This post is for all those quiet admirers of LFG who haven’t yet taken the plunge to get formally involved. You might have come to some of our events, you’re obviously subscribed to Radical Honesty or following us on social media, perhaps you’ve even signed some of our petitions. But you haven’t yet joined (or started) a local LFG Chapter. My aim is to convince you that our movement, and indeed our country, need what you have to offer.
You might think you’re not qualified to be involved, but what we have seen so far is that everyone brings something valuable. LFG has planning experts, transport experts, energy experts, people with experience working in government at different levels and others building world-changing start-ups or working in the companies that have to navigate all the endless regulation and red tape. For our Chapters, what we need above all else are doers. If you’re willing to clean up a park, send an email in favour of a new housing development, organise a social event or turn up at a planning meeting, you’ll be making a tremendous difference. We also need heterodox thinkers; the same failed politics that we’ve seen decade after decade will not save us.
Some of you will have been quietly getting on with similar initiatives on your own for years already, diligently cleaning up your local area and supporting good developments where you can. In that case, LFG will act as a force multiplier to your efforts. You will be amazed how much more you can accomplish when a group of like-minded people have your back.
You might think you are too busy, and I certainly understand where you’re coming from. Everyone seems to have full and busy lives. We’re running companies or working in difficult and demanding jobs, raising families, volunteering for community events – and all the rest. But it is exactly because we are so invested in our areas that we have to be the ones to step up and effect change. Moreover, those who stand in the path of progress, the NIMBYs, are certainly making the time to get organised to campaign and influence government to make growth even harder.
If you believe growth is good, you can’t afford to sit this out. The blockers will win if you don’t show up.
Now is also the perfect time to join a movement like LFG. We find ourselves in a rare moment when a network like ours has a chance to circumvent the traditional hierarchies of power to radically change how our country works. AI, vibe coding, open data sets, and APIs and automated lobbying tools mean a few motivated individuals have capabilities that would have required a whole government department 20 years ago. They give us the ability to start campaigning and influencing at frankly frightening speeds. I have been in discussions within LFG which have literally gone from an idea in someone’s head to a fully fledged website full of information in under an hour! There is so much publicly available data which lets us shine a light on issues where the country’s hierarchies are just completely failing to do what they should be doing. The more of you that get involved, the more mass we have to spread good ideas and get things done faster.
Those are some of the reasons why LFG needs you, but let me now appeal to your own self-interest and give just one reason why you might need LFG: it will increase your personal agency. Our motto is you can just do things. In our country today, precisely because of our anaemic growth and fraying public realm, it is easy to give in to the belief that the course of your life will be shaped more by economic and social forces beyond your control than by the actions you take. But even with things being as bad as they are, there are still countless things we can do to make our own lives, our own communities, and our own country better. Taking action is the antidote to despair.
LFG can expand your life in new and unexpected ways. When I first contacted LFG about starting a Chapter, I was driven by a sense of frustration and just wanting to do something, anything, to try to make a difference. Since then, in my Chapter, we’ve organised a park clean-up, hosted drinks and dinners, shown tens of thousands of people on X that you can just clean up road signs, and campaigned to get a cancer clinic built (yep NIMBYs opposed that too). I’ve learned some (very basic by LFG standards) vibe coding skills, was so moved hearing Matt Clifford’s rousing oratory at the O2 I learned how to make B-roll video to share it with more people (if you haven’t heard the speech yet, I promise it will be the best 15 minutes you’ll spend today). Perhaps most importantly, I’ve met the most remarkable, talented, curious, funny, smart and driven people you could imagine.
One of my favourite stories of a community expressing the individual responsibility we all bear to make the world better is the Christ the King Church in San Diego. In the church grounds there is, unsurprisingly, a statue of Christ. More unusually though the statue has no hands – many years ago vandals smashed them off. Rather than reattach them, or commission a new statue, the community added a plaque at the statue’s base which simply reads: ‘I have no hands but yours’. You don’t need to be religious to get the point; if you truly care about your town, if you want your city to be a clean and pleasant place to live, if you want to see the next generation enjoy greater prosperity and opportunity than you had, you have to accept that no one else is coming to the rescue – you must act!
Our country will not magically save itself, it has no hands but yours…
To join or start an LFG chapter, email: lucy@lookingforgrowth.uk or sign up on our website
Alfie Ramshaw is a member of LFG Reading and Berkshire.
