How a chance encounter led to the story of many lifetimes

Professor Howard Williamson, a Professor in European YouthPolicy at the University of South Wales (USW), has published a new book, The Milltown Boys at Sixty (Routledge 2021). The book is a follow-up to Professor Williamson’s The Milltown Boys Revisited (Berg 2004), which chronicled the experiences, to the age of 40, of a group of men from South Wales whom he had first studied when they were teenagers in the mid-1970s.

How did you initially come to study the young people who feature in the Milltown Boys books?

It was quite by chance.  I got a flat in ‘Milltown’ in 1973, bumped into some of the ‘Boys’ on a visit to the shops, volunteered at their so-called ‘youth club’ and – two years later, having already learned a lot about them – then explored in more depth their experiences of, and views about, the criminal justice system.  That involved hanging around on the streets with the Boys, going to court with them and visiting them in custodial institutions.

It’s been a long project, around 50 years. How have you managed to keep in touch with those featured?

It was touch and go!  I moved away in 1979 and wrote a memoir of what had been interesting times.  This was then published as a book (Five Years, National Youth Bureau 1981).  It depicted the environment the Boys lived in and recounted their lifestyles, and it profiled five of the Boys and considered the divergent trajectories of their lives from the age of 13 to 18 – hence the book title, though ‘Five Years’ is also the opening track on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album, a song that had bonded me to the Boys in the first place.  Bowie was their hero.

I kept vaguely in touch with those five, and a few others, but really lost contact with most of the Boys.  Twenty years later, however, by which time I was a professional youth worker, part-time academic and high-level youth policy adviser, there was a lot of academic and policy interest in ‘disengaged’ young people – and I wondered what had happened to the Boys.  After all, they were arguably the first generation of what I had later called ‘status zer0’ youth – those not in employment, education or training (now horribly referred to as ‘NEET’).  The Boys officially left school in the mid-1970s when local unskilled employment prospects were disappearing.  Had they continued to live life on the edge or found some other path?

With the help and support of those with whom I had stayed in contact, I tracked down 30 of the Boys and did phenomenally detailed interviews with them, producing 500,000 words of transcript.  It took me four years to analyse the material and produce The Milltown Boys Revisited.

What’s has stuck with you most about those who have been featured?

First, I think it has been the loyalty between them, however well or badly they have fared in their lives.  Most of them really have stuck together through thick and thin.  Secondly, it has been their striking resilience – the determination to get by, one way or another.  Of course, some have not got by very well, but even external judgement can be terribly misplaced.  If you take ‘Spaceman’, you could easily detect a tragic life – living alone in a tiny maisonette, having had the last rites, is a recovering alcoholic, was a heroin addict, has been in and out of prison, now suffering from emphysema and other ailments, and has been unemployed for as long as anyone can remember.  But you would have to revise that view if I also told you that he had been a spirited existential punk, life and soul of any party, is an articulate and informed debater, got a degree in Fine Art at the age of 41, contributes to my module on Social Policy and Young People, has done the paintings for the covers of the second and third books, and – as he says – has at least sold some of his paintings, which is more than Van Gogh did in his lifetime!

We have to be so careful about passing judgement or slotting the Boys into the social categories or theoretical explanations beloved of academics.

And what always stays with me is their humour, in good times and bad.  Humour sustains them. It almost destroys me – I laugh so much when I am with them.

What’s been the toughest part of the project?

Without any doubt, seeing some of them descend prematurely into poor health (sometimes through drug and alcohol misuse, sometimes through physical illness, more often through mental illness) and death.  Of the five Boys I profiled in Five Years, two are now dead, one suffers profoundly from depression and another is reclusive.  Only Danny is still ‘up and running’ and ‘out and about’.  Marty’s death in 2014 affected me deeply; he was the first of the Boys I ever met.  Ted died of cancer in January 2021.  We knew he was dying and I hoped the book would be published before he passed away.  Sadly, it was not.  But I attended the funeral, which was quite an honour – his family and friends added up, easily, to the 30 permitted under lockdown, but they made space for me.

What has been your favourite part of the project?

I think it is the reception from the Boys when I make contact, physically or virtually.  Sometimes I have not spoken to them for years, even decades, but it always, really, feels like yesterday.  Occasionally, they get in touch with me, as with Tony’s message a few years ago on my answerphone: ‘Howard, if you’re not dead and this is still your number, call me back’.  We had not spoken for 15 years but when we did, we chatted for more than three hours.  Those I have stayed in touch with have always given me a warm welcome. I guess those that might not have such warmth towards me have not bothered to stay in touch!

Did you ever think about not carrying on with the project?

It was never a planned project!  Each step of the journey was quite spontaneous, even opportunist.  I’d been thinking, ever since I interviewed the Boys in 2000 when they were 40, of possibly writing about them again when they were 60, but it was a light-hearted and, at first, lightweight thought.  But it gradually became more serious, first at Marty’s funeral and then at the funeral of Gary’s son, who committed suicide.  Gary said it was time for another book, quite a few of the Boys who were there concurred, and I started to give the idea some serious thought.

But I was too busy with other things to really consider it, until the Covid crisis.  That put paid to me flying somewhere every week and made the Boys at least theoretically more available.  I thought I would ‘give it a go’.  With Ted dying, there was some urgency, so I started seriously – with Gary’s consent – at the end of March 2020.  I did long online interviews with 12 of the Boys over the next couple of months and completed the manuscript by September.  Since then, it’s been production, marketing and promotion through Routledge!  One year and a day from start to receipt of my first copy!  And I’ve already been making notes for the future, as comments drift in and the Boys react.  My first author’s copies of the book went to Spaceman and Gary – for obvious reasons - a couple of weeks ago, and when I buy some more I will be delivering a signed ‘thank you’ copy to each of the rest of the Boys who contributed to this latest book.

Would you advise others to do a similar thing i.e. taking on such a long-term piece of research?

I can’t say it has been a huge commitment, because I never made a commitment to it.  The first book came out of postgraduate research.  The second was modestly funded (£20,000 from the Lottery) and rather experimental, because there were a lot of doubts as to whether it could be achieved.  The recent book has resulted from seizing the moment.

So there was never a grand plan!  I’m a youth worker.  I built a youth work type of relationship with some of the Boys when they were young and that has enabled the research to progress, when the chance has arisen.  Without that relationship, I don’t think the study could have been done, certainly not in the depth of information and understanding that has been achieved.  Perhaps nobody has done quite such a long ‘longitudinal ethnography’; it’s very different from surveying cohorts by questionnaire over time.

To address your question, I don’t think I would advise anybody doing it.  It would be very difficult to make it part of a plan.  But if the opportunity arises….. ?

How do you use your research in your teaching?

In myriad ways, I hope.  This is by no means the only research I’ve ever done.  Having been a contract researcher over many years, I’ve done numerous research projects on youth issues and other things, covering policy domains from entrepreneurship to drug misuse.  I’ve been a practising youth worker for 25 years.  I’ve been a youth policy adviser at many levels of governance and in many different countries.  I bring all that to bear in my teaching, which is around youth studies, social policy, and social exclusion.  And my knowledge of young lives and the life course, from my links with the Milltown Boys, is part of the menu of ideas and experience that I bring to the table, in lectures, tutorials and individual supervision.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Two things.  First, a personal statement: I have been immensely privileged in my life, largely from having two educations – one in an elite and prestigious secondary school, and one on the streets of Milltown.  That dual learning experience has equipped me with cultural capital that enables me to operate in all walks of life, from prisons to palaces. Second, linked to this but a message to others: Seize the moment, because it is never clear where it may lead.  When I met Marty outside a Budgen supermarket in the summer of 1973, I could have ignored or shouted back at the cheeky boy who approached me; instead, I spoke to him, was curious about him, and 47 years later I am writing this.  Thanks to him.

Professor Williamson was also the subject of a podcast focusing on his new book. You can listen to the podcast at Professor Howard Williamson: The Milltown Boys at 60 podcast.