Had we but world enough and time this nimbyism were no crime

I do wonder at the easy use of the Nimby epithet. It's perfectly designed to hit at a certain type of angst that many people feel about being too self-absorbed and, more particularly being seen to be so. Breaking it down through what underlies that term?

At its simplest, I guess it means looking out for ourselves to the exclusion of all others. In this raw form, it seems objectionable. It's selfishness pure and simple, isn't it?

It's interesting to note that the word is used almost exclusively to describe the very small scale. It's used to refer to Colonel Blimp protecting his acres from a railway line being built, or the residents of Upper Mucklingford raging about travellers being allowed to set up a mile down the road. It's personal and local. 

It also most often relates to situations where people are protecting something they see as relating to their quality of life. Most often it's something they have, or think they have, that others don't.

It's never used to talk about a national situation. No one has ever bandied the term about when Farage argues for his views on immigration or we ship our waste overseas. We may decry those actions but we don't use the word Nimby to do so. 

So Nimby is much smaller scale. It's more personal and it's somehow connected to some sort of privilege. This is precisely why people take to using the term so readily. Knowingly or not they're reaching for a very sharp and very barbed tool that is intended to be damaging, but it's cloaked in respectability. Essentially in calling someone a nimby, you're saying You selfish privileged bastard, without being seen to do so. But the code is thin. We all know what is meant, not consciously always perhaps, but we know.

The epithet is used throughout the anglo-saxon world and oddly it's beginning to be embraced by some people at whom it is targeted. Some are saying Yes, I'm a Nimby and proud of it. They're not the first 'persecuted' minority to turn around an insult and use it as a badge of honour, but what's to be proud of? Where's the honour in being a nimby?

Look at the world from a nimby's point of view and you may not feel a selfish privileged rage. As a nimby you might not be standing ready to shake your doormat on to your neighbours threshold. What you might feel is a bruised sense of injustice. You may feel the zeal of the injured party campaigning for justice. These are often people who see something valuable about their life being eroded and have decided to stand up for that thing. 

Nimbys are almost always 'local people'. It's difficult to say that all 'local people' standing up for some aspect of their way of life are wrong or simply selfish. Nimbys saved Covent Garden Piazza from the bulldozer in the Seventies, they've saved pubs and reversed river pollution.

So not all Nimbys are 'bad'. Sometimes they're protecting a community interest. On other occasions the interests are closer to home. They're protecting the interests of husband, wife, children or parents. When is it right and when is it wrong to protect those we love?

What would the nimby-name-callers have the nimbys do? Would they argue that the nimbys should just sit back and allow government or big business to behave as they see fit, no matter how incompetent those bodies have shown themselves to be, no matter what impact on their families' lives? Or should they stand up and be counted. I think most of us would defend the right of people to take the latter route. In effect most of us would defend the right of people to intervene where their interests are concerned. What we don’t like is where those interests impinge on those of others, very often more particularly on our own.

We’re at a pretty pass then. We don’t mind people standing up for their rights but not when to do so might have a negative impact on others, especially ourselves. What course should a  ‘nimby’ steer then? Some problems may have arrived on a nimby’s doorstep through no fault of their own, very often because others’ interests have made it so. Should they just sit back and accept the status quo, or should they engage and seek agency over their lives?

Many of us would defend a person’s right to stand up and be counted. Ideally from the get-go the action would be taken as part of the wider community, where community interests are discussed and debated and a solution thrashed out. (Sounds suspiciously like a democratic society doesn’t it.) The problem is of course that only a tiny percentage of people have the time or inclination to get involved in such complex processes. So, instead they voice their opinions from their armchairs or residents' groups and ask to be heard. In other words they pick up the nimby cudgel.

Nimby causes are often hugely complex situations which warrant a thorough understanding before making a judgment call. Some nimbys are just simply bloody awful and extremely selfish. Others are only asking for their point of view to be heard and engaging informally as part of a democratic process. So next time your blood begins to boil at yet another 'nimby', rather than automatically thinking ill of them, perhaps it's worth considering taking the time to understand their viewpoint, engaging with the issues and, almost always resisting the name-calling.

The title of this post is course adapted from Andrew Marvell's wonderful 'To His Coy Mistress'. Thanks Andy. (Having written this piece for HoL, the author fears that he'll soon be thumbing through the pages looking for a poem about regret from which to take the title for his next posting!)