a bribe in order to allow people to move out of social housing.
SM: Something like £16’000 GB: Yeah, it was quite a lot of money in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, and a lot of people in W12 took that. I think we’ve only had one or two people in W11 take it and fortunately we managed to cut a deal with the Trust so we always managed to get first preference on filling the vacancy that was left in the flat. With W12 Co-op though lots of people took the bribe and the Co-op just fell in on itself so I mean we’ve actually done quite well to survive as long as we have, even though there are problems. We were always very idealistic, we always had this idea that the Co-op had to be run by its members so the sovereign body was the general meeting. But in recent years of course, attendance at the general meeting has fallen off and we’ve had a problem getting meetings quorate so we’ve had to change our constitution and revert to a management committee just to get business done. When we started out we had all these fantastic ideas – we were going to convert one of the rooms on the landing into a laundry for the co-op because in the early days no one had a washing machine, we all used to walk down to the launderette on Westbourne Park Road. We thought we’d have a laundry, a proper office, but none of it ever happened. The most we got was the photocopier on the landing at number 16.
SM: I think there was a little office space there at some point? GB: There’s a cupboard there, which has a filing cabinet in it. We’ve sort of muddled on, I guess the Co-op has always been a bunch of eccentrics, maybe less so than it used to be, but I think the whole nature of W11 Co-op was that we were attracted to living around here and a lot of us were squatters when many of the old houses were being pulled down. For me, Portobello Market has always been a defining characteristic of the area, and sadly that’s changing. The fruit and veg stalls are hardly there any more, they’re just there as tourist attractions on a Friday and Saturday. And they’re great the fruit and veg stallholders; they’re a little community in themselves. When I had a really bad period in the early ‘90s when I was unemployed for a long time and I was sort of living hand to mouth, they were really generous. I’m happy to be living here, I know Tony Allen would like to move out of the country or move to the seaside, I think Kiran has found some information about some possibilities for doing that for over-60s, but I’m perfectly happy living here
SM: When you think back to the beginnings of the Co-op, it’s hard to imagine now how crumbling and unloved this little half a square mile was. 58