autobio

"Sons of Oxford have been among our greatest Empire builders and Empire rulers... The tone of the place, its ideals, its merits and defects, are felt wherever the British flag flies."

George R. Parkin: 'The Rhodes Scholarships, 1913.'

Quoted in Jan Morris' 'The Oxford Book of Oxford.'

INTRODUCTION

“A Squalid End to Empire: British Retreat from Africa”

This is the story of evil committed by kind, nice, decent British politicians. They sought to keep Britain from bankruptcy and found a solution in the mineral-rich Empire on the point of independence. It was necessary to bend the rules and, sadly, in due course the rules were totally forgotten. Those who got in the way were innocent like the colonial peoples, but both had to be dealt with quite harshly.

To leave friends in charge of Nigeria in our absence was surely prudent. The local people chose hothead politicians and it was our duty to outwit them. The loss of one or two lives is all we can truly comprehend. An expedient Whitehall decision is calm and deliberate and the risks if ever considered must be small and, of course, anonymous.

William was our cook and our steward in Lagos. It was said that we had the first television set in Africa and when William saw a lady newsreader, he tried to cover his near bare body and asked in a very frightened tone, "Can she see we?" William's body, his human remains first rested in a ditch in Biafra, before being consumed by the teeming animal life in the bush. Grace, our nanny, starved to death in her native village in Biafra with her small children.

We rarely had dinner parties in Lagos in Nigeria shortly before Independence. We were lounging in the overlarge PWD armchairs over coffee. William had cooked brilliantly and we had particularly enjoyed his coffee mousse that was his secret receipt. At that point Grace entered and announced, "Pican has shat on floor."

Millions died in the great Nazi onslaught on Russia. Millions died in concentration camps. Yet we need the diary of Anne Frank to experience this tremendous loss. It is a failure of our imagination. The larger the number, the less we feel?

Grace and William worked for us and we trusted them and treated them as friends. We loved them. We left Africa and were very worried for them. Nigeria was on the brink of freedom and independence. They believed it because they trusted the British. They were Commonwealth citizens and our Queen was their Queen. We know that their trust was misplaced. The British had betrayed them.

In his private office in Government House on the Marina facing the lagoon in Lagos, the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, was extremely angry. He had ordered that a senior British member of his Headquarters staff be carpeted. The Governor General's personal orders had been disobeyed. Worse, the offending officer had suggested that the orders were criminal. Even when allowed to return to the UK without punishment, this young officer had persisted in his disobedience, and had been returned to the colony in disgrace.

I was that young officer, and I was in deep trouble. I carefully prepared for that interview and wore a freshly laundered linen suit and, although it was steaming hot, a white shirt fully buttoned up, and a tie. I hoped to be told that a terrible mistake had been made. I hope to be allowed to leave the Colonial Service and forget all about this ghastly experience. My hopes were to be shattered. Sir James was not in a forgiving mood. John Bongard, his private secretary, showed me into Sir James' room.

"Mr Harold Smith is here to see you, Sir, as you ordered, he said, and retired.

"You know why you are here, Smith," said Sir James. "And I want you to know that all your worst fears and suspicions are absolutely correct. All the accusations you have made are correct. I am telling you this because I want you to know how much trouble you are in."

It is a cliché to say that my heart sank, but I use it deliberately because it was somewhere in my groin. I had wanted to be proved wrong, but I was being told from the highest possible source that my conclusions were correct. Britain had calmly, coldly and with deliberation set out to destroy democracy in Nigeria, Britain's giant colony of many nations in Africa!

While I was absorbing this incredible disclosure, Sir James was pronouncing a death sentence. In his opinion I was wilfully disobeying orders on active service. The penalty was death. If the sentence was to be postponed, and he clearly deeply regretted that, I would now do exactly as I was told. As I had no choice... I listened to Sir James' terms and, when he had finished, I said nothing. I looked at the portly figure of the most senior, the most powerful representative of the Queen in the Empire, and very calmly, pronounced two words:-

"No, Sir!"

I had graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1954 and joined headquarters staff in Lagos in 1955. My career was going well. I had brilliant reports. My name was soon known in the distant part of the empire that was Nigeria. When I encountered a famous, top administrator, a more famous Smith, he knew who I was. The lawmaker in Lagos, who was turning the Colony into a nation with laws to match, was Smith the Lawmaker. To be distinguished from Elephant Smith in the North and Tiger Smith who had named me Smith the Lawmaker.

When we arrived in Lagos in 1955...

Bradford-on-Avon, 1987

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Chapter One

The British retreated from West Africa almost in a state of panic. A few African nationalists were making noisy demands for freedom from the Colonial yoke, but the riots and rebellions hardly existed and no blood was shed in Nigeria expelling the forces of Imperialism. The British withdrawal took place in haste, because world opinion was beginning to demand that the Colonial powers spend money on their African possessions. If this suggests that Britain exploited its Colonies it simply is not true. If this had been the case, then Britain would have left behind many more factories, plantations, roads, ports and means of communication in Africa than she did.

The vast mass of the African people was indifferent or actually would have preferred the British to stay. But neither was it true that the British found in West Africa a land of savage tribes living in crocodile-infested swamps and by exercising Christian charity and benevolence carefully instructed the natives in the civilised ways of Western democracy.

Not only is Africa denigrated by the carefully nurtured fairy tale fashioned for the most part in Oxford, but with skill and cunning the British image is carefully burnished and enhanced. When did Britain itself become a democracy, if it has yet achieved that state? With universal male suffrage in 1884 or when all women got the vote in 1928? Britain's democratic traditions are of more recent origin than most are aware. When the British removed themselves from Nigeria in 1960 (though in truth they did not really surrender power to the African people) there was not even universal suffrage, as only a minority of the country's women - those in the South - were entitled to vote. As for tribalism, that well-worn cliché of colonial histories, the pre-colonial societies found in Nigeria were quite sophisticated and could be seen as city states or nations. And it is the British who have been at war with rebellious Irish tribes for centuries. Can any savagery in Africa equal the Belsens of civilised Western Europe? And the tribal skirmishes, often quoted as an excuse for the British armed occupation, pale to insignificance beside the massive bloody conflicts between the European powers. I refer of course to the two Great Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

My main qualification for demolishing the myth that the British created viable democracies out of savage tribes only to see the ungrateful and greedy natives quickly revert to their tribalistic ways was my personal involvement in these events. I was educated at Oxford in the traditional manner thought suitable for those who would run the Whitehall civil service machine, or the British Empire. Although my tutors tried to persuade me that I could win a first-class degree, I thought they were wrong. Not unnaturally they wished me to spend the usual three years taking the honours degree course in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but I found much of the Philosophy and Economic Theory studies uncongenial, though I had excellent teachers. Against their advice I took my finals and obtained a second-class degree at the end of my second year. I had already obtained the University Diploma in Social and Public Administration so I was considered particularly well fitted to serve the Crown in Africa. I became a thorn in the flesh of the British Government because I chose to believe in democracy, and to consider it dishonourable and despicable to tamper with it. But my problem was not that I was expelled from Africa - quite the contrary. I was offered the highest possible inducements to stay in the service of HM. Government. My work was praised and the British Government went to very great lengths to keep me in the service. Perhaps fortuitously, this determination to prolong my stay in Africa was to bring me down, for in my final year, the year of the rather tacky if not wholly sham Independence, I became ill with a chronic disease, tropical sprue. As a result I have had a quiet and retired life punctuated by alarming health crises.

I have not told this story before because I did not wish to wreck the chances of success of the new nation by revealing the truth behind the fine but phoney ceremonial retreat. It would not have been possible to write this book in the 1960's anyway as my health was in ruins and my survival unlikely. By the mid-1960's too, the consequences of the British betrayal were becoming evident and Nigeria was being torn apart by coups, corruption and civil war. If 1960 was too early, by 1966 it was far too late.

When I suggest that the British Government meddled with the democratic elections in Nigeria, I write as an authority. I was chosen by his Excellency the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, to spearhead a covert operation to interfere with the elections. The laws of Nigeria were a sham and largely window-dressing to conceal, not mirror, the reality of where power lay. I drafted some of those laws. The Factories Act I drafted was applauded by African leaders as the greatest piece of legislation to be placed on the Nigerian Statute Book. The National Provident Fund that I pioneered introduced a practical and simple worker savings plan for the largest African nation. Some major institutions, in themselves worthy and popular, were flawed and corrupt, as were the Employment Exchanges and Trade Testing Organisation. I was in charge of the administration of those bodies and revised the codes of procedure under which they operated. These structures did not become corrupt after Independence; they were rotten before the British handed over power to a small and elite group of Africans, who were for the most part thoroughly alienated from their native soil and their compatriots. If they had not been, we would have handed over to a more pro-British group. The new leaders and civil servants were for the most part Britishers with black faces. And they continued to rule as the British had ruled, espousing fine ideals and pragmatically wheeling and dealing and fixing to keep the show on the road. It must be remembered that British colonial power was autocratic, dictatorial power. The British did not practise democracy in Nigeria. They talked about it as a device to legitimise the transfer of power. There was a need to legitimise a new sovereign state. But the British to the end were fixing and cheating, and of course educated Africans were fully aware of this. These were the dictated terms of the sham Independence.

Whatever the shortcomings of British Colonial Administration in Africa, some of the more or less well ordered systems which were handed over to the native populations in the 1960's degenerated fairly quickly into corrupt, one-party states. Many of the native peoples must have looked back with regret to Independence and wished once more for British rule.

Much of this statement is true. Certainly, compared with other imperialist nations, the British behaved well to their native peoples. British historians, civil servants, academics and the colonial administrators themselves have told the story. However, as I have indicated, they have not always told the whole truth. The historical record does contain some questionable events which have tended to be glossed over, and, as always, it was the victor who wrote the history, not the subject peoples. I was present in Lagos, Nigeria, during the period 1955-60 in the run-up to Independence, and my recollection of those years is at variance with the record set down by some British historians. Many Nigerians may feel justly ashamed at some of the events that have marred the early years of the Nigerian nation. The assassination of several heads of state, five military coups and a bloody civil war in the first twenty-five years is a lot of history Nigeria could have done without. However, on reading my story, it may be seen that the British too did not leave Nigeria with perfectly clean hands. And perhaps the British will be seen to have been in some part to blame for the horrendous events which took place in the twenty-five years following Independence.

There are many fine, honest Nigerians who have served their new nation well and there is much to be proud of in Nigeria's short history. Similarly there were many fine British administrators who deserve to be remembered for the honourable service they gave in Nigeria. This book is dedicated to those many fine administrators, both black and white, who loved Nigeria and served it with honour. They know who they are, and they can be justly proud of their achievements, whatever blemishes my story may record.

It is probably too early to make a balanced assessment of the British occupation of West Africa. I hope this book will make its own small contribution to that record. I have no doubt, however that the overall assessment will prove that British rule, for all its shortcomings, was beneficial and advanced the welfare of many African peoples substantially.

The supreme betrayal of a new sovereign nation of which I write took place when the British retreated from Nigeria, the African giant, in l960. The last great act of the British Government was to hold democratic elections in l956 and l959 to choose the leaders who would inherit supreme power over this vast territory. It seemed that the Nigerian people did not want as its national leaders those educated Nigerians who had campaigned for freedom from British rule. For the election results gave majority power to the leaders of the then backward and feudal North, who had worked closely with the British and were sad to see them go. The British were well satisfied with the election results, though many Nigerians were baffled at the outcome.

What I now reveal in the following chapters is that the British Government interfered with the elections so as to achieve Northern domination of Nigeria. The consequences of this abandonment of the rule of law by the British Government is recorded in the turbulent and bloody events which were to produce the Biafran Civil War which grasped the attention of the world due to its daily presence on every nation's television screens. The pictures of starving children and homeless refugees will not soon be forgotten. Since the fraudulent handover of power to the Northern leaders in l960, not only has there been this bloody civil war which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians including many women and children, but five heads of state have been assassinated and there have been three military coups.

I was one of the British officers serving on the headquarters staff in Lagos, chosen by the Governor General, Sir James Robertson, to mastermind the covert action to rig Nigeria's elections. This secret operation hatched in Whitehall was of course a gross betrayal of trust by Prime Ministers Sir Anthony Eden and Mr Harold Macmillan. The orders which arrived on my desk from the Governor General before the elections for the Western Regional Government in 1956 were quite illegal and in direct contravention of Nigerian and British law. As a consequence of these illegal orders, I was to lose my career and my health. These orders were not only illegal but also immoral, and I refused to carry them out. I also refused many inducements. The authorities wanted me to promise never to reveal how the British Government rigged the results of Nigeria's General Elections.

In 1986, approaching my sixtieth year, I decided, in compliance with the convention, to seek permission from the Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, to publish my account of those years in Lagos. I believe that the British people have a right to know what was done in their name; and the people of Nigeria and the Commonwealth need to be made aware of the duplicity and criminal behaviour to which some British leaders had resorted when dealing with the African peoples' struggles for freedom from colonial rule.

The British Government's response to my plan to write these memoirs, was totally negative. Mrs Thatcher refused to reply to my letters. She is not often stuck for words but on this occasion she was rendered speechless. Assuming that my letter had been suppressed by the Foreign Office I wrote again using the good offices of the Archbishop of Canterbury and, when that produced no response, the Prince of Wales. I must assume after all these endeavours that Mrs Thatcher has indeed seen my letters and has no objection to the publication of my story of how the British tricked the Nigerian people.

The Governor General had told me that I had a choice. I could give my word to keep my mouth shut and I would continue to be a golden boy, a high flier, an outstanding officer with appropriate remuneration and rewards, or I would never be employed again by anybody. I chose the latter course. I had no choice really. Cheating a brand new nation out of its birthright was evidently routine stuff if you were Sir James. I could not see myself getting involved in this kind of intrigue. And of course I thought I would somehow survive. And of course I did, even though I found myself permanently retired at thirty-three with no salary or pension. I had only graduated at Oxford six years earlier.

During a TV discussion about an MI5 case officer, Cathy Massiter, who had resigned and told all, it transpired that MI5 had been partly privatised and was able to turn over unpleasant chores to private detectives. One of these sleuths remarked on TV. that he had been asked to check out on a character who had been kept out of employment for twenty-five years. He had declined the assignment.

The Governor General simply could not understand why I should make such a fuss about which set of Africans the British chose to leave in charge in Lagos. If I would not play the game I would have to take the consequences. I suppose this was the way Africans were treated, and it was decided I might profit from the same medicine.

One of my neighbours in Lagos was an expert in communist subversion. He swaggered around with his loaded revolver and when I warned him that burglaries were endemic in Ikoyi, the white area where we white Government officials lived, he said any 'wog' who broke into his house would get shot to little pieces. The following morning he awoke minus his valuables, his clothes and the gun that he had placed under his pillow.

I was very impressed with my neighbour's exploits. His main job was to check all foreign mail coming into Nigeria for Marxist propaganda or letters to subversives. I accompanied him to the Post Office sorting room in Lagos one day to see where he worked. I remarked he must be very clever to be able to understand all these foreign languages.

"I don't speak any foreign lingo, old chap," he assured me. "That's where all my years of training come in. I just look at the stamps. All mail from Iron Curtain and red countries I bung into the fire there..." and he indicated a stove.

"You don't read it?" I asked.

"Good God, no... It's obvious they're up to no good!"

So I should worry that my mail was opened and that I was being watched while I pottered around with my dog and cat in my old cottage at Widbrook. If I became a real threat, who knows but one day I might be fished out of the canal. The police would no doubt report that I had been complaining of being persecuted and was depressed.

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Chapter Two

I was born in Hulme, Manchester, in 1927 to a great Englishman and his wife. What better name for an English war hero than Harry Smith? In perhaps my first English essay at infant school I wrote,

"My Father's name is Henry, but my Mother calls him Harry. My Mother's name is Margaret, but my Father calls her Maggie."

That was the complete composition and it pleased my teacher.

"Short and sweet, Harold Smith," she commented.

By that time we had moved from the dark tight terraces of Hulme to the heavenly winding avenues of one of Manchester's nicest Council estates at Barlow Hall alongside the meadows, orchards and farms strung along the banks of the river Mersey.

In this first literary effort at the new and splendid elementary school built on the Barlow Hall estate I could have added that my name was Harold, but that I was addressed as 'Our 'Arold'. The Family secret, only revealed after years of pestering, was that my Father, the most true blue Conservative Englishman it is possible to envisage, was of Irish origin. And so was my Mother. Dad had once answered when I had asked him what he was, meaning what work he did,

"I'm an Orangeman."

I told my school friends he worked in a fruit shop. He was actually the key and quite senior employee in a large shirt factory, 'The Cutter,' no less. It was his job to lay out the patterns of the various bits of a shirt on to the stacks of striped flannel material so that the stripes ran the right way and there was as little waste as possible. He was really the boss on the production side of the factory, but it was only when I was sent to collect his wages one Friday afternoon so my Mam could do the weekend shopping that I found this out.

"He's the boss, Mam," I gasped. "They call him 'Sir,' and say, 'Yes, Mr Smith' and 'No, Mr Smith.'"

"He might be the boss there, but he's not the boss here," responded my Mam.

He was Irish, an Orangeman, a Protestant; his family were from Dublin and he was ashamed of his Irish connection. I was delighted to learn his Aunt had been a teacher in Dublin. Someone in the Family had actually been educated and read books! My Mam and Dad never spoke of their background or family history except on very rare occasions.

"None of your business," they would respond, and we believed they were concealing terrible secrets.

It was not just that they were Irish and despised the Irish, but that Mam was a Catholic, and that was worse than being Irish for my Dad. My Mother's sister, my Aunt Nell, rarely called to see us. She hated my Father for being an Orangeman and despised my Mother for giving up her Roman Catholic faith to marry my Father. To my Father and Mother this was of the greatest possible importance. It took many years before I was able to force Mam to reveal that her maiden name was MacGarry, a clan or tribal name associated with the West of Ireland. I know of no famous MacGarry's but I am pleased from time to time to find writers and film makers who are MacGarry's. And one of the MacGarry's had enough brass to get himself a beautiful coat of arms.

Although my Father's discharge certificate mentions no special medals for heroic conduct, he was regarded by his many friends as being a war hero. Perhaps this was because he was one of the few who returned from three years of trench warfare with the Manchester Regiment in the first Great War. He regarded himself as incredibly lucky. All his friends had died. He had lost an eye and a leg and had a stiff left hand due, he said, to lying on that side for months in hospital beds while his wounds healed. He never complained, but then he did not grumble about anything. He never actually sat still. He was always on the move. Not so much restless, because that would suggest he was nervous, which he was not. He was perfectly content and sure of himself. He was highly principled, a bosses' man, a freemason, a heavy drinker, an Orangeman, a Conservative and he loved his country without the slightest reservation.

Before the War my Father had been a keen athlete, and his weekends were taken up by football and long distance running. After the War, with the young men dead or busy elsewhere, he was taken to the pubs and fêted by the older men. Later when he was established in a good job, it was his turn to repay their generosity and every night of his life he bought drinks for anyone and everyone. My Mother had started drinking to try to stop him but she had rapidly become hooked and probably drank more than he did. Eventually she died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Dad was always right and never saw two sides to any question. He was strict, unbending, without a hint of ambiguity and, although he inflicted much pain and suffering on his children, he was respected and adored. The rules had to be learned and were reinforced with a cuff on the side of the head.

"Don't answer back! Don't be cheeky! Speak when you're spoken to! Who are you looking at? Look at me when I speak to you!"

And general rules. "A man - a gentleman - never strikes a woman or ever lays hands on her!" (This rule made me an extremely reserved and inhibited teenager. Perhaps I was so popular with the girls because I 'did not try anything on' as the saying used to be. My best friend got an older girl pregnant when he was fifteen. I had not got to the kissing stage at that age.) Truth telling had to be one hundred per cent and lies brought on kicks as well as blows. I never lied to him, but sometimes he did not believe me and I would dive under the table for protection. Only rarely did he move the table so I was able to dodge his gammy leg which was swung with great force. If the table was moved my mother would intervene as I scrambled to get under the sideboard.

"I'll kill the little sod, I'll throttle him, I'll swing for him!"

My Mam used to say, "No one will poison you, you little bugger, you were born to swing."

Practically all the money surplus to food and rent and coal went on alcohol. Money for clothing or anything else was only extracted with great difficulty and after continual nagging and pleading.

From my bedroom window I could see through the trees the ancestral home of the Barlow's. During the long months of mysterious illness which beset me throughout childhood I peopled the Hall with its generations of Barlow children in strange costume and saw in my imagination its long hall hung with dark paintings of Barlow knights. My Father had no need of the ancient equivalent of a family photograph album to know where he belonged and who he was. He was ex-Private Harry Smith of the Manchester Regiment, an officer of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes.

Although I adored him, our life paths diverged from the very start. One of the Barlow's, Ambrose, was a Catholic martyr and had been cruelly executed. Ambrose Barlow was one of my saints before he was canonised. To follow in Jesus's footsteps and pay the ultimate price for his faith! There was a man. I doubt my Dad knew of his existence for, although intelligent, he had little education and I never knew him to open a book or read anything except the Daily Mail and racing papers. When we sang my favourite hymn, 'There is a green hill far away', in the hall during assembly at Barlow Hall School I saw Ambrose Barlow on a cross beside Jesus and revered the Catholic Church for producing men of Ambrose Barlow's calibre. Dad would have been perplexed by Ambrose's Catholicism but I feel sure he would have responded to his heroism.

My Father served his king and country. The only top person he ever criticised and that below his breath so he would barely be heard, was General Earl Haig.

"Bloody Generals! What did they care! It was like a bleeding butcher's shop... What did Haig care?"

Then he would swing his leg and shut himself away in the kitchen.

"Dad's crying in the kitchen. He was sobbing, Mam," I would say.

"Leave him be," she'd say. "It's the war."

When very young, I would ask, "Why are you crying, Dad?"

Once he said, "For my old comrades I left in France," but usually he'd say, "I'm not crying. It's my eye watering."

And he'd slip out his glass eye and wash it under the tap at the sink.

When my body burned with fever as if I was on fire, I slept in his bed and would watch as he unstrapped the canvas and leather belts which held his artificial leg in place. One of his boots was laced permanently to his gammy leg and he would leave the leg with the boot attached inside his trousers when he undressed. Then he would remove the special white socks made to measure for his leg stump and rub away the pain. Only my Mother would know when his stump was raw and sore. It was a point of honour not to complain. It was something men did not do.

For the fevers my Father prescribed Fennings Fever Cure, which was highly thought of because it tasted ghastly. Dad knew about such things because he had had ambulance training and for a time had been a stretcher bearer in France. To us children he was truly a medical expert even if his remedies included sweaty socks for sore throats and peeing on your feet for foot rot. Perhaps this was the Poor Bloody Infantry's treatment for trench feet.

I would swim out of a delirium to find my Dad clinging to me. Our flannel shirts would sometimes be soaking with sweat. But sometimes I would be in one of those tranquil cool periods between fevers when my brain, though no longer inflamed, saw everything so clearly, and it was my Dad who was tortured in his sleep and re-enacting a battle in the trenches. Sometimes it was impossible to make sense of the incoherent flow of shouts and orders - perhaps that was how the real battle was. Sometimes pieces made sense.

"Mr Edwards, Sir! Mr Jones presents his compliments and requests you to bring up your men immediately, Sir! We are under heavy attack! They are in the trench!"

There would be a pause, then, "Oh God! Jesus Christ! They're all dead! Bits and pieces of bodies everywhere! Jim! Bob! Where are you?"

Then Dad would begin to sob and I would try to comfort him.

I was brought up to serve King and Country and the Empire. I was a boy soldier, and as such treated like a man. A man never ran away. He always stood his ground. A man never laid hands on a woman. The reason as I have said for my being regarded as a 'nice boy' by girls and their mothers when in my 'teens. Impatient girls undid their blouse buttons and put my cold hands inside to warm. One can be too nice!

Sixty Maitland Avenue was on the edge of the estate next to a new Methodist Chapel which also housed a branch of the Public Library. Beyond the Chapel was the farm which had served Barlow Hall and carried its name. The parameters of my early influences were within two hundred yards of our front gate. Reading about the Barlow's led me into local history while I was too young to join the Library. From local history it was a short step to local politics and the City Council debates. The Liberals seemed to be responsible for the building of the council estates so I became a Liberal.

"Don't be so bloody daft," was my Dad's response. "We are Conservatives."

All my Dad's beliefs were like that. Final and forever.

Although I adored my Mam and Dad, one of my earliest recollections, following on those of being fed with pobs and later Farley's rusks and squatting on the Daily Mail and grunting, was of total disbelief at what I was seeing. I was propped up with cushions on a settee watching my Mam and Dad and brothers and sisters. The furniture was cheap and unattractive. How did I know? The conversation was in bits and pieces, accusing, mock threatening, whining from the children. It was not elevating or educated, but common and even vulgar. I was repelled and alienated. Why had I come here? I was in the wrong place! Some awful mistake had been made!

I was a weakling. Something had to be done. I had to be taught to fight and uphold the family honour.

"Up the Buffs!" was my Dad's cry to arms.

At every opportunity I was expected to fight. If my Mother stood at the gate she would challenge a passing Primo Carnera or budding Tommy Farr and cry, "My lad can beat you!"

They would look at me and laugh, which only encouraged my Mother.

"Call yourself a lad of mine and you won't fight!" she'd say.

"But Mam, I don't want to fight!"

"Don't you want to stick up for your Mother then? Say someone attacks your Mother? Fat lot of good you'd be. Harry (my oldest brother) would look after his mother! See that boy coming. He's very nasty! Go and get him!"

And so began my career as a prize fighter. Nobody fought harder, longer or more often. I got used to pain, bruises, split lips, black eyes, scratches, kicks. In fact I welcomed them as it made my Mother happy. I was a real boy. I never won a fight in all those years and never desired to. But I never ran away and would get off the floor time after time until my assailant would explain he would lose face if he kept knocking down someone who obviously could not fight for toffee.

"He wiped the floor with you," said my Mother scornfully after watching a somewhat unequal contest with a boy the size of a furniture van.

How I longed for her to rescue me and tell me I was brave, but she never did.

"You don't want to be a bloody clerk," said my Dad when I was eleven and took the scholarship examination, so I ended up at Chorlton Park Elementary Boys' School or rather after two minutes, in the playground winded and bleeding.

I was picked up, my arms were threaded through the school railings and I was then thoroughly beaten. The gravel embedded in my knees turned septic and when the delirium finally cleared I had been away from school for ten weeks. I had no idea that I was dying; that the doctors had given me up. In 1938 the wonder cure for septicaemia, Penicillin, had not yet been discovered. It was just delirium, another fever, but it seemed like coming back from a far country and I did not care whether or not I arrived. On one of these occasions early on I became aware of the doctor examining me.

"Hello," he said. "It's the first time I've seen you conscious. I'm Doctor P. I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm bringing a colleague to see you."

Dr P. was apologetic when the other doctor arrived. The new doctor assured him he had done the right thing.

"Let's start again," he suggested. "We'll examine him from top to toe."

They pulled off my shirt. When they saw my knees they could not miss the abrasions and scabs. They parted my legs and found a large black swelling in the groin.

"Septicaemia!" they exclaimed.

The decline continued. There was no cure. I would become conscious to find Dr P. bathing my body to get the temperature down.

"We're both in trouble," he said.

Ages later I swam out of delirium and he said maybe I was going to make it. My temperature was falling.

"They can't take that away," he said.

Very gradually I recovered and Dr P. would sit by my bedside doing his pools coupon. He would bring me piles of expensive American comics. And then he stopped coming. My Father would not tell me why. I felt somehow it was my fault.

"When is he coming back?" I would plead.

My Father said he was not coming back. He had been struck off for gambling debts. I did not believe my Father. It could not be true. If it were true I would not have wanted to live.

In my absence from school the preliminaries in the Chorlton Park world-wide street fighting competition had taken place and the whole school acknowledged that Alan Dawson was the world champion. I met the world champion as soon as I arrived back at school.

"You're new, aren't you?"

"Not really," I replied.

"Listen. I can beat everyone in the school," said Dawson.

I guess he thought I looked a pale thin weakling who had just got off his death bed.

"You can't beat me," I said.

"Are you kidding?" said Dawson. "I could blow you over."

He gave me a push which would have sent me six feet if the railing had not been three feet away.

"You can knock me down," I said, "but I'll never admit you can beat me."

"You're crazy," said Dawson. "I'm not going to fight you!"

In due course Dawson became my friend.

"Why wouldn't you admit I could beat you?" he would plead. "You were the only one in the school who wouldn't submit."

"I can't," I said. "It's the way I was brought up!"

Ten weeks into my new school and I had not had a lesson or met a teacher. I was really looking forward to my first class. Besides I had survived my first encounter with Dawson. I did not know which line to join in the playground when the whistle blew. Somehow I found myself joining a woodwork class. I stood out in the workroom because I did not possess a white apron. I was told to stand by a bench. All the other boys were planing and sawing and forever holding up pieces of wood to check with set squares. I picked up a wooden plane and hastily put it down when Mr Ladd, the woodwork teacher, glowered at me. Then he charged across, grabbed me by the ear and dragged me to his desk.

"I have told you time and again for months," he yelled, "never to put a plane down on its blade."

The rest of the class gathered round in eager anticipation. From his desk Mr Ladd extracted a long leather strap. The ends of the strap were cut into thongs.

"Hands up, boy! One under the other!" yelled Mr Ladd.

"The cat of nine tails," somebody murmured gleefully.

Mr Ladd was not angry. His face was lit up. His eyes were gleaming. His tongue was hanging out. He skipped forward as if going to bowl out Don Bradman. He could not have tried harder to tear the fingers from my hand. I got six of the best. Three on each hand. As he was preparing to take aim a quiet boy wearing spectacles tried to intercede.

"He's new, sir. It's his first lesson."

"Shut up!" yelled Ladd. "I've told him a dozen times."

I was not too upset by all this. I was used to pain and the school bullies left me alone. Apparently Dawson had let it be known that he was the only one who was going to beat me up. The school probably thought I was a nut case. And Mr Ladd? Nobody liked him very much as he was not a proper teacher and the other staff rated him on a level with the stoker who fed the school's boilers. But he later became the hero of every boy in the school.

In 1939 war was declared and Mr Ladd, as the dogsbody, was voted to be in charge of Air Raid Precautions. As timber was in short supply he had a good excuse for not handing out any wood for the boys to work with. As he had always been mean and acted as if it were his wood he was handing out, he was very pleased to walk around wearing a tin hat and blowing his whistle. Instead of ghastly woodwork we now got lectures, often very imaginative, on what to do if the enemy bombed us.

During one of his talks he told us what to do if the Hun decided to drop gas bombs on Chorlton-cum-Hardy. We would hear gas rattles - which Mr Ladd demonstrated. Apparently as soon as Mr Ladd learned that the Germans were going to wipe us out with gas, he would ride around on his bicycle rotating his gas rattle. We would then all put on our gas masks. However, this would not help if the enemy were dropping mustard gas. How would we know if we were being bombed with mustard gas asked a brave ex-woodworker. Mr Ladd looked at him as he had once looked at me, and I feared he was going to demonstrate his skill with the cat of nine tails again.

"You'll know about it, you just wait and see," he threatened.

"So what do we do if we get covered in mustard gas, Mr Ladd, please sir?"

"A very good question," said Mr Ladd with a snarl.

He would have smiled but there was a war on.

"You take all your clothes off immediately."

"In the street?" someone exclaimed.

"Anywhere," said Mr Ladd.

"Women too?" said a brave soul.

"Women too. Everybody stark naked."

Mr Ladd was warming to his work. Perhaps he was thinking of riding on his bicycle giving his rattle alarm for a practice mustard gas attack and making everybody he encountered strip stark naked!

"What do we do then, Mr Ladd, please sir?" asked the class.

"You run to the nearest house. Ring the door bell. Run inside and jump in the bath."

"What if there's a lady in the bath?" the whole class gasped.

"Tell her to move over and get in with her," shouted Mr Ladd, full of excitement. "All naked, all in the bath together!"

With that he ran out of the room with his tin hat and rattle and the class broke up to run round the school, telling everyone to pray for a mustard gas attack. The girls got quite hysterical. Next day a deputation of anxious mothers waited on the headmaster to ask why their daughters were expected to strip naked when Mr Ladd performed with his rattle. Mr Ladd became extremely popular and his stories, like all good yarns, were added to beyond all recognition.

When Mr Ladd suddenly disappeared, it was obvious to all the boys that the headmaster, jealous of Mr Ladd's incredible popularity, had volunteered him for something very nasty, like being dropped behind enemy lines with his tin hat and gas rattle.

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Chapter Three

When I was a small child I would help my older brother Harry with his newspaper round in Northenden, an attractive Cheshire village which was in danger of being swamped by the Manchester sprawl. When Harry left school and got a job delivering fruit and vegetables in Northenden, I helped out on Saturday mornings. I was nine years of age when a University team of researchers into child employment caught up with me. I had enjoyed giving my mother the one shilling and sixpence and a bag of fruit, though she was never very impressed.

For two years I was unemployed, although my mother sent me for a number of jobs. I pretended to be stupid so as not to be employed as a butcher's boy. My mother was very disappointed. She liked the idea of cheap or free meat. When I was eleven she found me a morning newspaper round which paid three shillings and sixpence a week. Then an evening round for another three shillings and sixpence. Mr Burgess at the farm at the bottom of our council estate street could see I was a keen worker, so I took on a milk round too at seven shillings a week. I started delivering milk at five in the morning until the air raids started and I was at risk of getting in the way of fire engines and rescue squads. After my evening paper round I turned up at the farm to help bottle the milk for next morning. At the weekends I collected cash from my customers on the milk round and did odd jobs on the farm. In the holidays I cleared pigsties and weeded and picked potatoes.

My mother was not too happy when I left school and started an engineering apprenticeship at the vast Metropolitan Vickers factory. I only earned fourteen shillings a week at the factory. I loathed engineering. My first department was H Machine. I arrived the morning after it got a direct hit from a German bomb. The lathes and milling machines were hanging from their drive belts in mid-air. I was moved to K Machine. The lavatories at K Machine were in two facing rows and were so close that legs stretched into the walkway between.

My father had lost his job as a shirt cutter and had volunteered for war work. I found him dragging trucks piled high with iron castings on K Machine. The management had not noticed he had an artificial leg and a glass eye and he did not tell them. He was intensely patriotic. Women had been conscripted in large numbers into the factory and rapidly proved, after only a short training period, to be better machine workers than the men. This caused a lot of resentment. There was a great deal of flirtation and even the middle class ladies who were well spoken seemed to enjoy the sexual banter and innuendo.

My job was to drag two large steel baskets of brew tins to a lean-to boiler house at lunch time and otherwise run errands. A surprising number of men would either try to grab my penis or stroke my bottom. Some would try to get me to go home with them. If this was homosexuality, there seemed to be an awful lot of working class homosexuals at Metropolitan Vickers. The brew sheds were dangerous too. Sexual attacks disguised as initiation ceremonies were common. I learned to run fast and cry at night. The nightmares I had then I have had ever since. The initiation involved masturbation by an older youth and sometimes variations like jamming a narrow topped bottle on to a boy's penis so he could not remove it when he had an erection. If he did not get an erection a girl would be persuaded 'for a laugh' to expose her breasts or raise her skirt.

At fifteen I was on some errand when I stopped to chat to another brew boy from the Research Department. I agreed to swap secrets. They had few sexual initiations in Research. The people there were graduates and college apprentices and scientists. A better class of worker. So I recounted my stories of the K aisle brew sheds and he told me the secret of the atomic bomb which they were working on in the top secret Research Department. A little later I moved to West Works where I helped to assemble the switch gear panels for the Victoria Falls Power Station and mobile switch gear units for the Soviet Union.

My national service in the RAF. followed a predictable pattern. I tried hard not to be an electrician so I became one. At Melksham in Wiltshire I was pushed through advanced courses in electronics which I found totally boring. We had to be reasonably bright and our intake included a sprinkling of grammar and public school boys and students. When taking the end-of-course examinations I was surprised to get high marks.

"You remember very little, so you work out all the answers from theory and principles," I was informed. "The others only remember what they've been told."

I was asked what rank I would like. I settled for a pass. I was terrified I would be given stripes and recruited as an instructor.

At Melksham I discovered the joys and delights of Bath and spent my weekends in the Salvation Army hostel which was situated on a blitz site. I made friends with a family who lived in a modest but attractive terraced house which clung to the hillside under Beechen Cliff. This pleasant terrace on Calton Road, like much else in Bath, was to be destroyed by supposedly educated town planners or greed and replaced by ghastly egg boxes with flat roofs and picture windows. Mr Ryder was a shop steward at Stothert and Pitt's crane factory and Mrs Ryder was an activist in the local Labour Party. At that time the Bath Labour Party had their meeting place in the very beautiful Lansdown Terrace. I had never met such a nice group of people and they were very kind to me. I knew then that one day I would return to Bath. Much of what I needed to bathe my eyes and make my heart sing was available free in Bath. With BBC radio and some library tickets, most of my needs would be satisfied. That dream was to come true, but only because my wife kept me alive in extremis. And I have behind me too, two delightful daughters, my collie and my Persian cat.

I volunteered for service in Germany and was sent to Egypt. There we lived in tents which were cool because the floor was two or three feet deep into the sand. The floor and sides were lined with packing case timber and we fashioned chairs, tables and shelves from the same source. After a year in the Canal zone the RAF. were reluctant to let me go when my demobilisation notice came through. As I was already heading for three years' service I was not too pleased. My problem was that I had been too keen and had acquired a great deal of experience on various aircraft. Spares were short so we did a lot of patching up. From time to time we would ask a pilot to land with his wheels up, what we would call a pancake, so that we could strip the plane - 'Christmas tree it' - to keep the rest of the flight flying. The pilots were quite agreeable to a crash landing from time to time. They loved flying and would plead with us to sign Form 700 so they could take off.

The problem with electrics in a very hot climate is that the insulation melts. The fire switches were held in place by blobs of pitch which also often melted, leaving the engines awash with foam. One Lancaster had very temperamental inflatable rafts which kept popping up on the wings. The trick was to get everything to work at the same time so we could sign the plane as fit to fly. It was only a matter of hours or days before something else would go wrong. The aircraft were clapped out but the pilots were very easy going. One effective precaution was to make all the ground crew fly on the first flight after a major refit. We would have to search for some of the ground crew and ignore their sick bay chits. The aircraft hangars at Kasfareet contained mountains of small arms which had been collected from the surrendering German and Italian armies in North Africa. These armaments were in great demand and twice a week we spent the night in searchlight towers along the barbed wire perimeter fence. I had been a washout and had refused to hit the target during my rifle training at Rattlesden in Suffolk. When I arrived in Egypt the Station Armaments Officer decided I could be very easily made into a crack shot. He invited me to spend every afternoon when the heat was intolerable at an open rifle range. He presented me with an inexhaustible supply of bullets and told me I could fire for ever and a day until I got six in the centre of the target. I knew I had met my match. I got down on the floor behind the sandbags and put six bullets in the bull's eye.

One night I was swinging my searchlight and trying to dodge the large dung beetles which hit the lamp and fell at my feet, when a Sten gun opened up and bullets flew around my head. The rifle came up and I fired a magazine automatically. I was furious that the RAF. had succeeded in training me against all my inclinations to become a rifleman. My inhibition was not unconnected with my father's experiences in the trenches in France. My chums in the guardroom were convinced I was dead.

"It's a bit of a let down you being alive, Smithy," said one. "We were all saying what a smashing bloke you were. We felt very sorry for you - you being dead. Now you've gone and spoiled it!"

About this time I was summoned to see my Wing Commander and was given a dressing down.

"I have here a report on your work signed by your Flight Sergeant before he returned to the UK. He said your work was 'Excellent.' That is a grade reserved for officers. Aircraftsmen are satisfactory, NCO's very good and only officers are excellent. Is that understood?"

"He didn't tell me, sir," I said.

"All right then," he replied. "So long as you know. Your grade is satisfactory!"

At that time the British were withdrawing from Palestine and questions were being asked in Parliament about war supplies being released by the British to the Egyptian Army. Arms may not have been released but we were aware that vast quantities of vehicles and other supplies were being auctioned at army warehouses in the Canal zone. The impression we had was that Ernest Bevin, the Labour Foreign Secretary was anti-Semitic. Later I was to meet RAF. people who had come out of Palestine who showed off photographs taken at kibbutzim after attacks by Arabs. Pits were filled with the bodies of young boys and girls. On the troopship from Port Said I met another of these anti-Semites. While standing at the rail one night as we sailed through the Mediterranean he showed me some more of these pictures of atrocities. As I expressed disgust and went away I paused and very seriously contemplated pushing that RAF. corporal over the rail and into the sea.

During that voyage back to Liverpool in August 1948 I cleaned the latrines all the way through the Mediterranean. The girls on the dockside were wearing black outfits which went half way down their calves. It was the 'New Look' in fashion. A few days later we were demobbed from the RAF. and I was on the train to Manchester in a brown tweed suit which felt very rough. At once I missed the RAF. The RAF. was enjoyable because we had been conscripted. As we had no choice we could make the best of it and dream of what we would do when we got out. Now the dreaming had to stop and harsh reality hit me. I tried desperately to get any kind of job but there was nothing. I would have to return to the factory in Trafford Park.

Within days it was as if I had never been away. I would have gone insane if I had not been saved by my old mate Frank Fairhurst, the shop steward. Frank had news of a junior engineers' conference organised by our Society, the Amalgamated Engineering Union. I attended that conference and was pitchforked into battles with the communists. I was outraged to discover that they rigged elections and found that they fought dirty. I was very quickly elected to the Trades Council, the executive of the Fabian Society, the executive of the City Labour Party. The following year I was a candidate for the City Council. When Frank Fairhurst stood down as shop steward I was elected to replace him, and Frank became a foreman. The communists now saw their chance and the District Committee refused to issue me with credentials as a shop steward. The works director had wanted Frank to remain shop steward. I only pretended to force him out. Frank wanted the foreman's job. However, the works director was displeased with me and very rapidly, to the delight of the communists, I was out of a job. The major battles in the unions in Manchester were between the communists and the Roman Catholics. The communists often seemed to be ex-Catholics and in time they would either return to the Church or join some other political group. They sought strong authority and doctrine. People like myself were in the middle and got shot up by both sides.

I found a job in an aircraft factory. Was it true, the communists asked, that I was collecting books for a book fair for the Labour Party League of Youth? Would I like a pile of books? How kind, I thought. I was checking some wiring on an aircraft when a security officer ordered me to report to the Personnel Department. Someone had been smoking or taking a break on that aircraft.

"I wasn't smoking or taking a break," I protested.

"You're going anyway," said the security officer. "Have you seen your bench?"

The works of Lenin, Marx, Engels and Stalin were stacked high on my bench. The communists howled with laughter.

"Have a good read," they shouted.

I had been out of work a few weeks when a printer on a newspaper asked if I would like a job. He was a keyboard operator. The salary seemed enormous.

"I can't type," I said.

"You won't be allowed to. It's a union agreement. They've got rid of a machine, but they've got to employ an extra man."

"And what do I do all night?" I asked.

"Nothing. You won't be allowed to."

I declined the well paid job. I disapproved strongly of this kind of trade unionism.

I saw an advertisement in the Guardian for university extra mural courses at Hollyroyde College. I began to find temporary labouring jobs and in between times attended courses at Hollyroyde. The tutor at Hollyroyde was an ascetic intellectual with great warmth and wit. Ralph Ruddock took an interest in what I was doing and began to push books my way.

"Why don't you go to University?" Ralph asked one day.

"It's impossible," I protested.

Ralph asked what I thought of one of the visiting lecturers.

"OK," I replied. "Not very bright."

"Right," said Ralph. "He's got a couple of degrees and you're brighter than he is... Remember," he continued, "knock on plenty of doors. Some doors will be slammed in your face but eventually you'll find someone who's been waiting for you."

This was excellent advice. In October 1950 I got on a coach to Oxford. I had a Sir Ernest Cassel Scholarship and a place at Ruskin College. On the coach with me was a shop steward friend who was unemployed. We had met a couple of weeks earlier and I had asked him if he would like to go to Oxford.

"Ruskin won't take you without money and the City Council won't give you a grant unless you have a place at College," I told him. "So write to Ruskin and say you have the money and to the Council and say you have the place."

I helped my friend write an essay for Ruskin on the closed shop. The opening sentence of his draft commenced, 'The non-trade unionist in the factory is a philistine within the gate who must be eliminated...'

"We start," I suggested, "'Some would say that the non-trade unionist...' Then we put the other point of view and proceed that way all through the essay like two people having an argument."

"And at the end?" my friend asked.

"Sum it up, pros and cons, and if you want my opinion, settle for tolerance or leave it open."

"I won't sell out," said my friend.

"You'll enjoy Oxford," I assured him.

Two years later when I moved to Magdalen College my one time friend won a scholarship to Balliol. He became a psychologist and took a doctorate and became Director of a Research Unit. He had collected some smart friends and cultivated a posh accent. I was saddened. He was much nicer when he was a radical shop steward.

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Chapter Four

My first year at Oxford involved a great deal of travel. I had foolishly assumed that on arrival at Ruskin I would immediately receive my scholarship money. It was not to be. On leaving Manchester I had pressed what money I had on others who needed it more and arrived at the College on Walton Street penniless.

I was met by the College Secretary, Ferdie Smith, who said, "You'll be staying at the Rookery in Headington," and bundled me into a taxi.

"Don't go away," I advised the taxi driver when we arrived at what had obviously been a large country house.

I then tried to explain my predicament to the students I encountered. Conway Morgan came to my rescue. He was to be my room mate and he was rolling a cigarette with one hand when we first met. He said nothing, but pressed paper money into my sweaty palm. During this manoeuvre he seemed to manage to keep one hand in his pocket and continue rolling his cigarette in a Rizla paper with the other. No mean feat! He was like that. Con was a very dark Welshman who could be eloquent but otherwise, unless he had something important to say, preferred silence. He chose on leaving Oxford to work in a Borstal. I had encouraged Con to take up social work so that I would have someone to accompany me to the Isle of Dogs. Con did not merely sympathise with the poor and down-and-outs and criminals, but totally empathised with them and he took a rather jaundiced view of anyone in authority. I had chosen the right man to ask for a loan to pay for my taxi.

Some of our lectures were given in Headington and others at Walton Street, and of course we attended University lectures. For our social work course we were attached to Barnet House, the social work faculty who in turn packed us off to London's East End for months on end. The Rookery at Headington was therefore mostly a base camp for our first year.

Returning from a sojourn in Shoreditch which had been made more tolerable by that area's Shakespearean connections, I found that an oafish oligarchy of Northern barbarians, masquerading as trade unionists, had taken over the house committee at Headington and were being a bore. These were not brothers but old fashioned bullies and they had drawn up long detailed rules and regulations which licensed them to annoy and irritate fellow students. While I was luxuriating in a hot bath one morning, one of the comrades burst in on me to announce that this was criminal activity. The committee had drawn up a timetable and one could only bathe by consulting this dreary document and taking a dip at an allotted time. As the bathrooms were mostly vacant with hot water gurgling in the pipes at all hours, this seemed like an attempt to turn our sylvan Oxford retreat into a Stalinist labour camp.

I found the fellow conspirator I needed playing the piano in the common room after dinner. Robin Higgs was quite unique at Ruskin. He was a London trolley bus driver whose mother played the piano in pubs in Holloway. Nothing odd in that. What made Rob special was that he was an extremely right wing Conservative. He also had a marvellous sense of fun and was an absolutely brilliant musician and mathematician. The simple belief we shared was that liberty and freedom were the hallmarks of civilisation and they ranked higher than food and shelter in our scale of values. While the oligarchy debated and bullied over coffee in the common room, I would encourage Robin at the piano to compose saucy ditties satirising these idiots who made up with malice and violence for what they lacked in wit and charm. The oligarchy was already restive, for some anonymous benefactor had stolen their set of rules and regulations and without their constitution the barbarians found it difficult to move motions. They spent a lot of time moving motions. Robin's Hymn to the Clean and Decent which he composed extemporaneously that evening stirred them up even more.

'No baths today
But we are dirty!
No baths today!
What can we do?
Take a furtive dip?
And risk persecution?
Big Brother is at the keyhole
Watching you!'

That evening, returning from a rare visit to a local pub, the staircase in the Rookery was dark. As I reached for the banister rail, yells and the thud of falling bodies came from the top of the staircase. I stood aside as the thugs of the oligarchy stumbled and bounced down the stairs.

"Sorry lads," said Robin, who was massively built. "I didn't see you crouching on the stairs in the dark!"

Robin revealed to me over a mug of cocoa that he had overheard the mob planning a Tyneside Friday night ritual, namely to kick the shit out of someone. The target was my good self and the lads had removed the light bulb and were lying in wait when Rob had accidentally kicked them down the stairs! Not since my schooldays, when belatedly the school champ Dawson had become my chum, had I known the joy of having a protector. Robin's massive presence terrified the oligarchy. They never found their rules and regulations.

"Where did you hide their ghastly constitution, Robin," I asked one sunny day.

"The one place those ignorant bastards would never think to look," said Robin.

"The library?"

"Naturally," said Robin.

Ruskin had been a delightful experience. The College specialises in courses for mature students, and I found the tutors to be very kind and generous with their time. Ruskin is in no way inferior to the older, richer and more prestigious colleges of the University and achieves extremely high academic standards. Ruskin is an oasis of liberal civilised values to which students and scholars have been drawn from all over the world. It was established by two young idealistic Americans at the end of the nineteenth century. An act of great generosity from the New World to the Old.

In December 1950 I attended a student conference at Transport House. The chairman was an old friend from Manchester University, Peter Morris.

"You are going to have your photograph taken for the Daily Herald," said Peter. "Pick out a pretty girl from the hall."

At the back of the hall was a young lady with a golden halo. The halo was her plaited fair hair pinned up. I pointed to her and called and she came forward. That was how I met Carol. We had our photographs taken and the next day I apologised for being a bit slow and asked her to marry me. There were a lot of good looking men at that conference and I was taking no chances. We sat holding hands in the foyer of Transport House when the porter decided to play Cupid and showed us into the TUC. General Chamber.

"It'll be warmer up here and a bit more private," he said.

Which goes to show one should never underrate the TUC. The brothers mean what they say about love and fraternity. Trade unionists are magnificent people. Sometimes a little foolish because they are very ordinary like the rest of us, but big-hearted, very generous and very loyal. What few Conservative politicians understand is that they are also intensely patriotic, conservative and yet liberal minded and the salt of the earth. Harold Macmillan understood them which is why I think he will go down in history as a truly great Prime Minister.

I now had a problem and Billy Hughes, the Principal of Ruskin was, quite rightly, rather cross. I had been accepted to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Catherine's Society by the Censor, a reverend gentleman, and I had changed my mind.

"What are you playing at, Harold?" asked Billy Hughes. "You've done extremely well to be accepted and now you say you won't go!"

"But I've also been accepted by Magdalen," I said. "And Balliol are quite keen."

"Good God, Harold," said Billy. "How many Colleges have you applied for?"

"Twelve," I said. I was taking Ralph Ruddock's advice literally. "I didn't think any of them would want me," I added.

I apologised to Billy Hughes, and suggested we take it that I had gone the wrong way about applying for admittance to a College and had been severely reprimanded. He should reply to the Censor accordingly and smooth his feathers.

And would I go to St Catherine's? asked Billy.

"No," I said. "He wrote me an extremely abusive letter without giving me a chance to explain. I acted in ignorance. That letter was meant to hurt."

The Censor of St Catherine's was not mollified. If I would not go to his College, the doors of every other Oxford College would be barred to me.

Perhaps the President of Magdalen had seen me out of politeness. His butler had taken my dirty raincoat and held it at arm's length. The President's study had large faded tapestries covering the walls.

"Hello, Mr Smith," said Boase. "Excuse the old clothes. I'm weeding the garden."

The butler poured the tea from an exquisite Georgian teapot and I thought, 'This is better than working in the factory.'

"So what have you been doing with yourself?" asked the President.

I explained about Ruskin. I had the University Diploma in Public Administration and had been awarded a State Scholarship in addition to my Cassel Scholarship.

"I was born into a working class family in Manchester with six brothers and sisters," I said. "I went into engineering when I was fourteen, into the RAF. at eighteen and served in Egypt..."

"Tell me about Egypt," said Boase.

"I was guarding the Suez Canal for a year," I said. "But it was the chance of a lifetime."

"What was?" asked Boase.

"To see Karnak and Luxor! I saved up all my money and leave and went to the Valley of the Kings..." I told him how wonderful it all was and that it was the greatest possible experience. "You really must go, Mr Boase," I said.

He threw back his head and laughed. "Mr Smith," he said. "All my life I've wanted to go to Luxor and all my life I've found excuses for not going. You had nothing, but you knew about Luxor and the Nile and the Valley of the Kings, and you found it all by yourself!" The President got out of his chair and shook my hand. "I think you're a Magdalen man, Smith. Welcome to the College! See Harry Weldon about your PPE. and tell him you're a member of the College. Then see the Dean of Arts in the cloister. Fill in forms and all that."

Harry Weldon was extremely friendly and we had a glass of sherry. I was beginning to drool at the thought of Magdalen. The very atmosphere made me tingle with joy.

"I'm a socialist, but not a communist," I told Harry Weldon. (I thought it as well to make that clear.)

Weldon chuckled. "Surprise me, Smith. Surprise me," he said.

After the Censor had got to work, Weldon saw me again. "What's the old sod up to, Smithy? What have you done to him?"

"I told him I didn't want to go to St Catherine's..."

"Quite right too!" said Weldon. "Who would want to go to the Cats' Home with that burke! Tell him to piss off!"

I nearly upset my sherry glass. "It's all right your telling him what to do, Mr Weldon," I said. "Sitting here in Magdalen sipping your sherry. He'll have my balls!"

Harry Weldon roared with laughter and tears ran down his face. "That's the stuff, Smithy," he said. "Tell the old bugger to go and..."

I began to form the impression that Weldon had no particular respect for men of the cloth. Some days later Boase sent for me.

"I'm afraid, Smith," he said, "you may be called on as a Magdalen man to make the supreme sacrifice..."

It seemed that Magdalen was supporting Balliol who needed some new laboratories on condition that Balliol helped Magdalen put through some crafty wheeze. Unfortunately the Censor of St Catherine's support was also needed. His friends were making noises and...

"I think I must withdraw my application, sir," I said.

"I knew you'd understand, Mr Smith," said Boase apologetically. "It's Balliol's labs and our little scheme and..."

'Oh well,' I reflected, 'it was nice being a Magdalen man while it lasted.'

Towards the end of term I was doing my washing in the basement at Ruskin when I had an idea. I was not committed to any College now. Balliol had probably got its laboratories. I would start again. I wrote to the President of Magdalen, apologising for my ignorance of the proper etiquette when last I applied. I now had no commitments and wished to make a fresh application...

Boase replied next day. 'Dear Smith. Glad to have you with us...'

I was a Magdalen man again.

"Good God, Smith," said Boase. "We let you in for three years and now you want senior status and to do the degree in two years. Did you ask Harry Weldon?"

"He said it was all right with him if you agreed."

"And the Dean of Arts?"

"He said if you agreed..."

"Look, Smith," said Boase. "Just because they let the Prince of Wales do it before the war doesn't mean..."

"The way those regulations are drafted," I said, "I'm sure they'd let me do it."

"Go on then, Smith, old chap," said Boase. "Tell them the story. Tell them the story."

I was housed with the Rhodes scholars in a set of rooms opposite the College. The sitting room was furnished with a deep club-type leather suite and limed oak sideboard, table and chairs. Mr Edwards was my scout and we became good friends.

On matriculation day the Junior Dean of Arts at Magdalen lined the new boys up in a crocodile. We were wearing sub fusc, that is dark suits, squares, gowns and white bow ties. The Junior Dean was taking no chances. He placed four reliable grammar school boys at the head of the crocodile and shoved choir and organ scholars - Dudley Moore was not untypical- who were notoriously wayward, in the middle. I was with the oldies, the Rhodes scholars, bringing up the rear, but the Junior Dean, suspecting we might slip into the pubs on the High Street, shoved us in the middle of the crocodile too.

Off we went down the High and into the Sheldonian which always resembles a Costain building site. I was chatting to Colin Eisler, a New Yorker, about everyday matters like the meaning of life and how to make a good cup of tea. We were plunging down a stone corridor when a labourer with a wheelbarrow blocked our way. We paused and then a man with a ladder came along. We set off again, but this time Colin and I were leading the back end of the Magdalen matriculation crocodile. We went round the building and passed the man with the wheelbarrow again when the cry went up, "We're lost!" and our followers deserted us and started opening every door they came to. Colin and I ran after them and then some smart public school boy got the scent and we burst in on the matriculation ceremony. There was one small problem. We had come through a door behind the Vice Chancellor who was on a raised dais. The Vice Chancellor looked startled as the Magdalen mob propelled by those behind hustled past him. As I squeezed past I noticed he was reciting his Latin speech from a script concealed in his mortar board.

The Junior Dean of Arts was somewhat displeased. His Latin speech slipped out of his hat. When he got us outside he just shook his head and groaned.

"Do you think we got matriculated, Sean?" asked Colin.

"About that pot of tea, Colin," I said.

An Oxford lady invited me to attend an orchestral concert at the Sheldonian. The concert was most enjoyable. I sent a letter of thanks. And that is how I became a friend of Miss Rosemary Spooner and her cousin, Miss Ruth Spooner.

I was invited to lunch and thoroughly enjoyed the burnt sausages and mash. I detest rare sausages. Miss Rosemary and I had a contest of apologies. She apologised for the burnt sausages. I apologised for being so greedy and eating every last burnt sausage. I think I won. Henceforth I was introduced to everyone in Oxford, for everyone in Oxford attended the Spooner Sunday teas, as the politest man in Oxford.

"I'm told you're the politest man in Oxford," said one curious lady at a Sunday tea.

"I like burnt sausages," I confessed.

"Tell me," she said. "What is the University? Is it the Colleges?"

The politest man in Oxford spent an hour telling Sir Maurice Bowra's wife all about Oxford University. I think Lady Bowra was trying to prove she was the politest lady in Oxford, because she said, "Really, how interesting," at least twenty times. On the other hand, as she was undoubtedly sending me up, perhaps she was really the rudest lady in Oxford, but I was too polite to tell her.

"You really are deaf, Harold," said Miss Rosemary one Sunday afternoon."

"I really don't think so, Miss Spooner," I responded.

"Humour me, Harold," said Miss Spooner. "I've made an appointment for you at the Radcliffe tomorrow."

"So you're not deaf," said the hearing specialist.

"That's right," I said.

The specialist covered his lips with his hand and continued talking. I tried to peer around his hand. How could I hear if I could not see?

"Can you hear now?" he asked, letting me see his lips.

He stuck a hearing aid in my ear and I recoiled. The traffic noise was awful and a whole aviary of birds was singing madly. I was being assaulted by a battery of sound. So, courtesy of Miss Spooner, I became officially deaf and was issued with a hearing aid. When I wore it I didn't need to turn it on as people shouted my head off. Not that I had much time for social activity at Magdalen. There were one hundred tutorials to attend and one hundred essays to write. We were all so busy. Friends one wanted to know better, Alf Morris, Guy Barnet, Gerald Kaufman, Fred Jarvis, all rushed by.

"Hi! How are you? Fine. See you!?"

Each week at Miss Spooner's one knew where there had been a revolution because she always had for tea the very latest batch of refugees. One sometimes wondered where last month's refugees had gone. Everyone was made to feel somebody special. I had my title. A shy Dagenham shop steward, which seems improbable, blossomed after being introduced several times as a very important trade union official. Another visiting shop steward held the whole room transfixed with a long boring yarn but it was not his story which was spellbinding. It was his table knife which he waved above his head in a repeat of the speech which paralysed London docks. The Spooners' guests were not quite paralysed, more hypnotised, as they watched the docker's knife, for clinging to the end of the knife was a blob of raspberry jam.

"Did we take their stinking offer?" demanded the docker.

The assembled professors and refugees shook their heads vigorously.

"No, we didn't!" said the docker emphatically, the knife and its cargo of jam cleaving the air.

On the last syllable the knife and jam parted company and everyone's eyes rose to the ceiling with the raspberry jam and then down to the fine Persian carpet where it landed.

"Oh sorry!" exclaimed the docker and he ground the jam into the carpet pattern with his boot.

"What a thrilling story," said Miss Spooner faintly.

"Lovely jam this!" said the docker reloading his knife.

If I was polite, what were the Spooner ladies? Saints, I think.

My friend Neil Smelser compared being a student at Magdalen to living in a monastery. Perhaps unlike Neil I found everything about Magdalen joyful and sheer delight. Like Neil I was not overawed either by Magdalen or by Oxford. My factory experience and my social work training in the East End of London protected me against being transported by magic casements and dreaming spires. Whilst I enjoyed the buildings and the literary and historical associations, I also very much appreciated the good food, fine furniture and the linen fold panels in the great Hall.

Yet we had so little time to appreciate the magnificence of Magdalen. Two or three years may seem time enough but in my case a hundred tutorials and a hundred essays left too little time for friendships and the astonishing range of social and political activity available. How did I find time to convene the Cole Group, to give papers to the Labour Club, to entertain ex-Ruskin people who were also reading politics to tea each week, to walk around Oxford with Philip Williams, to enjoy Sunday teas with the Misses Spooner, to write poetry, short stories and song lyrics? Not to mention long vacations at the University of Tours where Carol was polishing her French and a conference on European unity at Stuttgart? To make quite sure I did not lose my bearings the Labour Group appointed me as their delegate to the Oxford Trades Council.

Neil was a Rhodes scholar from Arizona and he was soon to achieve his ambition to become a Professor of Sociology. At that time Rhodes scholars were not supposed to marry so Neil and his beautiful girl friend, Helen Margolis, had to postpone their wedding. Helen was a pioneer women's liberationist and she argued fiercely on those issues. Neil developed a trick of dropping by for coffee with Helen and departing for lectures - I skipped them all - leaving me with Helen in full flow.

"Look after Helen, Sean," he would say and he would be away.

Was Neil trusting or did he know that Helen would pin my ears back and would still be giving men - and me as the sole representative available - hell when he returned much later? My daughter Helen was named for Neil's Helen and she is an active feminist too.

We wore short black gowns, but only when we had to wear them, which was usually for lectures and formal dinner in Hall. Neil and I had only one mortar board between us. We were really mean. At the end of term we would assemble in the Hall for Collections which were known to Magdalen undergraduates as 'The Inquisition.' In turn we would go up to the high table carrying our square and the dons would make sarcastic comments on our progress. Quite accurately after a term of Philosophy, Harry Weldon reported I was in danger of discovering the subject any time now. On one occasion Neil had preceded me as usual carrying our square. He was on his way back and my name had been called when the President took him aside to compliment him on his work.

"Your square, sir!" the head porter yelled as I set off up the Hall minus my mortar board.

The assembled scouts grinned as I indicated that I was carrying an invisible square under my arm. I managed to stand alongside Neil at the high table and our square disappeared from under Neil's left arm and reappeared under my right one! The dons must have thought we were a stingy pair. Actually it was Neil who was the radical. He loathed bullshit and the Oxford flummery. Having been brought up in a working class home I knew how it was to be well looked after and was quite happy to let Mr Edwards, my scout, be my mother, but Neil loathed having his shoes cleaned and would hide them. His scout usually found them, however, and Neil's casual loafers would be polished with a mirror finish.

Neil and Colin Eisler lived on the top floor of a beautiful old pile called the New Building. Neil would have preferred a building made of glass and plastic but Colin, who was studying Art History, fitted perfectly into Oxford's old buildings and ambience. Colin had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all beautiful artefacts and he had scrubbed and polished his rooms to make them elegant and fit for an aesthete. As Neil had to fight to keep his shoes scruffy, Colin fought a losing battle with his curtains.

"What's wrong with the drapes?" said Neil, puzzled.

Colin paraphrased Oscar Wilde's remark about the wallpaper in his room where he lay dying, "One of us will have to go."

Each day Colin took the offending curtains down and whenever he returned they would be back in place. Oxford scouts are made of stern stuff.

The Oxford I knew was tolerant, liberal and civilised. The tutors I knew were progressive in outlook and most of them were probably Labour or Liberal voters. Although serious and hardworking, they were also cheerful and given to joking and sending themselves up. There was a lot of laughter, mockery and teasing at Oxford. A good story, preferably against oneself, and a refusal to take oneself too seriously were always well received. An ability to amuse and provoke laughter was highly prized. As most of one's contemporaries were extremely able and clever people, nobody was interested in anyone who talked of achievement or ambition.

Although I mixed mainly with American and Commonwealth students at Magdalen because they were older, I had no problems with the boys from the public schools such as Eton, Harrow or Winchester. Unlike the grammar school boys who tended to wear blazers with college emblems, and college ties and tended to be quiet and restrained, the public school mob were not only self-confident, but often wild and streetwise. On boat nights they would pretend to be drunk and stagger around the quad with lavatory seats around their necks vandalising anything that was loose. I say 'pretending to be drunk' because I had been holed up in a tutor's library one night poring over his books and was hurrying back to my rooms through the quad where the Eton and Harrow lot were on the rampage, when the Junior Dean of Arts appeared and blew a whistle. The transformation was remarkable. The drunken revellers meekly removed their strange neck gear and trooped off to bed quietly. The public school boys, as I had found with those I had made friends with in the RAF., could be tough, coarse, wily and extremely adaptable. They could also, of course, be well mannered, scholarly and loyal.

The vandalism used to annoy me, particularly as the damage was meticulously recorded and costed and added to our bills. As the vandals were often rich and some of those who did not take part were poor, this did seem inequitable. Some of the public school boys appeared to have been starved for years. Being from the working class and a fastidious eater, I would rarely clean my dinner plate and would be surprised when a well-to-do ex-Etonian would offer to finish off my scraps. In conversation the public school boys would tell stories of hunger and deprivation which made my working class upbringing seem rich and privileged. They would also be contemptuous of their parents and critical of the lack of love shown to them. Too often they felt they had been packed off at an early age to get them out of the way. And some complained that excuses were made for sending them off in school holidays too. They would be aghast when I piled jam on my bread.

"You can't do that, Sean," they would protest.

When I queried why not, they would say, "You can't. It's not allowed."

"Pretend you're working class," I would say, "and pile it on."

Maybe they thought nanny or the school matron was still watching them.

All in all the student body at Magdalen was very mixed and quite cosmopolitan. No one was nasty to me, no one patronised me. I sometimes made the point that I felt so much at home because the Oxford colleges were founded for poor scholars.

"It's you rich sods who are the interlopers," I would claim.

Yet in my second year I became a little weary of Magdalen. And that because I fitted in too well. I felt the balance I had struck was threatened. I loved the deep leather chairs, good food and amusing chatter. Perhaps I felt I was being seduced. Most of the friends I had made in my first year were now in digs and I had chosen, as this was my final year, to keep my rooms in College. A joke that I was 'the college communist' stung me. At most other times I would have laughed it off by saying 'how true' and how 'it paid so well, the floor of my rooms had been reinforced because of the weight of the sacks of Russian gold.' Perhaps all my friends felt the same. A realisation that the world out there would have to be faced and some adjustment was necessary.

I decided that I had to junk all the Oxford flummery and get it out of my system. I would not register with the Oxford Appointments Board but would go back to factory work for a time. When my head was clear, I would then make a decision about the future. The temptation was to stay in Oxford and I had to resist it. Four years was enough. It was now or never. A research post at a University Institute was mentioned. How I wish now that I had taken it! Perhaps I was frightened that I would be corrupted and changed. Today, this puzzles me, but I am recording honestly how it felt in 1954.

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Chapter Five

I joined another Union, the Municipal and General Workers, and became a Smithfield porter. The butter factory where I worked frightened me. We wore clogs because the floor was running with water and after a few days it was as if I had never been at Oxford. I would carry Shakespeare in my pocket not just to read, but as a reminder of or key to that other world. At lunch time I would cross the road and hide in St. Bartholomew's Church. I had hoped to find myself but it was more as if I was getting deeper into a bog.

My job was to move crates of butter along a conveyor belt and bind the boxes with wire on a machine happily named, 'The Gordian.' A homosexual theatre buff with rotting feet, who shuffled around stacking empty cartons, told me of a young bloke he had recently helped escape from the factory on to the stage. The young bloke's name was Maurice Micklewight, and I have often wondered if Michael Caine, when he became famous, remembered the factory hand who took pride in helping others get on.

There was much ribald laughter and teasing when I took my place on the conveyor belt. The girls on the butter packing machines were not accustomed in those days to have students in their midst. I say 'students' because, having recently seen the Doctor series of films like 'Doctor in the House,' they decided I was a medical student. When I protested that I was not, they said I was really a psychologist, one of those doctors who listened to your dreams. They had seen that film too! The girls would invite me to listen to the glorious sexy dreams they had had and ask me to say what they all meant! The machines were very close to the conveyor belt and when the girls created a log jam, the men had to take turns to move along the conveyor and squeeze past the girls. We were timid and reluctant to do this, especially as we knew from experience that the girls might force us against the conveyor for a 'bit of fun' and all the girls would howl with laughter.

Before going to the packing machines the solid packs of butter would be mixed with salt and water in massive churns. The salt was kept in the cellars and because of the large number of rats down there, some cats were kept in the cellars. The sacks of salt we brought out of the cellar would be pungent with the stink of cat pee. The workers claimed that this is what gave the factory butter its appeal.

The butter would pass through the packaging machines in a variety of cheap paper or fancy silver wrappings, heading for a cheap corner shop or a Knightsbridge store. We all knew it was the same butter but when the men slipped some packs into their pockets they preferred the posh wrapper, for even they felt it tasted better. My refusal to steal the butter myself was eventually to lead to bad feeling. I was not only superior but dangerous. I pretended to take the butter, but they were not deceived. I might tell on them. Perhaps I was a boss's man, a spy? It was time to move on.

When I applied for the post of Labour Officer with the Department of Labour in Nigeria, Carol had just given birth to our first child in Hackney Hospital in London's East End. We named Helen Lindsey after Helen Margolis, who was now married to my college friend Neil Smelser, and Lindsey Miller, a fellow Oxford student we had met while attending a vacation course at the University of Tours.

Helen was of course the most beautiful baby ever born and Carol and