Community Challenge
A conference report
1983
£2.00 + p&p, 76 pp
ISBN 978 0 903319 35 5
Order from the Foundation
This is a report of the controversial Community Challenge conference organised by the Gulbenkian Foundation and The Guardian in Liverpool in 1981, in the wake of the Toxteth riots and concern about the increasing desperation of those living and working in deprived communities.
The main purpose of the conference was to re-assess what was happening in the inner cities and to examine how community-based initiatives could ease the problems. It was set up on the basis of twin principles: that effective inner city renewal rested on self-help initiatives, and that the organisation of local government services must be changed to allow the community to exercise real influence and control over them.
The conference was set up by Charles Clarke (who became Home Secretary in 2004), with contributions from, among others, David Blunkett (at the time the Labour leader of Sheffield City Council), and offers a fascinating insight into the political, racial and community tensions at a particular moment in recent British history.