OPINION: Howard Williamson - It's their right to make the 'wrong'choice

Much of youth work is about establishing professional and moral boundaries. The debate about "compulsion" is one prominent issue and I welcome Bernard Davies' comments in Soapbox last week (YPN, 13-19 August, p8). In the same issue, Steve Barrett's editorial (p11) addresses what he suggests may be a thin line between political education and political agitation. It has always been thus.

Before I became a "proper" youth worker, I was doing my initial research on the Milltown Boys. At the time they were quintessential skinheads, dressed in denim jackets, turned-up jeans and oxblood 17-hole Doc Martens. Long before they were 18, we had had casual conversations about politics: they certainly thought their world would be a better place if Black people were "sent home" - wherever that might be. We discussed the prevailing political system and I recall mentioning the general idea of democracy and the sanctity of the vote.

Their first chance to vote in a general election was in 1979. That Thursday evening some called round at my house. The election was not particularly prominent in our opening topics of conversation, but eventually I broached the subject. Had any of them voted? "Waste of time," they retorted. I told them there was still time to vote and four of them strapped their boots back on and sauntered off to the polling station. There were only three choices in our constituency because our MP was George Thomas, Commons speaker at the time. Custom had it that the main opposition parties did not contest the speaker's seat. So there was no Conservative or Liberal option. The boys had to choose between Thomas, Plaid Cymru and the National Front.

When they came back to the house, I tentatively asked how they had voted, emphasising that they did not, of course, have to tell me. Without hesitation, all four said they had voted National Front. Their reason was simply, and simplistically, that they supported the "repatriation of immigrants".

I have told this story many times on youth work training courses. We are always agonising over the dividing lines between what is legitimate and what is not in the practice of youth work.

I have asked myself time and again over the years whether, had I known the way the boys were going to vote, I would have been so forthright in encouraging them to exercise their right. I abhorred their decision and would have liked the National Front to have been a prohibited choice.

But, like the British National Party today, it was not, and I still believe that I was right to defend their right to make the choice they did, however much I personally wished that they had voted otherwise.