Fair Play for Children News July 2021
Top Stories — Children’s Play & Youth Work — Children and Young People in Society — Children’s Health Environment and Wellbeing — Education Early Years and Childcare — Child Legal — Children’s Research
Top Stories
Also read ‘The Way to Powis’ at the end of this edition
Read Fair Play’s report in 2004 about soccer abuse and FA failings — why did it take them so long to publish a report in 2021?
Children’s Play and Youth Work
Help us celebrate our very first #PlayStreet with a play street of your own
Sheer Play!
Children and Young People in Society
Lockdown dynamics see children’s gambling exposure increase
Bar demands urgent re-funding of youth justice
Children’s Health Environment and Wellbeing
Education, Early Years and Childcare
Improving Indian human capital by enhancing investment in the early years of children’s development
Experts denounce ‘smoke and mirrors’ UK education pledge
Special educational needs in the early years : a guide to inclusive practice / Penny Borkett
UK unveils plan for post pandemic tutoring
UK Aid cuts will mean 700,000 girls will get n education, NGOs say
How children and young people are kept safe in schools and colleges — and how we’re making …
What you need to know about the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme — The Education Hub
Children in the World
Child Labour: exploring how the informal sector feed into formal supply
Indians flood internet with please to help Covid orphans at risk of exploitation
Children among those allegedly terrorised in Nazareth police torture room
Child Legal
Children’s Research
Stress may pass down to offspring through a father’s sperm
Family social support and gender pride may curb substance abuse in transgender teens
Maternal stress may alter how babies process emotion
Play Article
Tom Vague
Powis Square Politics of Community Action by Jan O’Malley: The Politics of Play
‘It was because play was seen as just one of the battle fronts of struggle in the area that people found the energy for the taxing and often routine responsibilities involved with running play sites. An important element which had sustained these play activities was the ideological impetus from events like the seizure of Powis Square. It is worth looking at the events around Powis Square over the years to get an idea of the interaction of play and other struggles. Powis Square was a privately owned garden square in the centre of the Colville area. It had been locked up for years and the weeds were over three foot high. In the early 60s it had been up for sale, and the estate agent’s advertisement read: ‘Powis Square Ornamental Gardens. Privately owned garden square free from all rights of entry, possibly the only one in central London. Half an acre at present derelict. Unique opportunity for sports club. No building allowed beyond changing rooms.’
‘As early as 1961 the Colville and Powis Residents Association had called for Powis Square to be opened up to the public. In response the owner offered its use for rent of £500 a year which the Association set about raising. However the owner promptly raised the rent to £2,000 a year and the Association gave up. In 1964 the Young Communists had organized a petition signed by more than 300 people asking the Council to buy the square. The Town Clerk’s response was that he thought it would be unsuitable for use as a public open space. New private owners bought the square and the policy of exclusive neglect continued.
‘In 1967 when the Summer Project Committee had been clearing the use of Lonsdale Road play street with the local police, the chief superintendent had advised using Powis Square instead of the inadequate space of the play street. However, independently of this helpful suggestion the People’s Centre decided to put pressure on the Council to buy the square so that it could be opened up to the public. The petition, the picketing of the owner’s house and the symbolic play-in one rainy Saturday morning, have all been described as part of the early history of the People’s Association. The Council response was clear — they deferred any decision about buying the square till January 1969 “in the light of the need for nationwide economies.”
‘By the time the 1968 play programme was in progress Powis Square was already the focus of the People’s Centre activity plan. At a public meeting called by the Centre in May, the idea of more direct action on Powis Square was put forward. A new group had come into the Centre, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and they were convinced that all conventional channels had been tried by the Centre and that more direct action was needed. So while other members of the Centre picketed and lobbied the Council over the buying of Powis Square, the VSC spent the week advertising what they called “a free party in Powis Square” on Saturday May 25th. That same morning a child was hurt in a road accident in Colville Gardens, a vigil was organised and the bells of All Saints Church tolled to mark the accident.
‘The vigil turned into an angry march of children and adults circling around the closed garden squares. It was as this was going on that the VSC came on the scene and marched on the square supported by a pantomime horse and a gorilla. As they advanced they were met by a large body of police, angry scuffles followed and eight arrests were made. The party was not held in the square but tragic emphasis was added to the whole day’s events when another child was knocked down two days later. A week later 600 mothers and children marched from North Kensington to the Town Hall chanting ‘Open the Squares’.
‘Then on June 15th the VSC came back for another attack. They held a public meeting outside the locked gates, and called on all residents to join with them in opening the square for the people. Then they moved forwards, past the immobile policemen, and forcibly pulled down the fences which surrounded the square. In a few minutes the square was filled with jubilant demonstrators and children, though many parents held back more hesitantly. During the next few days the square was filled with people at all times of day and night. Opponents of the opening exercised their dogs. The People’s Association issued a statement disassociating themselves from the methods used by the VSC without the active support and involvement of local residents. However at the next meeting of the People’s Centre, the Powis Square Committee was set up to concentrate on working out the best way in which the square should be laid out and used, and to continue to pressure the Council to buy. This committee organised the clearing up of rubbish on the square and started organising painting and games for the children.
‘Then barely three weeks after the fences were torn down, on July 9th the Council announced that: “agreement had been reached with the owners. Preparations are in hand to convert the square into a playspace for children.” At a victory celebration in the square bunting fluttered above a large banner proclaiming: ‘At last the square belongs to the people. The Council have learned a simple lesson from the local people and children. The Council is the servant of the Community.’ However this was in many ways just the beginning of a long struggle to force the Council to provide for the square to be properly resourced with playleaders, equipment and proper maintenance — a struggle that was still going on into 1974.
‘The Council made obvious their instinctive response to becoming the owners of an open space in North Kensington. Within three weeks of announcing they had bought the square they sent the steamrollers in to make the square conform to what they understood by a playground — a rectangle of tarmac with 12 foot fencing surrounding it. But this was not what the square was opened for. The steamrollers were turned back and the chairman of the Public Amenities Committee was forced to appear on Powis Square in her pink feathered hat to meet the Powis Square Committee and to make her understand that people had not fought for the opening up of the square only to be pushed aside. They had ideas on how the square should be laid out, and were preparing plans which they would put to the Council. Having been forced to agree to this the chairman withdrew, having fixed a date for a meeting with the committee in two days time. At this meeting the Council agreed to abandon their tarmac and 12 foot fencing plans and to consider the detailed plan of the Powis Square Committee when it was ready, after the square had been used for the school holidays.
‘At a second meeting in November the Council agreed to spend £3,000 on five foot fencing around the square, a small area of coloured paving stones, and the building of a slide on the mound in the centre of the square. They agreed in principle to the need for a playleader and a play hut but said that would have to wait till the next financial year. The to-and-fro over plans for the layout of the square has gone on ever since, the Council stalling whenever the question of doing anything imaginative or costly was raised. After spending £6,272 on buying the square and £2,754 on the initial fencing and seats, the Council has got away with just over £100 a year up to 1970. Salaries for full-time playleaders and equipment have been paid for each year by the Play Association, which also raised a grant of over £10,000 from a local charity to build a play hut on the square. The grant was passed over to Playspace, the local play organisation. They raised an additional £4,000 and organised the building of the hut with a local builders cooperative set up to do the job. The hut was completed in the spring of 1975.
‘It would seem that whereas the violent action of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign compelled the Council to capitulate and buy the square, forcing a rapid shift in the situation, the task of generating adequate financing of the square by the Council has been a much more protracted up-hill struggle. However, throughout the long struggle over Powis Square, the square itself has provided a public forum for all kinds of community events — for carnivals, for bonfire parties, for housing rallies, puppet shows and concerts, and so has always been seen and used as much more than a play area.’ pic note I think this photo from the 1968 Hustler paper is from 1967 as it’s raining.
