This time I've checked Google first and I can find no trace of RESPOND!, so it is down to my unreliable memory. RESPOND! (Churches' Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis) grew out of Impasse and also the work of Teesside Industrial Mission (TIM). During the 1980s it was independent of TIM but I think it returned to the care of TIM in the nineties. I left Middlesbrough in 1989 and so my knowledge of what happened after that date is hazy.
In 1983 when I moved to Middlesbrough, RESPOND! was a small group set up by TIM to address the Industrial Crisis (I don't think it was called RESPOND! in those days) but it was in 1984 (I think) when RESPOND! obtained funding, that the work took off with the appointment of Keith Lindsey. Keith had previously founded a youth work project in Stockton called the Ravens.
One major dimension to the work was the opportunity to speak directly to government ministers. RESPOND! prepared reports for the Church Leaders who were able to call government ministers to Cleveland. The reports were written with the participation of unemployed people across the county. So, this process, which was repeated several times, enabled the views of the long term unemployed to be heard directly by the government. The first included the idea that Cleveland could be designated as an experimental area to try out new ideas for work with the unemployed. I don't remember how or whether the government responded but the truth was Cleveland was an experimental area in its own right. Impasse and a variety of copycat projects, some inspired directly by RESPOND!, were springing up all over the place. For a couple of years in the late 80s I wrote articles for RESPOND! about unemployment projects for the local free paper . There was never any shortage of places to visit.
Keith made lots of contacts with groups of unemployed people all over the county and these led to a training course called Dark Holy Ground. This was led by Keith, Robert Gallagher, who at the time was vicar with the Local Ecumenical Partnership in Coulby Newham, and the Catholic Priest at the Catholic Cathedral in Middlesbrough - I'm afraid I've forgotten his name. The courses were a mix of long term unemployed and people in employment.
The impact of these courses was phenomenal. They were the topic of the only article for the free paper I had rejected! I will write about the findings in future posts.
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