The GLC Years.
I had been offered a job at the BBC, exactly what I wanted,
yet I somehow let my mother talk me out it and persuade me to join her at the
GLC where she worked in the Market Research unit under Jenny Owens (?) I was to be trained in something akin to
town planning which was great as I like architecture and had studied sociology
at A level. However, when I got to the GLC this professional qualification
through work had disappeared so instead I was sent to Traffic Surveys down in
Vauxhall, which I loved. I was 19/20 and
had to go out sometimes very early in the morning with a team of mostly older
people to count traffic. The pensioners
were very loyal, and reliable, able to find their ways to get to anywhere in
London despite the early hour and they worked split shifts without complaint. I heard later when stricter rules came in re
people only being allowed to work to 60/65 that this dedicated group were
disbanded but that the students who replaced them were not normally as
effective. Despite being responsible
for the merry band, I was able to come to work in torn jeans and bare feet in
the summer. It always amused me to be
picked out as the person in charge when inevitably someone asked what we were
doing. I also enjoyed it when I got to
plan the surveys. I worked with two very nice immediate bosses, Greg Strange, down at Vauxhall and Vic Bamburgh….? Who was up at County Hall. Contact with the staff up there lead me to
getting married to a co-worker shortly after my mother’s death in 1976. By then, I was also working up at County
Hall. I had applied for and got a
promotion to the Information Service that was to open up shortly, but was not
yet in place, so initially I was moved into Population Studies. I was the non-demographer within a team of
demographers. Our job was to answer Councillor’s questions on housing and
population statistics. Sometimes members
of the public wandered in too. I used to
help them with their microfiche searches.
We all worked in a big open plan office and mainly got on well
together. I remember one person having
lots of problems getting housing and his difficulties confronted me with the
impact of racism on other people’s lives. I had seen him as a colleague and a
friend; potential landlords had seen him as a black man, who they then
discriminated against!
Whilst in this office I worked on a Research Memorandum with
the demographer Miriam Fields (?) on
Non-Census Sources of Statistics – somewhat dry, but necessary in those pre
easily accessible resources. I sometimes
dipped into the computer room to type input on cards. One error and I had to
throw the card away. The room housing
the computer was huge and probably had much less computing power than my
phone. Overall, the job was very desk bound but
having to take a message or getting the chance for dinner with my future
husband or mum was a great reason to pad around the extensive corridors. Sometimes during my travels, I would see an
exotic creature who seemed to sum up the new zeitgeist permeating the building.
He wore a short leather skirt, and sort of medieval breaches like a follower of
Robin Hood and was someone fairly senior in the hierarchy.
The information service was also a part of the new spirit
infusing the place. I was dispatched to Highbury
and Islington alongside Islington Council and CAB staff. My boss, Noel, a charming Irishman, was an
expert on housing and employment, I was the generalist, together we were
supposed to be the face of the GLC but in the end we answered questions on all
sorts of things. I once even had to
write to one of the Krays because of one enquiry we received and on the first day had to handle an enquiry from a women convinced her husband was trying to poison her. It was a rewarding, if challenging job, but
the death of my mother finally caught up with me and I was off work for 6
months, which evoked poison from my colleagues rather than support. My County Hall line manager initially even
refused to talk to me when I finally resurfaced which could have caused concern
when the GLC refocused its information work and I was sent back to the
telephone information service at County Hall.
Luckily the quality of my work and my reliability rescued me and my
manager and I forged a good working relationship which she acknowledged
beautifully the day I left. Her immediate boss, the Head of Information,
was one of those caught up in Entebbe. He spoke once of sitting
there on the plane, knowing his job title and imagining how that might play
out, luckily because he survived the tale was amusing, but it illustrated some
of the wider issues worldwide at the time and which in many ways the GLC was
actively trying to challenge with its ideology under Ken Livingstone.
Despite the negatives, the GLC was a great place to
work. By the time I left to train as a
radio journalist I earned a better salary than my sibling in the Home Office, about
£5000 a year, and we had very good holidays.
It was only later when working as a teacher and doing 60 hours a week
that I finally found a job with equivalent leave, but the work was much, much
harder. Nowadays I am one of the army of over 60-year olds who cannot retire to
66. As a result, I now regret trading
in my GLC pension to help pay for my year's training as one of the first group
of people outside the BBC to receive such training. I never made it as a
broadcaster, though my fellow student, Mark Mardell did, but I did eventually
used the experience to work as a media lecturer. I still teach but only part
time for health reasons and earn if I am lucky about £11000 a year. I feared if
I stayed at the GLC it would be too cosy, too comfortable. I never dreamed that it would one day be a
home for fishes. Us staff were conscious that for all its imperfections it was
at the cutting edge. Working there laid a professional foundation of good and
standard practice re diversity that has had a great influence on subsequent
generations of council and related services and even with the cuts, many of the ideals of the GLC administration
at that time remain relevant and aspirational.
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One of the things about visiting the project about the GLC is the discovery that this period of history, especially the time under Ken Livigstone is now almost forgotten, my memory has forgotten lots for example I know I was also involved with a GLC women's project to do with art, but do not know if I was still working for the GLC when that happened or after, I guess whilst I was still working there. It was one of the few opporutinities for seeing the more luxurious parts of the building and was exhiting because suddenly just ordinary people like myself were being asked for our opinions.
It is a long time ago now, so it was nice to suddenly revist in my mind, the corridors, the set of stairs where I sat reading when I first met my husband to be, the chambers where all the Council members met and discussed things, the wooden panels and the endless corridors, the day I fainted after giving blood etc, etc. Ken wasn't there all the time I was, but he is still a controversial figure today and so I it is nice to realise one paid a small part in that history.
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I had written this and then saw something on Taiko drummers and that reminded me that in addition in Jubilee Gardens there were all these lovely events put on for example Taiko drummers from Japan came and performed. I just fell in love with the whole idea of their life in japan, but still have not got there, but that was also typical of some of the great ideas that came out of the South Bank in that period.
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