Christian who

puts his

faith in action

WHEN Bob Holman arrived in Easterhouse 10 years ago, the locals dubbed him The EastEnder. The eponymous soap opera had just hit the small screen and, to the untuned ear, the tousle-haired man from Ilford sounded like an extra who had lost his way.

``We don't like English people here, but it's better than coming from Edinburgh,'' one local told him bluntly. Happily Bob had some handy qualifications. He was a university professor and he had a PhD but they don't count for much in Easterhouse. No, the two qualifications that got him over the first hurdle were a Glaswegian wife and an unexpected proficiency at table tennis. The latter had the effect of taking by surprise the bored teenagers who hung out in an empty shop unit which had been commandeered by a community group.

What had brought this respected academic to Easterhouse was a sort of spiritual quest. ``I was professor of social administration at Bath University when I began feeling a bit of a hypocrite. I was writing about social work but not doing it. I'd written a text book about poverty and was getting the proceeds, yet I was distanced from people in poverty.''

His Christian faith, too, was nagging him. ``When Christ came to earth he dwelled with low-income people, not the rich. What were the implications of that for me?'' The upshot was that he gave up his chair, and moved with his family to a bleak council estate and started asking people what they wanted.

One woman said: ``A rich bloke of about 40.'' Another screamed from an upstairs window: ``If you're the bleedin welfare, clear off.'' Most said they wanted youth clubs. So Bob went about creating a network of clubs which didn't just entertain kids but also provided a counter to boredom and delinquency and a source of positive role models.

A decade later the clubs were running themselves and Bob needed a new challenge. Annette, the Glasgow girl Bob had met in the back row of lectures at the London School of Economics, and later married, was keen to come home with their two teenage children, David and Ruth. The council was selling off cheaply flats in Easterhouse. A #50 deposit secured one.

Today Holman combines working on the coalface of community action with lecturing at Glasgow University and writing a stream of books. On Wednesday I caught him applying for Children in Need money for a youth club, delivering a birthday card to a local youngster and arranging a forthcoming visit to a swimming pool with local boys, in between answering questions about his forthcoming book Children and Crime.

It is a potent mixture of keen social observation, personal experience (both bitter and heartwarming), and a painstaking analysis of work done by others. He uses this technique ruthlessly to expose some of the slick assumptions made about juvenile delinquency and debunk tabloid-style mythology about young thugs. (``People come here for half a day, then go away and write about `the underclass'. That makes smoke come out of my ears.'')

The book is aimed not so much at students of delinquency and deprivation as those members of deprived communities fighting to turn them around.

His thesis is that delinquency often has its roots in family malfunctioning, often in association with poverty and conditions of social deprivation. The reference to family is no crude theory about the effects of divorce or the supposed handicap of life in a one-parent family but rather the potential of the family unit as a vehicle for conveying loving care and firm but fair discipline.

``There is general agreement that infants do suffer if their mothers fail to supply not just food and shelter but also the emotional vitamins of love and affection expressed in cuddling, attention, approval, and stimulation,'' he says.

And as children grow, parents need to mix other ingredients too: discipline, a sense of permanence, suitable role models. Families living in poverty are less able to provide these things. For example, a household on income support cannot afford regular outings to the ice rink or the cinema. Holman's contention is that such families need more support rather than Labour's idea of teaching parenting skills. ``The very act of saying `you're an inadequate parent' will defeat this strategy. Governments need to make sure parents have the facilities that enable them to be good parents. If politicians are going to castigate people in damp overcrowded flats, in areas where there are no youth clubs, that's going to make the situation worse,'' says Holman.

He is particularly incensed by the Tory right's vendetta against lone parenthood. ``If it's harder for one parent than two to bring up a child, the answer is to support them, not go around condemning them. We're not going to stop one-parent families any more than we're going to stop Princess Di being a lone parent.''

The real link, he says, is not between crime and poverty or crime and single parenthood but crime and unemployment. ``If you have no money and you're hanging around all day, there's a great temptation to get drawn into crime. The main way to counter delinquency is to have a proper employment policy.''

Holman has some very specific ideas about that. Areas like Easterhouse, he says, are bursting with human resources and yet many are kicking their heels at home or struggling in poverty while working as volunteers. The Thatcherite theory that driving down wages would attract companies into areas like Easterhouse has been proved false, says Holman. Instead, he says government, both national and local, should invest in new kinds of jobs that could be developed in areas like his: running creches and credit unions, for example.

His own experience has been bitter. In Easterhouse with a group of local people, he set out to repeat the success of the youth clubs in Bath. Fare (The Family Association of Rogerfield and Easterhouse) runs numerous youth clubs, outings for children and holidays for local residents, but it operates out of one tiny office and lurches from one financial crisis to another. Strathclyde Regional Council holds up Fare as a model but doesn't give it a grant. ``If we had a building and enough of a budget to employ six youth workers, there's so much we could do here. We could tackle boredom and drugs. We could reduce delinquency by getting to kids before they get into trouble.''

Holman's argument isn't just with the Tories. He has a bone to pick with New Labour too. ``Tony Blair and Jack Straw say community is the answer to delinquency but none of the parties has a strategy for developing community groups.''

Old-style socialist? ``My wife says I am Old Labour because I dress like Michael Foot.'' However, first and foremost Bob Holman is an instance of faith in action. ``I am a Christian before I am a socialist. I believe all people are created by God and therefore all people are equally precious to him. Therefore the resources of the earth are for all people.''

n Children and Crime, by Bob Holman. Lion: #15.99.