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Emma Warren
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Sep 8, 2026
The Return of the Youth Club
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Neil MaggsHOST
Here's Emma Warren, a volunteer youth worker, writer and author of the book Up the Youth Club.

Emma WarrenGUEST
You know, Banksy is the most famous artist in the world who very definitely came out of the youth club through the work of this particular youth worker, John Nation, and Barton Hill Youth Club.

Emma WarrenGUEST
You just think, like, wow, what other kind of spaces have created this amount of culture? Famously, the two-tone scene was related very directly to certain youth clubs, including one called the Hollyhead.

Emma WarrenGUEST
But that also brings us to an intersection with sound system culture and people who are both black and British, Caribbean culture, and the way that's informed so much British culture, because the youth club was often used as a space for sound system dances to happen.

Emma WarrenGUEST
And so you suddenly have this supersizing of what could already happen in the youth club with a group of people who needed the space because for reasons of racism weren't welcome elsewhere.

Emma WarrenGUEST
So that story of the youth club as a generator of culture is replicated on a small and large scale countrywide.
11 MINS LATER
Could youth clubs solve Britain's fairness problem? With Emma Warren
10:16
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10:03Connor NackenHOST
So I suppose in broad terms, how should we understand that historical evolution of the youth club?

Emma WarrenGUEST
And some of those are churches and Sunday schools, which offered a kind of like youth club-esque environment.

Emma WarrenGUEST
Women who had more wealth and more time made it their business to try and do something for the girls and young women who were working in factories.
17 MINS LATER
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27:58Connor NackenHOST
But also more broadly, how do you see the landscape of intergenerational fairness in the UK?
Monstrosities Mon Amour: Lewisham High Street with Emma Warren
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John GrindrodHOST
And I guess the most famous of a massive sort of political moment in the last 50 years would be the Battle of Lewisham, 1977, which... sort of ends out kind of playing out in this very area, doesn't it? So what was the battle?

Emma WarrenGUEST
In 1977, the National Front decided that they wanted to execute their right to march and to have their freedom of expression.

Emma WarrenGUEST
But they decided to do that in the Borough of Lewisham and particularly down Deptford High Street, which obviously back then, as it's now, is a very mixed area in terms of where people's families come from.

Emma WarrenGUEST
People are British, but Guyanese, British, but Indian, British, Jamaican, British, and lots of different things, just as people are also British and Scottish.

Emma WarrenGUEST
Many people thought this was a very bad idea, a very dangerous idea, and tried to stop it through the official routes, but that didn't happen, including the then mayor of Lewisham.