity and Socialism (as opposed to state capitalism).

How are we doing with respect to our explicit or implicit aims? The liberty of the individual may be in conflict with needs of the community as a whole. The solution lies in voluntary restraint upon our freedom in the form of constitutional constraints, organisational structure and self-discipline. Things have evolved but in so far as it is claimed that lots of essential work is not done, we have not yet achieved the right balance between freedom and efficiency.

We have retained a strict form of equality, namely participatory democracy, which sometimes seems threatened by apathy which comes from a lack of understanding of the nature of the alternatives or a lack of appreciation of the responsibilities and sacrifices needed to make the system work.

We are not as fraternal as we might be, but we have learnt to live with this.

Lack of 'political' ideals as been a disappointment to some. Yet many basis principles of socialism are incorporated into our way of life, but because they are good principles rather than because they are socialist. We have never as a group tried to define what we mean by socialist.

Lack of ecological awareness has been a disappointment to some. Ecology did become a dirty word at one stage of bitter controversy, but it seems to becoming a little more in vogue one again.

Time flies, but nobody could deny that we have achieved a great deal since we came here. For it is no easy task to set up a community from scratch wit no model to base it upon. But in so far as things could be better and we could have achieved more, there is no easy answer to what has gone wrong. The initial euphoria has gone. We have had external pressures (fire work), we have had personality clashes, we have had no-one to lead from behind, we have differed over aims and priorities and the means of achieving them.

The problem is that we have not found the forum for discussing together in depth the issues and problems which I have mentioned. It is difficult to discuss even simple things in a large group, let alone such complicated matters. One way or another communication and decision-making may hold the key to a better community.