Community action, counter-professionals and radical planning in the UK

This paper reconsiders the roles of ‘counter-professionals’ (Goodman 1972) in urban social movements, focusing on the generation of students, activists and planners involved in the UK’s community action movement from the late-1960s. The paper therefore provides the first historical account of the ways community action stimulated the development of a distinctive counter-tradition of radical planning in the UK, inspiring experimentation with new, activist roles amongst a generation of young professionals who sought to support community-based movements seeking to challenge the post-war state, develop new models of participatory planning and lay the foundations for a more democratic society. Drawing on oral history interviews with key figures and archival materials from their personal records coupled with analysis of Community Action magazine (1972–1990), we track how many of those involved developed careers ‘working the spaces of power’ in and against various state projects (Newman 2012). The paper explores three key, interconnected dimensions of our participants’ experiences that we argue are central to counter-professional practice and the politics of radical planning: their relations with the state; their relations with community-based movements and organisations; and thirdly, the ways these relations shaped the political horizons of community action. Our empirical work concludes by accounting for the relative decline of community action in the 1980s. Through reconsideration of the UK context, the paper contributes to debates about the politics of radical planning and the roles of activist-professionals within urban social movements. It concludes with reflection on the seemingly constrained conditions of possibility for counter-professional practices today and the wider lessons of the community action moment for attempts to build collective alternatives, in, against and beyond the neoliberal state. By reconsidering the role of radical planners in community action in the UK we hope the paper can inspire further debate about the contributions future generations of counter-professionals might make to ongoing movements for urban justice, both in the UK and internationally.