Some "far-right" nostalgia

Is it really a bad thing to hanker after a, perhaps imagined, past of full-employment and low crime where an ordinary man could afford the rent or the mortgage on a decent house?

You take a walk round where you live. Along the estate roads, through the recreation ground and passed the children’s playground. Into the park, walking by its flower beds, pond and paths. Especially now, in high summer, this little walk should be a pleasure. It isn’t.

The footpaths are cracked and uneven, kerb stones have dropped or turned, there is a vibrant weed ecosystem at the side of the road and the gully grates are filled to the brim with road dirt. There is litter everywhere. As you turn into the park you see that the gates have gone and that the paths are patched and untidy. Still litter everywhere though and the park’s litter bin is filled to overflowing. The flower beds, once a riot of bright, cheering summer colour, are drab and a little overgrown. The pond is empty with an ugly plastic fence and ‘keep out’ signs.

In the recreation ground it is the same but you also notice that the floral display, once a feature of the war memorial, has gone and that there are no hanging baskets on the main street. The old youth club on the corner by the recreation ground’s entrance is closed and boarded up. The children’s playground has broken glass on the ground and a swing tied in knots. You see the detritus of teenage rule-breaking. The recreation ground itself no longer has a marked out football pitch although the broken ruins of goal posts lie in a pile of rubble to one side gradually colonised by bramble, fire weed and buddleia.

Your shoulders slump as you wander home. You spot the potholes and the broken manhole cover on main street and watch as cars swerve to avoid these as well as the puddle caused by a blocked road drain. The zebra crossing and its warning zig-zag has faded almost to nothing. A builder has parked his pick-up there anyway so his mate can pop into the shop for cans of Monster and bags of snacks. As the light fades away you head round the corner towards the house. The street lights should come on but, for some reason, haven’t. The verges are overgrown and untidy so you have to walk in the road. There are empty plastic bottles, polystyrene takeaway boxes and the remains of vaping devices scattered everywhere.

Arriving home, you put the kettle on to make tea and, while waiting, flick to the local Facebook forum. Amidst the usual petty squabbles there’s a persistent vibe of insecurity. Doordash footage of undoubted ne'er-do-wells, urgent warnings of burglars on the prowl, and reports of how the poster’s cousin’s next-door neighbour was a victim of some terrible scam. Meanwhile the gala committee is spitting tacks because the council wants them to apply for a licence - for an event older than the council itself - and to pay the council’s legal costs. There’s reports that, in the next little town, the council refused the licence because too many people would come to the event.

You put the phone down, finish making the tea and sit down to watch some TV. “Let’s see what’s happening in the world” you think as you turn to the news channel. The usual talking heads are telling you that the biggest and most important event today is that one politician is claiming another politician was racist. There are other stories too: a celebrity is getting acrimoniously divorced; there’s a protest march about a war several thousand miles away; and there’s the political correspondent of the news channel being interviewed by the news anchor about what all this means for the prime minister and the opinion polls. The channel then runs into several minutes of advertising for the news channel and you switch off.

The phone rings and it’s a friend in a bit of a state. Her mum needs to go into a home but all the half-decent homes are full. The council won’t accept the case for your friend’s mum going into a home insisting that two 30 minute visits from a care company each day is adequate. You offer sympathy and suggestions, maybe sell the house, perhaps you could supplement what the council offers? Gloom comes over you as you think about the prospects for your own infirmity. “Maybe they’ll just kill us old folk off to save money,” you mutter in a fit of black humour, “perhaps Logan’s Run was a prophecy not a story.”

As you look up you see, on the kitchen table, a pile of papers all ready for the annual and stressful task of filling in a tax return. You wonder what happens to all that money you and millions of others hand over, more-or-less willingly, so the government can function. There’s little evidence of it being spent in your local community. And the media is no guide either, preferring celebrity and political gossip interspersed with dire warnings about climate change, the rise of the far right and how Israel is the most evil place on the planet.

There was a time, you can remember it you think, when the streets were clean, everywhere wasn’t covered in litter and local councils made it their business to make the place bright, cheerful and pretty. Perhaps it is nostalgia but wasn’t there a lot less crime and didn’t you used to know the name of the local policeman? And didn’t everybody have a job - a real job in a place you could point to that didn’t require a forty minute drive? There was a bloke, Geoff or Fred or something like that, who spent the day walking the streets with a cart, a broom and a shovel keeping it clean? Is it really a bad thing to hanker after a, perhaps imagined, past of full-employment and low crime where an ordinary man can afford the rent or the mortgage on a decent house. The sort of house in which you could raise a family?

Is it such a bad thing to want a return to a world where people spoke politely, where manners were a matter of course and littering was something you simply didn’t do? A world where people took pride in their village or town and where discipline and good behaviour weren’t sneered at as some sort of unspeakable lower class value. Or worse as a symptom of being ‘far right’.

The TV drones on in the background and you look up. It’s another crime drama, pretty good but why do they all have to have some sort of social message? And why the need for bad language and gratuitous sex scenes? You smile to yourself: “now I really am being far right”. You switch the telly off and tidy things away before bed. Spotting your phone, you plug it in to recharge and remember you wanted to see the doctor about the gammy knee. You set an alarm for 7.45am so you can ring for an appointment in the morning. “I wonder what chances there are of that happening,” you chuckle.