Let us suppose that you, the parents in this group, discover that specialist services for children with heart problems are rather scarce in your area. You decide to become a campaigning group which will put pressure on the National Health Service to open a special department at the hospital for such children. You need to explain to the people in your region about the problem. You need to interview and protest to local politicians; you need to raise money - and raise public enthusiasm for your cause. Parents may become committed for a lifetime to improving the lives of children with heart defects; or they may spend just a few months, energetically involving themselves in meetings and demonstrations and lectures on behalf of their child - and other children.
Here are three different kinds of group: an interest group, a self-help group and a campaigning group. They are all examples of what one sociologist has called the characteristic feature of British life: "voluntary associationism". That is an ugly term but it distinguishes what is special about this activity. When people decide to get together to do something for their joint benefit they are entering into an association which has the following characteristics:
(1) Such an association is freely formed by people with a common aim; nobody is obliged to join or forced to take part more than they wish to do.
(2) Such an association is not part of a larger state or municipal organisation. It is not run by officials of any kind, and it is not obliged to respond to requests by state or municipal officials to organise or take part in specific activities. It is autonomous and nobody needs to know about it.
(3) Such an association is not part of a business or business group or any business sector institution. It is not organised or controlled by any business.
(4) Its members decide what they want to do and what they do not wish to do. These decisions are probably made from meeting to meeting although the members may have one meeting a year where the accounts are shown to all those present and where members can vote on what they want to do next.
(5) Such an association does not pay its committee or its members, except occasionally for expenses. Typically all the work, all the effort, all the hours of involvement are voluntary. If you wish to read and discuss books; or help and be helped by other parents who have no partner; or campaign with other parents for improved services for children with heart problems, then you will need to spend time and effort. By joining the association you are committing yourself to deeper involvement in this activity.
When I wrote, at the beginning of this chapter, that there is no real equivalent in Russia for "voluntary associationism", I had in mind the network of hundreds of thousands of such groups in Britain. Perhaps a million - it is impossible to count. Russians certainly join activities in community centres (as we do) or support the clubs and societies set up in their work place by their employers (as we do). But these excellent activities are organised by someone else - someone who has the authority to organise. Very rarely (at least at the time of writing in 2009) have I met Russians who are deeply involved in something of their own making, their own choice. We are persistent, eager and almost instinctive users of that free voluntary space for communal activity.
So far in this account I have chosen quite serious kinds of voluntary association, so I would like to return to those teenagers. By hanging around they are using the streets for a kind of private club or party. The opposite type of great activity on the streets is the public Official Parade, once common in Russia and not unknown in Britain. Is there something between the group of teenagers and public planning?
About ten minutes from my home, in a road where about two hundred people live, is a brass notice fixed to the wall, telling the passer-by that on 31st December 1999 the people of that road and their friends held a street party.
Millions of people around the world on 31st December 1999 were attending a late evening party. In Oxford there must have been thousands of private parties with friends and family; there were also big public firework displays, arranged by the city administration. And there were street parties. I do not know how many - perhaps twenty or more. The people of this particular road got together and planned a party out in the street with food and drink, fires and fireworks, music and dancing. They had to inform the city authorities and the police (who put up simple barricades to stop any cars driving through). After that, everything was their responsibility - from decorations and weather protection and general safety - to all the home-devised entertainment with which they celebrated the arrival of the new Millenium. Not everyone attended the party; some people don't like big parties and some people don't like their neighbours. Anyone who joined in had to contribute by cooking or cleaning or making decorations. Members of the committee went round asking for money to cover the costs of the party - so they had to keep accounts. All the activity was voluntary and self-organised. People remembered it and talked about it, so much so that eventually someone suggested that the people in the street should contribute to a brass plaque commemorating the event. How do I know that it happened? Because the people in the road decided to pay for the sign and then display it.
Parties, fetes, exhibitions, entertainments all over Britain often begin as an idea in the mind of one person who then suggests it to two or three more people. If they take up the idea, sooner or later many people in the community will get together to organise it. We feel that the spontaneity and enthusiasm of such community-inspired celebrations is exhilarating, fun and memorable for all the participants.
Here are other examples of such activities: amateur sports groups; parents running football clubs for their children; gardening clubs; amateur choirs, orchestras, dance groups and drama societies; groups of painters or writers; clubs for people interested in sewing, photography, bridge, toy-making, etc; gatherings of car owners or of those who enjoy co-operating on engineering projects; teams who practice for pub quizzes; clubs for a pets and animal welfare; many kinds of youth groups - from Scouts and Guides to insect-spotters; mother-and-baby groups, groups of elderly people, holiday groups, enthusiasts for learning and practicing foreign languages.
Sometimes Russians tell me, ‘That is fine for you, but in Russia we have no time for such pleasant activities.' I can only say that Russians have, on average, longer holidays and fewer children than the British, and retire earlier from work. I am more conscious of older Russians, in general, having too much time. In Britain many of them would be happily occupied as committee members, active participants and vocal critics in that significant space between their private and public lives.