Regulars at the Stubshaw Cross Community and Sports Club may be looking forward to a return to business as usual. Since late May, the venue has doubled as Andy Burnham’s centre of operations, as he seeks to plot a path to Downing Street by winning Thursday’s byelection in the Makerfield constituency. But the back bar will soon be free of visiting ministers and attendant media, and the bingo, pizza nights and quizzes will again proceed undisturbed.
At their peak in the 1970s, working-class institutions such as these were an integral part of the fabric of social life in Britain. Since then, more than half have disappeared. Of the 1,800 or so that remain, a recent survey found that many were under severe financial strain. Deindustrialisation and the digital revolution have created a more atomised culture and weakened habits of association. At the same time, scholars such as the American academic Robert Putnam have diagnosed a crisis of belonging – or of not belonging – in western societies.
