Dear All,
I will catch up with mails just posted later on.
After writing yesterday, another point which I think is of great
importance occurred to me, and which is a psychological issue.
Typically in our area in fairly central London, it has been widely
commented that usually one person in an estate, for a long time
shoulders the tasks of lobbying for proper services and attends
meetings of various kinds. In my case this exacerbated existing
chronic fatigue and I have been able to pass over the reins to people
who are willing to take on the responsibility. To anticipate
possible personal criticism (why did I not find these people before?)
they were new residents, and they were both middle class who had
bought their flats on this originally all lmc and working class
council estate (the previous Chairman had a newspaper pitch in Fleet
Street). With more education some are capable of lobbying somewhat
more effectively and writing appropriate letters and so forth, so in
this respect, class advantage and interests works also to the
advantage of the estate as a whole.
On the trade union side, there was also one very outspoken (always
civil, but plain speaking) spokesman from Unison, always pressing for
proper procedure and master of arcane financial issues, who was a
well-known thorn in the side of the Council and fairly effective.
Just when there was some genuine response from the government on
housing issues, now probably nine months ago, he collapsed and died
of a massive heart attack, well under retirement age. His name was
Alan Walters.
The health pressures on grass-roots community leaders and the
incredible amount of time such work takes up, is an issue that the
Community Psychology group might make an agenda item.
Part of this is the willingness to take on such work, and the
complications of otherwise involving several people. Training is
offered by the Council so that more people will get involved, but
attending such courses is itself time consuming. Such posts have
both advantages and disadvantages when entirely unpaid and voluntary,
a further issue. E
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