Amidst the mass unemployment of the 1980s more than 200 unemployed workers centres were set up around the UK, sponsored by the Trades Union Congress and sometimes supported by local councils. They typically provided advice, support and places to meet. I have written previously about my experience of one of these in Luton, where young punky activists clashed with the centre management and later squatted the centre for a memorable gig.
As the 1980s ground on, many of these centres closed or were scaled back due to funding cuts. One example of this was the Leicester Unemployed Workers Centre (upstairs at 138 Charles Street), where among other things meetings were held in 1984/85 in support of striking miners. In March 1987 council plans to reduce the scope of the centre led to a month long occupation.
I visited the occupation and recently came across this leaflet in an old diary, setting out the basic demands: 'We, some of the unemployed users feel this is reducing the limited facilities available for the unemployed people of Leicester... Basically we want the Unemployed Workers Centre to be run by the unemployed for the unemployed'. Another occupation leaflet quoted in Workers Press article below, says 'We are oppressed by property and the human lottery of unemployment' and criticises decisions made by people 'with no personal experience of long-term unemployment and without consultation with the "experts" (the unemployed)'.
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According to a report in Counter Information, occupiers set up 'a free food kitchen and workshops, with the result of more people than ever using the centre'. There were tensions between occupiers and what Counter Information describe as 'trade union bureaucrats and Labour Party hacks' and I remember there was some discussion about whether decisions in the occupation should be just for the unemployed or whether paid workers at the centre could be involved. There were also some of the problems familiar to anybody who has been involved in organising open access spaces - one person had to be evicted for stealing from the occupation fund and a woman occupier was sexually assaulted. The occupation seems to have finished on 7 April 2025, by which point around 30 people were involved according to local paper the Leicester Mercury. The centre continued afterwards until at least 1990.
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| Counter Information, July 1987 |
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| Workers Press, 14 March 1987 |
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| Workers Press, 21 March 1987 |
Other 1980s Leicester bits...
I had some close friends living in Leicester in the 1980s and spent quite a bit of time there. It had a radical bookshop, Blackthorn Books, with a cafe in the basement (Bread & Roses) and I recall a lot of us hanging out there in 1985 as there was a threat of it being attacked by the British National Party on the day before a planned Bloody Sunday demonstration in the city. The next day (3/2/1985) the Bloody Sunday event went ahead and was followed by a picket of Leicester prison in support of Irish Republican prisoners (see full report of this here).
The following year one of the Unilever animal rights trials was held in Leicester and I went to to the prison to visit one of those jailed, the late Gari Allen. Also in 1986 (20th January), I noted that I had 'Shouted abuse at my second cabinet minister in 4 days, when I joined a demo of about 200 people outside Leicester Poly where Keith Joseph [Thatcher's education secretary] was visiting'. A few days earlier I had heckled Thatcher herself when she was on a visit to Luton.
Leicester visits also sometimes involved dancing at the university student union Mega Disco or the Leicester Poly equivalent, and I remember seeing Chumbawamba's Danbert Nobacon playing in the uni's Mandela Bar, singing a song in support of the Silentnight strikers. The latter dispute, involving bed makers at factories in Lancashire and Yorkshire, was one of the longest strikes in British history lasting from June 1985 to April 1987.
