Lack of community spirit in a more general public theme is down to how and where we live nowadays.
Formerly, entire families lived in the same village for generations and everyone knew everyone else. Life centred around work, which was usually in the same village, and social interaction was conducted in places like the pub, church, and over the garden fence, etc.
Today, youngsters can barely afford to buy their own homes and are clobbered by Inheritance tax and the likes and the majority cannot afford to buy a property in the place where they were brought up, if they were brought up in one place and had not moved home more than once in their childhood.
Work is generally a commute to another town or even county.
Socialising in the old sense has become a lost art with people talking to just family and close friends at best. How many people can name the people who live in the five houses either side of them? Not many I bet.
The only time I come across what could be called community spirit in a non-profiteering sense of things is when people jouin to gether to protest against a development that is likely to affect them. Even that dies a death once the development has been dropped/completed.
Sounds like a sad world I'm painting but generally it's true with just a few silver-lined clouds. I can only see it getting worse as well what with all the extra housing and competition for jobs and the almost ghetto like culture of some foreign groups that make little effort to integrate with the local community other than their own. Then again perhaps we could learn something from them and reinstate our own local communities.
Here's the first small step. Start saying hello in passing to people in your street. It's surprising how contagious it can be.
Cheers,
Adam