ROD & NILLA FREEMAN “I don’t care what Cameron has to say about the ‘Big Society’, we’ve been living the big society for 35 years here”
Rod Freeman: In 1976 I was a refugee from a relationship abroad and came to London principally to join up with musicians that I knew. I met up with Johnny Clayden, Anna and Rosa’s father, whom I had known before, and we used to play together. I was living in Leamington Road Villas in a five pound a week bedsit. He came round one night and said ‘there’s some people down the road who are thinking of starting a Housing Co-op, are you interested?’ I didn’t really know what a Housing Co-op was and I thought ‘well, I’ll give it a go’. I went to a meeting and there was Anna Malcolm, Jason Copeland, Milena Tadini. Johnny and I used to go to these meetings and people like Anna, Jason and Milena had already had meeting with Notting Hill Housing Trust. The Trust had put out an initiative in 1975 or ‘76 saying that there are a lot of single people living in bedsits, there are lots of one parent families living in difficult accommodation, and we want to develop an initiative looking at Co-operative Housing where the Trust would provide the houses and allow the tenants to manage them. So after going to all these meetings and not understanding the housing speak, like ‘HMO’ (House in Multiple Occupation), eventually this bunch of people managed to form a Housing Co-op under the aegis of the Housing Trust. We wrote a constitution with Geof Branch and others and the Housing Trust approved it. We got our first house, which was number 30 Lancaster Road. I was with Marie at the time and our son, Brynley, who has just reappeared again last year age 33. That relationship unfortunately ended because of Marie’s mental state. It frightened the shit out of me and I decided to move out. I moved to Twickenham. I still kept contact because of the musicians I knew in the Co-op and eventually in 1979 I got a phone call from Ninon to say ‘we have a flat at number 16 and you’re one of the people who could be eligible, are you interested?’ It was a bit of a tug for me as I was living in a house with other musicians and it was probably a 87