Published: 1 December, 2011
by JOHN GULLIVER

WHILE the government is tightening the laws against squatting, a peer of the realm, Lord Peter Mandel­son, described on Monday how a squat he had helped to set up had brought benefits in its wake.

The building he had helped to save in 1972 was now, he said proudly, a thriving youth centre – the Winchester Project, in Swiss Cottage.

Mandelson looked around the large ground floor room of the Project – known as The Winch – crowded with diners at a special brand-raising evening, and described how he and other squatters had moved into the building, then a disused pub, bought by Camden council.

It was an “act short of outright criminality,” he said He read passages from his recent memoir – The Third Man – Life at the Heart of New Labour – describing the first moments of the squat.

For nearly 40 years it has been a haven for many poor children, some from troubled families, who were able to discover they had talents in sport and the arts that their schools had not been able to nourish.

Mandelson moved away after a few months but his fellow squatter, Graham Good – later to become a seasoned councillor – stayed on to take it on under his stewardship.

All that is decades ago, and few, perhaps if any, of the 60 or so people, a mixture of Winch kids, councillors and trustees of the projects, knew much about Graham Good or his commitment to the club that had kept it alive. But that is the nature of community bodies – the founders are often forgotten as the years move on.

Mandelson’s “I have been a squatter” confession appeared to surprise the audience who had presumably neither read his recent memoir nor knew of the dramatic first days of the Winch.

Those who had been around a bit longer looked in vain for the man – Graham Good – who had kept the club alive in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

At my table were one or two teenage members of the Winch.

My fellow guest epitomised what the Winch stands for.

A late teenager, he had passed his GCSEs at the local comprehensive, Quintin Kynaston, but did less well with his A-levels.

Still, helped with several A-levels he was now established as a youth worker.

He lived in Adelaide Road, a typical tower-block kid, talked rapid fire, and I had to work hard to follow him – but I knew that not only had the Winch probably saved him from what could have been a much different life, he also had a lot to give the Winch as a youngster who knew what life was all about.

Unlike academics, think-tankers, and professional NGOs, Courtney (not his real name) had pulled himself up from the bottom.

Let’s hope he will always remember where he came from.

Naturally, because most politicians seem to blame criminal and lawless teenagers for the August riots, we talked about those extraordinary days.

He had gone down to the disturbances in Chalk Farm Road to look for a young boy whose mother had asked him to get him back home.

He did get the boy back safely – but his 16-year-old cousin had got involved in the riots in another part of north London and had been sent to jail for four years.

I shared with Courtney the feelings that the sentence was draconian, especially for a boy without any previous convictions.

I hoped, with Courtney, that his lawyers will appeal.

The life Courtney had led was all a far cry from that of Mandelson’s, brought up in a middle-class political family, all the cards stacked in his favour.
But Courtney, I felt, will make it – and he has a lot to give to society if only society is prepared to listen.