My father, Eric Youd, who has died aged 88, was a youth and community leader in Oldham for more than 30 years.
He was best known for managing Oldham community centre and also the multicultural Greenhill centre in the Glodwick area of the town in the 1980s, a decade in which riots were breaking out across many British cities. At the time Oldham’s community education service was rated in the top 10 nationally.
Born in Salford, to Arthur Youd, a wood turner, and Margaret Ann (nee Parr), who worked on the looms in the Tatton Mill, at the age of four Eric was evacuated two days before the start of the second world war to the Lancashire village of Silverdale.
The contrast between the smog-ridden, poverty-stricken, industrialised city and the clean air and rolling countryside surrounding the picturesque coastal village of Silverdale had a profound effect on his outlook and shaped his choice of a career in youth work.
After O-levels at Stretford Tech (now Trafford College) in Manchester, night school at Salford Tech and national service with the RAF, he worked as a co-ordinator for the YMCA’s British Boys for British Farms scheme, which placed teenage boys from varying backgrounds in YMCA hostels to train for work on farms. He then applied to study at the National College for the Training of Youth Workers in Leicester and after working as a youth worker in Keswick for two years from 1964, he returned to the north-west, settling in Oldham, where he worked until 1993.
My father was an ebullient leader founding various groups in the town, including the Tortoise Ramblers, a walking group for older people, and the Oldham community choir, which is still going strong. He also set up courses at Oldham community centre that were designed to help people prepare for retirement and the bustling centre hosted everyone from potters and photographers to singers and Scottish dancers.
In the early 90s, as branch chairman of the National Association for Teachers in Further Education, he fought alongside colleagues against proposed changes to Oldham Community Education and Youth Service that he believed would lead to higher fees and reduced participation, as indeed they did, when the restructuring went ahead. My father and his colleagues were devastated that their passionate fight on behalf of the people of Oldham had been lost. He, along with many others, was made redundant.
Outside work, Eric was a magistrate from 1977 to 2005, the chair of governors at Royton and Crompton school, president of Oldham Choral Society and an active member of the Labour and Co-operative parties.
In 1964 he married Joan Grimshaw. She survives him, along with two daughters, Ruth and me, and a grandson, Joshua.
