By the early 80's there was general alarm at widespread
inner city riots by disaffected youths.
The Secretary of State for the environment
announced £95 million aid for inner cities.
Youth and community services considered
their role in rebuilding relationships between the police and local
communities and in working with young people in multi racial settings.
The club was ideally located with the right facilities and infrastructure
to make a telling impact on the local youth unemployment situation
over and above the positive work already going on with existing
members.
The manpower services commission agreed
to sponsor a scheme to be housed in the club with a full time manager
and instructors. It provided light engineering and catering training
for 25 young people.
The arrangement was a classic example
of good utilization of community resources and facilities. Evenings
and weekends were for club use; daytimes were for the Youth Training
Scheme for the unemployed. There was an element of integration between
the two. Another faction of the community also benefited as the
catering trainees produced cheap daily lunches for the elderly.
Inevitably there were teething troubles
and one or two ongoing problems.
Safety measures and the protection of
expensive plant equipment resulted in restricted areas limiting
the space available for club use. The financial arrangements were
not as advantageous as expected - minor building modifications were
necessary, repairs and renovations were more frequently required.
Costs of services seemed disproportionately higher. However, without
doubt, a good number of young people moved into employment and others
became better equipped to seek work and more able to cope with their
individual circumstances.
As far as club life went it was achieving
well with five star awards in the NABC National Fitness scheme,
2 lads became the first Duke of Edinburgh Gold award winners the
rugby team went from strength to strength sweeping all that stood
before them and ventured abroad for top quality rugby with the famous
Carpentras Club near Avignon, France.
The successes of the D of E awards were
unfortunately set against a backdrop of mounting problems for the
club.
The high-rise flats which had promised
so much after slum clearance but a few years earlier, were now themselves
condemned due to structural defects and massive social problems.
As the flats were demolished the area became particularly run down.
Due to this membership had fallen sharply. Thankfully in the long term
the whole area was redeveloped and before long the club was boasting a
good number of new recruits.
In common with many clubs who had taken
advantage of the the 70's building boom, they were faced
with a rolling programmed of maintenance and development. It was
one thing raising funds and enthusiasm for an exciting new building,
quite another to lift people to meet mundane upkeep costs.
The basic needs of young people remained
pretty much the same as they had always been but the environment,
personal circumstances and opportunities change - housing amenities,
family stability, employment, commercial and peer pressures.
Hunslet was a different place to the
Hunslet of 1940.
The club itself had seen individual
facets of the well ordered pattern which had stood the tests of
the fifties and sixties, shaken, rearranged, and in some cases lost.
A casualty of evolving was that the Boys Brigade Company was
allowed to slip away from the club in 1980. Part and parcel of the
clubs history, the BB had had significant impact on every important
occasion, every stage of the club's development.
The BB had influenced the behaviour
and attitudes of generations of twelve year olds giving early shape
to their personal development towards an adulthood in which ideals
and principals deeply etched can be given mature and joyful expression.