Braving a visit to southern wastelands, I was cycling through an Essex village recently, when a newspaper billboard saying ‘FIGHT TO SAVE CIVIC PRIDE’ caught my eye. Time spent on the bike is the only free thinking time I get and true to form, it started the cogs whirring. How do you ‘save’ civic pride? Surely it’s something that you either have, or don’t have. If it exists, then encourage it; if it doesn’t exist, you can hardly save it. You can attempt to instil or restore some civic pride in people by highlighting aspects of a town that are shabby or neglected and then convince them that improvement is possible.

            To help answer such riddles, I often like to find what the dictionary definition of a word is. In the case of civics, it says ‘Relating to, or derived from, a city or citizen; relating to man as a member of society, or to civil affairs’. So, clear as mud then and only in a city. Civic pride merely says ‘pride in your city’. Much more concise, but yet another city? Both are obviously related to the words civil and civilised, which should need no explanation. I would suggest that civics refer to any organised (civilised) society and civic pride refers to pride in that organised and built environment, whether it is a village, town or city.

            Moving up another level still, I suspect the PC brigade may frown on National Pride, but why shouldn’t we be proud of the good bits, of which there are many.  And why should that not cascade down through pride in our county, our town, or street and right down to our own house.  Why shouldn’t we gain a little satisfaction in seeing each one of them well kept?

            In the past, householders seemed to take more pride in their immediate area, but over time, councils have taken over the business of street cleaning, cutting verges, picking up litter etc. As they charge us a princely sum for this privilege and increase it annually above the rate of inflation, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to let them get on with the job. It also helps to know which council (town, district or county) does what. Sadly, councils rarely do a thorough job, so we often end up with tatty overgrown areas, strewn with litter or rotting leaf mould. Even when the council do the job properly, it’s often rapidly undone by those without any civic pride. Is it really so hard to clear up the small area in the vicinity of your house (even if you’ve already paid for the privilege)? Is it really so difficult to take your litter home in the first place? If it looks untidy and unloved, why not just sort it and take some satisfaction from the results.

            With only a little effort on a regular basis, you can back the ‘Pride in Pickering’ campaign and maintain you own local area with civic pride.

            If you’re interested in joining the Civic Society, visit www.pickeringcivicsociety.btik.com

 Mike Potter.