[ D ] Notting Hill, for years ago, but it not active neighbourhood. It was riddled by crime, and race problems, and murder and so on. And for twelve years, I worked there doing community work.
[ M ] In Notting Hill?
[ D ] In Notting Hill, but it was a broken down neighbourhood. But it was very easy because Notting Hill there was known worldwide because of the race riots. So when I, we left Notting Hill in 1972. We decided to take the same community work approach in ordinary neighbourhood where there were no glamour, and no publicity, and no particular problems.
[ M ] No particular problems?
[ D ] No, and there were none and we chose the Grove Ward in Hammersmith as being a typical inner London ward with no particular problems. It wasn't rich, it wasn't poor, it wasnft fashionable then. In 1972 it was a run-of-the-mill neighbourhood. Our purpose was to show that the basic principle that community work are effective wherever you practice them and they were as effective in the grove ward as they were in the publicity ridden crime areas of Notting Hill in the 1960s, you see. The Notting Hill Housing Trust very kindly gave us rent free, this house at twenty Overstone Road and for the community work project. And we have the ground floor and basement and a tenant lived the rest of the house. I was the director of the community work project and I had one full time personal assistant who did all my typing and all my secretarial work. And we established very good relationship from the beginning with Hammersmith Town Hall. And within three months of the community work beginning, they seconded a full time social worker, a young woman called Pamela Harris who was quite brilliant, although she was only very young she was brilliant. The overall organization was City Poverty Committee