The changing fortunes of community

In England, the change of government in the wake of the 2010 General Election brought with it a fundamental rethink of the relationship between state and community. This article tracks this relationship over the past 40 years, reviewing the development of what might have been described as a community movement in the 1970s to the community sector of the early 21st century. It then asks what the prospects are, under a radically new government regime, for delivering the new, more autonomous forms of community action that have been promised under the rubric of the ‘Big Society’.