John Harris writes:

Ten days before the election, I was in the Dumbiedykes estate in Edinburgh, a high-rise scheme a few minutes’ walk from the Scottish parliament, where a shrinking working-class community is hanging on in the face of gentrification. The neighbourhood, which had a Labour MP until 2010, is the headquarters of an organisation called Edinburgh Helping Hands, whose motto is “Solidarity not charity”: its work runs from giving children in the city free bikes, through football and boxing training, to basic help with the most urgent aspects of poverty.

Its co-founder, Jim Slaven, was readying himself for a food-bank collection at Hibernian FC that would bring in huge amounts of provisions, donated by a constant stream of fans bringing bulging carrier bags. But before he set off, he walked us round his estate, and put its experiences in the context of politics. “Do you know who we never see round here?” he asked. “The left.”

When I worked on films for the Guardian’s Anywhere But Westminster series with my colleague John Domokos during this election, a big part of our plan was to cover the kind of community initiatives that Helping Hands exemplifies. The aim was partly to ensure that the stories we told always contained a large element of hope. But as we went on, we were also struck by the gap between what was happening on the ground and the distant noise of national politics. [Continue reading…]