Money, Work, Religion and Politics
Community Association
Two organisations, the Tenants’ Association and the Community Association, have played prominent roles in Harold Hill over the decades.
The Harold Hill Community Association
The first of these, the [Community Association], began at a meeting sponsored by the London Council of Social Service in February 1953 when 150 tenants gathered to discuss the possibility of opening a community centre. Gooshays Farm House was muted as one prospect. In May the same number of residents turned out again to see the adoption of a constitution for the Association, the objects being:
*To promote the well-being of the community by a common
effort to further health, advance education and stimulate physical,
intellectual and moral development.
*To foster a community spirit;
*To assist in the maintenance and the management of a community
centre.
*The association will be non-political and non-sectarian.
There was a battle between the Working Men’s Club and the 'Association over the use of Gooshays Farm, which also included a straw-roofed eighteenth century barn – the biggest in Essex. The Community Association won, with the opposing group moving into the Red House and which continued as a Working Men’s Club until the nineties.
Mr R.J. Frost, part-time warden and Broadford’s school teacher,
announced: It will take a long time to get the Association running
smoothly, but when we do, it will be of great benefit to the residents
of the estate.
Familiarly, the following week’s Romford Times reported that the building had been vandalised, this time by Teddy Boys.
By the summer of 1956 they had a total of 218 individual members, with 15 affiliated organisations. Their magazine, Farm House News, had a circulation of 1,000 while every room in the Gooshays Farm House was fully booked daily during the week with such classes as needlework and motorcycle maintenance.
By 1957 though the membership had dropped to 130 with a corresponding decline in enthusiasm – five years after starting, it looked in terminal decline.
Typical though of the dedication of the small minority of activists, 22 people went out to knock on doors and recruited 256 new members. The chairman of the Association said:
‘We visited 777 houses in selected areas. On average each canvasser has spent 40 evenings or Sunday’s going from door to door explaining our aims. They have done a wonderful job.’
By 1959 that had risen to 500 members, and from there continued years of pressurising the authorities to build the Community Centre that was finally built in the mid-sixties.
There were hundreds of estates and towns that had their own Community Association. For a more thorough explanation read [The Development of the Community Associations: Dagenham and Beyond].
