Why Downing Street needs a new name if it is going to properly repair the fabric of society

All eyes have been on No 10 Downing Street for much of the last year. This sweet street off Whitehall that backs on to St James’s Park is about possession. And whoever possesses No 10 is exalted and enlarged, as if they were permanently under a giant magnifying glass. 

Such magnification is not always good for the human being placed under such scrutiny. Andy Burnham has recently been seen running, with health commentators suggesting ways he could get rid of his tummy. 

Now it is being suggested that he is going to have to dial back on the chummy blokeishness. Dial it back, because when big decisions are called for that chumminess will come across as devaluing. 

As a habitual user of Downing Street during much of my early life to cut through to the park, its transformation into a wee street taken out of public use, with guards and large gates, still makes me wonder. 

Such a silly little place. Unlike the White House, or France’s Élysée Palace. Nothing grand, but small. Understated. A row of Georgian houses that the author James Boswell in the 18th century wandered out from to pick up prostitutes at nearby Birdcage Walk. Not to bring them home to his digs in Downing Street, but to enjoy in the park itself. 

Later, of course, the noted prime minister William Gladstone picked up supposed lost women of the night and brought them back to No 10 to pray alongside.

Downing Street cannot be downplayed in terms of importance in the fabric of our society. And with the immense growth in power of the PM to almost monarchical status, No 10 is the cat’s cradle of politics.

There is a beautiful word that sounds a bit like ‘Downing’ that was symbolic of getting the most out of life: ‘darning’. It means to sew. To repair. To get the most out of socks or stockings, of injured clothing. A torn jacket would not end up in landfill but would be transformed and its life extended by darning. A kind of continuing utilisation rather than an abandonment because of a hole or a rip. 

Read more:

• New prime minister Andy Burnham starts with vow to end rough sleeping. Here’s how he aims to do it
• Austerity was something we simply could not afford
• We descended on Downing Street to demand an end to child poverty. This is what happened

In 2018 we arranged a conference to launch an idea called ‘Social Echo’. Some readers will remember this because I have written about it as one of those unfulfilled initiatives that Big Issue has started. A promising beginning that we will return to. About getting local charities working with local businesses. Getting local businesses buying the services of maybe a housing association, trying for example to expand a maintenance and repair business so it could employ more of their unemployed tenants. Estate agents are ideally placed to buy services because they often have many buy-to-lets that they have to maintain.

For one issue only, we even had a little magazine to explain what we were trying to do. Which was repairing the fabric of the local community. We were trying to sew the holes and repair what was beginning to fall apart. And we had a good name for the mag: Darning Street – sewing back the fabric of society.  

In other words, repairing the damage done by austerity and the local shrinkage of services. As the local authority became less and less able to provide the glue of community, so the community was looking increasingly threadbare.

But in some ways, isn’t it the job of Downing Street to promote those repairs to our society, so that we can have a better functioning community? Shouldn’t Downing Street be renamed ‘Darning Street’? 

Isn’t its job to help pull the show together? To repair the damage done by closing police stations, community centres and youth clubs, reducing the streets to bleak places fit only for commercial transactions?

Shops and high streets are dying yet surveys show that people are desperate to go to a physical shop to buy. To sew together the high street should be a priority for the government. And to help darn society as a whole into not being a series of holes and vacancies.

Freeing up and encouraging communities to do their own darning is clearly the answer. A community that is looking out for the weak and the needy, the old and the infirm is going to be healthier than an ‘undarned’ community. There is going to be more antisocial behaviour in a community blasted by poverty and social divides.

Social Echo raised this issue of communities working together for the common good. Volunteerism is an essential ingredient in that.

It can’t all be done by the council. Businesses need to spend within the community and possibly offer their staff the great enrichment of helping those less fortunate than them. 

Addressing the local will take the weight off Downing Street. Mental health will improve greatly if we manage to kick the increasing alienation that is taking over our digitised society. And Darning Street could help us sew the fabric of the community back so that it works for us all.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Big Issue. Read more of his words from our archive.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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