The growing inequality of shared spaces

This week, Westminster has seemingly discovered the existence of private members’ clubs. These clubs, almost always based on paid membership, have been around for centuries, existing in London since the 1600s. Some, though not all, continue to exclude women from their membership. 

When the all-male membership of the high-profile Garrick Club was reported this week, commentators were quick to point out that the industries most represented – politics, the civil service, law, media, business – are also those perennially dominated by men. Prominent members like Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, struggled to explain their membership, made the rather implausible claim that they were daring reformers seeking to change the institution ‘from the inside’ – and then caved and resigned their membership. Private members’ clubs are undeniably spaces where professional relationships are forged and strengthened, so if being in the room where it happens matters, the exclusion of women from these spaces must matter too. 

But missing from this debate is a much bigger group of people excluded from these spaces; anyone without the financial means to access them. Club memberships range from hundreds to thousands of pounds annually. The exact membership fee for the Garrick Club is not publicly available but estimates put it at an annual £1600; membership of the newer, trendier and generally younger Soho House (open to both men and women) starts at £700 per year with an additional three-figure joining fee. Women with the cash to spare could gain access to every elite club in the country, but they would still be just that, elite.

Why does this matter? Lots of spaces and experiences are exclusive based on income – gyms, holidays, cultural events all cost money. But as exclusive members’ clubs are increasing (the sector has been described as “booming” by industry groups), shared spaces that are open to all, not based on any income or fee, are in rapid decline. A new inequality, that of access to shared space, is growing. 

The incremental loss of community spaces over the last decade or so is well-known. Libraries, community centres and SureStarts have all fallen victim to austerity and stretched local government budgets. Industry groups warn that 500-600 pubs are likely to close this year, on top of the 500+ that closed last year. Perhaps the most significant loss is youth centres, now practically non-existent, with countless reports linking their decline to youth violence and exploitation. The damage done by austerity is not just measured in lower living standards and greater difficulty accessing worse services, but also in the unquantifiable cost of our devastated social infrastructure. 

For decades, sociologists have argued that physical space plays a central role in the formation of social ties and networks. Where I grew up in South Wales, the landscape is shaped not only by mountains and valleys but by rugby clubs and miner’s halls. Sharing space with those from your community, away from work and economic output, was once valued, and indeed defined many working-class communities. Just as the opulent rooms of the Garrick Club provides a space for the development of human connection and bonds, so too did the welfare halls, community hubs, and youth clubs of the past. The problem is that, increasingly, those shared spaces and the value they bring are not available to all. 

The case for shared spaces has rarely been stronger than it is today. A post-pandemic wave of homeworking paired with the continual and inescapable rise of social media means that we are all less connected through physical space. These changes have very real consequences. Loneliness has now been labelled as a global public health concern by the WHO, while online radicalisation, particularly of men and boys, continues to grow. The sociologist Robert Putnam, one of the seminal writers on the links between shared space and social capital, wrote twenty-five years ago that those “divorced from community, occupation and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism”. [1] That sentiment is only strengthened in today’s context. Shared space, community, connection; these are all things that impact us deeply, and yet, for many, seem further away than ever before. While privatised and exclusive spaces thrive, social media’s promise of a more inclusive democracy appears even more remote, and increasingly the majority are deprived of genuinely inclusive spaces. Private members’ clubs and genuinely open-to-all shared spaces are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but for one to slowly disappear while the other thrives should be a genuine concern, and  demands more attention and thought than the gender-balance of spaces reserved for the wealthy. 

Crucially, any incoming Labour government should focus not only on rebuilding our economy, but also the need to rebuild, almost from nothing, the social infrastructure we desperately need, and make it accessible to all.

Caitlin Prowle is a Labour Party member and trade union official. She was previously political advisor to a member of the Shadow Cabinet.

Notes

^[1] Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.