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.
