'The Toss of a Coin', Chapter 15 / 1

The Founding of the Railway Children

I have mentioned the Railway Children charity a couple of times. After my first consultancy trip to Australia in 1989, under the guise of Transmark, to look at the application of quality management to Western Australia Railway’s freight business, I returned via Bombay. My family had sponsored the education of a girl and her younger brothers in that city through ‘Save the Children’ and I asked if it would be possible to visit her and her family as I passed through.

Arrangements were duly made and I arrived at Bombay International Airport at midnight and must have been the last person off the Jumbo jet as I found myself at the end of a two hour immigration queue in a stifling sultry building without (then) air conditioning. After a novice’s frantic and panicky attempts at finding my way to a taxi and my hotel on Marine Drive in the south of the city, I got to bed around 3am, feeling nauseous – I had unwisely taken my anti-malaria tablets on an empty stomach. I tossed and turned and at 7 o’clock I could stick it no longer and got up. Unable to face breakfast, I dressed, took a few deep breaths on the promenade facing the Arabian Sea and debated with myself what to do next, as I was not due to meet the girl and her family at the ‘Save the Children’ agency in Colaba, on the Eastern coast side of the city until 10 o’clock.

I decided therefore to fill in the time by walking across the city to my destination, the flat of a couple who belonged to the Theosophical Order of Service and acted as Save’s agents in managing over 700 sponsorship grants. After half an hour or so, I was lost until I stumbled across Churchgate railway station. I entered the crowded concourse to scrutinise my street map and as I was doing so, I was accosted by a small girl, probably around six or seven years of age, begging. I had no small change, so I waved her away, when to my shock, she brought out a plaited whip from behind her back and started lashing herself across her naked shoulders. I stood there stupefied, like a dummy, when she repeated her actions. I was feeling fragile anyway and emotionally I couldn’t cope. I fled the scene and when I’d pulled myself together, I thought, ‘I can’t leave her like that’, and I went back. I’ve no idea what I thought I was going to do and in the event I couldn’t find her again on the chaotic concourse.

As I went on my way, my mind was racing to explain what I’d just witnessed and I soon realised that this girl was the exploited victim of some unscrupulous adult who was using her to extort cash from gullible tourists like me in return for a meal or so a day. I am still haunted by the eyes of that girl and when the truth of the situation dawned on me, I got sufficiently angry to search for organisations which would protect such vulnerable children. To cut a long story short, on my return to the UK I got involved initially with Amnesty International’s national ‘Working Group for Children’ and a few months later, became their representative on a newly formed UK ‘Consortium for Street Children’, a group of a dozen or so British non-government organizations (NGOs) working for street children internationally.

A few weeks later, the then Prime Minister, John Major, offered the Consortium a launch and reception at No.10 Downing Street and I got involved in the discussion on how to use the occasion.When the debate turned to the causes of children coming to the street, I doodled a simple risk assessment of being a street child on the back of an envelope as I listened – a Fault Tree highlighting root causes and an Event Tree which explored consequences. The Fault Tree highlighted three key immediate causes: children coming from destitute families searching for earning opportunities; children running from abusive situations, physical and sexual; and children abandoned or neglected for a variety of reasons.

Rarely was poverty a root cause on its own. It was usually coupled with the experience of violence or abuse and often went back to the root causes that were behind families in trouble – conflict, health breakdown such as the AIDS pandemic, natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods causing family disruption, economic collapse and loss of employment opportunities. All these put immense strains onto families and created the scenarios in which some children suffered traumatic experiences with which they were unable to cope. When children opted for escape to the street they were then met with the urgent needs of finding food, shelter and friends and I explored the actions they took to satisfy those basic needs, often with consequences that made them further rejected by society.

I asked each of my colleagues round the Consortium table what their NGO’s intervention strategy was, and to my surprise found a glaring gap. Whilst large international NGOs like UNICEF and ‘Save the Children’ did little work directly with ‘detached’ street children, their partners worked in both urban slum and rural situations on preventative measures – education and health care in particular. ‘Amnesty’ was working on extreme consequences when the behaviour and life style of the children made them victims of violence and abuse, especially from the police and other agents of ‘normal’ society. I had identified that the first few days – or indeed hours – after a child has turned to the street and travelled to some city are a key risk time in that child’s life.

As BR’s Head of Safety Policy, I had been introduced by the BT Police to two Salvation Army Officers who patrolled the large London railway termini in the 1980s and early 90s, looking for runaway children at risk. They told me that they had picked up 3,600 under 16 year olds in the ten years of their mammoth self-imposed task – an average of one every evening. They also said that a young teenager alone there had on average ten to twenty minutes before they’d be targeted by a pimp, paedophile or drug dealer. In the last few years such children are not so obvious as the introduction of stricter barrier control, CCTV cameras and extra police presence has caused the children to avoid London and go where they are less easily recognised.

Anyway, as a result of my discussions at the Consortium, I explored the opportunities to intervene with these children to offer support before they were abused, exploited or corrupted, and came to the conclusion that the transport terminals of the world – railway stations in Asia and Eastern Europe, bus stations in Africa and Latin America – were obvious places to make a first contact. I therefore persuaded some of my railway colleagues to raise money to work in partnership with local organisations that would go out onto the platforms and offer help to the children as soon as possible, backed by drop-in centres where the children could obtain immediate food and health care while longer term options were explored with them. On May 31st 1995 this came to fruition and the ‘Railway Children’ charity was born on the concourse of Waterloo station ‘under the clock’.

Had this experience come ‘out of the blue’? It may depend on whether you believe in ‘guidance’ or ‘fate’ or just luck or coincidence. I had been an orthodox or traditional Christian for as long as I could remember. My parents were staunch members of the Methodist Church – as were both sets of grandparents – and much of my early life had been spent in East Molesey Methodist Church where my paternal grandparents were Sunday School teachers and my father was Circuit Steward and Treasurer. By the time I was 18, I was a Sunday School teacher myself and Secretary of the Woking Church Youth Club.

I was attracted to the radical thinking of Bishop John Robinson of Woolwich in the 1960s and rejected the literal or fundamentalist Christian viewpoint. In the 1970s and early 80s I found my liberal views often at odds with the increasing number of ‘charismatic’ Christians in my church, now in High Wycombe and felt myself to be drifting from the church, when I read a fascinating and very radical little book called ‘Mr God, this is Anna speaking’ which prompted me strongly to stop engaging in theological argument and get on with life working to the humanitarian and compassionate demands of the person of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.

Because of a number of positions I held within the church, especially in youth work, I had been afraid to speak out and feared to undermine what I was doing. I’d been reading the book I’ve just mentioned on the platform at Maidenhead while waiting for my train one morning and just got to the bit where the six year old precocious Anna talks to her mentor about the importance of ‘not being afraid’ of life when my train drew in, not the expected DMU, but a long distance commuter train headed by a class 50 diesel, named of all things ‘Dreadnought’!

Seven years later, still convinced in my mind that I needed to get more involved in something, but not quite sure what, I’m confronted by that girl on Churchgate station. If challenged for my ‘Christian’ story, I’ll admit to being ‘converted’ by two six year olds and a railway engine! And I’m sure it led, in that very roundabout way, to that moment on Waterloo station concourse when I’d at last ‘stuck my head above the parapet’ and taken the risk of failure or being considered naïve or eccentric.

I’d been encouraged to discuss my ideas with Geoff Myers (a BR Board Member) who was then also on the Board of ‘Save the Children’. He suggested I link with a group in Yorkshire who were raising money for children in Romania, but after a couple of meetings I found my vision and theirs did not coincide. Others tried to put me off, describing the difficulty of what I was taking on, especially that I was seeking help for slum and vulnerable children on another continent, but I kept talking with the encouragement of others at the Consortium for Street Children who acknowledged the gap in intervention that I’d identified and reassured me that this need was very real. David Rayner continued to support me and once the die was cast, Bob Horton, Chairman of Railtrack, and John Welsby, Chairman of British Rail, promised to help me launch the charity.

I’d seen photos of street children in Bombay reproduced in the Observer newspaper and got permission to use some from the book’s author, photographer Dario Mitidieri and his publisher, Dewi Lewis of Stockport. They went a stage further and generously offered me their photographic exhibition which supported the launch and stayed on the concourse where I spent the week talking to people about the issue and the photos and the fledgling charity.

After the launch itself which was centred round speeches by Bob Horton, Tony Roche (John Welsby was detained at a meeting at the Ministry of Transport) and Dario, and I’d explained to around 150 people gathered there the objectives of the charity, I was approached by Christian Wolmar, then Transport Correspondent of the Independent whom Bob Horton had put pressure on to attend. He expressed interest and offered help. He is still a trustee of the charity 15 years later.

In addition to funds collected at the launch and exhibition and resulting from the media coverage, Christian went to Romania and got a two page article printed in the Independent about the street children on Bucharest’s main railway station. Christopher Campbell, the non-executive Vice Chairman of Railtrack got me a grant from a trust fund he knew well, and within a few weeks I had enough money for the Railway Children’s first project.

I’d talked at length to Consortium members about the opportunities to contact running and abandoned children at stations and Nic Fenton, then Director of ‘ChildHope’, suggested I support him in funding one of two projects that he had identified in Bucharest and Sofia stations in Eastern Europe. Two young men in London Transport’s Planning Department then undertook a sponsored 3,500 mile cycle ride across Europe to Istanbul and we were off, partnering a local Romanian NGO that ‘ChildHope’ vouched for, called ‘ASIS’ who would provide a home and care for 50 boys aged between 10 and 14 found living in the sewers under Bucharest station.

By November 1996, I’d registered the charity with the Charity Commission and got permission to use the name ‘Railway Children’ – the only other organisation with this name was a playgroup in Kent whose premises backed on to a railway line and whose organiser was happy for us to share the name. I’d had the help of a number of railway people who’d formed a Committee to advise me and several of these stayed on to act as our first Board of trustees – my friend and ‘best man’, Stan Judd, Christian Wolmar, Gordon Pettitt (Managing Director of Provincial Services and former General Manager of the Southern Region), Terry Worrall (BR Director of Operations) among them.

For the first year until I retired I’d been given permission by my boss, David Rayner, to use my BR office facilities to get the charity off the ground and from March 1996 I’d run the charity from my home, until I had a number of local volunteers and needed an office nearby. The former BR health insurance company, ‘Health Shield’ had an office in Crewe and offered me a small room in their building which I gratefully accepted.

Although I’d taken advice from colleagues at the Consortium about potential partners in Eastern Europe, Latin America and India, a number of my colleagues in the railway industry were concerned about the situation in the UK and felt we should not ignore the problems on our own doorstep. We therefore decided that at least 20% of any income we received should be devoted as far as possible to partnering organisations that would offer early assistance to runaway children in our own country. At first I was introduced to a group interested in developing the crypt of St Pancras parish church on the Euston Road for a drop-in and emergency shelter for such children and youth, but on inspection the huge cost of such restoration became obvious and way beyond the resources and capability of a new non-government organisation (NGO).

The British Transport Police then introduced me to Diana Lamplugh, founder of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust in memory and as appositive response to the disappearance and presumed murder of her estate agent daughter. She had become aware of the dangers to homeless and runaway young people from predatory individuals – it was shortly after the conviction of Fred and Rosemary West who preyed upon homeless young people at their Gloucester home. She was concerned that many young people with a variety of problems did not know where to turn for help and was developing a new phone helpline service in conjunction with a number of interested NGOs and I became part of that founding committee.

In due course we registered the charity as ‘Get Connected’ independent from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and I helped it find its initial office accommodation in the Kings Cross East Side offices thanks to my contacts with Railtrack station management. I also became its Chairman for around three years when no-one else volunteered to take on the role, until our Chief Executive, Justin Irwin, developed a strong partnership with the Carphone Warehouse and their founder and Chairman, Charles Dunstone, took over the role and threw the resources of his company behind the project in a very powerful and successful partnership.

Early fundraising initiatives for Railway Children included a reception for potential donors at the LT Transport Museum in Covent Garden; a very generous contract with Britt Allcroft, then owner of the ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ franchise, to provide anecdotes of my days as a ‘Fat Controller’ for a ‘Thomas and Friends’ video and to review scripts to check that the company was not subject to a barrage of criticism from pedantic rail ‘gricers’ because the railway detail was inaccurate; and a Channel 5 TV telethon called ‘Give 5’ based on our first Indian projects which raised the most reaction and response from the few who viewed the week’s five charities featured, but was overshadowed by the death of Princess Diana at the beginning of the week.

In May 1998 we partnered Centrepoint to mount our first Railway Ball at the National Rail Museum - which raised £30,000 for Railway Children and the donation of the nameplate ‘Lady Diana Spencer’ from a Class 47 diesel which we eventually auctioned for £10,500. Virgin Trains ran an HST from Euston to York via Birmingham for the event and arranged for a naming ceremony before departure when Sally Thomsett – Phyllis in the 1970s film, ‘The Railway Children’ – named power car 43098 after the charity, unveiling an impressive nameplate which included the charity’s phone number. After we’d learned how to run such an event Railtrack provided £20,000 risk capital up front for us to work with a banqueting company, Conference Line, to organise a dinner and ball at a London hotel in 2000, which raised £110,000. This was the forerunner of what is now an annual event at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane and by 2012 had raised over £ 3 million.

By 1997, through contacts at the Consortium for Street Children, I had arranged partnerships with projects in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Calcutta and I felt bold enough to apply to the National Lottery for a grant to develop our work to six other partners in India. I was pleasantly surprised and not a little astonished to receive £225,000, spread over three years at the first time of asking and our India work took off. At that stage I was reliant on making personal visits to India to interview applicants for funding and supervise the work and ensure that we were complying with our objective of making early intervention.

Two years into the grant, the Lottery Fund’s International Grants Officer visited one of the partners in Tamil Nadu, and whilst confirming that the children were safe and well looked after, recommended that we used the greater experience of some of our other partners to network, identify and spread best practice. This led to a major discussion among trustees at which we accepted the Lottery Board’s suggestion and decided to invest sufficient resource to become a development agency with add-on value instead of just a grant making organisation.