ABSTRACT
The Redcliffe-Maud Commission, which led to the reorganisation of local government in 1974, commissioned, although hardly utilised, a piece of research which demonstrated that most citizens conceived of only a few streets as the ambit of their civic and social identity. Education is an especially relevant illustration, for it is general education in all types of social provision which is lacking. The process of community development and community politics invites many specialists to do exactly the same, and indeed, invites, the medical people to do the same some more. A pattern of social provision, therefore, which tried to embrace a participatory or popular component at local community levels, would need, within the centralist state framework, to establish two elements. One would be a structure of 'concentric circles' of social provision, in order to acquaint the economies of scale and popular identification more smoothly.
