|
|
 |
| |
 Winston Pinder: an unsung hero for generations of young black people |
Winston’s historic struggle for youth
As Black History Month begins, Angela Cobbinah talks to an old campaigner on how it was for young Afro-Caribbeans in north London in the 1960s and 1970s
THE sign has long gone and the youngsters who lived there probably have grown-up children of their own.
But 15 Woodchurch Road in West Hampstead lives on in the memory of many as the Paul Robeson House, a once-derelict property that rose from the ashes to become a hostel for homeless black youth in the 1970s.
The man behind it was Winston Pinder, a popular youth worker with a reputation for radicalism.
“A group of youngsters I was working with couldn’t find anywhere to live and began squatting empty houses,” he says, recalling how it all began. “In the end, we squatted a property in Belsize Park that was due to be renovated the next week. We said we would not move out until we were given another empty place that we could turn into a hostel.”
Camden’s ambitious new housing chief, Ken Livingstone, swiftly intervened and the imposing double-fronted house was offered on a temporary lease to the Afro Caribbean Organisation (ACO), a drop-in project run by Winston in King’s Cross.
With the help of a £725 grant from the Commission for Racial Equality, the young men and women set about renovating the Victorian property, which had been boarded up for several years.
Paul Robeson House opened in 1976 and for the next seven years provided a home for 12 youngsters at a time for three months to a year.
A familiar figure on the streets of Camden, with his Lenin cap and bulging briefcase, Winston worked for race watchdog Camden Committee for Community Relations (CCCR). “The streets were my office,” he says.
The youngsters he came across had been cast on the sidelines of society by the brick wall of racial discrimination: “Under the old ‘sus’ stop and search laws, they could even be arrested for just being on the road. It was important to be there for them.”
Just a few years earlier, with the support of Alderman Ruth Howe, chair of CCCR, he had launched a campaign for a local youth club to be set up so that the young people would have a place of their own to hang out in.
In 1971, the Kentish Town Youth Club, a purpose-built two storey building, was opened in Hadley Street to great fanfare. “It was a real breakthrough, the first youth club in the borough in which black and white kids could freely mix. We were told it couldn’t be done but it was a great success, with different clubs and workshops and a luncheon service for Haverstock School kids.”
It was the dearth of local youth facilities that first drew Winston, who settled in Kentish Town after arriving from Barbados in the 1950s, into community activism. “When I arrived in the area, there were only two youth clubs and it was made clear that black kids were not welcome in them,” he explains.
Camden had a small black community at the time, with a concentration of Grenadans and other Windward Islanders living in the Queen’s Crescent area. “It was not an easy time for us. People were not shy in those days to let you know they didn’t want you around.”
The 1958 Notting Hill riots increased tensions and Winston, a senior engineer with the post office, remembers being chased from one end of Kentish Town Road to the other by Teddy Boys armed with chains. “Fortunately, I was fleet of foot and I easily outran them,” he laughs.
On another occasion he was not so lucky and had to have his spleen removed after being stabbed in the stomach when a fight broke out in the old Tally Ho pub in Fortess Road.
It was against this troubled backdrop that Winston decided to turn his tiny flat in Kentish Town Road, where he lived with his wife and four young children, into an informal drop-in centre. Later, he rented a hall in Our Lady Help of the Christians church in nearby Lady Margaret Road, and when this was no longer available moved into the leaky basement of an empty fire station in Pratt Street, Camden Town.
Meanwhile, he had decided to formalise his passion for youth work by taking a social science degree at Ruskin College via the post office workers’ union. Soon afterwards, he joined CCCR. When the organisation moved out of its premises in Gray’s Inn Road, King’s Cross, Winston was offered the use of two of its former rooms to run his own drop-in centre.
The ACO quickly became a gathering place and gave Winston, a communist, the chance to pursue a more overt political agenda.
Like many of his generation, he had become politicised by the anti-colonial struggle in the Caribbean, particularly Guyana, where he had trained as a telecoms engineer and campaigned alongside Cheddi Jagan, leader of a Marxist party there.
Once in Britain, he found common cause with fellow radicals and one of the first events organised by the ACO was the Paul Robeson Lecture held in Friends House, Euston, delivered by Tony Benn in 1976 to mark the opening of Paul Robeson House. But the organisation was also a place to relax in and on Friday nights the din of King’s Cross traffic would be drowned by the sound of people unwinding for the weekend.
Inevitably, perhaps, Winston began to clash with CCCR and in 1978 it was decided to sack him on the grounds of “incompatibility” in a meeting behind closed doors. “They wanted to get rid of me because I openly criticised them for their lack of real commitment to fighting racism,” says Winston by way of explanation.
However, CCCR acknowledged that he was a successful and dedicated youth worker, qualities noted by Islington Council where he became deputy senior youth officer and later Hackney, where he was appointed youth chief.
Now aged 70, Winston looks back on his career with a mixture of pride and sadness. So much of what he helped build up has been swept aside by the march of time – Paul Robeson House is now a privately owned dwelling, Kentish Town Youth Club was demolished and the ACO closed down after the council withdrew its funding.
“On the plus side, so many of the youngsters I worked with have gone on to lead successful lives,” he says. “The projects may have gone but the foundation is still there.”
• |
|
|
|
|
|
