Dispatches From a Dilettante (16 page)

Family dynasties abounded in a sort of low grade Mafioso way. One family had made the arbitrary and totally unlawful decision to extend their council house garden. They did this by simply appropriating adjoining land and adding additional fencing. As the Council were too scared or too lazy to do anything about this (probably both) the family kept on the expansion, and by the time I left ‘their’ garden stretched to about an acre. All of it was used as space to service cars - ‘on the hobble’, hold barbeques and in summer enjoy the above ground swimming pool that they had installed. As we were building a Health Centre on the estate and security was a huge issue during the build process I thought it prudent to legally employ one of the brothers to act as security at night.

The biggest challenge was to persuade him that the wages on offer were worth his while. They weren’t but he took the job and pilfered away on a regular basis throughout the build process. Pragmatically this made both parties happy. The construction company would have lost treble the amount during this period with all the concomitant aggro. This way our security guard could earn enough ‘extras’ that, combined with his legal wage, made him better off than not working at all.

I should add that we had initially tried employing guards from an external security company but two successive night staff quickly resigned in fear after ‘Our nights of terror on Penrhys’ as the local press ran it.

What is critical to note as I sketch the worst of life on the estate is that while all these bizarre, illegal and often scary things were happening, the majority of people on Penrhys were decent human beings who had not had luck, education, role models or the opportunity to develop latent talent. They survived an often hopeless situation without rancour, and if not surprisingly many were already bereft of energy or ambition, they quietly and lawfully ground out the days.

A journalist friend of mine was doing a sympathetic feature on Penrhys for the News of the World. She knocked on the door of a flat in one of the depressing grey ugly tower blocks. Apprehensively she announced herself as a journalist to the pale, bedraggled and clearly impoverished male who answered the door. She never got invited in but during the ten minute conversation that ensued he quoted the metaphysical poet Lovelace (‘Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage’), made astute comments about the economic outlook for the Valleys and declared his contempt for the local Council, who for political expediency had just spent sixteen million pounds renovating other tower blocks on the estate which they were now going to demolish. With that he stated that the conversation was at an end as ‘he had to go shoplifting in Tonypandy’.

Guile was not a characteristic that featured much in Penrhys relationships. A jilted boyfriend of a feisty female, who had dispensed with a long line of lovers on the estate, painted in huge letters on a prominent wall by a boarded up shop in the old redundant shopping centre, ‘Kelly is shagging Carl’. The next day Kelly, who was not remotely perturbed by this graffiti attempt to shame her, had scrawled underneath, ‘No I’m not, I’m shagging Bryn from the pub’. Not only was this refreshingly honest but it was also a considerable shock to Bryn’s wife, the ramifications of which took the form of a public slanging match between Kelly and her a few days later.

The saddening frequency of funerals was depressing, yet they managed somehow to combine emotion with humour. On occasion they spilled into alcohol fuelled violence at the wake. Take as read that ‘Simply the Best’ was always the song played at the impressive modern chapel that had been conceived and built by the efforts of John Morgans. If a mother, young or old had died, it was invariably a huge and expensive bouquet forming the word ‘MAM’ that lay on top of the coffin.

At one funeral a bunch of hoodlums from Cardiff had hired a stretch limo to take them up to Penrhys and make an ‘entrance’. The staged grand arrival was somewhat undermined by the fact that the lengthy limo got jammed in the small turning circle by the church and it took half an hour of their combined efforts in full public view, to free it.

By far and away the worst fight at a wake started right at the beginning of one, when the drink had only just begun to flow. The cause of the argument was the future ownership of the scraggy dog that had belonged to the deceased. As the night wore on mourners were split fairly evenly in their support of the two protagonists. To say that a sense of proportion had been lost would be understating it as violent mayhem ensued after the heavy drinking took its’ toll. At the end of it all the dog had disappeared and was never seen again.

It was an obvious tactic to try and employ local people in any of the positions created by the work of the Partnership. Initially I was given a flat in a tower block to have as an office. Later the Council ‘donated’ an entire tower block to the Penrhys Partnership for just a pound. This was good business for them as demolition would have cost thousands. The cleaner of the stairwells and what passed as a foyer was pleasant and bright and became the first employee when I took her on as my administrative assistant. Beveley proved to be as astute appointment as, apart from being excellent at her job, she was the institutional memory for the estate and the characters on it. She soon told me that she had nearly quit the day before I moved in when a drug dealer hung his pit bull over the stairwell and threatened to set it on her, purely for his own amusement at her palpable fear.

The phrase ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ was just beginning to come into vogue and we gradually began to persuade senior executives from the few big companies in the area to visit. Their reactions, as ‘captains of industry’ were interesting. The chief executive of the Welsh Utilities giant Hyder and the MD of the British Airways plant in Llantrisant were interested, insightful and supportive. They understood the broad truth in the maxim that to have prosperous high streets their needed to be prosperous back streets. They were appalled by what they saw in terms of the poverty and social exclusion but were willing to become engaged in a long term attempt to provide some sustainable solutions.

To that end, and very early on in the life of the Partnership, we had arranged a consultation meeting group for a small number of residents and external senior external business people who had shown interest in the Partnership vision ‘to enable Penrhys to become a place where people wished to live’. We understood from the outset that the initial get together would not achieve much, but hoped it might be the start of better trust, understanding and possible buy in to what was a radical attempt bring about positive change. To actually persuade a representative group of residents to attend the meeting was a major challenge. Understandably apathy and cynicism were the first reactions to an invitation.

However one evening five senior business people from South Wales and six residents got together in a room on the estate. Two of the residents were local hard men who had come in their best jeans and proper shirts, which was touching and quite a big gesture by them. The business people had attempted to dress down with embarrassing results. Both parties made nervous small talk before we began. Considering the gulf in life experiences round the table it could have been a lot worse.

The high point for me came in the only part of the meeting where voices had become strident. A business man who was making generalisations about the work ethic of residents stopped in mid sentence. I looked across the room and realised why. One of the estate’s hard men had, in the warm room, undone the top two buttons on his shirt to reveal tattooed across his neck the words. ‘Fuck the system’. He had done this unselfconsciously but you could see the business visitors realise the scale of what was being attempted on Penrhys. At least they were present and trying to engage.

Unfortunately many other senior executives, of course, merely commute in air conditioned cars, sometimes chauffeur driven, park in underground car parks and then take a lift up to the luxury of their well appointed executive suites. The world outside, and the lives of many people in it, is only of genuine interest to them when it/they trigger a change to the share price. When those executives visited they were the ones who were often visibly scared at having to confront scenes they had never truly believed existed in a rich western nation.

On one notable occasion a ceo phoned from his car not twenty feet away from our office door and asked to be met and escorted to the entrance, while another insisted his driver take the car off the estate and only come back on request to pick him up. Interestingly these were the people who tended to offer instant judgements or draconian measures as quick ‘cure alls’.

A very senior Whitbread executive was on a walking tour with me and opined that ‘nothing could be done and estates like this should be left to sort themselves out’. He quoted King Edward the eighth who, when visiting nearby Tonypandy in 1936 was so shocked at the transparent abject poverty, that he said publicly ‘Something must be done’. “What happened then?” I enquired”. “He fucking abdicated” said the Whitbread man in the smug certainty that the royal pronouncement and disappearance illustrated his argument totally.

Nevertheless despite this bluff Yorkshireman’s initial judgement he did become involved and months later when I asked him the reason why, his response was typically forthright. “When I were at school lad I got nowt…no exams…nowt….I never even passed a standing bus, so we’ve got to fucking do summat”.

We had our first grand opening of a converted tower block, which had been transformed into comfortable and secure sheltered housing. William Hague, the then Secretary of State for Wales came to open the building. I had been in communication with the Welsh Office as to the wording of the plaque to be put on the foyer wall to record the details of the great occasion, and they had then kindly agreed to provide the plaque themselves. Half dead with fatigue one Friday evening I signed a letter to the Welsh Office formerly addressed to ‘The Secretary of State for Wales the Rt. Hon. William Hague’ not noticing that what I had actually written was ‘I look forward to getting the PLAGUE from you’. His move from the Principality soon afterwards was I am sure, coincidental.

‘Summat’ was, however, done as a powerful Partnership managed to get momentum behind projects despite the ignorance and inertia of many local politicians. The truth is that there is rarely a happy ever after for places like Penrhys. As the Partnership converted wrecked housing blocks into a health centre, got companies involved in literacy and numeracy programmes, built sheltered housing, built an arts centre with recording studio and dance space, the Council were busy knocking half the place down. From three and a half thousand people in 1992 the population today is about seven hundred. When I left in 1997, after a five year stint it was already down below a thousand. This resulted understandably in jealousy and resentment from other estates in the Valleys who had three times the population but none of the facilities that Penrhys enjoyed.

Through the efforts of John Morgans and his church team, some young people did get employment and lives were changed for the better. John was described as ‘a devious saint’ by one of his fellow directors, although it requires more than devotion to get things done on the fringes of society. But with so much of the dwindling population transient it was hard to sustain a sense of community let alone progress. For all that and for relatively little money, dynamic enterprising /files/22/08/36/f220836/public/private sector partnerships with focus and commitment, can achieve sustainable benefits. Working with residents and working independently, free of the shackles of monolithic Council bureaucracies some disenfranchised people can be motivated to better their lives.

12.
TRAUMA AND TRAVEL 1990-1992

In a job, in a dinner jacket, in a taxi with my wife and heading in a hurry for a Prince’s Trust Royal film premier at Leicester Square, self belief was running high and my increased ego had caused an enlargement of my cranium to the extent that I struggled to get out of the taxi door on arrival. Press photographers had rushed forward as it halted and then quickly turned away as they realised the occupants were ‘nobodies’ as opposed to the ‘C’ list celebrities due to arrive.

The Prince of Wales and Diana were in attendance which did give the event some genuine glamour and we were sitting two rows behind them. The audience and Royals then had to sit through ‘Steel Magnolias’ - a film of such unremitting awfulness that never at any point did it look like rising to mediocrity. It was late and we dozed through the last half an hour and then, as protocol demanded that nobody leave until the royal party had departed, we were awoken by the clamour as they did so. There followed an almighty crush as people rushed down the stairs to try and get in the press flashlights as the Royal Group chatted to crowds outside.

We decided to avoid this by going down another exit staircase only to be met by a couple of glamorously dressed attendees rushing back up. Clearly they had wanted to be in the limelight by going out of the main exit and were arguing vociferously as they tried to rectify their mistake. “You shouldn’t have worn that bleedin’ dress Debbie it looks crap”, was the final comment I heard as they disappeared back into the throng suggesting that the argument would continue long after they had departed from Leicester Square.

Conveniently I have excluded this period in my working life from subsequent CVs as, were it to be included, head hunters would have binned an application at the point they read about this disjointed but enlightening couple of years.

A multi millionaire property magnate had offered the Prince’s Trust ‘about a million and a half pounds’ to buy a building for residential courses. Without doubt this arriviste felt that his desire for a knighthood might be enhanced by a significant philanthropic gesture. Based on a feasibility study it was decided that the building should be northern central England. I was appointed as the first director and given the initial task of finding a property based on the requirements and budget. It was quite amusing for a man of my modest means to go into an estate agent’s in 1990 in the north of England and casually say that I was looking for a house, because after the first question from the agent which was usually about the price range, there usually followed an invitation to lunch. It was a surreal couple of months as our backer had given me the loan of his executive helicopter which came complete with Toby his pilot.