For A Change articles from April 1997

For A Change archives from April 1997

Listen, don't panic.
April 1, 1997... The Times, 18 February 1997: `Drug and alcohol abuse and violent crime are rife... Although Billie-Jo's murder has shocked residents, many say that after five murders last year, she was an inevitable statistic... There is 14 per cent...

Britain's moral crisis: it's time for Britain to take a long hard look at herself.
April 1, 1997... Not since the battle of Monte Casino has an elevated piece of realestate been more bitterly contested than the moral highground in Britain today. The country is embroiled in a public debate that some thought would be short-lived, but which will...

Struggle to be decent: British politician Frank Field talks to Mary Lean about gun control, sleaze and the moral force of the welfare state.
April 1, 1997... The Labour Member of Parliament for Birkenhead, Frank Field, is widely respected for his integrity, courage and Christian convictions, and for the vision and pragmatism which he brings to his central area of concern: the struggle against...

Welcoming the rejected.
April 1, 1997... `We have drugs in waves, and it's very bad at the moment,' says Ann Panks who, with her husband Terry, runs Copperdale, a hostel for young men in the heart of Wythenshawe, a suburb of Manchester. `A lad who once lived here died just before...

Against the odds.
April 1, 1997... 12,000 black people live within the two square miles of the Chapeltown area of Leeds, representing the densest population of those of Afro-Caribbean descent anywhere in Europe, according to a European Community report. The area faces...

White light ablaze in red-light Amsterdam: forty years ago, Rolf and Georgine Boiten set up home in one of Amsterdam's sleaziest quarters.
April 1, 1997... Forty years ago, Rolf and Georgine Boiten set up home in one of Amsterdam's sleaziest quarters. Digna Hintzen visits their `extended family'. A few minutes' walk from Amsterdam Central Station and the Queen's palace, Dutch glory and shame...

Failing school becomes a winner: things were so bad at West Gate Community College in Newcastle upon Tyne that 127 pupils had to be excluded each term.
April 1, 1997... Things were so bad at West Gate Community College in Newscastle upon Tyne that 127 pupils had to be excluded each term. Yet today the school has a new air of self-belief and discipline. Tom Jones finds out how this happened. West Gate...

Still giving peace a chance: in 1970 a cleaner in Belfast's Gasworks had a dream - of Northern Ireland's women working together for peace.
April 1, 1997... In 1970 a cleaner in Belfast's Gasworks had a dream--of Northern Ireland's women working together for peace. Twenty-seven years on, they're still at it. Kristen Tiedje and Mary Lean went to meet them. It's Saturday evening in Harryville,...

Lighting the darkness.
April 1, 1997... Hazel Aicken well remembers her fear during June 1995 that the IRA ceasefire was about to collapse. `We just knew something was going to happen--tensions were building and building.' As Vice Chair of Women Together at the time, Hazel wanted to...

Who needs morals? Cambridge student Richard Jones, with the help of Mike Teece and Katherine Kirkham, offers some tips from the receiving end.
April 1, 1997... Moral values are the object of much distrust and thorny debate. But most people would admit that they are in some way important. Even the `Youth of Today' (henceforth referred to by the acronym YOT) would tend to agree, though our idea of...

Consider the birds.
April 1, 1997... The sight of a bird, scratching and pecking for food behind him as he spread manure on a farm in post-war Britain, was the unlikely trigger for a decisive turning point in Stanley Hobson's life. After three and a half years serving in the...

Indians take stock of 50 years of freedom.
April 1, 1997... In the rays of the setting sun, batches of schoolchildren arrived with bands playing and banners unfurled in a time-hewn amphitheatre, high on the Maharashtran tableland above Panchgani town, for the opening of an international conference to...

Meeting of the Americas.
April 1, 1997... `We are fighting corruption in order to answer the needs of the country,' the former Vice-President of the Brazilian Confederation of Industry told people from seven South, Central and North American countries at the MRA centre in Petropolis,...

What price honesty?
April 1, 1997... I looked up the subject `conscience' recently in Respectfully Quoted, a dictionary of quotations requested by Senators and Representatives from the Congressional Research Service. It wasn't there. Honesty got one reference: `A man is sorry to...

Making the soul dance.
April 1, 1997... At the age of 12, on a November Sunday in 1982, I wrote in my diary: `Today I feel as if I could do Irish dancing forever'. I had just won my first medal at a `feis' (a traditional Irish dance and music competition) in my home town of Newcastle...