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Anyone know where I can get a copy of this film please?

Stephen Frears' early film was inspired by a local enquiry into poverty in the St Ann's district of Nottingham by students from the WEA in nearby Shakespeare Street. Their survey gave rise to a book, St Ann's -- Poverty, Deprivation and Morale in a Nottingham Community, by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, which is now being republished together with its striking photographs which vividly recall the old St Ann's. St. Ann's is frequently in the headlines in this twenty-first century, but what was it like in the 1960s when thirty thousand people lived in an extended area of ten thousand houses, many without bathrooms or hot water? The film speaks for itself, as does the book, which, at the time, caused a storm of local controversy.

(SEE NEP article)

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http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/St%20Ann'...avid%20Lowe.htm

Tells us

Poverty_07.jpgSt_Anns_cov.jpg

http://www.spokesmanbooks.com

FRESH LOOK AT HISTORIC STUDIES INTO OLD ST ANN'S

11:00 - 21 June 2007

Ken Coates and Richard Silburn have published new editions of two ground-breaking books on poverty in Nottingham in the 1960s. DAVID LOWE reports.

A lot of water has passed under Trent Bridge since Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn was first published in 1970. Three years earlier the two authors made major political waves with their book Poverty, Deprivation and Morale in a Nottingham Community.

It was a classic study, based on several years' work by groups of WEA students.

The main district investigated was St Ann's, where mass redevelopment displaced 30,000 people and tore the heart out of a close-knit community.

Ten thousand houses and virtually all the pubs and streets were removed.

To be fair, many families desperately needed better housing.

Over half the homes in the old St Ann's had no hot water system and 85% had no bathroom.

But with hindsight, neighbourhood renewal should have proceeded at a pace more in tune with people's priorities.

The two authors, noting that 2007 is the 40th anniversary of their initial report being launched, have now re-published both books.

In a preface to the 1967 study, Coates and Silburn say: "St Ann's is frequently in the headlines in this 21st Century but we may well be asked why we think it fitting to republish this report...

"We can allow the report to speak for itself because, in spite of a storm of local controversy, and a ferocious onslaught in parts of the local press, there is not much in it that we would wish to change.

"Poverty has certainly not changed its aspect since the 1960s but, since we were primarily concerned with its moral effects, our report remains depressingly familiar, and points up a whole constellation of attitudes and experiences which are all too familiar in modern times."

The St Ann's work was undertaken in the 1960s to find out if a proliferation of sociological studies of poverty in contemporary Britain had any truth in them.

Today, the new St Ann's looks very different from the old district. Cobbled streets and terraced houses have been replaced by rows and crescents of open plan houses and maisonettes.

Most of the original St Ann's residents were re-housed to Nottingham's larger council estates, built before and since the Second World War.

Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen has been reprinted several times since 1970. Follow-up studies in the mid seventies indicated that most people had not settled too badly into their new districts.

Eighty per cent said their new house was generally better than their old one in St Ann's.

More than 70 & thought they had more space and properties were in a better state of repair. Around 87% felt the standard of neighbourhood amenities, like schools, had improved.

In a new introduction to the Forgotten Englishmen Coates and Silburn say: "Paradoxically we found in 1976 that slum clearance had actually strengthened the family network, so that more people had relatives living nearby after the families of the old St Ann's had been spread across the whole city, rather than had been the case while they still lived in the narrow area of the old slum."

The main reason appeared to be the city's large stock of council housing in many areas, enabling people to swap both houses and districts with relative ease.

But the two authors warn that the brisk policy of council houses sales has done its best to end this important freedom.

They also discovered that as a result of moving, money worries increased.

An epilogue to the new edition of Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen looks at what has happened to the overall national position of people on low incomes.

It does not make cheerful reading. Ten per cent more people said their incomes were insufficient to live on in 1976 than had admitted in the 1967-8 investigation.

The two authors acknowledge that housing conditions were improved by slum clearance.

"But it is also right to recall that the numbers of poor people are steadily increasingly, not declining; that large areas of housing just as bad as that which we studied survive in every large city in the country including Nottingham itself; and that unemployment is planned to rise over the two million mark, probably before this new edition of our book has come off the printing press."

Coates and Silburn had hoped that poverty in England would have been largely eradicated by now.

But they conclude: "Throughout the seventies, the continuous growth, which was to have enabled the painless amelioration of poverty and slum life, has not merely failed to materialise; indeed, it has not merely become an increasingly unattainable dream; it has, as we stare into the chasm which opens in front of us, become almost officially undreamable." Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen and Poverty, and Deprivation and Morale in a Nottingham Community by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn are published by Spokesman Books, the publishing imprint of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. Both books are available in Nottingham at £5 each. For further details ring 0115 9708318.

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St Ann’s

47 mins, 1969, United Kingdom, Black & White

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From Time Out Film Guide

The St Ann's district of Nottingham has two cinematic associations. In 1899 it was the birthplace of Alma Reville, future writer and wife of Alfred Hitchcock; and almost a lifetime later, after the place had become a sodden, peeling slum and its narrow Toytown streets were being demolished brick by brick, Stephen Frears, leading-British-director-to-be, then the merest tyro, showed up to record an anomaly, as it seems in retrospect - the poverty-stricken '30s still persisting alongside the swinging '60s. Frears' directorial tone (lucid, unsentimental, unassertive) is displayed here already fully formed, ensuring that the piece has hardly dated at all, except for the style of deprivation being recorded.

Author: BBa

Source: Time Out Film Guide 13

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...Their survey gave rise to a book, St Ann's -- Poverty, Deprivation and Morale in a Nottingham Community, by Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, which is now being republished...

Why does the name Ken Coates ring a very loud bell...?

Wasn't he a later Nottingham Councillor, or even a local MP?

Cheers

Robt P.

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A lot of those old houses were struturally sound and would have lasted another couple of hundred more years. A better alternative might have been to knock two into one and refurbish the interiors. That way at least 50% of the community could have been kept together. Probably would have worked out cheaper for the council too.

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An interesting chap - probably not very popular in the Thatcher years!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Coates

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Thanks to you all! I will try to get a copy of the book and film.

Incidentally was he born in Nottingham. Wonder if he was related to that other great Coates (groan !-apologies to all the military readers), Eric Coates of Mucky `Ukna.

Born in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire, the son of a doctor, and studied music at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1906, receiving viola lessons from Lionel Tertis. From 1910 he played in the Queen's Hall Orchestra under Henry Wood, becoming principal violist in 1912. By the end of the 1910s he was concentrating entirely on composition, having been forced to give up the viola for medical reasons. He had an early success with the overture The Merrymakers (1922), but more popular was the London Suite (1933). The last movement of this, "Knightsbridge", was used by the BBC to introduce their radio programme In Town Tonight. Amongst his early champions was Sir Edward Elgar

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An interesting chap - probably not very popular in the Thatcher years!

Thanks for the link Eric....

A prompt to remind me that I recall him as a Euro MEP...

Confused him initially with Ken Martin, of Bulwell Lido fame!

Cheers

Robt P.

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Memories...K.B. Martin,my first headmaster at Blue Bell Hill School! Slim as a rake with a huge protruding Adam`s apple! Excellent chap,but keen on music and swimming. In my year of 150 pupils(3 classes of 50) only 1 passed the 11 +.

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Wonder if he was related to that other great Coates (groan  !-apologies to all the military readers), Eric Coates of Mucky `Ukna......

Hardly a 'hotbed' of arts & culture is Mucky 'Ukna....

Only other 'famous' native that I can recall is Robin Bailey...of "Uncle Mort" fame....

Still retained his house on Long Hill Rise, up until shortly before his death....

IMDb used to have a link listing famed natives of a particular town, which is now seemingly withdrawn.

Cheers

Robt P.

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Memories...K.B. Martin,my first headmaster at Blue Bell Hill School! Slim as a rake with a huge protruding Adam`s apple! Excellent chap,but keen on music and swimming. In my year of 150 pupils(3 classes of 50) only 1 passed the 11 +.

I can only recall one teacher from Blue Bell Hill, not by name but because he argued black and blue my surname wasn't spelled the way it was!

I remember Graham Shaw passing the eleven plus and going on to Grammer School.

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Go on then what is it? You jogged a memory for me I had a teacher who argued that my mates name was wrong ,it was Whitwam ,pronounced wit am but Mister Meakin always called him wit wam

;)

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Go on then what is it? You jogged a memory for me I had a teacher who argued that my mates name was wrong ,it was Whitwam ,pronounced wit am but Mister Meakin always called him wit wam

;)

Not sure Ian, but I think he was a Welshman called Davies, been over 50 years now!

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I meant your surname email me if you don't want to show it to all and sundry

;);)

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I meant your surname email me if you don't want to show it to all and sundry

;);)

I'm a few years older than you Ian, so you don't know me from school, that is unless your 60 this year. LOL

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I was at BBH from 1945 until 1951 !

1952 to 1958 for me Stan, then on to Huntingdon Street Sec School until 1962.

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  • 4 years later...

Hi All

Sorry for the interruption as a newby all this talk of old st Anns I lived there for years the clearance not only destroyed a community but all the engineering firms coming back and looking around the place was it for the best sorry i don't think so. is there anybody that can remember places like Rose st ,Pole street or was it all a dream

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Ayup Wibbs and welcome onboard, I'm sure there will be a few of our members who will help jog your memory a bit for you and prove it wasn't all a dream !!

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