The way we were…

Published: 10 March, 2011

• WHERE has all the money gone?  

The multi-millions brought into Camden by Camden Lock Market, by hugely increasing visitors to the British Museum, and other attractions?

In the early 1970s none of the above riches really existed. Yet it was then that there were three council-run day nurseries open from 8am till 5pm. There was the wonderful thriving Fleet education centre with café and all and the excellent classes and projects; Ed Berman started Interaction, moving via Cressy Road to Talacre, which was made an Open Space.  City Farm began; youth clubs in Malden Road, Highgate Road and others; the Winch started, and the much-maligned Swiss Cottage market began; Camden Art Festival packed with events and venues; the Roundhouse took off them and inspired Torquil Norman; street festivals and adventure playgrounds, free of CRB and H&S, sprang up and challenged lively children everywhere.  

Volunteers took on projects without being used by a penny-pinching Treasury as a form of cheap labour, but instead were encouraged to set up all sorts of projects – good neighbourhood schemes; Task Force shelter and Simon Community challenged the status quo. Action Space was allowed to do wonderful things with inflatables on the Heath.

This is not intended to romanticised these times, but as a prod to those who need to be reminded of the huge amount that was once here and that we are possibly about to have taken from us or have already lost. There is what a civilised society ought to expect to be able to enjoy – and what is the very barest minimum such as a totalitarian state might offer.

If the big corporations are refusing even to consider paying taxes for anything, we cannot rely on them to keep any of the above either. 

It was Lord Tebbit who deemed housing as a consumer product and one presumes he and his like believe now everything must be up for grabs or destroyed.  This is what the present cuts are all about. 

LIZ JELLINEK, NW3