INTELIGENCIA EN OPERACIONES PSICOLÓGICAS

Previous chapters have demonstrated that while youth clubs have been fluid enough to appeal to a variety of young people, at city level, the target group for membership of most clubs was working class young people. Furthermore, in part due to the assumptions that boys clubs were founded upon, the presumption that the young people who needed a youth club most were male has also been examined. The post-war period witnessed many changes in the lives of young people and constant reconsideration of who they were from a range of perspectives. State education and welfare has taken a greater role in their lives and they have grown up in a supposed age of affluence and consumerism. Legislation has looked at the age that young people should leave

10

Abrams, The Teenage Consumer

11

Davies, A History; Fowler, Youth Culture; Geoff Mungham and Geoff and Pearson eds., Working Class Youth

Culture, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976; Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945; Louise Jackson gives a

vivid example of the scene in Manchester in The Coffee Club Menace : Policing Youth, Leisure and Sexuality in post-war Manchester, Cultural and Social History, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2008, pp. 289 308

education, when they can vote, when they can have sex, when they can marry.12This and informal changes to the youth trajectory shows that the world was changing for young people and so were the boundaries that defined their youth status. Youth clubs and associations, though not

compelled to do so via a statutory underpinning, also periodically reconsidered the age group they thought they should serve. They have tried to assess how many young people were using their clubs and the suitability of clubs for certain age ranges and specific age groups. This section seeks to examine who the young people in youth clubs in South London and Liverpool were between 1958 and 1985, continuing from previous analysis of membership levels and gender disparities in the chapters above. Furthermore it looks at how this changed over the period in question. What age group did clubs and associations serve? How did the young people in those age groups differ?

Changing perceptions of the ages of the people in youth clubs were observed and give the impression that the target youth club age group was getting younger, at least partly because the age when organisations could intervene before young people were too mature for their assistance was also getting younger. However, while the youth club lower age boundary fell, the upper boundary for the work of the youth service remained quite fluid during this period.

In the early 1960s members could join the main section of a youth or boys club at age 14, which fitted with the aim to provide opportunities for those who had left full-time education. The separation between under and over 14s was fairly strictly enforced in many cases because it was felt certain that the presence of children drives the older boys out of the club.13Indeed, the LFBC made a decision to focus on over 14s and while junior sections of clubs could affiliate, they were often given scant attention. For example, they had merely one paragraph a year in the annual reports for the years 1961 to 1964.14At the upper end, the ages 18-21 were used in various circumstances. The Albemarle Report referred to one in three people aged between 15-21 years

12

The School Leaving age was raised twice in the post-war period via The Education Act 1944 to 15 and subsequently, in 1972 to 16 years of age with The Children Act 1972. The age of majority was reduced to 18 following the Latey Committee in 1968, papers held at The National Archive, HO 328/115

13

LMA, LMA/4283/A/2/4, LFBC Annual Report 1958-59, p. 4

14

old using the service.15The Members Council of the Liverpool Union required members to be between 15 and 21.16The LBA followed the National Association s lead in looking to focus up to 18 years of age, but the Bronte Centre in Liverpool, with its concern for local young unemployed people aimed to cater for those up to 20 years old (though it would accept membership until 21).17 In a city where youth unemployment was a problem the Bronte Centre included those who could not complete the transition to the adult world of work but who were free from the influence of school. The variation in ages covered at the top end reflected the understanding that youth club membership was transitory, a phase in the lives of young people, and that people matured in different ways and at different times. Keeping the members council representatives until the age of 21 reflected the desire to recruit future leadership from the membership (as discussed in chapter six). In the 1960s the voluntary youth organisations normally referred to those under-21 as under its remit, although the focus of youth work increasingly became the 14-18 age group. This

acknowledged that the 18-21 range represented the ages that people usually dropped off the Youth Service radar and allowed flexibility for this.

By the later 1960s boundaries came to be reconsidered. Following the Newsom Report, the school leaving age was raised to 16 and shortly afterwards the voting age was lowered to 18. By the time the Fairburn-Milson Report came to be published there was a re-evaluation of the age range the Youth Service should serve. In 1966-67 the LFBC had stopped talking about the under-fourteens and instead referred to the under-thirteens.18In 1972-73 they changed their membership

conditions to stipulate that a qualifying club must have a minimum of 15 boys aged 13-19 paying subs.19This reflected a sense that while the young people they catered for were getting younger, they were also increasingly failing to hold the older young person in membership.

15

Albemarle, p.9

16

LRO, M367/MYA/G/1/4, Liverpool Union Draft Constitution (1960s), p.1

17

LRO, M367/MYA/B/9/1 , NABC Memorandum on Development (n.d., c. 1960 as part of post-Albemarle development policy); LRO, M367/MYA/B/10/4/1, Bronte Street Development memorandum

18

LMA, LMA/4283/A/2/6, LFBC Annual Report 1966-67, p. 9

19

Similarly in 1970 the MYA Development Committee said that [I]t is highly likely that the 14s of yesteryear are the 13s of today, agreeing that younger people than previously thought formed part of the main youth club age group.20This may have reflected earlier puberty as

remarked upon by the Albemarle Report or a decision to offer Youth Service interventions earlier in the lives of young members.21They added that the grant-linked age range was 14-21, but that their priority was the 14-17 age range with a pilot scheme focussing on employment for 17-21 year olds.22From this it can be seen that despite recognising a shift in the local young people they thought they could attract and provide for, the grant system did not allow them to shift their focus to what they saw as the appropriate Youth Service age group at that time.

Within this reconsideration of age ranges in the late 1960s was a sense that there were differences contained inside the 14-21 age group, particularly in the ages at which boys and girls matured. Fairburn-Milson and subsequent discussions about it in the MYA, LYOC and NABC noted a

change in emphasis at 16 whereby youth club members should be given more say in the running of the club.23It was also at around 16 that a drop off in the numbers of girls attending clubs was noticed:24

It is possible that, because youth itself is divided into levels, many young people are unwilling to join clubs where their own interests cannot be adequately indulged. There is the problem of general separation for the boys of 16 plus, whose interests are quite different from those of the younger boys, and in this connection it is felt that boy 16 = girl 14.25

It was remarked that girls were losing interest and moving on from clubs earlier than boys and that they developed independence within the club at an earlier age. The change of emphasis at 14 for girls and 16 for boys was viewed in Liverpool as natural and was not questioned. The remedy

20

LRO, M367/MYA/M/4/2, Report and Recommendations of the Development Committee upon Policy for the 1970s, MYA Development Committee (n.d., c.1970)

21

Albemarle, p. 14

22

Ibid.

23

LRO, M367/MYA/M/6/1/7, NABC View memorandum, (n.d., c.1970), LYOC evidence to the SCNYVO on Fairburn-Milson, Conference, 8thNovember 1970, p. 5 and Youth and Community Work in the 70s Memorandum to the Executive Committee from the Development Committee, MYA Development Committee, (n.d, c.1970)

24

Ibid.

25

LRO, M367/MYA/M/6/1/7 , Youth and Community Work in the 70s Memorandum to the Executive Committee from the Development Committee, MYA Development Committee, (n.d., c.1970)

though, was argued to be giving young people more responsibility within clubs to keep them engaged as members, and perhaps as junior leaders.26Discussion about the age of young people continued into the 1970s however, with further suggestions that local youth clubs and youth projects catered for ever younger young people. In 1976 the DYW team in Liverpool were doing an Intermediate Treatment Programme with 12-14 year olds.27In 1981 the London Union gave 11-21 as the age range they covered though they, in general, covered a wider range of member

organisations.28

This concern with ages reflected wider discussion of the roles and responsibilities of young people in society at the time, with school leaving and voting ages changing. This broke the

traditional link whereby the Youth Service had sought to cater for those who had left full-time education. By the 1970s, this was just who they were having increasing trouble retaining. Overall there was a feeling that the kind of interventions that the Youth Service could offer young people needed to be offered earlier. In Liverpool, it was felt by some that 14 was too late to tackle criminal behaviour and indeed in Liverpool the LYOC felt that it peaked then.29However, it was as likely that the voluntary youth services were adapting to those who would join clubs and pay membership fees as much as they were seeking to step in earlier in the lives of young people. In the 1960s and early 1970s, junior clubs were a holding pool for club membership proper. However, as age ranges shifted and older teens moved on, juniors were able to attract more attention.

Individual youth clubs also considered balancing their membership by age and keeping older and younger members apart, though often from a pragmatic viewpoint. In Alford House in Lambeth they banned over-16s from joining for a while after gang invasions of older boys which were driving out other members. They briefly closed, reopening by registering new members in

26

LRO, M367/MYA/M/6/1/7 , NABC View memorandum, (undated, c.1970), and LYOC evidence to SCNVYO on Youth and Community Work in the 70s Conference, 8thNovember 1970, p. 5

27

LRO, M367/MYA/M/6/1/4-1/6, DYW Report June 1975-76

28

LMA, LMA/4232/A/02/002, London Union Executive Committee Minute for May 1981, p.1

29

LRO, M367/MYA/M/4/2 , Under 14s memo by LYOC to SCNYVO and DES, 1970, p. 1; Parker, The View

under 16 and under 14 categories to solve the problem of domineering older boys.30They also used a senior room at one point to give older members a place to socialise away from the younger members who were thought to be a deterrent to the older age group remaining in membership.31 In the early years of the Bronte Centre, the warden returned subs to under 14s who had been allowed to join while he was on sick leave, keeping the club for older members who it was felt needed the facility the most.32They developed colour-coded membership cards for under 16s, under 18s, full members, boys club nights members and coffee bar members as a way of making sure the membership balanced in the way they wanted it to.33Anfield Boys Club also noted keeping under 14s on a list because too many were applying for membership.34

The bulge in numbers of young people and the ending of national service as considered by the Albemarle Report also fed into currents reframing youth.35The Youth Service was not immune or isolated from these discussions. They too sought to re-evaluate the age range for which they could best provide leisure and social education. In continuity with earlier framing of the youth problem , young boys were the target of service providers. However, in the late 1960s and 1970s the efficacy of doing this at 14 was reconsidered and efforts made to keep 11-13 year olds in more than a holding pattern. It is possible that these changes were influenced by changes in commercial provision. By reframing the age limits in youth clubs and continually considering how to divide youth into groups youth clubs and associations understood that young people were not a homogenous group. This is something also shown in the way clubs accommodated youth subcultures and the wider cultural interests of young people.