It is over 30 years since I had a temporary job working at the steel works at Shelton Bar. I was working for cleaning contractors that was based in Birches Head. The experience was like something from Boys and the Blackstuff and for many of the men employed I guess that it was a last hurrah, as I could not see many of them surviving the mass unemployment of the following decade.
Some of my colleagues sort to avoid work by hiding in the shed, which was close to an old furnace. Sometimes a splash of hot metal would send a shower of sparks on to the roof. Inside the building was a scene of indescribable squalor filled with many months of accumulated debris
A number of people who worked with the contractors had problems and some of them tried to flush their troubles away with drink. One, I was told, drank ten pints a night in a pub in Cobridge He did not say anything and sat slumped in a chair everything morning holding his head. Another rather haunted figure was illiterate and it was said that his wife died because he did not know how to use a phone to summon an ambulance.
One was so detested by the others that they got their revenge by substituting his filling in his sandwich with the contents of a mouldy something found in the back of a sofa in the shed. It reminded me of the line in the "Odd Couple" of it being either old meat or young cheese. There was a rumour that he was the son of a very wealthy businessman who despairing of his congenital idiot of a son had paid him off by buying him a house in Stoke. One of his few friends said that he had called around to see him and had been stunned by the state of decoration. It would seem that he covered the walls of the house with the contents of a wallpaper sampler. The root of the dislike that he provoked was the belief that he had made a pass at one of the men.
Another a young worker with a harelip would earn extra money by running a disco each weekend on a local estate. He would often clash with people and would turn up on a Sunday morning with a fresh cut or bruise gained after a brawl on the dance floor.
I worked outside helping to clear up an oil leak into a nearby brook. I worked in an enclosed culvert in which there were heated pipes. The oil was a foot deep. I filled buckets of the sand and oil mix, which was hauled off in a dumper. It was August and it was hot. I gained some satisfaction when it was all cleared up. I was working with a very cheerful Irishman who had the unnerving habit of tossing the butts of his cigarettes into the fuming oil. He always apologised afterwards. I was filthy and there was nowhere to wash. I would travel back home on the bus to Abbey Hulton looking like tar baby. No one would sit beside me. It took several hours to clear the mess off as it had stained the skin.
One aspect of my time with the cleaning company was a friendship that has now lasted 30 years. I was reading history at York and as I had a few essays to write decided that I should try to catch up with some reading. I was reading the "Social History of the Third Reich" when I met up with Greg. He assumed that I was a Nazi. It was only over the sausage and chips in the canteen that the misunderstanding was cleared up and I found out that he was going to York that October. We have remained friends since; in fact he reminded me that it has been 30 years this month
What about other great figures of the past? Bach has been accused as an anti Semitic because of disparaging references to the Jews in his music especially in the St John Passion.. Bach has come down to us as a good man and fabulous organist and composer who struggled to make a living for his 20 children - a number of whom became composers in their own right - by playing in churches and writing music for sacred services and the occasional noble patron.
It has been pointed out that far from being an innocent who knew only music, Bach was a learned man who had a vast library of theological works and was a devout follower of Lutheranism. And let us not forget that Luther also penned anti-Jewish rants that would resonate centuries later with both Wagner and Hitler. There is no way of knowing whether or not Bach was an anti-Semite, but he was still a product of his time, his country and his church.
Finally it occurs to me by judging the figures of the past we lay ourselves open to similar charges of humbug from the people of the future. What will they make of our war mongering or consumerism with the tremendous waste of finite resources.
I have no idea whether she did that or whether it went on alcohol. That was the only time I saw her and it proved to be the last. From reading the account of her life in the paper it seemed to be a cheerless life a broken childhood, addiction to alcohol and the depressing carousel of regular court appearances, eviction, homelessness, begging leading to further court appearances. I hope in all this she found some happiness. Realisation that she needed to break out of this hopeless cycle is apparent from the October article but sadly it was not to be. I am sure that the authorities, the Police, Salvation Army and other others did their best but is likely that she was unable to change her situation.
It led to the lonely and unnoticed death reported last week. Of course her fate is not unique.
Excessive alcohol use kills around 20,000 people each year. Liver disease is predicted to be the greatest single killer within the next decade. And the annual bill of £3 billion to the NHS is significantly higher than previous estimates. It would cover more than 170,000 kidney transplants, or the entire cost of the breast cancer drug Herceptin for the next 30 years.
In October Clare asked for the people of Leek not to judge. She is beyond human judgement now.
Vex not her ghost: let it pass but recall her fate and the fate of others like her.
He is pictured with the officers of the club wearing a trademark hat and beaming at the camera. That visit on the 4th April 1960 is not recorded perhaps it was a courtesy visit. There is no report of a meeting or an address to the club. He liked the town and in a letter to the recently appointed Principal of Keele University, George Barnes written in September 1956 states that "Leek is quite the best town anywhere and the Norman Shaw Church with Lethaby fittings and Hamilton Jackson paintings is finer than its counterpart at Ilkley".
He liked the people of the area as well. Several months earlier when he congratulated Barnes on obtaining his post at Keele he commended the area by saying" I love Stoke on Trent and people of the Trent valley are the nicest in England and the toofer, the naicer".
There were a number of reasons that he was drawn to this area during this decade. He had a friend who lived in Leek DB (Charles) Peace who was the chief planning officer for the County Council who introduced many of the buildings and landscape of the Moorlands to Betjeman. He was very friendly to Peace’s wife and tried to help her literary career. In March 1956 he wrote to Longman’s publisher pressing the case for the publication of a journal that she had written about Leek during the 1950s describing it as a "wonderful record of what life in a provincial town is like. A sort of modern Flora Thompson". Longman’s declined to publish Mrs JM Peace’s work on Leek during this period. I wonder what happened to it? Do any readers know? Betjeman reveals his High Anglicanism distaste and possible snobbery for nonconformity in the letter, "this was the first work by an articulate Congregationalist that I had heard".
He husband was an enthusiast for Staffordshire Churches and wrote the introduction to the county in Collins Guide to the English Parish Church published in 1958 with illustrations by John Piper. I have a battered, well-thumbed copy bought in a second hand bookshop in Stratford on Avon in the 90s. The concluding remarks by Peace in the introduction are apposite and to the point.
"In landscape and architecture Staffordshire is a good average with numerous high spots. There is quite remote country especially in the centre and the north; there is much industrialised building in parts and both in the towns and the countryside there are many churches which deserved to be loved more widely".
They are listed in Betjeman’s book sometimes with gnomic descriptions. Alstonfield "pleasant setting with box pews, Checkley" the best medieval church in North Staffordshire", Cheddleton with its Burne Jones glass and Rushton" a church of rare interest and individuality and Grindon a three word entry "spire, massings, setting". The longest entry however is for All Saints in Leek " a nice contrast between the intimate scale and great arches" and a special mention for the " splendid green marble font"
Another reason for visiting the area was Betjeman’s long-term friendship with George Barnes, which dated back to 1930 when Barnes was Head of the Talks Department at the BBC. Barnes would later become head of the Third Programme and used Betjeman frequently in programmes on heritage and architecture. He discerned in Betjeman a great ability to communicate with a showman’s ability to describe to the public some of the architectural and landscapes on offer in Britain. Barnes played a pivotal role in introducing Betjeman to the British public initially through the radio and as the 50s progressed on the new medium of radio. In 1956 Barnes was appointed to senior academic role at Keele and the poet was a frequent visitor praising the local towns both in the Potteries and beyond. Betjeman passed on the love of church crawling to Barnes’s son Anthony who in later life became the Director of the Redundant Churches Trust. Later Betjeman was regularly visiting an ailing Barnes and in the words of Betjeman’s biographer AN Wilson, whose book was published in 2006 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, thought the letters written to Barnes the most impressive things that he wrote
To Barnes by this time dying of cancer he wrote in August 1960
" Like you, I’ve spent my life avoiding pain, mental and particularly physical. I know enough however to know how awful pain is, I sometimes think that it is the only thing to reconcile me to dying- to get out of pain…I cannot see that pain serves any purpose except to give one joy and thankfulness for not having it".
It was a very appealing side of his character that he was very supportive of friends as well as the anonymous hospital visiting that he carried out meeting and offering support to strangers on regular unpublicised visits to St Bart’s in London
North Staffordshire was very close to Chatsworth House and therein is another reason. Betjeman met Lady Elizabeth Cavendish in memorable circumstances. They met at a dinner party held on the 29th May 1951. The event was auspicious for students of espionage as another of the guests of that night Guy Burgess had fled a few days earlier to Moscow and another guest that evening Anthony Blunt was expected to be arrested at the party by MI5. Elizabeth Cavendish was the daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. She was a sister in law of Kitty Kennedy and friend of her brother JFK. At the party Betjeman fell in love with Elizabeth Cavendish and the feeling was reciprocated. It was a relationship that lasted up to his death in 1984. He had been married for many years to Penelope it was an unhappy relationship. He spent a great deal of time at Elizabeth’s cottage on the Chatsworth estate passing his time " in rest and quietness" in contrast with the rows at his married home in Berkshire. Early in the relationship he wrote a poem "In Willesden churchyard" which describes the illicit affair that the Victorian writer Charles Reade had he uses the poem in an attempt to dissuade the curious.
AN Wilson records the morbid modern fixation that people have about the private lives of others is illustrated
" Did Laura gently stroke her lover’s head?
And did her Charles look into her eyes
For loyal counsel there? I do not know
Doubtless some pedant for his PhD
Has ascertained the facts".
He was also a regular visitor to Chatsworth from this time onwards so much so that there was a bust of Betjeman placed at the stately home.
Above all, he liked to gad around Britain and from his letters edited by his daughter and the monumental biography written by his literary executor Bevis Hillier he spent a great deal of time during the 50s and early 60s on the move and involved in campaigns to save the towns and cities of the country from the excesses of architects and planners. In 1957 he founded the Victorian society, a period of building and design, which at the time was deeply unfashionable.
In 1960 he supported the doomed campaign to save the Euston Arch. I am sure that older readers will recall the arch outside the station. I first went to London in 1961 and alas to young to be aware of this splendid piece of Victoriana. Locally and later on his support was enlisted in the successful campaign to preserve Cheddleton Railway station reputedly designed by Pugin the celebrated Victorian architect. And probably there is another reason why Betjeman came to Leek frequently and explains why there are few records after 1960. Betjeman was an enthusiast for the railways for steam and for branch lines. And of course Leek’s Railway station closed in 1960 the year that Sir John is seen being welcomed on the front page of the local paper.
At the end of AN Wilson’s book the Duchess of Devonshire uses the phrase " blinding charm" about him. I can see that charm deployed to staff and people that he met in Leek as he got off the railway station with his slouched shoulders, his old coat, his battered hat and that beaming smile.
The crusading editor WT Stead spoke at an anti Boer War rally in Leek in October 1899. It was an unruly affair with taunts and fists flying between pro and anti war protestors. An interesting man Stead. He was a strong supporter of women’s rights and was proud that he was amongst the first employers in the country to pay women the same as men. He also believed that he was a reincarnated Charles II. Stead died on the Titanic so even at the end he had a nose for a good story. But it is in his role as the creator of the New Journalism essentially the pioneer of investigative journalism that he should be recognised.
In 1885 and acting with the Salvation Army, he uncovered a trade in child prostitution in the London underworld. He was shocked to find that the government knew of the problem but turned a blind eye to protect the trade's wealthy clientele. Stead’s crusading journalism led to an unprecedented outcry and the government forced to legislate to raise the female age of consent from 13 to 16.
Good journalism according to Stead "to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed." Since his time there have been many examples of investigative journalism that has spoke truth to power. The Sunday Times campaign on behalf of thalidomide victims which involved Stoke South MP Jack Ashley in the 70s. Veronica Guerin who combined her accounting and journalism skills to expose Dublin drug dealers who murdered her. The Telegraph and MP expenses scandal.
Such journalism has a role to play and I fear that in the understandable panic over the hacking scandal this might be lost sight of.
Stead wrote "Society...outwardly, indeed, appears white and glistening, but within is full of dead men's bones and rottenness".
The media whether old or new has a role in rooting out corruption, but the problem over recent years is not too investigation but not enough. By investigation, I mean the dogged extraction of facts that those with power would wish to conceal. Investigative journalism has for years been in decline perhaps it needs a reincarnated Stead.
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Staffordshire made its impact upon him throughout his career. The clash with the Staffordshire based leader of the Tory Party in the 1840s Sir Robert Peel of Drayton Park and MP for Tamworth made his career. Early attempts to establish himself foundered perhaps because Disraeli because of his religion and his foppish personality was regarded with suspicion. Disraeli established his reputation through his journalism and his writing. He wrote his first novel when he was 23 and followed this up with a series of political novels of which Sybil published in the 1840s is the best known. He was interested and sympathetic to the demands of the working class and in his early years in Parliament called for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and working people against the rising power of industrialists.
In 1841 Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister and his action in repealing the Corn Laws- a tax on bread, which benefited the Tory gentry, split the party five years later. During the debate on repeal Peel was goaded by Disraeli who felt that the landed interests were being betrayed. The resultant divide had the greatest implications for Disraeli as most of the Government sided with Peel and Disraeli was left with a small group of landowners leading the surviving rump of the Conservative party into many years of opposition. Disraeli first opportunity to become Prime Minister came in 1868. As he remarked, "I had climbed the top of the greasy pole". It was a difficult and lengthy ascent. The administration was short lived and within 10 months the Liberals lead by Disraeli’s great parliamentary rival Gladstone was returned to power.
It was a considerable achievement by Disraeli in an admittedly more relaxed age to write a major novel- Lothair. A novel by a former Prime Minister was a unique event. The book is the life of a young nobleman who is rootless, well connected and very wealthy. Lothair becomes a target for conversion by the Catholic hierarchy. He joins the fight for Italian independence against the armies of the Pope and his experience counters any desire to convert. It is an unflattering portrayal of a manipulating Catholic Church as well as an attack on an aristocracy, which is in danger of degenerating into a useless caste
Lothair has strong connections with North Staffordshire as two of the houses mentioned in the novel are Brentham and Muriel Towers a thinly disguised Trentham Park and Alton Towers. Trentham was the home of the Duke of Sutherland and Alton Towers that of the Earl of Shrewsbury. The eighteenth and nineteenth earl served in Tory administrations that Disraeli was a member and Sutherland was equally a well-known local Tory MP. Alton Towers was built 1811-1820s and the great early Victorian architect Augustus Pugin made substantial alterations in the 1830s. Pugin would later work closely with the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury and was much interested in medieval art. He used his associations with Alton to visit medieval churches in the area and the remains of monasteries such as Croxden to inspire him to design one of the great buildings of the gothic revival- the Roman Catholic Church at Cheadle. Another great figure of Victorian design was less convinced. William Morris on a day trip from Leek described Alton Towers as a "gim-crack palace of Pugin’s"
Disraeli however was enchanted by the setting, "Muriel Towers crowned a wooden steep, part of a wild and winding and sylvan valley at the bottom was a rushing stream. A vast park spread in all directions beyond the limit of the eye ornate and choicely timbered"
The first Duke of Sutherland had married into wealth having inherited vast areas of land in the Highlands of Scotland. The family’s name is blemished, as they are held responsible for the Clearances in which Scots were evicted from the land and forced to move to the industrial towns or emigrate to North America. This compulsory movement of people was done with great cruelty. A huge corroding statue of the Duke on which much blame was directed stands on hills above the Trentham estate another one is at Golspie in the Highland.
Trentham Hall and Gardens were created in the late 18th century. The house was extended and improved in the 1830s by Charles Barry later to be the architect of the Houses of Parliament. New bedrooms were added, a sculpture gallery and a 100-foot clock tower, a grand entrance with portico supported by stone sculptors of beasts. Trentham or Brentham in the novel is described as " agreeable" of long walks into forested ways of " thick and fragrant scrubs and a dell of high trees and gothic shrines". Trentham then as now is admired for its gardens; huge bushes of honeysuckle and bowers of sweet pea and sweet briars, and jessamine clustering over the walls". Disraeli visited Trentham frequently staying with the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland following the death of his wife. He spent Christmas1873 at the house.
The following year he became Prime Minister for a second time he was assisted by a swing away from the Liberals in towns like Leek. His Government was a reforming one and was able to push through a series of acts, which would help to improve the position of the working class. He was to die in 1881. His main biographer believes that his sceptical outlook makes him of all the Victorian figures the least dated. There is a champagne sparkle about Disraeli. Another goes so far as to describe him as " lovable". At the end one has to admire his wit: on his deathbed he was asked whether he would like a visit from Queen Victoria. " No it is better not. She would only ask me to take a message to Albert"
First they came for the bankers and their bonuses and they were venal and incompetent
And it didn’t involve me, as I’m not venal and incompetent
Then they came for the politicians and their expenses
And it didn’t involve me, as I’m not venal and incompetent
Then they went for the press and their spying
And it didn’t involve me, as I’m not venal and incompetent
Then they went for the police and their bungs
And it didn’t involve me, as I’m not venal and incompetent
So how come I end up paying?
