Today's bad word - Community

While I am in the mood for words and their misuse by politicians, how about "community". What a lovely, friendly, cuddly word it is. In our road we have a vibrant community, hosting street parties every time the Labour Party gains a vote in an election; come one come all, old Mrs Miggins with the lazy eye shares a drink with Festus Cannabis, the Rastafarian pole dancer from Wigan, swearing lessons for the educationally challenged kiddies, discussion groups on how to claim benefits for their parents; roll up roll up all the fun of the fair in our happy community. It is an inclusive word, bringing together people of different backgrounds and experiences by finding common interests and a sense of, well, community. It is a physical thing involving actual people doing actual things, not a label.

But not for politicians. They tell us of the black community, the muslim community, the Indian community, the Irish community, the football community, the rugby community, the gay community. They claim to be furthering the best interests of every mis-described community they can think of, is there any truth in the claim? Quite obviously there is not and the explanation is simple. These are not communities at all they are labels for disparate people with one of more characteristic in common but no, or very limited, common interest.

Take the Indian community for example. People of Indian descent in the UK do every type of job, have every type of interest, hold every conceivable prejudice; they range from the most indolent to the most hardworking, the richest to the poorest, the cleverest to the thickest, the thinnest to the fattest; they support every political party and none. The only thing they all have in common is that they or their ancestors came from India. In no sense does this make them a community.

But what is the result of labelling them a community? It seems to me there are three results. First it separates them from everyone else by turning them into a distinct group, secondly, it encourages loudmouthes to claim to be able to speak for all people of Indian descent and, thirdly, it causes unhappiness and, sometimes, unrest in those who do not wish to be labelled. Suddenly, instead of someone's national origin being irrelevant to the law and to policy-making special provisions are being discussed to reflect the supposed special interests of this supposed community. As a result those not entitled to the label resent others being given special treatment and special attention and the loudmouthes press for greater and greater special treatment to bolster their own power base. Instead of "community" being a description of how people act together it has become a divisive and self-defeating concept.

It must be abandoned and we must return to equality under the law for all.