By David Bowen

How it all started 

In October 1976 I joined CRI after attending its stall at the Societies’ Fair in the Corn Exchange. This was my final year as an undergraduate. 

CRI was based at Overstream House; a well-worn villa on Victoria Avenue, near the bridge and the boathouses. The ground floor was used for storage of the many bags and boxes of things collected for the children, an office and meeting room were on the first floor and  there was a small flat on the top floor occupied by the volunteer lead, who was I believe a member of  Homerton. It is a matter of huge regret that I cannot remember her name or indeed many of the band of volunteers with whom I subsequently worked. It seemed to me that most of the volunteers came from Homerton, with a handful of men from random colleges. Strange as it now seems, we were not vetted in any way. 

We met weekly on Mondays in the flat for a shared convivial lunch; what in modern times would be called “team-building”. In the evenings and weekends we had other more formal meetings, presentations and some training, all undertaken in the first floor rooms. At the bottom of the stairs I remember we had to negotiate a large bent and very rusty steel pipe. Squeezed into the narrow drive alongside the house was an ancient and apparently abandoned Landrover.

From the start I was aware that this was a very special organisation, with an important mission and that the volunteers were committed, humane and enthusiastic – to be part of this was intoxicating. I had some sense of the history of CRI – we newcomers had I think an introductory presentation including this. The name of the late Faithful Davies (universally called FD) was treated with reverence.  The changing role of CRI was explained; moving from work with war-afflicted children abroad or refugees here to working with children in the most deprived areas of England.

There was a Xmas party for the volunteers given by FD’s widow in her cottage which was joyous and very moving; I vividly remember the warm light and the laughter, all presided over by this dignified and serene and welcoming older woman.

The takeover by Save the Children Fund

I think in the first term we were made aware that the decision had been made to handover our work and administration to Save the Children Fund. I was unaware of the process or reasons behind this decision, but the volunteers shared a degree of reservation. The change resulted in SCF employing a full-time manager to be based in Overstream House at the beginning of 1977. This seemed strange to an entirely voluntary team, operating frugally with meagre funds. He was however a very pleasant, big, dark-haired and bearded man called David Green, who I think was called our “director” or “manager.” He turned the back first-floor room into his office with new paraphernalia, and I volunteered to redecorate this.  It appeared to me as a relative newcomer that our activities carried on more or less as before. I recall the organisation being called Childrens Relief International, though it was clearly known earlier by another name. Perhaps this was a change brought about by the takeover.

How we were organised

The new volunteers were absorbed into a number of teams – each linked to a specific area and group of children. My own group was from Smethwick to the west of Birmingham. I remember there was a team for Kirby in Liverpool and I think another for somewhere in east London. I am not sure how many teams there were, though given the overall number of volunteers and the number needed in each team, it could not have been many. The children were selected by their local Social Services department as the most needy and likely to benefit.  The age group appeared to be about 5 to 11, and they tried to keep siblings together. The idea was that there would be continuity too – so the children would generally stay together from one spell with us to another. This is a photograph of most of my team, taken at the summer camp; on the left was a helper from Austria, and I took the photo:

Our work consisted of preparing activities for our group of children, fundraising for CRI as a whole, attending joint training and helping with other things as and when they arose. I will give some examples of the work with which I was involved.

Fundraising

In November 1976 we had a stall in the Market Place selling bric-a-brac. Though I had no car I had a licence, and, volunteering to collect the heavier items, I was presented with the keys for the Landrover. I had never driven one of these but I managed eventually to get it going and engage a gear or two, and I headed off on my itinerary around Cambridge. This became exciting when in the afternoon rush-hour, I ran out of fuel at the busy traffic lights at the bottom of Castle Hill causing a large and impatient queue of traffic. Fortunately I found a full jerrycan but it took me a while to discover that the elusive filler cap was underneath my seat. Amongst the various quirks of this venerable Landrover was that it embarrassingly roared like a tractor since it had no exhaust pipe. I thus discovered that this was the mystery object abandoned at the bottom of the stairs. The new director/manager took pity on me and lent me his VW Golf for a subsequent foray. We made a lot of money on our stall. There were of course other means of fundraising during the year, but I cannot recall any details.

The childrens’ Xmas party

Our first work with our children was the Xmas party. This took place on a Saturday just before Xmas 1976 in a community hall near where the children lived. We spent the morning decorating the hall and preparing food, and the party was held in the afternoon when the throng of children filled the hall with noise and excitement, playing games and disco dancing. Yet when they sat at the long table for tea all went quiet as they tucked in. The volunteers stood behind the children as waiters and ensured some order prevailed. I recall that the cheese sandwiches were a particular hit. They had crackers at the table so hats and small novelties abounded. Then there was some clearing-up before presents were handed out from under the tree. I have a vague idea that one of the volunteers was Santa. Then the children played whilst we started to tidy away. I recall I was washing up in the kitchen when one of the boys came in. He said earnestly “thank you so much, go on, have a chewing gum.” He held out a pack of Wrigleys with a foil wrapped piece pushed out. I was touched and I went to pull it out. Snap! It was a practical joke and my thumb was rapped by something like a mousetrap, and I had fallen for it. He ran laughing and triumphant out of the room. After all the children left we emptied the hall and went our separate ways home.

Preparation for the summer camps

All volunteers underwent First Aid training in June 1977, conducted at Overstream House by St John’s Ambulance. There was also much collecting of food, clothing, shoes and toys and packing these things up ready for the camps. I was one of two of my team who volunteered as minibus drivers, and I recall undergoing an official minibus driving test around the centre of the City to be deemed fit to do so.

The summer camp

This was a week for the children – from Monday 25^th July to Monday 1^st August 1977, though for the volunteers the whole trip took the best part of a fortnight. There were nine of us– women Chris, Louise, Nikki, Di, Gill and men John, Grundy(?),Chris W, and myself and then Lynn and Dave came to help for the last weekend. We were based at Lindley Green, near Farnley in the hills to the north of Otley in Yorkshire. All the volunteers assembled there to get the place ready before we went down to Birmingham to collect the thirty children. We drivers had then to go to pick up our vans. Mine was a gold-painted petrol Ford Transit lent by Lanchester College (now Coventry University) and I collected it from their campus next to the Cathedral. Our other driver had to collect his dark-blue diesel Ford Transit from Warwick University. I recall that the Warwick bus had a dodgy starter switch, and we had to by-pass it with a bit of wire! We drove them back to the pick-up point in Smethwick, where we loaded up all our boxes and bags. I have such a vivid and emotional memory of the children then turning up. Some of them arrived just with the summer clothes they were wearing and few had any form of coat. Many were sockless, and a number had only gumboots on their bare feet. Few were carrying anything else such as toys or food. Some of the children just appeared without any adult, and some of the adults who attended were shouting at their children. I think someone from Social Services was there too, ticking them off a list as they arrived. We knew them from our Xmas party, but again I was struck by the range of ages. Some were siblings. Soon they were all aboard. Those were the days of no passenger seatbelts, but the children were very well behaved, and most of them were very quiet.

So we made our way northwards to Yorkshire, and after an uneventful journey arrived at our campsite in what can only be described as the most blissful of countryside. The children were wide-eyed when they saw the place.

The site consisted of an empty but sparsely furnished detached house with adjoining paddocks, and surrounded by open country. In one of the paddocks the Army had set up two rows of khaki canvas tents, with camp beds, and one large mess tent with tables and benches. In an adjoining paddock they had installed boys and girls chemical toilets behind corrugated iron sheets, without roofs and consisting of buckets with seats and filled with Jeyes fluid. Behind the buckets was a slit trench into which waste was regularly tipped and a pile of earth with shovels to cover. 

This view shows the house with the tents arrayed in front. Towards the left can just be seen some trees behind which were the latrines. The rough track seen at the bottom was the access to the house which was some way from the public lane. Following is another view, looking up from the latrines!

It was quite bare inside the house, but there was basic furniture, a bathroom and a kitchen. It was clean enough. The Army had left us boxes of rations, to which we added our own supplies.

There was plenty to do to get us settled-in. We assigned children to their tents and beds, and bathed them all in relays. My job was to wash the hair of those with nits. We fitted-out the children with the extra clothes and shoes they needed. Throughout the fortnight we also washed the childrens’ clothes in relays – we had to use the bath. At night the tents were lit by petrol Tilley lanterns –  the Army had left these, brand new in boxes, and it was my job to fill them and set-up their mantles. Thereafter it was my job to maintain, pump, fill and mend them, and to make sure that at night there was always one burning at the latrines.

During the night there would be one volunteer sleeping in each tent, though I remember sleeping in the house a couple of times. Meal preparation and washing up obviously took place in the kitchen, but food was served in the mess tent. I think that volunteers were assigned to different meals – I remember there were the same two of us who made breakfast every day – invariably eggy-bred with tinned tomatoes, and squash! We had huge army saucepans, but only a domestic stove, so this was a bit of a juggle.

This photograph shows five of the children peeling spuds in front of the house. You can see two camp beds drying in the sun and a table and bench borrowed from the mess tent. The washing-line can be seen empty which was very unusual.

Our children

Below is a photograph of nearly all our children. I can honestly say that they were well behaved throughout – there was never an instance that I can remember of disruptive behaviour or unpleasantness between them, though my diary does mention that they were, as all children, noisy and naughty at times. They seemed just very happy to be away, and happy to be with each other. There was no homesickness that I recall.

Our holiday activities

Thankfully, the weather was warm and dry most of the time. A lot of activities were based at or around our camp. We would have morning play inside the house; toys, board games, drawing and craft. We would sit amidst the children and do this with them. One day we asked the children to do a drawing of their home. I recall sitting with one of the younger children who was very thoughtful, then she did a perfect drawing of a television set; just that. There was a field alongside our camp and we would play games there. However we also had daily bus trips out, such as to the zoo and the swimming pool. The following are the ones that I recall in some detail after all these years.

We made the long drive to the coast at Filey, and parked near the sandy beach. It was a cool, dull but dry day, and the beach was nearly empty. We took the children down towards the sand and the volunteers just ran off excitedly, like children themselves. But then we all stopped and turned back to the children who had not moved and were standing silently in a group. It then dawned on us that perhaps they had never in fact been to the seaside before and had no idea what to do. So we had to show them how to make sandcastles, and paddle in the sea and jump the waves, kick a ball and run about wherever took their fancy. They soon got into it and whooped and screamed and raced about till we all collapsed on the sand and had our picnic. 

On another day we took the children to Otley for the matinee showing of “The Jungle Book”. We filed in past the box office, to the bemusement of the manager. We handed each child their ticket, and we took our seats in the middle of the stalls a row or two from the front. They were mesmerized. I recall looking at them sideways to see them sitting still, eyes wide apart and mouths open. At the break the cinema manager reappeared, obviously moved, and said that the children could have any icecream they wanted “on the house”. We sang the tunes all the way back.

We had another long drive to the limestone cliffs at Malham, and we watched the children like hawks, keeping them from anything high. But I remember hearing stones dropping and looking up saw that one of the older girls had somehow found her way to the top of a cliff and was experimenting with gravity. All very sobering, and needless to say we got her back down very quickly and beat a retreat.

The return trip

We packed up and tidied up, and set out in our vans for home. Not only were the children subdued, but all the volunteers too. The realisation had dawned that most of us would never see the children again, nor each other. I recall the children being collected, and that some of them were shouted at from the very start by their adults. Alone I drove my now empty van back to the college campus, left the keys and walked back, disconsolate, to the station.