Opinion: Communities remain fearful of the young

The luminaries leading the opening plenary discussion were Frank Furedi, Geoff Mulgan and Richard Sennett. Furedi wrote an influential book called Culture of Fear, suggesting that ordinary people have had their own power and autonomy systematically undermined by distant bureaucracy. Mulgan was a key adviser to Tony Blair's government before taking over as director of the Young Foundation. And Sennett is an American academic now at the London School of Economics, who has written widely on social relationships.

The festival was preoccupied by questions about what counted as community, how such relationships should be governed, and what might be the appropriate balance between individual freedoms and regulatory intrusion for the benefit of the majority. Inevitably, the respect agenda and antisocial behaviour orders provided the empirical handle for much of this debate. Very different views were articulated by the liberal intelligentsia in attendance, most of whom, it was alleged more than once, had probably never spent any time anywhere near the kinds of communities they were discussing.