Appendix A
I mentioned earlier that during this whole time-related employment pilot project I had been developing a careful reporting system in order to provide information to ensure our own project ran smoothly. But in addition, as this was a pilot project, I had also been keeping copious records for the Manpower Services Commission, This was a fascinating and rewarding social experiment which expanded my own knowledge, and I gained a fuller understanding of the reactions of different ages and communities and their personal development.
I had been travelling the country, often speaking about this whole experience and additionally sharing this and the boys’ own stories with others in Bible and Theological colleges and other educational establishments. This was in addition to sharing and using the experience with our own TCWs and also producing publications. I found that I was often using examples from my current experience in my lecturing in Community Studies as well as in other ways.
Through this I had been encouraged to write an article for an international social journal and in clearing out papers nearly 50 years later, I found the records of a substantial article I had written among all the other files and folders! But I also remembered that having submitted it and hearing that it had been enthusiastically accepted, I then had had ‘cold feet’ and had withdrawn it. I prevented it being published as I was very concerned for the young men whose stories I was telling. Even though I had only used their Christian names, I had felt it was unethical to allow the paper to go into print as it could have damaged their reputations and unfairly influenced their lives in the future as they had all by now moved on and hopefully experienced some change.
I hope I have now made sufficient further changes and given each of the lads a pseudonym identified in inverted commas and italics, but I have also been convinced that it all took place so long ago that these stories could now be a good and useful social record from that era which would enable others to learn, not only more of the thinking of young people in that specific time and place, but also give guidance for possibly similar situations in the future.
Some of the personal stories that follow have already been mentioned in the text above, but I am now recounting some more, with my reflections on why they were, and are, included.
The Influence of Others
It was amazing the amount of influence that members of this rather enforced team working together exerted upon each other and how much some people’s actions were influenced by what was going on around them. Actually, nobody would ever have admitted that they were influenced in any way by their colleagues on the site, particularly if they were those with whom they did not want to identify or associate very closely. But it was inevitable that they were in fact all influenced by each other. Occasionally, they were influenced so that they avoided doing things which they saw others do, but more often they were influenced to do things which if they had had time to consider them carefully, they would never have allowed to happen.
Challenging Principles
I remember one Afro-Caribbean carpenter, ’Chris’, who had been with us for some time, who stuck to his principles and made no bones about the fact that he was a Christian and distinguished clearly between right and wrong. ‘Chris’ often put himself at risk with the other men by denouncing some of their actions and showing his disapproval of their behaviour. He did not like to hear them swear and particularly not in the presence of children or members of the centre who were not working on the site. He did not see that to some of them it was a way of showing their independence by proving that they were every bit as good as others who appeared to be in a more advantageous position. Neither did he see that his very disapproval would provoke antagonism in certain members. If he ever did realise it, it never really bothered him – he felt it was just one of those burdens he had to carry.
Some of the lads considered him fair game and he would often find his tools missing. One memorable occasion which had a salutary effect on all then on the site happened, when ‘baiting’ went too far. The roofers were working on the new toilet block sealing the surrounds to the skylights and ‘Chris’ was constructing doorframes down below. Tools “accidentally” dropped down through the skylights and each occasion was followed by a shout of caution from down below leading to an occasional rush outside to see who was responsible. Of course, nobody ever knew anything about it and those who had instigated the action rapidly disappeared. It was when a brick came down when he was immediately underneath, missing him by inches and hitting his good work, that his temper broke momentarily and he retaliated and hurled a nearby club hammer through the air and the skylight. It sailed through and landed in the road and I shudder to think what the outcome might have been if any car or person had been passing, but fortunately no one was hurt. I say no one was hurt – not physically at any rate.
News travelled fast and within seconds everybody knew, and they were waiting and watching with bated breath to see what would happen. Only two days previously one lad had been dismissed for throwing something at another lad on the scaffolding – that particular boy had had so many warnings about his behaviour that this fragrant act of stupidity had been the final straw. But this time it was not a youngster showing off – this was a grown man whom everybody knew had been provoked. And acts like that could, and probably should, have meant dismissal, but if this kind of rule had been followed, we would have had an impossible turnover of personnel.
The rules we had laid down allowed for a written warning before dismissal – that was over and above any number of verbal warnings. ‘Chris’ came to me and told me his version, the foreman and other workers told their stories – there really was not much difference. So a written warning was issued. I shall always remember the penitential acceptance of the written warning that ‘Chris’ had to sign to ensure that he knew that the next time it would be the inevitable dismissal. We both knew there wouldn’t be a next time – but neither of us had imagined that there would ever have been a first time. Although we never found out who had been dropping things through the skylight, the tormenting of ‘Chris’ ceased – perhaps he had proved himself to be one of them – and liable to the same disciplinary procedure.
The Vulnerable Grow Up Rapidly
Then there was the young man ‘Shane’ we have mentioned before, who because of his height, his immaturity and lack of education, had been unable to obtain a job for over a year since leaving school. He came from a large family with ten brothers and sisters all of whom were older than he was and none of whom had a job! He was thrilled to get the job of teaboy with us and pleased also to get out of the house with something positive to do. His curly hair and his baby face along with his pleasant friendly disposition had advantages and disadvantages.
Members of the centre tended to mother him and feel that he could do no wrong, but those on the site would tease him and put upon him and occasionally make his life a misery. He soon learned how to react to both these groups of people, but it wasn’t always easy for him to keep the company of those who brought out the best in him. He was very easily swayed to go along with the feelings of whichever particular group he was with, and although essentially honest over big things, he was a kleptomaniac over small trivial items.
We occasionally found collections of these petty trivial items in the bottom of the oven where he had made the tea on the stove above and we would occasionally challenge him as to where he had found them. For more than six months they were of no great consequence, and although he was reprimanded and told that he could have had them if he had asked, we felt on other matters we were getting somewhere with him. But there were others on the site who also knew of this failing of ‘Shane’s and one or two of them did exert an influence upon him after he had been with us for some time: this caused him to act as go-between for some of their actions. They did bully him and tease him and although sometimes he was tied up in fun during lunch breaks, there were other times when the threatening became serious. For him to survive at all, he either had to acquiesce to those stronger than himself or tell tales on them. The repercussions of the latter were not anything that he could countenance.
The things that disappeared at this stage were not things to do with the job. Strangely enough there seemed to be a kind of honour code about the property they were working with, and I suppose if we really analysed the situation, each time anything went missing, we would find that temptation had been put in their way – they would have been of property left lying around or not put away properly.
There was one occasion when we wondered why a tape recorder ordered for the centre had not arrived by post and when we queried it some days later, we found that it had been delivered and handed to somebody at the centre. Of course, no identification was possible after such a lapse of time and all we could do was to make sure that it didn’t happen again. But the grapevine told us a little about some scurryings in a little group of the workers on the day it should have been delivered and although no definite proof was forthcoming, we had our suspicions and we knew who was probably involved, and I had no doubt that ‘Shane’ was used to store the equipment, or to get it off the premises. We were not able to pin anything like this onto ‘Shane’ or any of the others, but when contracts expired, the opportunity was taken to amend the situation, and ‘Shane’s was one contract that was not renewed at that time. He had by this time learned how little work he needed to do to get away without a harsh reprimand, and I think that he recognised that if he was to make anything of his life he had to buckle down and work hard.
When he left us, he had the opportunity to get away to a camp throughout the summer months, but when he called in to see us when this was over, we hardly recognised him. He had grown up during those six weeks into a young toughie. He had had a skinhead haircut, there was stubble on his chin, gone was the baby face and the friendly manner – he had obviously found another way to survive!
There were then many occasions when men just did not turn up for work or absented themselves during the day – preferring to lose pay and run the risk of dismissal for absence, rather than to be around when questions were likely to be asked. Survival often meant remaining uninvolved and keeping out of things – turning a blind eye and pretending not to see what had happened. Nobody likes telling tales on others or taking sides with the authorities against another workman, no matter how unpopular the other workmen might have been.
Personal Difficulties
Take the time ‘Ollie’, who had been in trouble before, was dismissed for throwing a ball of plaster’s scrim at ‘Amir’ who was high on the scaffolding. Unfortunately for ‘Ollie’ he threw it when ‘Bert’ the foreman was immediately behind him. Upon being challenged, he denied categorically throwing anything and the strange thing was that neither ‘Amir’, whom it hit, nor any other workmen around, admitted seeing anything or would say anything, until a few days later after ‘Ollie’ had left the site.
Two of those working in the area ‘Fred’ and ‘Claude’ had not turned up for work the next day when I had intended to question them about the incident. I knew that neither of them would tell lies, even to save their skin, and although both managed to convince themselves that their absence was due to other reasons, psychologically they were very relieved not to be around on the site. They did not want to be involved in the episode at all and yet they knew that their very presence had involved them.
It was only a week later, when the constraints were lifted from them because the decisions had been made without any reference to them, that they felt free to put into words what they had seen and heard. They knew that they had not been a party to the decision to remove ‘Ollie’ and that he would know that they had not been involved in any way.
‘Ollie’ had been particularly difficult most of the time he had been with us, but we had persevered. Everybody knew ‘Ollie’, although not many knew his background. It was a particularly violent one culminating in a court case which had gone against him for grievous bodily harm with a knife. He had come to us after a series of jobs each of which had ended in dismissal after a few days. We managed to keep him for five months to the delight of his Probation Officer, particularly as during this time he managed to keep out of major trouble outside. But on the job, there were many times when he was extremely difficult and caused trouble among the other workers. He delighted in tormenting some of the lads and in terrorising others: he would lose his temper very quickly and everybody treated him warily. The morale of the team had fallen very low and we knew that he would have to go eventually.
There was a conscious relaxing among the men when he had eventually left the site. One of the most remarkable things about the whole ‘Ollie’ episode was that when he did leave, it was not with the vindictiveness we all expected. His tongue had been particularly vitriolic at the actual time, and although he had not actually laid a finger upon ‘Bert’ who had to report him, he had threatened to do so. When he came to see me, he was reasonable and able to talk rationally about his whole time with us. I think he was rather glad to be dismissed with the thought that he could start again afresh somewhere else – he knew he deserved dismissal, and he even went and apologised to the foreman ‘Bert’ voluntarily. When I rang the Probation Officer apologetically to report that we could no longer keep him, it appeared that he might really have landed on his feet, they had just been offered a place on a training course for car mechanics and this was what ‘Ollie’ had always wanted to do.
A Feeling of Superiority
Most of the lads would meet together in the site office when they took a break mid-morning for their breakfast. There were, though, usually one or two on the site who for one reason or another would not do this. Occasionally someone was so interested in their work that they had their cup of tea alongside them on the bench. Others would take the time off and sit in splendid isolation outside and it wasn’t always because the other lads were not willing to be friendly with them. It was often because they did not want to get too closely involved with the others.
Occasionally, we had one or two who felt themselves to be superior, but usually it was because they genuinely had little in common and preferred to keep their own company. Overtures of friendship were often rejected and very few had much to do with others outside working hours.
‘Ken’, who came to us from another scheme started in this way. He had done a TOPS training course in bricklaying, and he enjoyed the pointing side very much. He came to us just at the right time when our previous bricklayer, who had left to take up permanent employment, had not been very fond of this side of bricklaying and he had tended to leave it until last. So there was plenty of work for ‘Ken’ to do. He seemed to be on the edge of the group all the time – a loner or at least one on his own – but he must have known his own tendencies as we discovered later. He worked well for the first three or four weeks. When he began to make friends or when he got a little bored with the job (and it could be rather tedious work) we could not be sure which, then his work and his timekeeping fell very badly. He seemed to pick up with the wrong group and ‘who influenced whom’ we still didn’t know, but there was trouble!
When I talked to him, he said he really had tried and had meant to stay on his own and not get into bad company and was determined in the next job he got that he would move right away from this part of London and really persevere on keeping his job. He was on his own, as his wife had left him about two or three months previously and he felt free with no ties, so he determined to go up to one of the new towns in the Midlands and try to make a fresh start there.
Individualism
‘Mark’ came to us finding it very difficult to express himself and stuttering a great deal. He was very concerned that he wanted to do a good job and give satisfaction, but he was also very adamant that he only wanted to commit himself to 4 weeks. He got on well with everybody and as far as I know, nobody teased him about his stutter - and we really thought that he would be willing to stay longer, but no, when the four weeks were up, he said, “thank you for having me” and he was off. Perhaps it was too deeply ingrained within him that in order to survive he must not become too involved with any particular project or job.
We had at one time taken on a young but fairly experienced plasterer who had been out of work for a relatively short period of time. You could almost see him weighing up the other members on the site and deciding that he would get on with his job and leave them to theirs. He was a man of very few words as far as the other workmen were concerned and whoever was deputed to mix up for him would have a very silent time, and if they drifted away to talk to their friends, he would just mix up for himself. His policy was, if the youngsters worked for him they worked for him, but if they weren’t there then he was not going to be responsible for them. He was an excellent workman, and he achieved more plastering in the three weeks in which he was with us, than the other plasterers had managed to achieve in as many months. He found another job to go to, said that he was pleased to have been able to have helped us get on in that direction, but he was obviously relieved to be getting back to a more usual team with more conventional work! He personally survived extremely well, but very much as an individualist.
Two Different Aspirations
‘Navor’ never mixed at break times. He was an excellent worker from an Asian background, but nobody ever really found out what he was thinking. He lived in a different world and was unconcerned with the activities of the other men on the site. It came as a great surprise to find that since he had been with us, he had been offered a contract in an Indian film and was off to become an actor. I never saw the film but I’ve no reason to doubt that he had been offered a small part, although it did not lead to the stardom he had at one time thought it might. I met him later on that summer and he told me the name of the film, but he was once again seeking work, although not as a labourer. He was a good-looking lad with a good physique and whether all the labouring he did with us helped his body, or whether his natural physique helped him to labour, we shall never really know.
We had others who worked through their meal breaks just so that they didn’t have to mix with the others - they were either shy or ill-at-ease and certainly quite an amount of teasing went on during these breaks.
I remember ‘Carl’ who came from a broken home with a history of mental illness on his mother’s side and who had walked out of numerous jobs for one reason or another. He desperately wanted to become a gardener and yet the Parks Department would not look at him because he had not got a good reference in his pocket. He was determined to work hard and well and stick to the job in order to earn a reference so that he could have this outdoor job which he so coveted. He was very open and willing to be very friendly, but he was also rather naïve with the other lads and was an obvious target of ridicule if they ever felt so inclined.
He had been put away in care at a very early age but had ‘escaped’ around the age of 12 and had managed to stay ‘free’ until he was of an age to look after himself. His education was very limited, in fact he was illiterate, but he wanted to learn and while he was with us, he attended adult literacy classes. He was a romantic and would bring and show me poems that he had written in his own style of writing – all feeling poems mainly about love.
His present landlady had mothered him, and he was responding greatly to this. I realised that the other boys teased him, recognising how immature and limited he was in his thinking, but he was able to take it, until once again they went too far. He found his donkey jacket, which he had bought with an advance of wages to help pay for it, urinated on, in the corner of the toilets, his bus fare was gone and his cigarettes floating in the WC pan. He broke and went berserk and left the site. Apparently, nobody could reason with him and he made a great many wild statements. He did return the next day to talk things over with me, but he could not be persuaded to work again on the site. Once again, all his high ideals and his hopes had been shattered. But he had tried, and in the four weeks in which he worked for us, he was never late once, nor absent and willingly undertook some of the dirtiest jobs such as brushing down the red brickwork. He got his reference and a recommendation to a nearby park where he was eventually offered a job.
Keeping Up Standards
Those who found it the most difficult to survive were those who had standards – high standards of workmanship and who found it difficult to take the attitudes of some of the youngsters.
‘Bert’ was an older man with very high standards, but he had come to us in the role of a supervisor and not just in the role of a craftsman and this was where any conflict in the leadership team set in. He could have survived as a craftsman and done an excellent job on the site. He had an army background and believed in discipline, and there grew up a love/hate relationship between himself and a number of the boys. One minute he was determined to prove that he could teach them something, and the next he was in absolute despair calling them all “born losers” and that none of them would ever be able to do a good day’s work in their lives.
He found it very hard to mix the roles of teaching the lads to do something and getting a good job done. When he concentrated on just one, or at the most two, willing lads, he felt he was getting somewhere. If they showed the least bit of interest in what they were doing and what he wanted them to do he was prepared to spend a great deal of time teaching them, correcting their work and helping them to progress, but, as often happened, they would treat him in a slightly offhand way, and he would then think they weren’t listening to him. When he did eventually leave and take up a role as foreman of a large building site, there were very mixed feelings. There was relief that we wouldn’t have to keep sorting out problems between the workmen and supervisors, but a number of lads who had listened to him, wished that they had taken more advantage of the opportunity which had been theirs.
But it was hard for lads with their first taste of freedom and money in their pockets to settle down and work hard and unfortunately ‘while he was with us, ‘Bert’ was not popular with the vast majority. There was no doubt that for his own survival as a supervisor he had to behave as he did, but his stories about what life was like in the years of the depression were relayed in tones of ridicule on many occasions. He found it very difficult to reconcile his attitude to work with that of today’s youngsters.
The workforce started work at 8 o’clock in the morning and I usually did not arrive on the site until 8:30 or a quarter to 9 by which time the supervisors had got them going on their respective jobs. There was one morning when only two supervisors, ‘Bert’ and H, were expected on the site and I had a phone call from H’s wife to say that he was sick and would not be in that morning. It was already gone 8 but I got along to the centre as quickly as I could to find that there was no supervisor at all on the site. Everybody knew what they were expected to do and all was quiet. The caretaker had let them in and apparently ‘Bert’, had been there but when it dawned on him that he was to be the sole one in charge, he had disappeared! When he did return later on in the day it was to say that he had had to go for an interview which had only come up the previous evening. He hadn’t got the job. I didn’t follow it up, he needed to retain some of his self-respect if it hadn’t been true, but I felt that this might have been another instance of how a group can make you go against all your principles.
Surviving and Making a New Life
‘Pat’ came to us as an odd job man and obviously had a great deal to work out of his soul. Nobody else knew his background on the site, or he wouldn’t have survived as long as he did! He had been chairman of a neighbouring borough’s National Front movement but had now rejected everything along those lines and wanted to stay out of the public eye. His wife had left him, his home had broken up, the party had rejected him and thrown him out because of adverse publicity in the local paper. He showed me the cuttings. After the news had broken in the local paper, he felt he could no longer return to the job which he had held, and he needed time just to reorientate himself to decide what he was going to do with his life.
He was desperately near to a nervous breakdown and was already having treatment from his doctor. He enjoyed painting and got a quiet achievement out of doing the job well, but it was obvious that we were marking time – that this would not be the type of work that he would want for the rest of his life. You could see him shudder when he saw a job badly done or materials uneconomically used and he couldn’t understand the “couldn’t care less” attitude of some of the youngsters, and eventually he had to visit a doctor who put him off work for some considerable time so he could receive treatment for his battered mind.
‘Could Not Care Less’ Attitude
Yet another way to personally survive was to be hard and show little interest but this, in many cases, often covered up deep feelings. It became a game never to let anybody know what you really thought and then they could not hurt you, and to be known as the ‘couldn’t care less’ devil.
‘Albert’ was like this, a proper lady killer who had all the girls from the local school around him at lunchtimes and who rode a motorbike: nothing seemed to concern him until he revealed a side of himself which had been hidden and was causing family problems which had spilled over into the workplace. We had had two brothers in the team, ‘Percy’ and ‘Paul’, and although ‘Paul’ had moved on to other things having introduced ‘Albert’ to us, ‘Percy’ was still with us. The two brothers’ sister was ‘Albert’s’ girlfriend and one day ‘Percy’ came in very late and obviously rather choked. His sister had just given birth to a baby the previous night and he had been up the whole evening and night running around getting her into hospital and doing all that was necessary, and he couldn’t get over just how casual ‘Albert’ was over the whole incident.
Fortunately, everything had gone well, but obviously he was thinking what kind of life the baby would have (or his sister for that matter) or even if ‘Albert’ was interested in whether the baby existed or not. ‘Paul’s attitude when he looked in on the site sometime later was also one that he couldn’t care less which was causing further problems in the home. ‘Paul’ was not like his brother ‘Percy’ who was still on our team and whose girlfriend also had had a baby a few weeks earlier, but he was a proud father, even bringing the child onto the site to show everyone. ‘Albert’, though obviously felt that he would lose face if it was generally known that he was a father or that he was interested in kids.
Importance of Bodily Strength
If you had a good physique it helped. If you were strong and you could prove yourself in fights, or had scars to prove that you had been involved on a personal scale, then you felt respected and able to take whatever was coming your way. I remember the story of ‘Jamie’ who loved a fight – racial or otherwise and who had joined the family rag and bone business. We often wondered what had happened to him until we saw him in army uniform and realised that he had signed up and was away for “the good life”.
Team Spirit
There were occasions when corporate survival became more important than personal survival. On several occasions the team would gel and have a full identity. A group of new employees had started on the Monday and on the Friday ‘Chris’ came running down the corridor into my room calling, “Monica! Monica! Come quick”. He could not articulate what he wanted to say but grabbed me by the arm and dragged me along to the gent’s toilet, to the absolute astonishment of the other members of staff in the room. They followed to see what was happening. He dragged me to the window and pointed to the back of the house next door saying, “Look! Look! Look!” and there was one of the new employees ‘Adam’ breaking a window to get into the house.
My heart sank, but I ran downstairs and called the foreman and ‘H’ and sent them in opposite directions to cut off his retreat path. When ‘Adam’ realised that he was surrounded he had one foot over the windowsill of the window he had just broken. He came back quietly with us into our own building, but the police had to be called and the neighbours informed, as there was a broken window and the other boys all knew all about it. Their resentment and hostility to ‘Adam’ rose. We actually had to put a guard on him, not to stop him from escaping, but to keep the other boys from lynching him. His sin was in drawing the police to the site!
It was understandable – many of them had records, and it was not long since the police had followed another boy from the team home every night for the first two weeks he had been working on the site and here we were, having to draw the police back to the site which would draw all the other men we had working there, back to police attention. I don’t think it was that they were against the actual ‘breaking and entering’, but the fact that it was just so foolhardy to do it so close to their own place of work. The team rallied round and repaired the window and made everything good for the neighbours who were obviously impressed, so the end result in relationships in the local community were rather better than we could have hoped.
Raising Self-Esteem
But I remember taking on ‘Amir’, an Asian carpenter of around 30, who could not speak any English and who was quite sure that we would turn him down and that he would never get a job in this country. I managed to get over to him that this was not the case and asked if he had his own tools. He proudly produced a strange looking saw - at least strange to our eyes - and made up and down movements with it. He proved to be an excellent carpenter, just needing to see a drawing of what was required and when his English improved, he eventually took a job at Fords – but we had set him on his way.
Changing Lives and Seeing Potential
I remember ‘Sean’ who had come to us as a labourer with seemingly very little to commend him. He was a very wild young man having served a year as a community service volunteer as part of his prison and probation services where apparently he had enjoyed community work so much that he wanted to be more practically involved. He admitted to having had a number of personal problems including a terrible temper and a drug problem. He assured us that he was practically over the drug situation and that he was well on the way to controlling his temper! He was a good hard worker, a good artist with a good brain - when he cared to use it. He did settle well and we only had one serious loss of temper during the time he was with us.
This had been over a pay matter. I was away on a long weekend leave but had made arrangements for the borough finance department to make up the wage packets and to deliver them so that they would arrive at lunchtime by Securicor van. The foreman would sign for them all but would only let individuals have them before the end of the day if there were exceptional circumstances. A number of the men had been getting rebates and ‘Sean’ was expecting his to appear. For some unknown reason he needed his money earlier in that day.
The foreman gave him his wage packet, he opened it and apparently went berserk. Not only did it not include his rebate, but there was an income tax deduction much larger than usual. ‘Ben’ had tried to explain and eventually put him onto the finance department, but by this time he could not put adequately into words what he wished to know and apparently he slammed down the receiver and marched off the site. He was back on site on the Monday when he was in a calmer frame of mind and apologised to ‘Ben’.
It was only much later on that the whole story came out. He must have gone into a nearby local for some Dutch courage when he left the site and then gone up to the finance department to sort things out. The woman at the desk could not give him satisfaction and so he entered the higher domains. By this time his long dark hair and beard were untidy and wild, and the members of the wages department still remember this huge strapping wild man descending upon them. There was no reasoning with him that day and it took two of them to eject him from the building. Sometime later on a visit to the Finance Department, I had numerous people there expressing concern for my safety. I think, up to then they hadn’t realised the kind of people I was employing! They thought everybody was respectable and gentle and could sit behind a desk and work. By that time we had managed to clear up the misunderstanding with ‘Sean’. He had by then cut his hair and shaved off his beard and settled down. The wages department were still shaking their heads when a few weeks later we had upgraded him as he had natural leadership abilities. He got married and worked hard and we were genuinely sorry to see him go when he had the chance of an old house up in Norwich in which he could live for free if he repaired it in his spare time. He really was as much a success story as we ever had.
Commitment
With some we did manage to build up a measure of commitment so much so that some did not want to leave until the whole job was finished, and we too were grateful for this level of interest and concern to see a job well done. Two craftsmen were allowed to stay on to the end of the project, but there was one unskilled boy, ‘Percy’ we have already mentioned, who had to go back to the unemployment exchange after he had completed a year with us. He did try for other jobs and although he used to drop in and lend a hand, we could not employ him a second time. He felt it was his project. He had learned commitment which should have stood him in good stead.
Overview
These are just a few more of the stories, not just of all that happened during the eighteen months of activity as we not only rebuilt a building. but we also helped a little in influencing, if not always rebuilding, the lives of those we had the opportunity to get alongside - memories abound.
Every one of those we took onto the programme had a story to tell and we hope that over the following years they would have had good memories of their time, however short with the project. Although we may have tried, we were not successful in reaching and helping every one of these boys, but they all certainly helped me to widen my horizons and understand them better which has stood me in good stead over the years since then. Hopefully too it will have made a contribution to the new national schemes being put forward to help social issues like these.