The Leader, the would-be bandwagon against crime, robust Buddhism, East End kid, Young Communist, Oswald Moseley & the Mitfords, British Mandate in ‘The Holy Land’ so-called, Channel Isles police, Trafalgar Square, Bournemouth Pavilion, Town Hall Annex, Westover Road YMCA, Blandford, Southport, Cornwall, Hounslow, Safeway’s, failure, Prohibition, destruction on the Promenade, Miami Beach, Muc-Off chain cleaner…
09h54-BST Sunday 04 May 2008-CE
A story in the newspaper in the mid 1970s first brought the man to my notice. He was calling a meeting of any citizens who might be concerned about crime. I attended and was bemused to discover that there were two themes. Not only did he have a lot to say on the main subject that I could agree with readily, but also he went on about Buddhism.
I spoke to him after the meeting and opined that he needed to drop the religious-type stuff and concentrate on the condemnation of government weakness on dealing with the criminals. It turned out that he accepted my point because, soon after, he changed the name of the group appropriately. I started going to his public meetings, and private ones at his house.
He had been an East End kid and done his share of taking wooden street paving blocks, whilst the road was dug up, to keep the home fire burning. He had joined the young communists. Then he had moved to the Oswald Moseley group and had risen high on the security side. He had shared a dining table with the leader and various Mitfords.
He had done military service in Palestine under the British Mandate, and served as a police officer in the Channel Isles. Finally, he found Buddhism, but his instinctive desire to be a political leader in his own right remained. He envisaged a balance between the vegetarian pacifism of the prince who found enlightenment under the tree, and war to topple crooks from power over the lives of innocent people.
I attended several of his activities designed to gain publicity and recruit members. Their degree of success was not quite zero, I found myself one evening sitting in a chair at his house, dramatically confronted by the inner circle (him and three others), and questioned up to the point where it would obviously have been either “do not call us, we will not call you” or “come and join us”. I passed and was unceremoniously but soberly sworn in.
I do not recall at which point I ceased to tag-along and became a committed member of the embryonic Party, but it was during a sequence of his events. I attended his Rally in Trafalgar Square. At some point he gave me the job of Security. I have always looked hard, despite being what lanky men call ‘short’. But I knew nothing of the task he assigned me.
I was doorman at his dance where an outstanding citizen was honoured in the Pavilion. I was on the door at his Town Hall Annex concert at which a Polish children’s singing-&-dancing group unsuitably shared the bill with a minor local rock band that whacked up the audio, assaulting the ears of the family audience. I became disillusioned. I achieved physical separation by moving to Blandford with my father who, soon after, moved to BC.
I returned to Bournemouth having blued the proceeds of my house-owning period, and you can read about the incident at the YMCA in Westover Road in a one-post Page of my sidebar ‘Afterlife: natural’. The man is definitely hugely gifted. Sadly, he adds a superstructure of nonsense upon his foundation of basic wisdom and insight. He gave credence to the idea that the Nazi thug in chief was a great leader who was let down by evil sidekicks. No way! I have to say that, as things turned out, I was wrong about taking the political channel to influence. The faith-based group would have had more chance, I now see.
Four years later, my father returned to UK, Southport this time. I moved to be near the place that was looking after him. My father died in Fall of 1985 and I returned to the West Country. I popped around between Hounslow and Cornwall for a few years and finally I landed back in Bournemouth in 1995. I went to Safeway’s on the second day and there he was, shopping. The other members had quit too. There was no pretence that it was not all over.
I met my old friend and former mentor again, by chance, in his beach hut as I rode along the Prom in the Summer of 2006. He admitted “I failed”. In fact, he had an influence on public opinion, along with similar campaigning voices. But crime will grow ever stronger whilst Puritan Prohibition (of mind-altering substances) enriches low life trash, and sabotages efforts to moderate and regulate use of the happy-herbs our ancestors discovered. Search ‘rendering’ on my sidebar for the full case. He could never see that. I failed to convince him on the issue, and also that he should write his autobiography, allowing me to transcribe tapes to WP if need be.
I avoid the Prom as much as possible. I love it, but it is barely ride-able now. The rebuilding (Miami-Beach-style) went way too far. Great wads of sand now make the way arduous for pedestrian and cyclist alike. I tried it again recently and, despite my efforts with Muc-Off chain cleaner, the system of my bicycle sounds like it is getting ground-out again. Silicon grains (unlike silicon chips which are an unmixed blessing?) infiltrate and destroy…
FIN 11h53
