John O’Malley writes: In July 1966, Chris Holmes joined a small group of us on a study trip of workers’ control in what was then Yugoslavia. We travelled in an uncomfortable minibus, camping overnight. Not everything went to plan. We were deported from Yugoslavia, but only after playing cricket under Chris’s supervision in the police station car park, and ended up in southern Italy. Chris enchanted the girls in a childrens’ home in Alberabello, Puglia, by reciting one of Aesop’s fables in immaculate German.
On our return to the UK, Chris came to live in the house of the Notting Hill Community Workshop, west London, and combined his full-time job with John Laing with being a core member of the team that launched the Notting Hill Summer Project in 1967. Its activities included a massive housing survey carried out by volunteer students.
Chris moved to manage the TocH house in Notting Hill Gate for a couple of years, and found a place for the Notting Hill Community Press in the basement. Into the 1970s he was a significant figure in the Notting Hill community movement and helped establish a range of innovative programmes including the first Law Centre and activities under the elevated Westway.
