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A Community We Shall Build
Two
organisations, the Tenants’ Association and the Community Association,
have played prominent roles in Harold Hill over the decades.
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 Community 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].
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
