Encounters with a future Tory MP, a popstar, and 25,000 placards

Here’s another episode in my memoirs of being an activist. You can read it at substack, or here!:

Between school and college I decided to take a ‘year off’ (what they now call a ‘gap year’). I didn’t have much of a plan, except that I wanted to travel, but not really to earn money (a difficult combination to pull off, frankly, and not one I would recommend). My dad had a brilliant idea, resisting which is something about which I have lifelong regrets, which was to go and live with Harry Ree for a few weeks/months and be his factotum. [1]

But, I did go and work for CND helping prepare for the big October 24th demonstration in 1981. I had two duties that autumn.

One was as an itinerant speaker. Some organization would contact CND and ask for someone to come and explain the case for disarmament, or debate with a Tory, or something like that, and make the case for people attending the march. Obviously, all invitations went to Bruce Kent, by then an unlikely semi-celebrity. But he couldn’t do everything, and someone, absurdly, decided that a grungy kid who had just turned 18, lived in a squat in Kentish town without hot running water, and was afflicted by an awkward shyness, should sometimes substitute for him.

I probably did 10 such events, mainly in London, and no audience was delighted when I turned up instead of Bruce, except at a youth club in Bromley of all places. It was getting close to the demonstration when I did the Bromley debate, so I already had quite a bit of experience. The youth of Bromley were very ungracious to my Tory opponent, a very straightforward, well-dressed, chap connected in some way to the United Nations Organisation, who was on his way, just a few months later, to becoming a Tory MP (in, actually, the constituency from which my family had moved to Oxford: he succeeded the truly awful Sir Ronald Bell, a man who would, today, feel that Restore is a bunch of namby-pamby liberals and whom, during the 1979 General Election, my just-turned 12 year old sister pursued down the street of our otherwise very welcoming village shouting “Ronald Bell is a fascist”).

He was a skilled debater, and my main assets for Bromley’s youth were that I was so poorly dressed, seemed like an unemployed yob, but had a relatively posh voice, was pretty articulate, and wasn’t this (ultimately ill-fated, though none of us knew it at the time) future Tory MP. Afterwards he was appalled to learn that I was planning to take the train back to my squat in Kentish Town, and insisted that I let him drive me back. I had no desire for his company, not because I didn’t like posh Tories but because I was intensely socially awkward with strangers. That said, declining seemed churlish in the extreme. When I pointed out that CND would pocket the fare they would have paid me, he cheerfully said “consider it a donation!”, and, to make matters worse, actually gave me a fiver (“for the cause, or for a good meal if that’s what you fancy”) which of course, I did give to the cause. I’m almost sure that his girlfriend lived in Berkeley Square. I rather liked him and was pleased when he became an MP and sad when he had to resign.

The other duty was a response to this perennial problem: How do you police the messaging on a demonstration of 250,000 people that will be broadcast round the world? You know you are going to attract all sorts of weirdos, grungies, plus thousands of activists who are taking advantage of your efforts to advertise their own wares. And you know that one left wing political party in particular (the SWP) has a rather wonderful commercial printing outfit, some really topnotch designers, and pockets deep enough that you can expect at least 5000 signs making it look as if the SWP is running the show, dominating the messaging.

I had a small budget, and was given a spot at the Pax Christi national headquarters in a Roman Catholic church in Hampstead, to get 25,000 placards made, all with CND signs and approved slogans, to be distributed to key stations very early on morning of the march (I was in central London by 5.30 am on October 24th, god knows how). I had a group of around 8 people volunteering regularly, and we had to get the posters made, cut the sticks (I couldn’t get 3ft sticks anywhere, so had to buy 9ft lengths to be cut with a buzzsaw), staple them together, and bundle them ready to go.

It went against my un-controlling nature about messaging (remember “Satan’s Bombs”?). And honestly, even now, giving me responsibility to get something like that done wouldn’t be the height of wisdom. But, thanks to the volunteers, it did happen.

Our location doubled as a quiet, off the beat, place for meeting with delicate people. Several Labour MPs not known for their support of CND cycled through, meeting with Bruce, or Dave Wainwright, or others, to chat about the campaign. Because we were the HQ for march logistics it was at our church that we met with the management and leadership of a band called the Jam, which had offered to play for free on the back of a lorry for us. The management was Paul Weller’s dad, and the leadership was Weller himself. I’ve read, since, that Weller is supposed to be something of a diva, but on this occasion, at least, he was anything but. When I asked who wanted what kind of tea and what kind of biscuits, Weller insisted on he helping me in the kitchen, and spent the entire time chatting as if he was really interested in what I was doing for CND. He was as quiet as I was during the meeting. When it finished, he and his dad didn’t, as I’d expected, leave immediately: his dad helped me bring the crockery back to the kitchen, and Paul dried the cups while I washed up.

Making 25,000 placards is probably easier than I remember it being. We’d have failed, though, except for a mysterious Australian chap called Peter Morris (who awed the New Zealanders I was living with) who turned up out of nowhere. He was probably in his late twenties, and just seemed grounded, calm, someone without ego issues. He brought along a bloke called John, who buggered off to a teaching job in the Seychelles straight after the demonstration. He also found a chap called George, from a local mental home, with cognitive impairments that were severe enough that I was always worried he’d hurt himself, and felt rather conflicted about whether he understood the cause and hence whether we were exploiting him. I worried about this especially because George always seemed so happy to be with us, and radiated a cheerfulness that even now I sometimes try to tap into when I am feeling low. He introduced himself to everyone in every situation, with “I’m George, ba tha way”, as if it was something they’d probably been wondering about for days. We worked from 10 am till… well, I rarely left work to walk back to the squat until 10 pm. But I did take weekends off.

It was during one of my forays into public speaking that someone did actually hurt themselves. It wasn’t George (thank god); it was a trade union official called Ron, who cut off his thumb with the buzz saw and was immediately whisked by the excellent Peter Morris to the Royal Free Hospital. They didn’t save the thumb. He didn’t ever come back to the project (fair enough), but a few years later I noticed him at Victoria station talking with a couple of eminent Labour MPs, with one thumb too few. I don’t know what happened to him. (Some people from around that time in CND have names sufficiently unusual, or profiles sufficiently prominent, that google helps – I have a rough idea what happened to AnnaJoy David, whom I always found a little annoying, and to Jenny Edwards, who was, as far as I could tell, gracious to everyone, and I’ve found one picture of Dave Wainwright, but there are quite a few people like Ron whom I don’t know what happened to them at all).

My final memory of George was the day of the demonstration. At 5.30ish we started unloading the placards in bundles. I’m not, and never have been, a morning person so was lagging even more than anyone else, until George turned up was utterly thrilled, introducing himself to everyone and giving us the energy we needed. He was at the party we held in the evening at the church, which was an appropriately relaxed affair. I left early, saying goodbye to him, and never saw him again.

The demonstration on October 24th was huge – maybe 250,000, certainly the largest demonstration London had seen for years. Looking at photographs now, I can see our placards everywhere. For once, we’d actually succeeded. The television cameras saw our message rather than half a dozen competing ones. Some of you may have carried one of my placards.

[1] Harry was a friend, and mentor, of dad’s, a school teacher turned SOE operative, turned education professor turned comprehensive school head, who also had a son who became a philosopher (Jonathan, whose work I’ve read but whom I regret never yet having met).