SNAP was right, of course; there was certainly an urgent need for an overhaul of the machinery of government. But I refused to accept their wholesale condemnation of local government and all its works which seemed to me unjustifiable. Instead I clung to my belief that ‘the system’ could be made to work if we gave our minds to it. To me, that meant two things. First, that a social policy designed to ‘knit up the torn fabric of the community’, as I myself put it, by bringing neighbour together with neighbour was essential; experience in Granby had demonstrated this to be both practicable and rewarding. Second, what SNAP had brought sharply home to us was that this alone was not enough. There must be a warp as well as a weft if the cloth was to hold; those who administered public services must be brought into a new and closer relationship with those whose needs they existed to serve. At the same time, the isolation of services—each focused on a particular specialism—must give way to a coordinated approach which would be more directly geared to the overall needs of the human beings for whom they were provided.