Who is ready for a public meeting?

It was curious to note that although we had around 80 residents who turned up on a cold night for the Area Forum in West Hampstead on Monday hardly anyone had been attracted to come by reading about the event on Twitter or Facebook. While most of our citizens are using e-mail these days there still seems to be a generation gap between those who are attracted to attend a traditional public meeting to keep up to date with current affairs, and those who aren't. The latter appear to be under-45, and are ready to post their opinions on social networking sites, but won't push through the doors of a community hall of an evening.

The same generation gap is sadly affecting the active membership of traditional residents and amenity groups too. I attend a fair number of community meetings as a councillor but I know there is a significant demographic I rarely come across. Within the boundaries of West Hampstead ward we have a higher than average number of people in the 25-34 age group compared to the population as a whole, but these are precisely the people we don't see taking part in community groups.

Many will be transient because of their work, so do not settle in the area, and therefore take less interest in local affairs. Those who put down their roots by buying a property or by having permanent tenancies are those who tend to join in. The only exceptions to my thesis are those who have children of primary school age and get involved in the local schools as Parent Governors or members of Friends Groups. But I suspect these are also the "settlers", and given the trend to have children later in life, many of these will be approaching 40 before they get stuck in to organising the school tombola or joining the Governors' Finance Committee.

I am not sure whether I should be worried or not. We have gone twenty years or so since a younger generation was catching the headlines with direct action with demonstrations and sit-ins. More recently the demonstration against the Iraq war also caught the imagination although this was across all age groups.

The recent unrest about student tuition fees, although in my view largely misplaced (See my earlier blog) at least shows us that when the right cause comes along the young can still get worked up about it. They are the ones who do use the social networking sites to organise their activities, but it tends not to be an invite to a public meeting in a draughty hall...