Interviewee: Ros Jennings and Meriel Poslett Interviewer: Christine Cox Date: Tuesday, 16th September 2014

[00.00.00]

CC: This is Chris Cox recording .. interviewing Meriel Poslett and Ros Jennings, on the 16th of September. It's about 3.30 and we're at Meriel's house. And I'm going to ask Ros and Meriel, how you ... you tell me that you both worked together, but I haven't hear about that from you. So maybe you could tell me about how that was, how it came about and what you remember of the time you actually worked with the groups together. [00:00:32]

MP: Well, Malcolm Holland who was at the time Bristol Youth Officer, mentioned to us separately that we might work together and I turned up as a volunteer, and then I was working with Henbury . CC: So you were already working with the Henbury group, were you Ros? RJ: Well I was working with all of them. CC: Of course, yeah. RJ: I knew all the groups. I worked mostly with Roger, he and I, and you [Meriel] and Dave . MP: Rog, when I started, Rog and Dave hadn't turned up. RJ: That was before them. MP: I started in 1969. RJ: Mmmm … MP: And they came in 1972. RJ: As long as that? MP: Yes. RJ: I hadn't realised. MP: Yes, either 1971 or 1972 but I think it was 1972. And after a bit they employed Jean Townley as a part-timer and I was farmed out to Jean to assist her. I don't know who helped you. Maybe you went on managing on your own did you? [00:01:52] RJ: I think I did for a while. I mean, we had quite a lot of volunteers... who were very capable. I mean there was Nan, Nan Pleydell Pearce. MP: Was she a volunteer? RJ: Oh yes. MP: Well, she was after Jean. RJ: Was she? MP: Yes. RJ: Yes, but you know there were people like her who came along who were really very competent. And Nan's husband who helped us a lot, Pleydell Pearce, Ivor Pleydell Pearce at the University. So we had lots of people we could call on for help. CC: Yes. [00:02:29] RJ: And I think that was really one of the big things about it - that we were all so different. I remember one of the university people on his postgraduate course was sent along to work with us and I asked to see their notes. And his notes were: ‘How can this middle-aged, middle-class lady deal with these children?’ [all laugh] CC: Lovely. RJ: I think he changed his tune by the end of the year. You know we had people who were very able who came in. It was a real eye opener to people like him, and like Reg Young who again won't mind me putting his name in, who is another PGCE one. … Then we had the people, can't remember her name, member of staff who supervised them. We could call on her as well. So a lot of people contributed. MP: And some of the groups, their staff came, we had ... he was called Mr McFarlane? Came from Henbury didn't he? I remember going round Wills factory with him and you. He sorted out a problem because one of the boys wouldn't take his hat off. [both laugh]. You couldn't wear a hat in Wills factory. CC: So he was a Henbury teacher that came with the group was he? MP: Yes. CC: Okay. RJ: Yes, well, we did get help. I remember, when we took some of them to camp in the Forest of Dean. That was done with St George's School and we didn't normally have a group from there, but they asked us if we would help. They thought it would be good and two members of their staff came with me and with Nan. MP: Yes, that happened to me once. RJ: So that's how we often staffed them, by calling on these other people. [00:04:27] CC: Right ... and the students ... so they came from the PGCE at Bristol University.

RJ: Yes. CC: - and at the Poly , what was the Poly then. RJ: No, we didn't have any from the Poly then. CC: Oh, didn't you? RJ: I don't remember any from the Poly. MP: We had social workers from the Poly. RJ: We had social workers from the Poly, but not teachers. CC: And did you get them from Trinity? Was it Trinity? RJ: Trinity was the theological college. CC: Yes. RJ: We had a bit of contact with them but not so much. CC: Okay. MP: Was that the one ... [00:05:00]

RJ: I don't know where the nun came from ... Perhaps she came from Trinity, I've forgotten now, but first of all when she appeared she was in full regalia and the kids thought it was very funny, but they loved her. They got on very well with her. Then she left us for a little while and came back in civvies! And of course the first thing .. 'Have they kicked you out miss?' [all laugh] But, you know that sort of input of such different personalities, different background, different things to bring to the group was a great help. And I'm still in touch with one couple, a husband and wife who were teachers who helped. I'm not sure which school they were from but I still hear from them every Christmas. CC: That's nice ... We did have … we had - I don't know for how long - but certainly from Trinity, we did have students working with school groups that I can remember, when I was .. I don't know which one I was working with...one of the groups, but it was interesting because they were kind of bringing, as you say, a different outlook onto things. MP: We had for a year, against everybody's wishes, we had some ... that's not Trinity is it, at the top and over the Downs, just over the Downs. RJ: Over the Downs? That's Trinity isn't it? MP: Well maybe it was. RJ: Down the hill a little. MP: A little way, yes. RJ: We also did try to get some in, but that wasn't for the school groups. It was to sit in and cover for people who were counselling at night. And we did have help then from Trinity. But my two jobs, sort of you know, moved in together, sometimes it was difficult to remember which one was working with which. Some of it was just the youth clubs and weekends for them, then I'd draw on the same staff that were helping with the groups in the day. And there was a lot of interchange. [00:07:14] MP: Yes, we had ... I can't think of her name now... Tart...What's her name, Tart, you know, Alison's friend. RJ: Jenny? MP: Jenny, that's it. She was introduced, I imagine, by her headmistress, Miss Draper. RJ: Yes, well her headmistress was on our committee. That was Miss Draper from Portway School . And she knew we were needing help, and she said, ‘I think I could let some of my sixth formers ...’ and she sent along Jenny and two boys. Now they were all good, but Jenny was really outstanding from the beginning. And she was a great help. She became the senior social worker in Gloucester - Warwickshire in the end. Warwickshire or Worcestershire? Worcestershire. Very competent girl and, yes, good fun. [laughs] But ones like that, they were young, they were near enough to the youngsters, but they were different enough for, you know, because I was told off by one headmistress, who said we shouldn't allow the children, young people, we shouldn't allow them to call us by our Christian names. ‘How could you have discipline, how could you? Shocking Mrs Jennings.’ [CC laughs] Actually none of the kids were ever as rude to me as she was, although she called me 'Mrs Jennings'. [00:08:53] RJ But we did find .. you know.. the approach from the social workers and the teachers was so different. MP: Yes. RJ: Wasn't it? MP: Yes, it was. CC: Can you say more about how that was? MP: Well, I tend to feel that the social work students had been a bit bruised by their course. CC: Right. MP: And they didn't think in quite the same way. They tended to, sort of, almost over sympathise with the kids, who, after all, most of them, had been pretty obstreperous at school, and that takes a bit of energy doesn't it and strength? And you didn't feel that with the teaching ones - the PGCEers. But they were amazed because they'd been very academic themselves, and when they fell up against the kids at Frederick Place they were really shaken. CC: Yes. MP: They were human people. [RJ laughs] They were quite surprised that they had a very sensible conversation, because of course, people don't have conversations at school with the kids, do they? CC: No, you don't get that chance, do you? MP: No ... I always felt that the point of Frederick Place was that it was an experience of relating to adults, which they weren't very good at. A lot of them had dad trouble, or mum trouble and only related to their grandmother or something like that ... and they enjoyed that. [the social work students] I think they really cared about that. It really quite shook the PGCE students. CC: Yes, I think it was ... has been a really positive thing for the PGCE students to be able to do that. And it's really sad, I think, that it's almost fizzled out. This year was a really good example because, for instance, when I was a PGCE student, you had to do, as well as your main school teaching course, you had to do two additional educational placements that were nothing to do with school. [phone rings] MP: Oh crumbs. Excuse me. CC: Shall I stop him. [recording pauses] [00:11:11] CC: So when I did my PGCE you had to, as well as your school teaching placement, you had to do two other … educational placements which were not in schools. So I did, also teaching English as a foreign language with a view to going somewhere lovely and sunny and teaching it. And my other one was Fred's Place , where I never escaped from. So Thursday nights at Fred's Place which I've done ever since. But, as well as being told we had to do it, we were given some sort of dispensation from one of our assignments because we were doing it, so the work we were doing at YES was seen as part of the whole. And gradually the amount of work they have to do on their PGCE just got bigger and bigger so there was no extra dispensation given. And then it became all … What's the word? ... They didn't have to do it anyway, it was a total choice but still we got ... recruiting was still good. And through all that time the university had paid us for the placement. So they valued it enough to actually give us a financial thank you. It wasn't an enormous amount but it was still, you know, it was worth having. And then, I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago, 3 years ago probably, they said, ‘Oh, we can't afford to pay you any money any more but we'd still like to carry on, is that okay?’ So I said ‘Oh, yes please.' Because we value ... we value the students more than the money ...you know. The money is nice, but the students are really important, so we carried on, and we still used to get about 20 people who wanted to come and work with us. And we always managed to put off some of them, because we got them in and told them what it was going to be like and said it would be a bit hard on the winter nights when you don't really want to come out again, so half of them immediately said, ‘Oh! Actually I've changed my mind’ sort of thing which is great because we didn't want the people who weren't really going to stick with it. And then usually we got a core that stayed. But last year we had, again, quite a lot, and then whittled them down quickly and then again really quickly ended up with three. And then really none of them carried on coming but one of them sent their boyfriend. And he was lovely, so that was better than nothing. He was great but that was a bonus. This year only five people have said they want to do it. And I think it's just because the requirements of their course is so much more than it used to be, with everything they've got to do in school and things that…, we're just not getting them. So we're going to be reliant much more on other vo... other student volunteers from a whole variety of sources, and other volunteers. RJ: Mmm. CC: And it will be sad because it was always nice when you got that big burst of young enthusiastic ... by the end of the year they were all … [mimes exhausted - all laugh] [00:14:11] MP: The ones that I remember, they all said they thought that it was the most interesting and useful thing that they'd done. CC: Yes. CP: Because the people from the PGCE, half of them were little souls who were scared of their own shadows really, and they sat down with great big hulking boys who sort of - I think -they quite regarded the students as the same as themselves very nearly. They were never afraid of them were they? RJ: They weren't really afraid of any of us... MP: No, they weren't. [00:14:54] RJ: That was one of the things that really came through. That there's all different personalities among the kids. Some were very difficult, some were easy, but if they were given the space they fitted in perfectly well. That was all they required – to be in school and have to sort of be held down and some of them were very competent. I remember one boy saying to me, I can't remember who he was, I get a picture of him but I can't get a name, and he said that he liked writing and I said to him, ‘What do you write?’ And he said, ‘Well, I've tried plays, or novels, but he said, I can't work with more than five characters.’ And this was a boy that at school was considered useless. And ... but he wasn't ... with us he was free enough to be able to express that. He wouldn't have dared to say it at school. MP: No, well that shows that somebody stepped on him hard. CC: Yeah. RJ: Well I think a lot of them had been very stepped on. MP: Yes. RJ: And another thing, they felt perfectly free to sort of tell us what they wanted which was again very valuable. And I remember one time there was a little group and the girl was lovely. It was a mixed group, boys and girls from, I think, the same school but it may have been from different schools. I can't be sure now. But she was a very competent little soul. And she came up to me and said, ‘We want to have a little private talk, will you stay out?’ I said, ‘Of course. If that's what … I said, ‘Is anything really wrong - family problems? We can deal with it.’ And so they sat round for most of the afternoon and sorted themselves out and chatted But they didn't mind saying to me, ‘You keep out of it.’ But it was giving them space I think was one of the most important things. MP: The most difficult people were the ones who sat in the chair and went like this [mimes disinterest] and you went, ‘What do you think then David?’ And they went [mimes a shrug] nothing. And there were some like that. RJ: There were a few. MP: And they were really hard to get out of it. RJ: Well, they were very enclosed characters, those ones, and they'd had a lot of damage done before. I lot of them were very damaged youngsters. MP: They were. [00:17:19] RJ: But it was surprising that even with their difficulties, their backgrounds, like this little group I was talking about, that they could cope with it if they were given the space and the sort of, you know, the situation in which they could do that. MP: Well that was the whole point of youth clubs which are not valued any more. But that was the point. I mean the one I went to was a great relief from home. My parents were perfectly alright but I wanted to get away from them for a minute or two. And talk to my friends in a nice warm, safe place. RJ: Mm. MP: And they've just thrown that away, so no wonder there's so much problem with young people now. I'm not at all surprised. RJ: Yes, it makes me very cross when I think of a lot of the work which was done and the way the clubs have just been closed. It's when you've worked for years in it and saw the value of it and then just saw that people who didn't value it at all could shut it down, and didn't even understand it. Makes you cross. MP: I'd like to see a true, a true account of how much more they are now spending on the things they have to do now, because of the unruly young, compared with youth clubs. Of course, they'd have to do something about the boozing. Because we didn't booze, did we? RJ: No. MP: Didn't need to. RJ: I don't ever remember anyone coming in drunk. MP: No, of course, they lowered the age for people to go into pubs but I think a well-run youth club would still have some attraction. RJ: Well again it would be with the personalities there. I can remember one of the smallest youth clubs, very little they had, in St Andrews , and really it was a little church youth club and there was one main worker – volunteer - and she had other people helping her, but that was Jenny in the office, remember? MP: Oh yes. RJ: And she was lovely. She was absolutely lovely and the kids just went to talk to her. MP: Yes, well that's ... of course, you can realise now that Ros and I … our background was youth clubs, and we applied it. And after all Ros thought of how to do it, most of what we did, she had originated. That's never mentioned but that was a strong idea of ours wasn't it? RJ: Mmm …. Yes, I remember that woman I've already mentioned. The headmistress who though I was so dreadful. I said, 'Well, you know, in Youth Service we always use Christian names,’ and this woman couldn't, just couldn't understand that at all. MP: She needed a dose of going back to PGCE and being referred to us. [laugh] Because presumably the poor things that were in her school had an unhappy time. I agreed with Roger's article which you two might have ... I forgot and gave it to my next door neighbour... but his last article was very good ‘cos he said, ‘very nice that all these kids have done so well in their exams, but what's going to happen to all the others?’ RJ: Mmm. CC: Mmm. MP: And that is something I really mind about. RJ: Yes, it's a real problem isn't it? MP: Mmm. [00:20:57] RJ: But it's been going on in a sort of way for a long time. I mean, my grandfather, in Shropshire, had a farm that employed thirteen farm hands and maintained thirteen families, they were all married men. And now, some of my family still know the farm, and they ... a man and his son run it, because it’s mechanised so all those jobs and the communities that they served, the whole fabric is changing. Of course we've got to have people who are prepared to do the less interesting jobs, someone's got to do them. If no one will do them they'll have to conscript some of us to go and do them, whether we want to or whether we don't. CC: People will do them. And there's people who would desperately love to do them, and are unemployed, and are being told they have got to do all their jobsearch online and the whole thing. They've got no chance to get these jobs. Even the ones that they could do … RH: Yes. CC: You know if you said, ‘I'll take you along, just show them how you can do it and you can start.’ It would be fine. RJ: Yes. CC: Oh dear. RJ: I know ... and yet we rely on these people. I mean, what if all the drainage system packed up and no water came out of the tap...? CC: Yes. RJ: What would the Prime Minister do? I mean, he couldn't put it right. MP: He couldn't put the sewers right either. RJ: No. MP: There are people who do the sewerage job. And take a pride in getting it right and doing it as it ought to be. CC: Yes. MP: But they're not valued for that. CC: No, good word - valued. Yes. MP: There are a lot of people who have lovely soft jobs, well paid. And we all know them. And they actually don't even think about the people who are keeping it running. I remember, Jack used to say that if a few of the senior staff disappeared it wouldn't matter much. But if the cleaners did then it would. RJ: Yes, well, my sister who's a Head said exactly that. She said, ‘I could have two or three days off school and everything would run. But if our caretaker has a day off or half a day off, things begin to go wrong.’ [00:23:25] MP: And actually, the people that we've been dealing with would have done all these jobs. And we know perfectly well that most of them would have worked pretty conscientiously. Not all of them. But then neither do people in, quotes, higher ranks. They don't. I always remember a thing that really shook me. That, literacy one day there was a young person who told me that he went home after that session and as he was going through a little gangway somewhere he saw what he called an ‘easy cabbage.’ So he put his hands through and pinched the cabbage. And then he ran across the road and got banged into by a car and smashed the cabbage to bits, which he thought was pretty funny. And then the next day I heard somebody in the office talking, and she said her husband was, not a plain accountant, but a consultant accountant - they are up higher. And she went to the bank to get some cash and the bank made a mistake and gave her £50 too much. And she said to her husband: 'Oh, I must take this back.' and he said ‘No don't bother, the bank made the mistake so they can't have it back.’ Now, which was the most dishonest of those two persons? CC: Yes. MP: This highly-paid person was paid a lot of money to be no better than the boy. [00:24:57] CC: That's true.... Thinking about the caretaker, was there a caretaker at Frederick Place? Who used to do those kind of things. RJ: We never had anyone did we? CC: Who used to do all those caretaking things....? RJ: I think there was a cleaner came in. MP: There was that bloke, what was he called? Who said.... RJ: Oh yes, oh yes. MP: [laughs] Yes, we had him, and Gordon McMillan did it for a time. RJ: Yes, he did. MP: He was one of the kids who'd left school. CC: Okay. MP: He did it better than the other fellow. [00:30:24] RJ: Oh yes, he did. But it was interesting because we used to let them cook ... not every...they didn't have ... I don't remember it being a sort of rigid... you know. But the interesting thing was that the girls, the black girls, were terribly fussy about the state of the kitchen. MP: They were very hygienic. RJ: Very hygienic! They would clean the whole kitchen before they started cooking. CC: Excellent! [00:26:00] RJ: The other girls just … [inaudible] always amused us. [RJ and MP laugh]. But you know, if they did it, they did it thoroughly, and of course then you have people like Vanessa... CC: Yes. RJ: ... who's come through on that. And look where she's got. CC: Cleans everything very thoroughly I'm sure which I'm pleased about. [00:26:16] RJ: It was interesting, very interesting to see the different schools. You could tell couldn't you, which school they came from? MP: Yes. RJ: I don't know whether you've noticed that yourself. CC: Yes. RJ: It's quite interesting. Somehow there was something about them, would be difficult to put your finger on what it was. MP: Well there was one school, they all seemed to be sort of battered, all the people from that school. In... Unlike another school where everybody was very, sort of, street cred and knew how to do everything. RJ: Didn't they? MP: They didn't look as if they weren't able to cope with their school work. In fact you were quite surprised when you found out they couldn't. But they knew how to run things. CC: Yes. MP: There was a big difference between those two schools. CC: I suppose that's... I mean, at least in part, whoever was choosing who was coming to you. MP: Yes, that might have been it. CC: Yeah..... I hadn't particularly thought about that. Do you remember whether you used to kind of give them some sort of brief as to who you wanted? RJ: The schools? CC: Yes. RJ: Oh yes, we would have meetings. CC: What did you say? RJ: With each school? MP: And they used to say ‘Ah, what kind of children can we send?’ And I used to say, 'Oh, you can send all the ones who are very badly behaved. That's alright. Um, any violent ones, not habitual truants because then we won't see them.’ And they used to look at one another and say, 'We could send so and so..’ RJ: For some of them I think it was a great relief because their most difficult ones could be... they knew that afternoon each week they wouldn't be there at school. We'd have to cope with them. MP: I always remember there were two at one place. The two teachers looked at each other and they were absolutely thrilled. CC [laughs] MP: ... we'll send so and so. RJ: Oh yes, and then they were very surprised that we had no trouble with them. CC: Yeah. RJ: We did have trouble with some of them, but ... MP: Yes, we did. [00:28:30] RJ: But a lot of the things were not um... I don't know how to put it. They were a bit of a nuisance. But we didn't have anything really major. Our main problem was that if we went out with a group sometimes, some of them got their own way home and didn't come with us which was a great worry, because you were dashing round to see what you could do. And you go home to tell the poor parents that you know I'm sorry but your child ... CC: ... lost so and so ... RJ: … has disappeared. And there he was having his tea. And even once coming from London, they managed to get through with no ticket. Street cred, I don't know, train cred! But most of the difficulties were that, for me, were more that sort of thing than actual misbehaviour. [00:29:50] MP: It was difficult when they brought along somebody else who wasn't in the group at all. We really weren't entitled to let them stay in. I used to apologise, say so and so has come, but then if I chucked so and so out ... CC: You don't know what's going to happen to them. MP: ... he got up to other mischief. RJ: Well, I remember one group and I don't know which school it was now. But he brought his little, well, little, younger cousin, who was a gypsy. And could he stay for the af... Well, we went out and for some reason we were going down St Michael's Hill and this gypsy boy saw a notice up in the church which said Pentecostal Mission. And he read it out and said, ‘What is a Pentecostal Mission?’ None of the rest of the group could have read that. And I said to him, 'My word that was a big word. How did you know that?’ He said, ‘Well, my Dad taught me.’ You can get such wrong impressions of people. [laughs] So I've always remembered the Pentecostal Mission. MP: I don't know what it is, even now. [both laugh] RJ: But he enjoyed coming, the gypsy boy. He enjoyed the group very much. He didn't come for long. He only came once or twice. CC: Yeah. MP: Well I had a chap who kept on adding himself on to a group. And he bothered me because we went out and did some climbing down over the Gorge and I said to him, ‘Don't you dare fall off, I shall never hear the end of it. I'll probably be done for letting you come.’ [inaudible] RJ: Well, I remember we took a group, when the first Severn Crossing Bridge was opened. They decided to go over and see it. So we drove a group out in the mini-bus. And one of the boys just jumped onto the railings and walked along. Oh, my heart was in my mouth. It was dreadful. And apparently he made a good circus entertainer. He had no fear at all. He just immediately ... and it was only about that width. [demonstrates hands apart] Incredible! But he was so thrilled to see the river. That's how he responded. MP: Yes, there were one or two occasions like that weren't there? When they did what seemed dangerous things. Made you wonder what they did when they went anywhere with school. CC: Yeah. RJ: And another thing was quite a few of them were kids who were from other countries. The Jamaicans -we had quite a few didn't we? Caribbean children, came through. And one group I took to St David's for a week and one of the boys in the group was really thrilled with what was going on, and he said you know, ‘I hadn't seen a goat since I left home.’ CC: Yes. [00:32:34] RJ: And the funny thing was that many years later, up at the garage that has just been taken over by Waitrose, this young man came to do something for me on a car and I was ... And he said ‘I know you, I know your voice. You took me to St David's.’ You see, a lot of them went on ... like him … he was perfectly well employed at the garage. And Vanessa doing well, and quite a lot of the others, and Imelda, you didn't know. She was with Vanessa so that would be St Thomas Moore. MP: No, I didn't … [inaudible] RJ: ... I still occasionally hear from [Imelda] a friend of Vanessa's. She's done well - had a good family. MP: There's somebody on the till at Waitrose some times. And as soon as I saw her I thought, ‘I know her, that's so and so. She was in the first group I ever did with you.’ [Ros] RJ: Oh. MP: I haven't had the nerve to say to her, do you know me, because I thought, well, it is... CC: Quite a long time ago ... MP: Forty years ago? [Ros laughs] MP: She's a big fat lady now. And I did hear somebody say.. use her Christian name, and it was.. I think it is... RJ: Yes, well they all managed. And one who was very, very, I don't know how to put it ... lacking in ability and shyness and not much ... well.... one of the most really difficult... not difficult from my point of view, not difficulties with her - her own difficulties. And yet I get a Christmas card from her every year. And she's had a family, several sons, three sons I think, and she always includes the boys’ names with her own on the Christmas card every year. So obviously we made an impression, not us personally, but the setting. MP: Yes, I think it did, well certainly my youth club made an impression on me because we did things that you couldn't do at that time. Most people didn't do. We had lecturers come in. It was very sort of ... academic I suppose. Not really academic ‘cos we had a lot of fun as well. I took seriously the idea that there should be a dash of education in it. And I don't think kids mind that. [00:35:23] RJ: No, do you remember the blind lady who used to come with her dog? MP: Yes! RJ: She was wonderful. The dog was accepted and they all loved the dog. But she... she was a good person. And she would go with a group. And I remember her going down to .... It wasn't the museum. What's that house down off Park Street? MP: Yes, I know the one you mean.... The Red Lodge. RJ: No, not the Red Lodge MP: Oh, another... CC: Georgian House? RJ: The Georgian House. MP: Oh, yes. RJ: And we explained that, you know, this lady was with a group, and I was there as well. She came with me and she was allowed to touch things. They weren't allowed to touch things but they said that because she's blind she ... The lady explained that she'd have to touch things because otherwise how would she know? And so she was very .... And then she'd say to the kids, ‘What are you looking at?’ And they'd tell her. And she'd say, ‘I can't understand that. Tell me a bit more.’ Then she'd go, ‘you didn't tell me about that.’ And that was one of the very best ones. She was excellent. She came with several groups didn't she? MP: Yes, she was good and Mona Gibb was another very good one. ‘Cos she didn't look like someone who would be really interesting but she was. RJ: Yes. MP: She did mock interviews. RJ: Yes. MP: And they were all to the point, weren't they? [00:37:03] RJ: Yes. MP: [laugh] RJ: I can remember one of the difficult ones was when we were accused of shoplifting in Lewis's . CC: Was that both of you together, accused of shoplifting? RJ: No, I don't think you were with my group. MP: Ah well. The groups I was with were good at shoplifting. CC: Yes, didn't get caught. MP: I probably said to Yvonne that we went to the MAC showrooms and I wanted a steel tape so I bought it. And we went there in the mini bus, and on the way home they said, ‘Come on then, what have you got? And I said, I've got this. And they said Oh, we've all got one of those.’ RJ: [laugh] MP: The MAC didn't really do anything but they said would we let them know in future that we were coming? RJ: Another was Fry's. When they went round and came out with so many chocolates in their pockets. CC: Very special skills. MP: 'Do you like my shoes? Very nice, where did you get them from? How much do you think I paid for them? I'd say, and they'd say, No, you're wrong, nothing.’ ‘Cos they'd pinched them. RJ: Well, I knew one group ... one boy in our group who walked out with a television set. Nobody quite knew how he could manage it. I think he was caught afterwards, but he did walk out of the shop with a television set. MP: Oh, I haven't heard that before. [00:38:35] RJ: And then his brother … went into tailoring and got a job with one of the top designers. MP: Oh, I remember about him. RJ: Yes, that was the brother of the boy… MP: We had a fashion show didn't we? RJ: Yes, that was for youth clubs ... not for... this is where they overlapped. [Ros's jobs] And yes, they had to design and make a garment and we got the person who was head of fashion and design at the college of art. This was a volunteer. I had no money. I had to just work with people and say, ‘It's terribly interesting, come and meet my kids.’ And get them to do it for nothing. And he used to judge the com... And he said about this boy, ‘Beautiful suit,’ but he hadn't finished off the flies he said. So I said to him, ‘Patrick, is the name for this new look, the bold look?’ [both laugh] But that's the boy who went on and got a job with one of the top designers so there was a lot of ability. A lot of ability. [00:39:54] CC: That's right - that is correct. RJ: Just needed the chance to come out. CC: Just the schools weren't the right places for them. RJ: No, and as I've said before, I think it was this freedom, the space ... CC: Safe space ... RJ: … to try new things, yes, and no one would criticise you if you made a garment and you didn't think it was good enough, or they didn't themselves think it was good enough. But it all provided lots of experience for them. MP: And lots of topics, because that's one of the problems with difficult children ... is you need topics to talk about ... RJ: Yes. MP: ... which is really the point of the speakers… Almost everything we did was something for them to latch on to and then talk about. [00:40:39] RJ: Yes, well I remember one boy. He swore appallingly, but he wasn't really a difficult child. He wasn't bad tempered. it was just the way he spoke. And so we came to an agreement. He said, ‘I don't believe you. I'm not swearing.’ I said, ‘Well, you sit next to me, and every time you swear, I'll just touch your knee.’ And after a while he said, ‘Am I saying it that often?’ [laughs] CC: Yes. RJ: But it worked. CC: Did you notice the change after that? RJ: Yes. He just calmed down. But he was quite unaware of it. I mean, look at the number of people who consider themselves perfectly literate and all the rest of it and they keep saying, ‘I mean, you mean,’ you know the same sort of little ... all the time. MP: Yes, they do. RJ: But in his case, it was ... CC: something else.... [00:41:35] RJ: ... It just upset other people. [laughs] And the skittle alley was good value. MP: It was. I regret ... I did notice that the skittle alley had been vandalised . CC: Well, the floor is still there. RJ: But it was a very good thing with kids. CC: I know. It was still there when I started there. RJ: Another thing I always said was one of our best bits of equipment. Somebody gave us a punch ball and if anyone was getting stroppy we'd say, ‘go on, have a go at that.’ MP: They ruined it - in the end it just fell apart. [00:42:14] RJ: But it was fine. And nobody ... you know, you gave them an opportunity to work their anger out instead of having to keep it in for the rest of the day in school or whatever... And the strange thing is .... I never had university education and didn't do courses. There weren't any in my day. We were the pioneers of doing stuff. Then, as happened with Relate, and it happened with Cruise, they started .... ‘Oh, we need to train people.’ MP: Oh, yes. RJ: And I agreed, yes we did, but we trained people as we worked with them. CC: Yes, yes. RJ: But for us, we just started from scratch didn't we? MP: We just had to go by the seat of our pants. CC: Make it up as you go along, yes, yeah. MP: But then maybe part of proper education, proper in inverted commas again, is that this is rather constraining. RJ: We had no limits, did we?... If it seemed to work, we used it. MP: Yes. RJ: And it worked with some people and didn't work with others but you learnt. You had a range of techniques, in a way, to apply. MP: Perhaps one of our strengths was that we hadn't got anywhere very much in education much either. [00:44:00] CC: Yes, I mean, I think, certainly some of the best people that have helped me with groups and things like that, have understood because they have been there themselves, haven't been parachuted in from some degree course without having worked and without having gone through things for themselves. MP: Holiday jobs, which most university people have done, are not the same as something you're locked into, that you're earning a living by. CC: Yes. MP: I worked in a factory for four years, when the war was on, and that was an eye opener. RJ: Yes, it would be. MP: Some of the best people I've ever met were working in the factory and they weren't doing an interesting job but I knew because in the place I worked we all knew each other's business and were locked in and couldn't leave the job. RJ: Mm. MP: Some of the people I knew well, I was always … thought they were some of the best I've ever met. In the old fashioned meaning of ‘good’. [00:48:18] RJ: You see, things are changing so much. I had a contact, lots of contact with the Probation Service. An uncle of mine in Birmingham was the fifth Probation Officer appointed, and when he had to leave through ill health the person who filled his job was the one who became my husband. And I left school and I thought it was something I wanted to do. Of course things were different in those days. You couldn't be appointed until you were 25 and you couldn't be appointed if you were married but I thought I'd like to do that, and that's fine. So I worked in the Probation Office as a secretary, I thought that was something I could do. I learnt a lot there too, a great deal, and those people that I remember, as Meriel was saying. They did the job because they wanted to do it. They were very dedicated and they ... there was an atmosphere that was somehow ... I don't know how to explain it - thoroughly good people. They weren't people just doing the job and skiving if they felt like it or anything. Nobody reacted ... but then much later contacts ... a very different attitude. A lot of people, and I remember one person saying he'd only be in it if he could get to the top and be a Principal Officer. You wouldn't have had that from the early group, they never thought about promotion, they just did the job. And I think that's gone on in quite a few different professions - different attitude to work. MP: That's awfully odd, because people don't work as hard now as they used to. ‘Cos they have shorter hours and longer holidays. Everybody does, have longer holidays. Because when we were young people had a week ... every year. Now they have more than one week and more money and they've got cars and foreign holidays and things like that. But they aren't any better or any more contented. RJ: No, that's, I think, that's one of the things that's gone. There's an unease in people. They aren't contented, they always want something more, something different, something more exciting, something more shocking, I think it's so difficult to do anything about it because it's the whole fabric of the way society was running and that's totally different now. MP: I think one thing is that with television you all know what other people have got. RJ: Yes. MP: And of course, that must really impinge on the way young people think. RJ: I thought that the other day. It was supposed to be an ordinary policeman's house and it was so lush, I thought, come off it. MP: It might be one of the reasons that people, a lot of them young people, do so much actual stealing of one kind or another. There always have been people who've … [inaudible] RJ: Oh, yes. MO: But now it seems to be pretty much, much more intense.... [00:49:29] CC: Everyone else has got one, so you've got to have it. I think I'm going to stop this, because I've got to transcribe it and it will take ages. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. MP: You haven't got to have every single bit of the waffle, you cut that. CC: I know how to cut it. [all laugh] [00:49:50]

Notes: Henbury: a group of pupils from Henbury School Roger … and Dave: Roger White and Dave Brockington, YES Trustees Wills Factory: WD & HO Wills Tobacco Factory PGCE: Post Graduate Certificate in Education Poly: Bristol Polytechnic Trinity College: a theological college in Bristol Portway School: Penpole Lane Bristol, now Oasis Academy Brighstowe Frederick Place: Youth Education Service,14 Frederick Place, Clifton, Bristol Fred’s Place: see viii St Andrews: a suburb of Bristol See interview with Ros 17.06.14 Roger: Roger White, YES Trustee, who wrote a regular column in the Bristol Post Jack: Jack Poslett, Meriel Poslett’s husband Literacy: literacy evening group The Gorge: Avon Gorge, Bristol The garage: White Tree Garage now Waitrose Store, Henleaze, Bristol Lewis’s: was a department store in Broadmead, Bristol Yvonne: see interview with Meriel 19.06.14 Skittle alley had been vandalized: covered over with carpet so it could be used as a training room