4. Cooperation
Cooperation
The
society co-operated with other bodies from the start, not only the
various levels of council authority. Early clean up projects were
undertaken as part of the Yorkshire and Humberside Clean-up Campaign.
Representatives attended meetings of Bingley Civic Trust, Bradford
Council of Social Service, Bingley Road Safety Committee. The society
affiliated to Shipley College of Further Education and Yorkshire Rural
Communities Council. By 1972 the planning committee started work in
connection with local footpaths and the society decided it could be
helpful to join the Ramblers’ Association. Registration with the Civic
Trust seemed a logical move. WVS aims appeared to be very much in line
with those of the trust, but the society learned that it was not
eligible to register because its membership was restricted to Wilsden
residents and other closely defined categories with specific Wilsden
connections. The general committee decided not to alter the
constitution, but to write to the Civic Trust explaining the reasons for
the membership conditions and even protesting that the trust’s
conditions were restrictive in excluding the society. One of the main
objects of WVS was to give local people some control over the
development of the village. Knowing how even with the small Bingley UDC,
Wilsden councillors could be outvoted on Wilsden issues, society
members were concerned to safeguard against any possibility of meetings
being loaded with supporters of policies that did not have Wilsden’s
best interests as their primary concern. In retrospect this may sound
far-fetched, even paranoid, but ahead of them loomed the prospect of a
very large local authority with a strong urban base. That year’s
chairman Gordon Bastow pointed out that under the new authority Wilsden
would be part of a council ward which would include Denholme,
Cullingworth and Harden.
Even
though the Civic Trust could not allow registration in the early years,
they were as helpful as their own rules allowed and agreed to supply
the society with their literature. Soon a great deal of literature was
reaching the society regularly; such things as the Town and Country
Planning Journal, Bulletin of Environmental Education, Changing
Countryside Project Report, Recreation News, literature from the Holiday
Fellowship and Men of the Trees. Janet Catling agreed to become
librarian for the society and circulate occasional lists of what was
available. Invitations also started to come and the society was
represented at Bingley UDC chairman’s ‘At Homes’ and at a Bradford Area
Development Association meeting on tourism. Some of the society’s
representatives at meetings and official functions suggested that it
would be helpful to have some sort of badge to indicate where they were
from. One of the early committee members kindly donated a handsome badge
of office on a green ribbon for the chairman. (When the society ceased
to exist in 2007 the badge was mounted and framed for display in the
village hall.)
There
was one area in which the society declined to co-operate with Bingley
UDC. The Education Authority was asking about play groups and activities
during the school summer holidays. Bingley proposed asking the society
to run this in Wilsden in August. There would be no payment to
volunteers and it was unlikely that school facilities would be available
because of issues of responsibility and supervision. Not surprisingly,
there was no enthusiasm for this project.
It
was important that the society should liaise with other village
communities, particularly if they too had, or planned to have, similar
societies. Following on from this, in November 1972 four committee
members, Ken Pitchers, Chris Moore, Marcus Catling and Astrid Hansen,
met officers of the Haworth Society. This functioned in very much the
same way as Wilsden’s planning committee, with no social side to its
activities. Haworth already had a social centre set up by the West
Riding County Council. The Haworth people passed on useful information
about a meeting of local amenity groups to be held in Bradford in
December, organised by Ilkley Civic Society. Two delegates from Wilsden
attended this and learnt that WVS’s range of activities and concerns was
quite the most comprehensive.
The
meeting of local amenity groups led to the formation of ABDAS – the
Association of Bradford District Amenity Societies - in 1974. Its
members were Bradford, Baildon, Keighley and Silsden Civic Societies,
The Haworth Society and Oxenhope and Wilsden Village Societies.
R.
Stewart Newiss, of the well known Bradford firm of surveyors, valuers,
auctioneers and estate agents, chairman of Bradford Civic Society, was
the first chairman of ABDAS.
The
Consultative Links Panel of the newly formed Bradford Metropolitan
District Council invited ABDAS representatives to an early meeting and
thereafter the group was able to meet regularly with council bodies to
raise issues where their members’ common interests were concerned.
1975
was designated European Architectural Heritage Year. ABDAS marked this
for Bradford with a week long event, ‘Pennine Heritage Exhibition’
(April 26th to May 3rd) in the Wool Exchange. Leslie Catling and Ronnie
Overton were Wilsden’s representatives on the organising committee. The
exhibition showed examples of domestic, industrial and ecclesiastical
architecture in their neighbourhood settings. It was opened by Mr R G
Wilson M.B.E., Regional Director, Department of the Environment. A
message in the programme from Bradford born Vic Feather , General
Secretary of the TUC 1969-73, contained words which echoed the
sentiments of those who formed and believed in aims of the amenity
societies. “ European Architectural Heritage Year will be featuring
magnificent cathedrals of the great capital cities of Europe. I don’t
think that will surpass the enterprise which you have shown in depicting
the architecture of villages and towns of the Bradford Metropolital
District area…..Scores of villages and townships in the vicinity of
Bradford house examples of industrial architecture which should be
preserved, not only for the benefit of historians, but to show to future
generations the kind of circumstances from which we sprang and the kind
of people we are.”
The
amenity societies were to provide a chairman for ABDAS in turn. In 1978
it was Wilsden’s turn and Astrid Hansen who had been WVS chairman in
1974/75, became ABDAS chairman. By this time Wilsden Village Hall was
built and being well used. There was interest around the district in
seeing and hearing about this achievement and WVS organised and hosted a
one day seminar for local amenity groups on behalf of ABDAS. Guest
speakers were David Fletcher of Calder Civic Trust and Bingley
Councillor Lesley Fullylove. In addition a choice of four discussion
groups was available:
Community
Centres and Social Activities, led by Verner Wheelock, chairman of WVS
and the village hall committee, with contributions from the village hall
warden Jeff Moor;
Fund Raising, led by Noel Bourke chairman of the WVS fund raising group;
Planning and Conservation, led by Ian Kirkbride, chairman of the WVS planning committee;
Press and Publicity, led by Anthony Davies, chief reporter of the Bingley Guardian.
More than 80 people attended, representing 21 different organisations within the metropolitan district.
In
1978 WVS did agree a rule change, opening up membership to anyone
interested. The society had grown in confidence and developed a
satisfactory relationship with Bradford Metropolitan District Council.
The change made it possible for people who were or had been involved in
the society’s many activities and had moved out of the village to remain
members. At this stage the society was able to register with the Civic
Trust.
During
1970 a notice board was erected on the wall of Spring Hill House, home
of Dr. & Mrs. Lloyd, so that village society meetings could be
advertised. Stan Boston took on responsibility for publicity, becoming
the first editor of an occasional news-sheet which became ‘The
Wilsdener’. He continued this until the end of 1972 when pressure of
work made it too difficult. Astrid Hansen then took it on for several
years. For a short time in the 1990s, WVS news was incorporated in
‘Village Scene’, produced by local estate agents Homeward Bound. ‘The
Wilsdener’ outlived the village society and is now the organ of the
parish council.
Other
WVS publications were Wilsden Village Handbook 1979, Ten Years On,
published in 1980 as a study in the origins and development of the
society, and as will be detailed later, the early and most significant
Plan for Wilsden.
The
various sub committees of the society were a source of strength, giving
it a much broader appeal in the community than more conventional
amenity societies. Some people were members of more than one group while
others joined only the one that interested them most. This had the
advantage of sharing out the work and providing a pool of potential
helpers who could be called on for such things as delivering throughout
the village or helping on the day at a particularly big event. Broadly
the areas of work were divided into planning/environment and social. The
pre-existing bus action committee became the transport committee, later
merging with the planning committee. From the early activities of the
social committee, two more significant sub committees developed, the
gala committee and the village hall committee, the latter concerned with
bringing Wilsden village hall into being, not with subsequently running
it. From the start things were happening on so many fronts that the
story of each sub committee needs to be considered in turn.