The Hastings Trawler — 2 (January 2006)

WELCOME This month's trawlings are like ‘Oxo’s’ ‘Wonders of the deep’. To explain — on high days and holidays’ an older fisherman known as Oxo, would display the unusual part of the day’s catch, on an old costermonger's barrow. There would be a Dover sole, lip-sticked and with a cigarette in its mouth, a dogfish on a pet’s lead and perhaps the odd exotic from warmer waters.

But, like this month's Trawler, the fishing fleet would have netted or dredged up evidence of the darker side of life. Shell cases and ammo belts, buttons and cap badges, the detritus of war.

This month we show how the Great Beast of numerical fame is still lodged in the corridors of power and how a rather less subversive force was washed up in Hastings. That a cult can still exert power and influence over otherwise rational intelligent people may surprise you, but I know to my cost it is so, and I hope that the new year will see a little more openness and honesty in our public and commerical life.

So, enjoy all the Trawler has to offer —and the usual greetings appropriate for this time of year

Graham Frost Publisher

Editor-in-Chief Francisco Ferrer Guardia Art Director Vitali Golev ✆ +44 (0)20 7490 5968 Production Editor Nestor Makhno Illustrators Lester Magoogan, Lesley Prince Richard Warren, Robert Sample Contributors Kate Ansell; John Barker; Stuart Christie; George Greaves; Pauline Melville;Ted Newcomen; Steve Peak; Freddie Phethean; Pam Thomas Advertising ✆ +44 (0)1424 436521

January 2006, Vol II, Issue 1 ISSN 1745-3321

The Talk of The Old Town A public arena for news, views, gossip and tittle-tattle about goings on in Hastings, St Leonards-on-sea, and far beyond.

2-6

Commentary Debate: Kentucky Fried Schooling — the shape of education to come? 7-8

Features Chess: A history of Hastings Chess Tournament

10-11

People: Aleister Crowley — The Hastings years

12-15

Maritime: Whither Hastings Fishing Fleet?

16-17

Politics: Who owns Hastings foreshore?

18-19

Society: Freemasonry — defending the status quo?

20-27

Food: Olives and Oil — the groves of Mani 28-29

Fiction

Info Panel Publisher Graham Frost

IN THIS ISSUE

Published by Boulevard Books 32 George Street Hastings TN34 3EA ✆ +44 (0)1424 436521 www.thehastingstrawler.co.uk editor@thehastingstrawler.co.uk Cover artwork Aleister Crowley © Robert Sample sample_robert@hotmail.com

Except where indicated otherwise, the copyright in all articles, photographs and illustrations remains with the author, photographer, artist, etc. © 2006 by Boulevard Books.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced or retransmitted without prior written authorization from Boulevard Books.

Whitbread prize-winning novelist Pauline Melville tells the disturbing story of Harry Vince, ‘The Rocker on the Hill’ 30-31

Letters Russian Arctic Defence Medal

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Abbot Print, The Applestore, Workhouse Lane, Icklesham, East Sussex TN36 4BJ ✆ +44 (0)1424 815111 F +44 (0)1424 815222 @: sales@abbotprint.co.uk http://www.abbotprint.co.uk Annual subscription £30.00 (UK) £40.00 (airmail RoW)

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HASTINGS TRAWLER THE TALK OF THE OLD TOWN Hastings Country Park

— WHERE’S THE BUDGET?

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astings Borough Council has recently distributed a CD for public comment, which covers the management plan for Hastings Country Park. This extensive document goes into considerable detail about the development and management of this superb local asset but strangely omits any budget!

The plan fails to say how much the proposed improvements will cost and how they will be funded — now or in the future. Hardly surprising, given the uproar caused when the council floated the idea of introducing car parking charges to this site of outstanding natural beauty. The management plan still conveniently forgets to say if it’s intended to maintain free access for local residents.

A petition against parking fees was organised by a local pressure group, WAROCH (Walkers Against Rip-Off Charges in Hastings) and signed by over 900 people. One councillor dismissed this, as ‘just a bunch of Fairlight Nimby’s who would sign anything’. An unfair and inaccurate comment that ignored the fact most petitioners were actually residents of Hastings. This arrogance won’t be forgotten when the next round of local government elections are due and the group will be asking prospective councillors where they stand on the issue of introducing car parking fees.

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Park have also commented on the extensive and costly new fencing that has been erected so that livestock can be grazed to control unwanted ferns and other vegetation. In some places the fencing is three layers deep and is reminiscent of the borders of the former East German Democratic Republic — only the watchtowers and minefields are missing!

The Council’s enthusiasm for barbed wire is also rather odd given that it’s no longer the obstacle of choice for most professional landscape managers. Firstly, it’s offensive and like a red rag to a bull to most walkers, and secondly, modern farmers believe its capital expense is not justified by the potential injury it can cause to livestock.

So far only a few cows have been sited in a couple of fields and the rest of the park has not yet been stocked.

Rumour has it that the authorities forgot that animals also need access to fresh water if they are to survive. Until this little hiccup has been ironed out we are unlikely to see Highland cattle or any other grazing animals in the vicinity.—TN Transport

TRAIN OF THOUGHT

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recently went by train from Hastings to Agen in southwest France. First I travelled to Ashford International where I changed onto the Eurostar to Paris where I then transferred again for Agen. That’s a journey from

Ashford of almost 600 miles each way — the train actually arrived in Agen 2 minutes early! On the forward leg of my Hastings-Ashford journey (30 miles each way) the train was nearly 13 minutes late, on the return leg the train was cancelled altogether because of a mechanical breakdown I had to return from Agen very early which meant being at the station by about 6 a.m. I was amazed to find it a hive of activity. Not only was the ticket office open but so was the station shop and buffet. I counted half-a-dozen railway staff already busy sweeping the waiting rooms (which were actually open) and platforms, emptying the numerous litter bins (I counted about 15 in the station area), and cleaning the toilets.

This is all amazing given that Agen is considerably smaller than Hastings, a provincial backwater, much further from the nation’s capital. Hastings by comparison at 6 a.m. looks like the entry to a fairground ghost ride with hardly any staff, even fewer litter bins, but lots of CCTV cameras — you can really see where our priorities lie.

What is it about successive British governments which makes them

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incapable of running a cheap, safe, clean, and efficient public transport system? Answers please in portfolio form and not exceeding 40,000 words. Maybe it has something to do with the French being citizens whilst we are still subjects? ‘Vive La Revolution!’—TN Council Tax

A MATTER OF STATISTICS! WHY

YOU PAY SO MUCH COUNCIL TAX

BRITAIN IS THE MOST EUROPE ne of the unsung assets of Hastings is the quality of its public library. As a previous resident of York and Bath — both towns boasting real, rather than ‘virtual’ universities, I can vouch for the fact that Hastings Public Library is simply streets ahead.

The helpful and friendly staff will assist readers to get any book through the inter-library loan system. One that I would particularly like to recommend is Kevin Cahills’ extensive study, Who owns Britain — The hidden facts behind land ownership in the UK and Ireland’, published by Canongate Books.

I was shocked by the truth revealed in Cahill’s 13-year investigation into who owns this island’s most valuable asset — its land. The book shows how a tiny minority has maintained its grip on land ownership and continues to hold back the UK economy and perpetuates rural, and by default urban deprivation — a phenomenon not unfamiliar to Hastings residents and one that contributes to the high levels of tax and excessive house prices that most of us are forced to pay.

We needn’t go into the story of how our countryside was expropriated by an unelected minority in a series of great land grabs starting with the Norman Conquest and consolidated by the Acts of Enclosure. Let’s not get distracted by thoughts about the hundreds of years of ‘legal’ injustices, but just stick to the economic facts AND HOUSING IN

EXPENSIVE IN

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and see how history still ensures a permanent annual redistribution of money from us, the less-affluent urban majority, to a wealthy land-owning minority.

As recently as just five years ago Cahill revealed that 70 per cent of the land in Britain is still owned by less than one per cent (yes, you read it correctly, that’s one per cent) of the population. Fifty-nine million people in Britain lived on just 4.4 million residential acres and were subject to a land tax (the Council Tax) of about £10.4bn a year. By contrast, a mere 189,000 land-owning families paid only £103m in Council Tax on their actual homes, but not on their rural acres. These instead, received a direct agricultural subsidy of about £2.3bn, plus other subsidies from the EU and various bodies, which probably brought the total closer to £4bn.

So just a few years ago each residential home coughed up an average of £550 in tax each year (yes, you don’t have to point out that this is over double now days). Yet at the same time each land-owning family home got an average handout (paid for out of our taxes) of £12,169 per year.

In addition, those 59 million of us lived in about 24 million dwellings which were crammed into only 7.5 per cent of the nation’s land area — making Britain one of the most urban and densely populated countries on the entire planet. Don’t believe the nonsense peddled by the CPRE (Campaign for the Privileged of Rural England) that our beautiful rural acres are in danger of being swamped by urban sprawl. Far from facing a shortage of land for new homes, this country actually has a huge surplus.

Cahill speculated on the outcome of the government doubling the amount of land in England and Wales available for housing. That’s an increase from 3.3 million acres to 6.6 million acres — which still leaves untouched over 80 per cent of our green and pleasant rural land.

The immediate effect would be a

sharp drop in the value of building land which currently makes up between half and two-thirds of the cost of a new house. This would allow two things — cheaper new homes for first time buyers, if maintaining existing standards, or extra money to provide more and better features. It would also stimulate economic activity and employment.

The current housing shortage and ridiculous prices are in the interest of nobody except landowners, property developers, and estate agents. Any talk by the CPRE (actually the Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England) about farms being taken out of agricultural production due to increased availability of building land are simply a lie. Especially when you consider that 40 per cent of farm sales today are to wealthy urban nonfarmers (probably all members of CPRE) just seeking the lifestyle of the rural idyll.

Recent reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy which merely move farm subsidies away from food production into ‘caring for the countryside’ will do nothing to promote the renaissance of our rural communities. Instead, they will perpetuate our public subsidy of the very rich by the average urban homeowner and ensure we continue to pay exorbitant Council Taxes and house prices.

Spiralling Council Taxes and ridiculous house prices are probably two of the most serious financial issues facing most ordinary families.

Isn’t it odd how the government and

National and local government recognises that the ‘citizen’ is the most important stakeholder in the complex mix of social, cultural and political issues that demand their attention.

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the media don’t want to talk about these issues in any detail? Can it be that they form part of the new ‘slavery’ of debt that the establishment needs to control us all?—TN *Who Owns Britain? The hidden facts behind land ownership in the UK and Ireland by Kevin Cahill, £16.99.

Published by Canongate (ISBN 1841953105).

De La Warr Pavilion

GREAT ARCHITECTURE! SHODDY FINISH!

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long with thousands of others I recently went to the much delayed re-opening of that masterpiece of Modernist architecture, the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea. Like other enthusiasts for this building I had been looking forward to seeing what £8m in public funds and over 20 months of refurbishments had done for the structure. What we all found was a construction site that was still far from complete and poor quality finishes which would shame some of the bodgy home make-over shows which currently clog our TV arteries.

In fact, it looked like a building that was still in desperate need of some refreshment, to reach those parts that recent efforts have obviously failed to reach. OK, perhaps it was a mistake to have the re-opening before all the work has actually been completed but what we all saw was some very second-rate craftsmanship. Particularly in the finishing touches — in fact they were 4

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so poor I can’t believe that the current restoration architects, John McAsian and Partners are going to let this go.

The media, especially the architectural press has always been full of praise for the Pavillion, and the reopening has been no exception.

Architectural snobs would argue that most of the population wouldn’t recognise great design if it fell on them but most of us can recognise poor quality workmanship, second rate finishes, and sheer grubbiness.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just too picky? Go and see, ask yourself the question, ‘would I accept this quality from someone doing my house up?’.

Look at the rough paintwork smeared over the edges of adjoining materials, especially at the junctions of walls and metal window frames.

Look at the tired old stainless steelwork — it’s in desperate need of some polishing. Terrazzo staircases are still stained and grubby. Fittings are still hanging off walls awaiting a few finishing screws. Look at the bodgy flashing to the roof parapet.

Isn’t the block paving to the roof terrace just second-rate and completely uninspiring — surely this isn’t what the original architects, Mendelson and Chermayeff had in mind?

I could go on, and it’s a shame that such poor finishing has spoiled a fine piece of architecture. Perhaps it’s not too late and a final push will see the Pavilion restored to an acceptable standard.

Maybe it’s the curse of Modernist architecture that it only actually works when it’s brand new and simply doesn’t wear well? Just like a modernist kitchen only works if you never cook and always keep it perfectly clean and tidy — the slightest clutter or mess and the whole impression completely fails.—TN

Rip-off Britain

SAVING A PACKET

The good citizen, nobly and voluntarily, does his best to assist the guardians of public welfare and safety to sort out their considerable financial problems.

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ike many Hastings residents we get our gas and electricity supplied through Utilita. According to the various consumer websites and depending on your level of consumption this company is supposed to be the cheapest supplier of dual fuel in our area.

Imagine my surprise when on opening my latest power bill I found that we owed a shed load of money for gas supply. Very odd, given that we haven’t actually had the central heating on since last May, thanks to the mild Autumn weather.

On checking the ‘estimated’ gas meter reading supplied by Utilita I found that this was way off the actual mark. Instead of being over £71 in debit as they claimed, we were actually over £63 in credit — a difference of over £134!

This is not the first time that I have found that ‘estimated’ power bills are wildly excessive, nor am I the only person to notice this con trick. In fact the practice appears to be very widespread among all gas and electric suppliers.

What this immoral practice means is that consumers are providing power companies with a massive and totally free bank loan. Say a power company has half a million customers and it ‘overestimates’ every home’s bill by an average of £134, then we are all contributing to a free loan of £67m per year! That’s money they don’t need to borrow from elsewhere to run their companies

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or they can just stick it in the bank on deposit at 5 per cent and make themselves £3.35m in interest — all at our expense and there is nothing illegal about it.

So the lesson is never ever accept an ‘estimated’ gas or electric meter bill from your power supplier. Always take the reading yourself and ring it in and make sure you only pay for what you have actually used.—TN A place in the sun

HASTA LA VISTA, HASTINGS!

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’ve recently met three couples from Hastings who are all planning to sell up and leave the town. I don’t just mean leave Hastings but leave the UK entirely, and not just for a long holiday but for ever. Surely their obsession with TV programmes such as ‘A Place in the Sun’ has got the better of them, or do they perhaps know something that I don’t — or rather, I suspect, but don’t want to admit to?

I was curious to find out how many other Brits are leaving every year and so went on line to the government’s National Statistics website and was shocked to find that British citizens are abandoning the ship in record numbers — 208,000 in the year 2004 alone!

Although direct comparisons are difficult because of the way the figures are held, it appears we are leaving this sceptred isle at higher rates than ever before. But don’t worry, the same year saw a record inflow of non-British migrants (342,000) arriving to stay here and so the population is still increasing. However, I won’t go into that side of the equation — that particular minefield of political correctness is too much even for The Hastings Trawler to navigate.

So in 2004, about 570 British citizens emigrated from this country every day of every week of every month. In five years time, if this trend continues, we will see over a million people gone — the equivalent population of a fair-sized provincial city.

It is now estimated that over a million Britons live either permanently or semi-permanently in Spain. Of the 300,000 new houses being built on the southern Spanish coast it is estimated that nearly a third will be snapped up

by Brits — that’s not much less than the number we build in the whole of the UK each year.

Australia, New Zealand, France, and the USA appear to be other popular destinations These emigrants are all leaving for different reasons — many are retiring to a place in the sun, others are giving up careers to seek job opportunities in other lands, some have young children, many have houses to sell and extended families to leave behind.

Most are mature, skilled, educated, and financially secure citizens. Isn’t it odd how no politician want’s to talk about this demographic outflow and what the real consequences are for the future? —TN Food Matters

HASTINGS — GOURMET CAPITAL OF THE SOUTH

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n case you missed it in the plethora of announcements about the regeneration of Hastings in the past year — here’s the good news, we are about to become the equivalent of restaurant nirvana, a Disney-like Mecca for foodies, with the opening of 255 new eating establishments in the town!

Now I’ve got your attention I have to admit that was a slight exaggeration on my part. It isn’t 255, or even 55, its actually only six new quality restaurants — but you have to admit for an area that’s not exactly world famous for its culinary skills,

it’s still an impressive figure and compares favourably with plans for some of the U.K.’s major tourist destinations.

Just in case you still don’t believe me I’ll list these projects for you:– 1)–The new upmarket fish restaurant on the top floor of the now defunct Stade Maritime Project 2)–The restaurant in the proposed 4-star hotel designed by Sir Norman Foster — to be located on the seafront at Pelham Place. Similar to the ‘Slug’, it’s rather bogged down in some minor legal oversight at the moment — the ‘we didn’t realise we actually had to own the land before we could build on it’ sort of oversight.

3)–The new restaurant on the top floor in the ‘Hanging Gardens’ element of the revitalised Station Plaza. I’m not quite sure what the ‘Hanging’ part refers to, but if it’s got anything to do with exacting retribution from local politicians for wasting our money on expensive consultants, I can see myself becoming a regular customer.

Readers will have to get to the back of the queue 4)–The new restaurant on the top floor in the second stage of the Media Centre on Robertson Street.

That’s the one where the building collapsed when they were trying to demolish the insides but leave the external walls in-situ. Clearly the contractors had never played that children’s party game where you

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gently pull out one wooden stick at a time from the pile on the floor without upsetting the whole stack.

5)–The revamped restaurant in the Marina Pavilion — that’s the place they shut down for the summer season while the architects went round with their tape measures. And not forgetting, of course :– 6)–The proposed new up-market restaurant on the seafront at Bexhill — but that’s Bexhill and you probably don’t give a toss about what’s planned for God’s waiting-room anyway, and besides this project is like the Stade’s ‘Slug’ and has also been scrapped Out of the six proposed eating establishments I’m only aware of one feasibility study which looked into the demand side of the equation. That being the Tourism Company report for the Stade area, which didn’t count the impact of the other five restaurant proposals, as the consultants weren’t aware of them.

The projects appear to rely on the belief that this part of South East England is to be subjected to an invasion of hungry gourmet lemmings. They have to be lemmings and they must arrive by sea — how else does anyone get here — certainly not via our outstanding road and rail links — you’d be hungry by the time the train rolls into Warrior Square!

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News of these new upmarket dining establishments has got existing fish and chip outlets in a bit of a tizzy.

Their owners claim they will be ruined if all these projects go ahead. One proprietor was heard to say ‘how am I supposed to compete with cod and chips at £35 a head and crab sandwiches at £14-99 a round? It just doesn’t bear thinking about!’—TN Empty properties

PHANTOM TENANTS?

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empty properties, the vast majority (almost 96%) belongs to private landlords, and over half of these have been empty for more than six months.

Some serious questions need to be asked by the local council and others (including the police) about why Hastings has this massive pool of empty dwellings. Is it just down to people from London who have second homes or is it due to an influx of property speculators? Who owns these homes and where do they live, which areas of Hastings have most empty properties, what is their condition?

Is there any truth in the rumour that there is a correlation between empty homes and money laundering activities within the illegal drugs industry. It is said that drug pushers can easily launder their dirty money by pretending to rent out empty properties to phantom tenants. If that is indeed true and the practice widespread then the authorities need to crack down and stop the practice. If that isn’t the reason then other steps need to be taken to stop this huge waste of a scarce resource.—TN

ational newspapers have been full of announcements about the government’s intention to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in the already overcrowded South East, some of them in Hastings.

What they haven’t talked about is the high number of empty properties which are currently going to waste. In reality, if every empty home in our region was occupied there would be no need to build a single house for another two years! * This is very odd given the uproar from some protesters that government plans will mean concreting over parts of the countryside and that insufficient * Figures from DETR Housing Investment thought has been given to providing Programme Returns and the Empty Homes Agency the necessary supporting infrastructure (www.emptyhomes.com) for transport, water, ● Shoot & Edit ● education, health etc.

Hastings is particularly bad with a total of 2,156 empty homes — that’s almost 5.3 per cent of the available housing stock in the local area, more than twice the regional average.

Which means our town has the fifth highest percentage of empty properties in South East England, including the London boroughs. Only Thanet, Eastbourne, Tower Hamlets, and Kensington/Chelsea have higher levels of empty properties.

The good news about www.electricpalacecinema.com Hastings is that public housing only makes up a 39a High Street, Hastings, TN34 3ER tiny minority of the Art House ● Classics Shoot & Edit ● 01424 720393 ● World Cinema ● Special Events

EDUCATION — OPINION

Kentucky Fried Schooling — A warning from a friend in the North

Fred Phethean

TONY BLAIR'S CONTROVERSIAL SCHOOL REFORMS ARE NEXT ON HIS POLITICAL AGENDA. HE PLANS TO BRING MORE PRIVATE COMPANIES INTO THE STATE SYSTEM — BASICALLY PRIVATE COMPANIES RUNNING STATE SCHOOLS FOR PROFIT. WE ASKED 18 YEAR OLD FRED PHETHEAN — WHO, THIS SUMMER, LEFT HEATON MANOR COMPREHENSIVE IN NEWCASTLE — TO DESCRIBE HIS EXPERIENCES AFTER HIS SCHOOL FELL INTO THE HANDS OF BOVIS THE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. IT IS A GRIM PORTENT OF WHAT’S IN STORE FOR OUR CHILDREN IF BLAIR’S PLANS FOR EDUCATION REFORMS ARE SUCCESSFUL.

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orget the fog on the Tyne, a resounding image of nostalgia that bears no relation to my generation. I wasn’t yet a bairn by the time ‘traditional northern modernity’ was six feet deep.

Born in 1987, I grew up amidst the rapid strive for development in the North East and witnessed great changes to the social and visual landscape. Besides the council’s proudly-voiced reformation of the quayside from the derelict cemetery of industry it once was, I have been, throughout my secondary school life, witness to New Labour’s educational changes — of which Thatcher sowed the seeds and Blair paid the companies to harvest.

The mark left by Thatcher’s legislation is undeniable and inescapable, either that or (shock horror) we have a Labour government adopting neo-liberal policies on purpose!

Seriously though, the ‘88 ‘Great Education Reform Act’ introduced marketization to the system, the logical conclusion being privatisation — unless it was nipped in the bud. Of course, life being the way it is and human expectation being so out of proportion to achievement, we should have known ‘education, education, education’ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

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hen I joined Heaton Manor Comprehensive school in 1998 it was on the way out. The building had survived WWII’s bombing and relentless vandalism throughout the following decades, but it was still possible to see where the divide lay between the old boys’ and girls’ schools. One episode our school would not survive however was the birth of PFI — Private Finance Initiative; it was the beginning of the end for the old comprehensive system. Basically, PFI works thus: the government invests a large sum (in our case £20m) in a contractor company to build a school and the contractor then contracts the work out to countless sub-contractors.

The contractor (Bovis in our case) supervises the entire operation, ensuring it runs smoothly and to deadline. If there is a problem Bovis have to sort it. In return, Bovis are given almost full ownership of the school's facilities. They actually rent the building back to the school. If the school staff want to use the building after school hours for whatever reason — parents’ evenings, sports tournaments, or school band nights — it becomes something they must pay for. In effect children become price tags — is it worth our while organising this tournament? Do we have enough kids paying £2 each to join?

Even worse are the school dinners. In an age of increasing obesity among children, the only health food available

is fruit, all other foodstuffs stocked have no nutritional value; chips; pizza; burgers and Turkey Twizzlers — reconstituted meat is a favourite with Scolarest, the company with the contract to provide school dinners for the next 30 years — talk about Kentucky Fried schooling!

One problem encountered when setting deadlines for a contractor is that it is they and they alone who understand what’s been done and what needs to be done; if they fail to complete on time they won’t shout about it as they will be fined. This often results in a corporate ‘bending’ of the definition of ‘finished’.

This problem came about when the railways were privatised. In an attempt to stick to deadlines companies cut corners resulting in unfinished or faulty products that are officially ‘useable’, which ends in the deaths of innocent passengers due to flawed maintenance of the trains.

The same applies to schools except the outcome is less dramatic. In our school the school's security card system failed. The ceiling collapsed and the entire performing arts department was undermined to the extent that drama was dropped from the syllabus.

Employing the teacher was not costeffective in relation to the small number of children gaining 'A's in drama GCSE. This brings us to the real problem in the system: the currency of achievement. State and private schools are all measured by the same criteria: schools in middle- or upper-class areas are in the same boat as those in deprived areas; all are judged on results from the same exams. However, as the current system stands no thought is given to the social and financial situations that many school-kids are in January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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despite countless studies suggesting children from ‘deprived’ areas are much less likely to achieve academically than their more financially fortunate brethren. As exam results define a school’s status they are used as the marker for ‘investment potential’ resulting in schools with a high exam pass rate getting more investment, while those with poor results tend to get left on the shelf, resulting in a ‘rich get richer, poor get poorer’ situation.

As if the prospect of a state school being a profit-making organisation wasn’t bad enough!

The icing on the cake, however, or rather the salt in the wound, is yet to come.

A school near where I live, Westgate Community College, has recently announced its plans to become a City Academy. These institutions represent the green light for the private sector; independent organisations have been given the go-ahead to open up ‘state’(ie free) schools operating under a policy of laissez faire; allowing the sponsors to alter or choose the syllabus, within reason. I need not remind you of the worrying potential this has — giving the highest bidder the opportunity to teach what they want in schools? It’s a bit like giving the police carte blanche to detain The argument behind privatisation

in education is simple: create competition and schools will have to improve to keep up with others and attract investment. However, I fail to see how that helps the schools most in need. Privatisation is geared towards the socially-mobile middle classes who can afford to travel greater distances to get to school; the odds are also stacked in their favour as popular schools have the opportunity (due to ambiguous legislation) to select their pupils rather than the other way round.

Because schools are not allowed to favour pupils on grounds of ability, they often opt for ‘social selection,’ which is based on residence and income, resulting in poorer kids being left out. The argument that there is a lack of public funding for schools is ridiculous. If the government chose to divert the £5m pounds a day it spends from war to education and converted the annual £600m with which it subsidises the arms trade to schools, significant improvements could be achieved. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric: choice, competition, parentocracy — they all mean the same thing, a system without equality, a privatised system. Education, education, education — what does it mean? Here’s a soundbyte that works —prioritise, don’t privatise!

VIRTUAL COMMUNITY GROWS EXPONENTIALLY...

In November Hastings Creative Media Community (HCMC) celebrated its third birthday with a get-together at The Rooms in St Leonards. HCMC is an email discussion list for all people working in, or interested in the creative arts and media in Hastings, St Leonards and the surrounding area. The definition of ‘creative media’ is broad — members range from fine artists to those working with new media, from community groups to graphic designers and illustrators.

The aim of the list is to provide a discussion and networking group for support and sharing of information. For example, you might want recommendations for a local printer or training course, or perhaps you want to share your thoughts about the role of the arts/media community in the regeneration of the area. Maybe you've got an exhibition at a local gallery, or you've just moved to the area or have just started up in business and want to let people know what services you offer.

This list is an independent initiative, running on a voluntary basis without funding. There are now more than 220 members. It is free to join. You can check out the list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/H-C-M-C/ or you can email ericasmith@f2s.com to be added to the membership list.

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Profit-driven education

CASE STUDY Global Education Management Systems (GEMS) — whose Dubai-based Chairman Sunny Varkey (Varkey Group) also has interests in the healthcare sector and Welcare World, a firm specialising in healthcare management and consultancy — manages a network of international schools providing education to nearly 40,000 students from 100 different countries. The company currently has a ‘portfolio’ of 13 schools in the UK and aims to increase this to 200 within the next five years.

GEMS UK’s ‘prestigious’ board of advisors include: Sir Gareth Roberts (President Wolfson College, Oxford, Chairman of the Board) Mike Tomlinson (Formerly Chief Inspector for Schools, Chair of DfES Working Party on 14-19 Reform, Chairman GEMS Advisory Board) Professor John MacBeath (Chair of Educational Leadership at Cambridge University, Adviser to UNESCO and OECD) Nick Stuart (Director General Schools Policy, devised the 1988 Education Reform Act and Education Act 1993 – leading to the National Curriculum) James Sabben-Clare (formerly Headmaster of Winchester College and Chairman of HMC) Elizabeth Passmore OBE (Dr Passmore is Director of Inspection at OFSTED One of the schools operated by GEMS was recently at the centre of a row after parents at Bury Lawn school in Milton Keynes were asked by headteacher Sheila Kaye to sign contracts which would see their child expelled if the head considered the parents’ behaviour to ‘bring the school into disrepute’ The letters, dated August 31, informed parents that they would have to agree to new terms and conditions for the January term.

Clause 6b of the terms and conditions reads: ‘The principal may at his or her discretion require you to remove or may exclude for a fixed period of time or permanently exclude your child if your behaviour is, in the opinion of the principal, unreasonable and is likely to bring the school into disrepute or affects, or is likely to affect. adversely, others. The document also promises not to use corporal punishment, despite the fact that corporal punishment was outlawed in independent schools in 1999.

In May, parents at the schools formed a protest group, the Bury Lawn Change Group, and passed a vote of no confidence in Gems’management after the sudden department of a senior member of staff.

Following the bad publicity surrounding the school, Gems then pulled out of a plan to sponsor two academies in the area.

Under the plans, two new schools would have been built in Milton Keynes at a total cost of £50m — £46m of taxpayers’ money through the Department for Education and Skills and £4m from the sponsors —- under the control of a Gems-appointed “superhead“.

The withdrawal of Gems was a severe blow to the government’s academy programme of privately run and sponsored state schools.

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

9

HASTINGS CHESS TOURNAMENT

Pier Pressure – the Hastings Gambit

Pam Thomas

THE HASTINGS CHESS CONNECTION MAY DATE FROM THE TIME OF THAT OTHER FAMOUS BATTLE IN 1066. WILLIAM THE CONQUERER IS REPUTED TO HAVE BEEN A CHESS PLAYER AND IS SAID TO HAVE BROKEN A CHESS BOARD OVER THE HEAD OF A FRENCH PRINCE’S HEAD, HAVING LOST A GAME. AT A LATER DATE, THE DAUPHIN, LOUIS THE FAT, LOST A GAME TO WILLIAM’S SON HENRY, AND PIECES WERE THROWN. TODAY’S ENCOUNTERS ARE A LITTLE MORE RESTRAINED.

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he present day tradition began with the world-famous Hastings Tournament of 1895 when the most illustrious names in chess converged on the town, including Steinitz and Lasker. The event received many column inches of press coverage and was won by the 22 year-old American, H.N. Pillsbury. That tournament took place at the Brassey Institute, now the Public Library, and is still regarded as one of the greatest international chess tournaments.

The brain behind the event was Herbert Dobell, a local jeweller, with funding provided by Hastings Chess Club, donations from its President, John Watney, a member of the famous brewing family and Horace Chapman,

a wealthy clergyman. The rest of the funding came from members and local townspeople. The total budget was £500 and the final balance showed a surplus of £18. At that time, Hastings was a fashionable watering place for wealthy Victorians and, as well as details of the games, the newpapers of the day gave graphic accounts of charabanc excursions to Battle Abbey, lavish dinners and living chess games in elaborate costume.

Chess continued to thrive in the town and, in 1918, the Hastings Chess Club was opened and it’s first president was the splendidly named Vandeleur Crake. It is still the only chess club in the country to have its own premises. At the end of the 1914-

Hastings, 1895: back row (left to right) — Albin, Schlechter, Janowski, Marco, Blackburne, Maroczy, Schiffers, Gunsberg, Burn, Tinsley Front row (left to right): Vergani, Steinitz, Tchigorin, Lasker, Pillsbury, Tarrasch, Mieses, Teichmann

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THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

1918 War a great Victory tournament was held in Hastings and the Premier Tournament was won by the Cuban grandmaster, Capablanca.

One famous member of the Hastings Chess Club was Vera Menchik. Born in Moscow she was the first woman to compete against men on equal terms at international level, beating such players as Max Euwe.

She also won the women’s world championships from 1927 to 1939.

She later moved to London and was killed in a bombing raid in 1944.

The present day event has taken place in more or less the same form since 1920, apart from the war years.

Nearly all the world champions to date have played at Hastings, and Premier winners include Alekhine and Anatoly Karpov. Several well-known players such as Judit Polgar and Nigel Short had early victories here. International grandmasters Stuart Conquest and James Plaskett were both residents in the town.

As well as being a chess “Roll of Honour”, the list of past competitors makes interesting reading. Several of the Bletchley Park code breakers had close connections with the tournament, both as players and later as supporters. The late Lord Callaghan was a keen supporter, as is Sir Patrick Moore, and both visited the event on several occasions. The latter played an important part in the event’s centenary celebrations in 1995 when he was one of the players in a ‘living chess’ game staged on the Pier. His opponent was the legendary Russian grandmaster, David Bronstein and a draw resulted.

The event has moved around the town over the years and venues have included the Town Hall, the Lower Hall at the White Rock Pavilion and the Queen’s Hotel. Some of the

HASTINGS CHESS TOURNAMENT

Hastings, 1995: centenary celebrations — Russian grandmaster David Bronstein (left) with Sir Patrick Moore (right)

venues have proved to be something of a challenge for the organisers.

During the time when the Pier Ballroom was home to the Congress, it was possible to see the waves breaking on the iron girders below through the floorboards — no joke in early January. Unbeknown to the players, the organisers had to keep in touch with the local coastguard who advised that the hall would have to be evacuated if the waves reached a certain height. Fortunately, this never happened as the thought of moving 500 players from the end of the Pier to the White Rock Pavilion while trying to keep their chess positions mid-gale was a logistical nightmare.

On the occasions that the tournament took place in the Lower Hall at the White Rock Pavilion it coincided with the Pantomime season.

While the grandmasters were concentrating on their moves, the quiet was shattered by stamping of feet and shouts of ‘Behind you’ and ‘Oh yes it is’, as several hundred excited children were encouraged to make as much noise as possible. This was not home to the event for long!

The eclectic mixture of people that make up the local residents is also reflected in the broad spectrum of players who converge on the town every December from countries from Argentina to Zambia. Last year a panic phone call was received from a group of 23 Belorussian players who had driven by bus from Minsk. They had

arrived a day early only to find their hotel closed for the holiday period.

In the days of the Soviet Union, players had to obtain the usual permissions to travel outside the country, often with much difficulty.

The year these restrictions were lifted, Con Power, the present day Congress Director, received a phone call from a Russian who was calling on behalf of his friend who spoke no English and who wished to enter the event.

Having successfully registered he enquired whether, as a lowly amateur player, he would be able to play in Hastings. On being told that of course he could, he promptly burst into tears saying it had been his dream to play in Hastings Chess Congress. That year was also the first opportunity for players to play under the Russian flag.

The Congress was the first major international event to take place in this country following the changes and it

was decided to offer players the choice of flag. One Russian grandmaster, on being presented with the two flags, tore the Soviet flag into pieces, ground it into the carpet and proudly placed his Russian flag on the table. Maybe this should be used as a model for elections in general?

It would certainly cut down on the ‘pre’ and ’post’ election analyses.

References to the tournament have been wide ranging including in a Stephen Fry novel and in the song ‘One Night in Bangkok’ from the musical ‘Chess’. With its rich and varied cultural heritage, Hastings seems an appropriate home for one of the world’s great chess events. ‘The Borough Council continues to sponsor the Congress, but its financial fortunes have diminished in recent years. It is hoped that a determined search for commercial sponsorship will yield positive results, enabling this ‘jewel’ in the Hastings calendar of events to re-gain its prestigious status and attract a new generation of world champions. The next opportunity to watch the moves will be at the end of December when the 81st Congress begins. The usual calls are coming in from Mongolia, Iceland and other farflung places as well as nearer to home.

Players are already working out the best way to overcome the holiday public transport problems and make sure that by hook or by crook they will be part of the Hastings chess tradition for another year.

Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me...

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

11

PROFILE — ALEISTER CROWLEY

WHAT ROUGH BEAST — the last days of Aleister Crowley, at Hastings

by Dave Arnold Hastings and St. Leonard’s-On–Sea (the home of an Ordo Templi Orientis lodge, O.T.O which celebrates his magical legacy), have become something of a global shrine to the memory of Aleister Crowley.

Crowley was a fascinating and intriguing man, involved in many aspects of the arcane, the occult, the spiritual — and the mundane: the religion of Thelema with its gnostic mass, sex magick, the Tarot, drugs, poetry, astrology, alchemy, art, mountaineering, chess, yoga, philosophy, illumination, and so on. Was he the evil rogue or charlatan he was made out to be by the press and his detractors? Hastings artist and musician David Arnold considers the Hastings connections of this iconic occult figure.

A

l e i s t e r E d w a r d Crowley, ‘The Great Beast 666’ as he described himself, died of pneumonia as a result of asthma and chronic bronchitis at Netherwood House, The Ridge, Hastings, on December 1st 1947. He was 72 –years old and had lived there for just two years.

The name and location of Netherwood House, now demolished, remain inextricably linked with the man named by the tabloid press of the 1940s as the ‘Wickedest Man in the World’.

Netherwood itself has become as much an enigma as its most notorious and bizarre resident, attracting occultists and the curious from all over the world to this day.

Netherwood was a large, gabled Victorian guest house which stood in its own green 4-acre grounds on The 12

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

Ridge, a road running across the flank of the upland area behind Hastings — about 500 feet above sea level. Its location afforded panoramic views of the town, the Norman castle, Beachy Head and the sea, all of which which, with its tree- and shrubbery-filled gardens and lawn-tennis court, were part of its albeit wind-blown attraction to visitors. The house was run by Kathleen (or ‘Johnny’) and Vernon Symonds, and it was far from being the ‘shabby boarding house’ that contemporary press accounts would have us believe.

Keeping Netherwood going during the Second World War was difficult for the couple, with all the food, fuel and petrol rationing, but business started to pick up in the second half of 1945, after the war in Europe had ended.

Vernon Symonds’ disposition helped in this regard. He was a sociable ‘arty type’, keen on amateur dramatics, good conversation and on mingling with ‘names’ in the arts and sciences.

He used his contacts to tempt down such intellectual luminaries as Professor C.E.M. Joad, J.B.S. Haldane, Edith Bone, and Professor Jacob Bronowski to Netherwood. In return for a free stay they gave a talk about their work and ideas to the other guests. Vernon had the reputation of being a wonderful host, providing not only a relaxed atmosphere, but the best cuisine possible during that difficult period.

The intellectual and culinary ethos of Netherwood was made clear by him in the handbook: ‘As long as I am here,’ he wrote, ‘this house will never be a guesthouse in the ordinary sense of the term. Those seeking a conventional establishment will be able to find better accommodation

Netherwood House, The Ridge, Hastings

elsewhere, for my friends care more for fine food than for the ritual of dressing for dinner, and more for culture and the arts than for bridge and poker.’

Netherwood also featured significantly in the musical development of one young prodigy. ‘A couple called Caplan,’ said Mrs Symonds, ‘frequently brought down a boy named Julian Bream who would play the guitar for the guests. After his recital we would pass the hat around and the money collected would pay for his next lesson. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.’

WHY HASTINGS?

I

t was in this unusual and somewhat snobbish milieu that Aleister Crowley, the ‘Great Beast 666’, found his final haven.

When WWII ended, Crowley was lodging in cold, cheerless and uncomfortable digs in Surrey, which exacerbated his chronic asthma and depressed his spirits.

Finding somewhere else to live was proving difficult; he was not only a victim of his own notoriety but he lacked a regular income. Concerned about his wellbeing, his old friend Louis Wilkinson, who heard about Netherwood and its eccentric proprietors from Oliver Marlow, who acted with Vernon Symonds in the Hastings Court Players, asked Marlow

PROFILE — ALEISTER CROWLEY

to enquire if the Symondses would be prepared to take on such an infamous old reprobate.

‘Johnny’ Symonds recalled: ‘My husband came home and asked me, “Do you mind if Aleister Crowley comes and stay with us?”’. ‘So I said, “Whoever is he?”

And he said, “He’s the wickedest man in the world.”

“Oh,” I said, “I don’t care!”’

But if ‘Johnny’ had never heard of Crowley before, his dramatic arrival soon alerted her to the fact that he was no ordinary mortal.

She explained: ‘Eventually we received a telegram which said, “Expect consignment of frozen meat on such-and-such a day and at suchand-such a time.” This, of course, was when meat was still rationed, so the Post Office handed a copy of this telegram to the Food Ministry.

‘We were somewhat perplexed by this because we hadn’t ordered any meat. We were even more surprised when the day arrived and two food inspectors turned up in anticipation of the delivery. While we were talking to them an ambulance suddenly came down the drive, the door opened, and out jumped Aleister Crowley with about 40 or 50 paper parcels containing all his books.

My husband said, “Well, there you are: that’s the frozen meat!”’

She recalled, Crowley looked rather pale and wan that day. His hair was cut very short. and he was wearing ‘rather wide knickerbockers’ with stockings, and shoes with big silver buckles.

Augustus John’s portrait of him, drawn earlier that year, shows him with the same gaunt and somewhat startled appearance possessed by many elderly people.

It wasn’t Crowley’s first visit to Hastings. In 1883, at the age of eight, his parents sent him to the ‘White Rock Boarding School For Young Gentleman’ also known as Habershon’s Prep School. This was located at 10 Pevensey Road, St. Leonards-On-Sea and was run by a

family of strict Evangelicals. The young Crowley attended the school until 1885.

M

rs Symonds could not remember the exact date of his arrival. The relevant page from the Netherwood guest book of the period had been torn out, presumably by over-ethusiastic autograph hunter.

However, as the next date in the book was 8 September 1945, it is likely he arrived at Netherwood either in late August or very early September — about six weeks before his 70th birthday.

Crowley had a choice of rooms and he opted for number 13, which was at the front of the house. ‘He particularly wanted that one,’ Mrs Symonds remembered. ‘It was furnished in the same way as most of the other rooms with a large wardrobe, a writing table, a bookshelf and a single bed. He also had an en-suite bathroom and toilet.

He had quite a lot of pictures on the wall, including several he had painted in the Himalayas.’

Crowley brought with him some special gold coins, which he claimed had magical powers and was anxious to keep safe. He also had a ‘box of I Ching sticks’ which he used frequently.

‘I remember when he had a dental appointment he would throw the sticks in the air. On one occasion he called me and said, “Phone the dentist immediately! The sticks have told me not to go.” The dentist was amazed, to say the least.’

BEASTLY ROUTINES

T

he ‘Great Beast’ soon settled into a regular daily routine at Netherwood. At nine each morning the housekeeper, Miss Clarke, took him his breakfast, and at ten, if the weather was fine, he would take a stroll in the garden, where ‘Johnny’ kept some beautiful, plump, white rabbits, which Crowley nicknamed ‘The Chrysanthemums’ and loved to watch.

When the sun shone he would often

sit with his hands outstretched, heavenwards.

Crowley spent most of the rest of the day sleeping in his room, where he also took his other meals. His favourite snack was sardines sprinkled with curry powder. As darkness fell he would rouse himself, and would sit up most of the night either writing letters, reading or feeding his heroin habit.

‘He had an authorised ration of heroin’ said Mrs Symonds, ‘which was sent down from a London chemist called Heppel’s, but the police were aware of it. I often watched him stick a needle in his arm. He didn’t mind.’

Miss Clarke, the housekeeper, was not fond of Crowley. He teased her by calling her a witch and claiming he had seen her at night flying past his window on a broomstick. Crowley’s jibes may have been prompted by the fact she nearly lost one of his precious gold coins, which she inadvertently shook out of the window along with the crumbs from his tablecloth. It lay in the bushes below for several hours, much to Crowley’s consternation, before it was finally found.

One amusing incident involving Miss Clarke occurred when Mrs Symonds asked Crowley to do her horoscope, but could only tell him that she had been born in the night.

‘When he started the horoscope, he wrote me a little note which he placed on his breakfast tray. The housekeeper peeped at it, and when she saw that it said “Before or after midnight?” she showed it to my husband, thinking that I was planning a nocturnal escapade with Mr Crowley. We all had a good laugh about that.’

Despite his unenviable reputation and the fact that he insisted on greeting everyone with the injunction ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’, ‘The Great Beast’ was popular in the Netherwood household. He was a stimulating talker with considerable charm, a pleasing personality and was very erudite, which helped make him a good companion. Vernon Symonds and THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

13

PROFILE — ALEISTER CROWLEY

Crowley spent many hours deep in conversation on all manner of subjects.

Crowley joined Hastings Chess Club, where ‘nobody ever beat him’’.

He also took the time to tutor the Symonds’s nephew Roland, who later became a priest, in Latin. Sometimes on sunney days he would walk along The Ridge where, he would often stop and lean against a lamp post and hold his hands palms upwards to the sun.

He also patronised a local health hydro called Riposo.

He had many visitors, recalled Mrs Symonds. ‘Some people came over from Germany, bringing him lovely wine. He also had regular visists from somebody in the army in Germany, who later went to America.’

Crowley’s English visitors included Kenneth Grant, author of Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, Michael Houghton, the owner of the Atlantis Bookshop, John Symonds, who wrote The Magic of Aleister Crowley, and of course Louis Wilkinson. Other visitors included the anti-Nazi occultist Dion Fortune and Lady Frieda Harris who came to examine the artwork for Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck. Crowley dedicated a copy of The Book of Thoth to her. Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris had designed The Book of Thoth during the war, despite shortages of paper and artist’s materials, as well as restrictions on travel, and all the other problems associated with wartime conditions.

Crowley wrote two books while living in Hastings: an anthology of poems entitled Olla, a self-published anthology of ‘sixty years of song’; the other was Magick Without Tears.

END OF DAYS

C

rowley received lots of parcels from America, with boxes of chocolates,’ said Mrs Symonds. ‘This was when they were rationed here. He had boxes of chocolates stacked from floor to ceiling. He also smoked this very strong tobacco made with molasses; the smell of that tobacco 14

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

lingered in the room long after Crowley died. A local grocer named Mr Watson would come and take him out for drives and generally look after him.’

As far as Mrs Symonds was aware, Crowley did not practise any magic, let alone ‘sex-magick’, at Netherwood — although this was probably because he was by then sexually impotent and physically ailing.

She recalled, poignantly, that when the film The Wizard of Oz came to Hastings he told her he would very much like to see it. ‘I said, “It wouldn’t interest you at all, it’s a children’s thing.” So he didn’t see it in the end!’

Aleister Crowley’s health began to deteriorate seriously towards the end of 1947. He had a bad chest, ‘a sort of bronchitis’ acording to Mrs Symonds and, despite the administrations of Dr Charnock-Smith and the efforts of his landlady and Lady Frieda Harris ‘he got worse and worse and died of pneumonia on Monday, 1 December.’

Also at his bedside that night were Aleister’s 9 year old son Ataturk and his son’s mother Patricia ‘Diedre’ MacAlpine.

Crowley had asked to be buried at Netherwood, but this was refused by Hastings Borough Council who also denied permission for his remains to be cremated in the town. He was cremated at Brighton the following Friday. It is believed that his ashes were later shipped to the USA and were buried next to a tree in Hampton, New Jersey on the property of Karl Germer (Crowley’s alleged successor as head of the O.T.O.).

‘Mrs Thorne-Drury and myself followed the coffin from Hastings to Brighton’ recalled Mrs Symonds.

‘There were only two or three mourners at the crematorium. I remember a German lady placing some red roses on his coffin.

There was no service. Louis Wilkinson, who had a beautiful voice, read his poem Pan, and something else that Mr Crowley had written.

‘That evening, when we returned to

Netherwood there was a tremendous electric storm which lasted throughout the night. Louis Wilkinson, who came back with us, said: ‘That’s just what Crowley would have liked!”’

Mrs Symonds, Aleister Crowley’s last landlady was also with him when he passed away. Her memories of ‘The Great Beast’ are of an easy-going, trouble-free resident who, although spending much of his time in his room, got along well with the other guests as he did with her and her husband. Her feelings about him were wholly positive: ‘I liked him. He was great fun.

THE ‘CURSE’ OF HASTINGS

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hat of the ‘curse’ Crowley is alleged to have placed on the town:— if once you had lived in Hastings you could never leave, you would always be pulled back. That turns out to be an urban myth.

Crowley never cursed Hastings. Why would he curse the place he came to love and where he found happiness and respite in his final days? The reality is he cursed Eastbourne, but that is another story the spin-doctors and black propagandists of that gentile seaside town would rather not publicise.

In 1897, Crowley got stuck near the top of the ‘Devil’s Chimney’, the rock at the foot of Beachy Head on the outskirts of Eastbourne, and had to be rescued by locals, who took the mickey out of him. Angered by his treatment, Crowley pronounced a curse that when the ‘Devil’s Chimney’ collapsed ‘hellfire and brimstone’ would engulf Eastbourne. The rock finally collapsed in 2001, but so far Eastbourne appears to have remained unscorched by the fires of hell.

LEGACY AND CONNECTIONS

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rowley’s influence locally has stimulated a variety of experiments and projects, among them local band ‘Turn Blue’*, who have

ART

Lester’s World Animated film, UK 2003 (4 mins) Directed by Wesley Magoogan & Joe King

L

ife is going well for Lester Magoogan. His cartoons have been exhibited at the Tate Modern, Spike Milligan and George Melly have both praised his work, he's received funding from the Arts Council and the National Lottery. This is a CV that many artists would kill for, yet Lester is still only in his early twenties.

Lester has Down’s Syndrome, which would be irrelevant except for the fact that his work is being shown at this year's Disability Film Festival. Apparently producing up to two hundred line drawings a week, his contribution to the festival is a series of six short animations under the banner Lester's World. His black and white line drawings are peopled with endearing monster types with huge mouths and large, blunt teeth. The pieces come in short, sharp bursts, and from a slightly unexpected angle. Watching them is like being blown by a refreshing wind, and all at once hit over the head with a rubber chicken.

Each animation is eye-catching, distinctive and entertaining. In Mr Spit and Boiling Mad, two men stand divided by a brick wall. One spits on the other's head and chuckles about it. Where’s my Bone? has the disembodied head of a dog flying around the screen from different angles, while a funky soundtrack asks that very question. Argue begins with two grumpy rubberised faces shouting at one another. The empty white background soon fills with other arguing couples, their voices get louder and louder, until there's a cacophony of noise.

The animations are surprising and surreal. Watching them one at a time is like allowing your brain a quick break from usual mundane activity. They succeed because Lester has a unique perspective on the world and a magnificent sense of humour. His approach is minimalist: simple drawings on a white background with a thumping soundtrack which catches the ear as much as his animations catch the eye. The effect is to magnify the real world a hundred times. The joy is that they are not forced or pretentious, but entirely spontaneous. It’s almost impossible to watch the characters without an enormous grin on your face.

There are a thousand patronising things you could say about Lester Magoogan, but you simply don’t need to. He’s a very, very funny man with a unique talent and a brilliant future.

Kate Ansell Lester will be exhibiting at the Dragon Bar, George Street from Wednesday 14 December until 5 January, 2006 www.lestermagoogan.co.uk

absorbed Crowley’s, Book Of The Law and released a CD of songs influenced by this work. ‘La Chambre Magique’ monthly dance nights on Hastings Pier, organised by Orage, are also heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley.

Crowley was also allegedly associated with Harpsichord House in Hastings Old Town, with tales of frolics in Indian costumes and the gift of a sphinx to a daughter of one of the visitors to the house.

George Hay the founder of ‘The Science Fiction Foundation’ and editor of the occult book, The Necronomicon

lived in Hastings Old Town for many years. George was an early acquaintance of L.R. Hubbard the Scientologist whom Crowley also knew. Hubbard, in turn, was a close friend of OTO member Jack Parsons who corresponded with Crowley at Netherwood.

One of Crowley’s paintings, ‘Cuboid’, is featured in George Barnett’s film The Fall of the House of Usher (not the Hammer version) which was shot on location in Hastings at Netherwood, Beauport Park, Ashburnam Place and in the

catacombs and cellars below a demolished house, also on The Ridge, Hastings. Barnett also described Crowley as a ‘quiet and charming man’, and appears to have been completely unaware of his ‘wicked’ reputation. George’s son Adrian still lives in Hastings.

It is an extraordinary tribute to the man that almost 60 years since his death, the enigmatic figure of Aleister Crowley continues to intrigue and fascinate old and new generations alike. * Love is the Law by ‘Turn Blue’ is available from www.deadhappyrecords.co.uk. Please send any Crowley anecdotes to info@thehastingstrawler.co.uk

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

15

FISHING

Turn of the tide for Hastings’ Fishing Fleet?

George Greaves

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hroughout most of the 1990s it was the proud boast of the ancient south-coast fishing port of Hastings, England, that its forty — strong fleet of mainly traditional wooden boats was the largest beachbased fleet in the UK. Over the last five years, however, their number has halved — boats being decommissioned, sold off to other fisheries or, in several cases, taken over for conservation as heritage artefacts by the local Fishermen’s Museum.

While it could be said that the decline of Hastings as a fishing port can be traced back to the mid nineteenth century (when the coming of the railways robbed it of its position as main supplier of fresh fish to London) there has been nothing to equal the rapid and dramatic changes of the last five years.

These changes can be put down to many factors. Depleted fish stocks and related conservation measures have spawned a shoal of legally enforceable rules and controls. Prices at market have been falling. At least 80 per cent of Hastings’ fish is exported to the European mainland, and a strong British pound has had adverse effects.

There has been greater emphasis on formal certification in, for instance, first aid, fire fighting, and sea survival which, along with high running costs, have forced fishermen into other trades. The relatively small size of the British fishing industry compared with others in the European Union gives it less ‘clout’ at the ballot box and Hastings fishermen believe this works to their disadvantage when decisions are taken on matters which vitally affect them.

Skippers and crews are paid on a share system, as they have been for 16

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

Bethan Louise: Robert Ball’s metal-welded boat approaching the beach to be ‘heaved-up’ to the shingle

centuries; there is no standing wage.

‘No fish: no pay’ is a hard doctrine when families need to be supported, mortgages paid, and full membership. of the must-have society aspired to.

Owners (some with a history of generations of fishing in their blood) and crew who have become disenchanted with such a precarious living have left for more regular — and often better — wages.

Yet there are owners who have sufficient faith in the future to take on the considerable burden of replacing their boats. They have opted for modern metal-welded hulls, typically built at Newhaven by Newbury Engineering, who have long experience in designing craft to suit the particular requirements of beachlaunching and -recovery. Often the boats are supplied in bare-hull form, the fishermen themselves completing the fitting out, augmenting their own remarkable skills and versatility with such technical assistance as is required.

For the first time there are now more of these modern metal-hull boats in

the fleet than there are traditional ‘big boats’ — the latter being clinkerbuilt, with the hull dimensions and graceful lines of their indigenous lug-rigged sailing ancestors of 100 or more years ago. Including the smaller, undecked Hastings punts, however, the traditional wooden boats are still in the majority. Surprisingly, perhaps, there are only two active fibreglass boats; ironically, one of the redundant wooden boats was sold as a mould for the building of GRP hulls.

The new metal boats, whilst srill conforming to the 10m (33’) limit for their class, tend to be heavier, sometimes beamier, and more powerfully engined than their predecessors. This takes them nearer to the limits of size and weight that can be launched and recovered in beach operation, even with the installation of heavier-duty winches.

The latest new boat, the Adams’s RX77 Four Brothers is the first to be fitted with the Kort nozzle — a design feature in which the screw runs in a tube-like structure. Named after its

FISHING

German inventor, it was developed as a means of cutting down propellerwash on European inland water-ways.

As a by-product it was discovered that efficiency of the propeller was increased by some 20 per cent. This gives obvious advantages when fishing with the triple trawl nets now regularly used by the new boats.

Diversification has become a necessity, with boats ‘potting’ for whatever species is legally available and sellable. These include crab, lobster, and cuttlefish (the last being especially messy to catch due to the black inky liquid they deploy in defence, which covers boats, equipment, and fishermen, and which is very hard to clean off).

Only the powerful modern boats are able to dredge for scallops; another fairly recent innovation in the Hastings fleet. The setting-up costs for the heavy dredges, which dig the creatures out of the sandy seabed, are quite high, and the wear and tear on the boat as the gear is shot and recovered can be considerable; but the high value of local Rye Bay scallops can make them a worthwhile catch.

The picture is not all black; nor is the future all doom and gloom.

Change, however, is inevitable, and the ability to take advantage of it will

be the key to survival. The heady days of easy pickings are long gone. The supplying of a product which the public and trade buyers demand is of paramount importance. In this latter connecton, the local, very active Fishermen’s Protection Society is seeking accreditation with the Marine Stewardship Council which, among other things, guarantees that fish catches are from environmentally correct sources. This requirement is increasingly being imposed by the large supermarket chains in respect of their seafood purchases.

The Fishermen’s Protection Society is also active in looking after its members’ interests and rights —

including their ancient and exclusive free use of the fishing beach for standings for their boats. Over the years this has produced many a confrontation between the fishermen and others who have cast envious eyes over this valuable facility.

The fisherman’s lot is a hard and not especially lucrative one but, among those who are able and prepared to take advantage of the changed opportunities, there seems to be a feeling of quiet confidence. Perhaps we are seeing the last generation of wooden boats but, while the fishermen of Hastings may be on the list of endangered species, they are not about to become extinct.

St Richard: A traditional ‘clinker-built’ boat owned and skippered by Graham Coglan

HOW BRITISH ARE YOU? The national newspapers are full of the new Home Office ‘citizenship’ tests that migrants will have to pass before they can become subjects of Her Majesty. How well would Hastings residents do? Here are some questions for you to practice on:– Q Which telephone number can be used to contact the police in Hastings?

A Is it? a) Dial M for Murder, or b) 999, or c) Scream loudly, its quicker

Q What is Her Majesties Opposition?

A Is it?:– a) Bremner, Bird, and Fortune on TV or b) The Tories with some half-hearted help from the Lib-Dems Q How are local services managed, governed and paid for?

A Is it?:– a) Don’t get me started on this one, or b) By local authorities through elected councillors, paid for by Council tax and central government top-ups

If you answered b) to most of these questions you are certainly Q Which statement is correct? ready to receive British citizenship – in fact you should be A Is it?:– a) The TV licence is too expensive and if you keep moving home they will never catch you anyway, or b) A running the bloody country! If you answered a) to most of these questions then you clearly aren’t paying attention and haven’t single TV licence covers all televisions in the home. lived in this country anywhere near long enough. If your answers are spread more evenly between a) and b) then you Q How are the Police organised?

A Is it?:– a) They’re not and that’s the problem, or b) By need to get out more and stop believing everything you read in the newspapers. regional constabularies under a Chief Constable January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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FORESHORE

Beside whose Seaside?

by Steve Peak

The Great Storm of 1875: Heavy seas invading Beach Terrace,(other side), opposite Pelham Crescent

She Sells Sea Shells: the sea shell stall at the east end of Beach Terrace, opposite Pelham Crsecent. Beach Terrace was built too close to the sea, and was often flooded in winter storms

‘SUN, SEA AND SAND — HASTINGS IS GRAND’ THE HASTINGS POSTMARK USED TO SAY. BUT THE TOWN WON’T BE SO GRAND AS GLOBAL WARMING BRINGS HIGHER SEAS AND STRONGER GALES TO BATTER WHAT THE VICTORIAN HASTINGERS APTLY CALLED THE ‘FRONT LINE’ — THE SEAFRONT. YET HASTINGS COUNCIL WANTS TO CARRY OUT A MAJOR DEVELOPMENT RIGHT ON THE EDGE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL WAR ZONE, WHERE IT WILL BE LASHED BY GALES EVERY WINTER. AND THE SITE — LIKE MUCH OF THE SEAFRONT — IS LEGALLY BARRED FROM SUCH A SCHEME. HOW HAS IT COME ABOUT THAT THE COUNCIL AND ITS’ ALLY, SEASPACE, CAN BE PLANNING TO REPLACE PELHAM PLACE CAR PARK WITH OFFICES, A HOTEL AND SHOPS ON SUCH WEAK ENVIRONMENTAL AND LEGAL FOUNDATIONS? en thousand years ago there while the town centre and Bulverhythe were no problems on Hastings were sea-washed marshes. It was the seafront — because Hastings, the sea rapid spread of Hastings as a seaside and the front did not exist. That was resort, and the creation of the new when Britain was literally part of town of St Leonards, in the first half of Europe, only becoming an island about the 19th century, that brought the 6,000 BC. And it is only in the last few straightening up of the sea front. The centuries that the Channel coast has West Hill and all the cliffs from White Rock westwards were cut back so that taken on a shape similar to today.

Everyone — especially the Pelham houses, hotels and shops could be built Place planners — should remember on what had been the seashore.

Their closeness to the sea brought an just how transient the coastline is. In the 18th century the coast was not the immediate need for protection of the near-straight line it is now. White Rock Front Line from damaging gales. In and the East and West Hills stuck 1828 the town’s first groyne had to be much further out into the Channel, built in front of the new seawashed

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THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

Royal Victoria Hotel in St Leonards.

Dozens of groynes soon followed, and maintaining them is an essential part of current sea defence work.

A major reconstruction of many of the groynes took place in the 1990s, but unfortunately the planners did not include the two opposite Robertson Street. The damaging result of that mistake can be seen regularly each winter, as huge waves break over the A259, a serious risk to pedestrians and motorists.

The ‘land’ on which all Pelham Place car park stands is shingle held in place by just one groyne: the harbour arm.

The harbour was built in the late 1890s by some local speculators who could not raise enough money to finish it.

For many decades the harbour was ownerless, and, being poorly built, it steadily broke apart. In the late 1980s Hastings Council took on the job of halting the deterioration and giving it some hoped-for strength.

But it is that strength (or weakness) on which the future development at Pelham Place hangs. I have protested about the Council’s apparent assumption that the harbour is basically OK, and £32,000 is now being spent on carrying out a survey of the harbour. If the result is negative, the office and hotel scheme may be abandoned. Even if the survey gives the

FORESHORE

go-ahead, developers should stand on the edge of the car park in a typical gale, such as that in early November, when the sea came to within 50 yards of the promenade.

A

nother problem with the seafront is the ownership of it — or lack of ownership.

Back in the 1500s, most of Hastings was located in what is today the Old Town valley. Its southern edge was the Hastings Wall, beyond which was mainly beach. Then in 1588 corrupt wheeling and dealing amongst the town’s establishment prompted the Crown to try and straighten out the town’s management by publishing a royal charter.

Part of the 1588 charter said that from then on Hastings Council owned the Crown’s former land called the ‘Stone Beache’ and all buildings upon it. This was initially taken to mean the foreshore in front of what is now the Old Town.

But as the coastline changed over the following decades, with the amount of beach increasing and spreading, the Council claimed ownership of the new beach in other places. As the town grew west of George Street in the early 19th century, with development taking place on many acres of what had been just shingle, the Council made big profits by selling building sites on what they claimed was their ‘Stone Beache’, even though it wasn’t.

The legal status of the 1588 charter and its transfer of property ownership to the Council has always been highly questionable. The destruction of many of the town’s official records by the mayor and freemen at the time of the 1832 Reform Act stopped any definitive formal challenge being made.

Reading between the lines, Hastings Council was helping its friends in the business world by giving them some kind of property ownership, however dubious, from which future fortunes could be made.

Documents in the East Sussex Record Office show this in action, with the Council admitting it did not really

own part of the site of Pelham Place car park. In 1821 local trader Thomas Thwaites gave the Council £100 for 550 square yards of ground where the promenade opposite Pelham Crescent is today. But the agreement states that the Mayor and company are selling it on the basis that at no time will they be ‘called upon or subject or liable to be called upon to produce their title’ to it.

For the next two decades Thwaites and his family carried out shipbuilding there. Then in 1843 they sold it to a group of local businessmen for £2,100 (several million pounds today). A line of boarding houses called Beach Terrace was built there, blocking the view of Pelham Crescent in the same way that the current plan threatens.

A

nother legal question mark hung over the eight acres of the America Ground, the shingle on which Robertson Street stands today, which was squatted by many people in the early 19th century. If the 1588 charter really said what the Council claimed, they should have owned it, but in 1828 the Crown decided they did not, taking forcible possession in 1835.

In 1893 the charter was further discredited when litigation in the High Court ended with the Council conceding that the Crown owned the Hastings foreshore as it then was. The Crown agreed to sell all the foreshore to the Council for £400 ‘upon trust for the common use, benefit and enjoyment of all Her Majesty’s subjects and of the public for the time being for ever’, subject to restrictive covenants.

The terms of the 1893 conveyance were soon forgotten, however, and the Council gave much of the foreshore over to uses that broke the terms. The biggest example was Rock-a-Nore car park, an illegal operation from when it came into use after the Second World War until 1988, when the special Hastings Act 1988 belatedly legalised it.

The 1988 act was partly an admission by the Council that it had broken the 1893 conveyance. The act legitimized the post-1893

developments in the Stade area and also gave the legal go-ahead for what was then the new Pelham Place car park. But what the 1988 act does not do is allow the car park to be replaced by the offices and hotel now on the drawing board.

I

t was the realisation two years ago of this deficiency of the 1988 act that revealed the full meaning of the 1893 conveyance, and the depth of the Council’s failure to meet its terms.

Hastings Council should have set up a trust in 1893 to look after all the foreshore – not just Pelham Place - for everybody for ever, but it had not. The Council may legally own that ground via the 1893 conveyance, but it also stops them doing whatever they want with it.

The Pelham scheme had to be put on hold in 2004 while the Council sorted out the problems with the conveyance.

A charity – the Hastings and St Leonards Foreshore Charitable Trust – was set up in 2005 which will keep separate accounts of the property. It seems unlikely that action will be taken in respect of the past breaches of the law, but from now on the Council and charity will have to act in accordance with the conveyance. Two of the trustees are local councillors, while the other four have been recruited from outside the town, because the benefactors of the conveyance must be ‘all’ Her Majesty’s subjects, not just those living in Hastings. The trust should start acting in 2006, looking at all the seafront covered by the conveyance. If all else fails, SeaSpace could compulsorily purchase Pelham Place car park To add to the confusion, the foreshore as defined in 1893 was not the same as in 1588, and the Council is still claiming ownership of some key areas outside the 1893 conveyance via the 1588 charter, because it has no other legal basis. Yet the 1893 conveyance seemed to prove the charter was not valid. If that is correct, who really owns that section of the Front Line? The battle goes on.

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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FREEMASONRY

The Brethern – A Wink, a Nod, or a Shake of the Hand

by Stuart Christie

THE POINT OF A CLUB IS NOT WHO IT LETS IN, BUT WHO IT KEEPS OUT. THE CLUB IS BASED ON TWO ANCIENT BRITISH IDEAS:THE SEGREGATION OF CLASSES, AND THE SEGREGATION OF SEXES; AND THEY EVEN REMAIN INSISTENT ON KEEPING PEOPLE OUT, LONG AFTER THEY HAVE STOPPED WANTING TO COME IN.

ANTHONY SAMPSON ‘ANATOMY OF BRITAIN ‘

I

f secrecy is to be considered a factor in British politics and commerce then without doubt Freemasonry is one of its principal vehicles. Freemasonry is the largest semi-covert organisation of the western bourgeoisie, with over six million members worldwide sharing a vision of a unified world order bound together through a series of interlocking Masonic alliances. Among the world’s most influential institutions is the United Grand Lodge of England, the mother lodge of Craft Freemasonry, with its headquarters at Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street near Covent Garden. It is here that the wealthy and influential members of the British Establishment meet in conditions of ritual secrecy, ostensibly to listen to lectures on Masonic history and to discuss charitable and other Masonic business. In practice, the Masonic brotherhood constitutes a clandestine network for the defence of the status quo and established privilege, in other words — a mutualaid society for the British ruling class.

Of course just as a mutual-aid society for gaolers will be different in aims and functions from a mutual-aid society for prisoners (one providing clubs and the other hacksaws), so the mutual-aid society of society’s privileged power elite will be different 20

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Officers of the Grand Lodge of England meeting and greeting outside Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, Covent Garden

from the mutual-aid societies which provide assistance among those whose deprivation of the good things in life is the essential condition for the preservation of the privileges of the few.

Since the benefits of privilege, preferment and patronage, as opposed to their outward trappings, are necessarily largely hidden, so the efforts, the necessarily combined efforts, of those who would defend their privilege are also hidden; that is to say, they are more than discreet, being secret and even conspiratorial.

As US historian Carl Oglesby observes in his book The Yankee and Cowboy War : Clandestinism is not the usage of a handful of rogues, it is a formalised practice of an entire class in which a thousand hands spontaneously join.

Conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means.

Freemasonry is one of principal structures that allow the joining of the hands to be a little more than wholly spontaneous.

Few aspects of contemporary life — political, judicial, military, commercial, administrative or law enforcement are untouched by the corrupting hand of Freemasonry. Also, rarely does the press speak, other than in veiled terms, of the role of Freemasons in business and politics, even though their presence is often a key to decoding affairs. Indeed, on occasion the media itself is implicated in specific scandals involving disinformation spread by a masonic network at the heart of the judiciary, magistracy and the press — the Poulson Affair, the Birmingham Six case and the Stalker Inquiry, to name but a few. In addition, the closed-shop environment which is created wherever the Brotherhood establishes a foothold is a constant source of acrimomony and division in both public and private sectors.

How many people’s careers have been routinely blighted by the curse of Masonic patronage and preferment, with particular jobs and positions reserved for a ‘Brother’?

FREEMASONRY

WHAT IS FREEMASONRY?

F

reemasonry is a particularly British creation which first emerged with the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 and spread throughout Europe from 1721 onwards. Essentially, it consists of three degrees or grades: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft Mason and Master Mason. The central theme of all Masonic ritual is the building of Solomon’s temple and the soap opera incidents involved in its construction, such as the murder of the principal architect Hiram Abiff and the continuing search for the secret of the lost Keystone. The sinister daftness of it all illustrates the essential madness and badness of power elites as well as providing a diversionary spectacle for the curious outsider.

In addition to the three Craft degrees of Freemasonry, which are open to all males who profess a belief in an Almighty Being including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Roman Catholics(1), etc. there are additional side or Higher degrees such as the Knights Templar (no relation to the original ecclesiastical Middle East Task Force) and the Ancient and Accepted (Scottish) Rite 33º who, despite the word Scottish, are exclusively White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. These side-degrees are higher only in the numerical sense, ostensibly, as the Grand Lodge of England practises Freemasonry only within the three Craft degrees and does not officially admit the existence of any superior Masonic authority. The side-degrees are conferred by patronage only on a specially approved and strictly limited number of candidates totalling at most a few hundred brothers, all drawn 1. Solemn excommunication for baptised believers who become Freemasons is no longer automatic according to the recently published Codex of Cannon Law in the Roman Catholic Church. there is also a document from the Congregation for Doctrine and the Faith which, together with a series of official and semi-official pronouncements, has more or less cemented the peace between the Vatican and Freemasonry.

exclusively from the intimate friendship circles of the British ruling class.

The top three degrees of 33º Freemasonry are themselves conferred only after a unanimous vote of approval by the Supreme Council 33 of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry, which itself is recruited, incestuously, from among the Grand Officers or Past Grand Officers of the Grand Lodge of England. These are the pre-eminent Grand Inspectors General, whose numbers are limited to 75. The headquarters of this inner Masonic organisation is the Grand Temple of the Rose Croix (no connection with the Rosicrucians) at 10 Duke Street, St James’s.

When I first began researching freemasonry in the early 1980s it was interesting to note the strong military presence among the exclusively WASP 33º: Major-General Sir Ralph Hone, KCMG, Major General Sir Allen Adair, GCVO, Brigadier Alex Cosby Fishburn Jackson, ex-ADC to the Queen.

CAPTAINS AND KINGS

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he principal figure in English Freemasonry is the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, who is invariably selected from the Royal Family and/or the English aristocracy.

The present incumbent is H.R.H. Edward Duke of Kent. Once installed, the Grand Master then appoints the officers of the Grand Lodge himself: there is no pretence at democracy, which would, after all, be out of place among so many aristocrats, captains of industry and masters of our fate.

Masonic officials are highly paid. No details are available concerning the salaries paid to the thirty-five full-time employees of the Grand Lodge, but they must at least be commensurate with the (in 1983) 20 million lire (approx. £10,000) plus lavish expenses paid for the part-time services of the Grand Master of the Italian counterpart, the Grand Orient of Italy,

Signor Armando Corona.

Additionally, Grand Lodge officials have wide-ranging powers of patronage accorded to them by the Constitution.

The most powerful position of all is that of Grand Secretary who is appointed by the Grand Master himself and who remains in office until retirement.

Apart from the three degrees of Craft Masonry and the confusing number of side-degrees there is a complex and labyrinthine pecking order of rank and precedence among the officers of the exclusive Grand Lodge, which covers over seventy grades of current and past office-holders.

There is little publicly available information on the structure, membership or workings of the Grand Lodge, which actively discourages any attempt at investigation beyond the now slick PR veneer.

Back in the 1980s, I spoke to the then Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of England, Commander Michael Higham RN who refused to be interviewed or comment on any of the questions I put to him. Things have changed radically in attitudes to Freemasonry since then.

It was the negative publicity surrounding Freemasonry following the publication of Michael Knight’s The Brotherhood in 1984 that first forced the United Grand Lodge of England to go in for serious damage control by publishing a leaflet on the positive aspects of the ‘Craft’.

The next PR blow Freemasonry received — the worst since the Bradford City Council and Poulson corruption scandal in 1970 — occurred in April 1988 when two Asian businessmen from Leicester, Sidney and Shaun Callis, accidentally gate-crashed a boxing function of the Victory Masonic Lodge in Blackburn.

The Leicester men were beaten up and then prosecuted on trumped-up charges of ‘assaulting’ eight policemen, but were acquited — presumably by a non-masonic jury.

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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FREEMASONRY

Lancashire police (ie, the tax-payers) eventually paid out £170,000 to the two men in an out-of-court settlement. What made the scandal more chilling was the extent of the Masonic cover-up, which involved not only the policemen, but also the hotel manager, the accused’s solicitor and a senior official in the Crown Prosecution Service who were all involved in attempting to secure the convictions of the Callises for attacking their police assailants Four years later, in 1992, as evidence about Masonic involvement in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad (disbanded in 1989 for corruption) began to emerge — partly as a result of the investigation into the wrongful conviction of the Birmingham Six, and the West Midlands forces’s involvement in smearing John Stalker, the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester who had been investigating the RUC’s ‘Shoot to Kill’ policy — the Masonic PR machine swung into action again. This time with the media (including Masonic journalists) being invited to attend a Masonic meeting for the first time.

February 1998 saw the first showdown between parliament and the Grand Lodge since 1951. In April 1951, Fred Longden. a Labour MP, called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Freemasonry. Home Secretary Herbert Morrison rejected the matter out of hand and the subject was not raised again until 1998.

In February 1998 the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee chaired by Chris Mullin MP summoned Grand Lodge Officers to provide the names of senior judges and police officers who were Freemasons.

Among other matters, the Committee was investigating the activities of the West Midlands Crime Squad, 96 of whom were alleged to have been Freemasons. The Committee had statements from police officers that the Freemasons within the squad had been operating 22

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

with impunity as a ‘firm within a firm’. One of their favoured practices was apparently holding a plastic bag over a suspect’s head until they agreed to sign a confession.

Having assured the Committee that that he would release the names on a strictly confidential basis, the contemptuous Grand Secretary Michael Higham then reneged on his promise and accused the MPs of conducting a ‘fishing expedition’.

The Grand Secretary changed his mind after being warned that unless he provided the names he would be charged with contempt of parliament.

Highams retired three months later and his successor, Jim Daniel, who took over on 1 June 1998, turned out to be considerably more media-savvy.

Grand Lodge now operates a hi-tech media-friendly and PR spin-machine from its headquarters at 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2, and a sophisticated but not particularly informative website at www.grandlodge-england.org.

JOINING THE BRETHREN

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o become a Freemason is not difficult. The requirements for a prospective candidate are that he must be male, twenty-one, and in reputable circumstances; he must profess a belief in a God and be prepared to take an oath on a book of Sacred Law under no less a penalty than ritual murder, mutilation and being ‘disappeared’ just like a victim of a Latin American death squad or a CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ team.

The would-be initiate is also forbidden to countenance any act which may subvert the peace and good order of society, must pay due obedience to the law of the state and must never be remiss in the allegiance due to the sovereign of his native land.

To the above list might be added a predilection for dressing up and performing dramatic ritual. The members of the Lodge to which initiation is sought are balloted as to the candidates’ acceptability to their

company, and membership is refused if three black balls are cast against him in the voting.

The vast majority of the 350,000 or so Craft Freemasons who come under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of England are obliged by the limitations of their friendship circles and income to remain at the level of the Third Degree, that of Master Mason. The Higher degrees and officership of the Grand Lodge are the prerogative of the rich and powerful and not for the likes of working-class brothers from Hackney, Hastings or St Leonards.

The following advice given by the Masonic Record in June 1964, although couched in suitably diplomatic language, reminded the Freemason of proletarian origin to remember his place: He [the brother] must consider how much time he can devote to Freemasonry without detriment to family, business and his other commitments. The more he progresses in Freemasonry the greater will be the demands on his pocket and he must decide whether he can meet these extra financial obligations.

For those with time, money, friends and influence the Masonic world is their oyster and they can join as many lodges as they can afford and will have them. Nor are the restrictions imposed by the credit-rating of the less-privileged brethren the only drawbacks to Masonic advancement.

Aspiring, upwardly-mobile Freemasons who join with an eye to discussing the price of beer with the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Kent, Lord Cornwallis and other distinguished members of the Craft are in for a disappointment: there are lodges and lodges and, like Orwells animals, some brethren are more equal than others.

As with the now notorious secret or ‘covered’ lodges P1 and P2 in Italy, the latter of which had a coded membership of 2,400 brothers although only 953 names were

FREEMASONRY

disclosed (2) there are a number of the 1612 lodges in London and the 5,865 provincial lodges (in 47 Masonic Provinces) whose purpose is to bring together into single discreet bodies brothers who hold high public or private office and who wish to remain at a suitable distance from the hoi polloi of Freemasonry.

Thus, there are lodges whose members are recruited exclusively and selectively from among the ranks of particular power elites: Mayors and Lord Mayors of London, the Bank of England, chartered accountants, architects, the legal profession, the merchant navy, the armed services, the Metropolitan Police, broadcasting.

There is even a Council of Public School Lodges.

Success and promotion in any of the professions is eased by membership of the Craft. The Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians, for example, appear to be an exclusively Masonic preserve. In his book The Doctors (Gollancz, 1965), Paul Ferris quotes a senior physician as saying ‘No one would become surgeon to the Queen unless he was a Freemason.’ This tradition dates back at least as far as Queen Victoria when, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, who was Grand Master of England from 1875 until his accession to the throne in 1901, when he assumed the title Protector of the Craft, the British Establishment consolidated its hold on Freemasonry.

The Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) successfully used Freemasonry as a parallel policy-making and action body to influence the affairs of state from which he had been excluded by his mother (herself, of course,

ineligible for membership, as a woman).

Freemasonry is particularly strong within the armed services, where it is seen as an extension of the fellowship of the regiment. There are 42 lodges in the British cavalry regiments alone, 25 in the Royal Regiment of Artillery and a number of Royal Marine lodges.

The exclusive elite of the British Army, the 22nd SAS and Artists Rifles (21st SAS), have a Lodge (Byfield) which meets on the second Monday of every month at the Duke of Yorks HQ in Chelsea. The Navy have their own exclusive lodges such as Royal Navy Lodge 2612, whose members include such worthies as the Duke of Edinburgh and former Grand Secretary, Commander Michael Higham RN. Hopeful squaddies and matelots looking for rapid advancement or simply good Masonic friendship should know, however, that since 1815 naval and military lodges have introduced by-laws excluding all civilians and stating that no sailor below the rank of Petty Officer or no soldier below the rank of Sergeant is eligible for initiation into the Brotherhood. Masonic researcher John Dewar, author of the authoritative study of contemporary Freemasonry, The Unlocked Secret, was told by a spokesman for a large Masonic outfitter in Great Queen Street that much of the firm’s successful business rested on export orders for regalia from NATO troops in Europe, an indication as to the extent of Masonic strength among the officer corps of the British and other NATO armed services.

2. During the investigation into Michele Sindona’s Banca Privata Italiana, a conduit for Mafia, fascist and Italian secret service money, police discovered a list of 953 members of Lodge P2, which included three cabinet ministers, 30 generals, eight admirals, the head of the armed forces, the heads of two intelligence services as well as the senior civilian collator of intelligence, 43 MPs, and police chiefs of Italy’s four main cities.

L

BLOODY OATH! ess bloodthirsty oaths than Masonic ones, but instead administered by trade unionists in the early part of the nineteenth century, were punished severely, as in the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Here are some Masonic examples: I, in the presence of the Great

Architect of the Universe, and of this worthy, worshipful, and warranted Lodge, sincerely and solemnly promise and swear, that I will always help conceal and never reveal any part or parts, point or points of the secrets or mysteries of or belonging to Free and Accepted Masons in Masonry , under no less a penalty, on the violation of any of them, than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the root, and buried at a cables length from the shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, So help me, God, and keep me steadfast in this my Great and Solemn Obligation of an Entered Apprentice Freemason. (The candidate then seals his oath by kissing the volume of Sacred Law.) — Oath of Obligation administered during the Ceremony of Initiation I, in the presence of the Grand Geometrician , under no less a penalty, than that of having my left breast laid open, my heart torn therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or devouring beasts of the field as prey. So help me Almighty God. — Oath of Obligation, Second Degree I, in the presence of the Most High, solemnly promise and swear, under no less a penalty, than that of being severed in two, my bowels burned to ashes .... and those ashes scattered over the face of the earth and wafted by the four cardinal winds of heaven.

— Oath of Obligation, Third Degree I, in the presence of the True and Living God , solemnly promise , under no less a penalty, than that of having my head struck off.

— Oath of Obligation, Holy Royal Arch Chapter (3) And here are some of the laws which might have applied: Every person, who shall in any manner or form whatsoever administer or cause to be administered, or be 3. The rules were changed in 1986. Would-be freemasons no longer have to agree to disembowelment, have their tongues cut out, or their ashes wafted by the winds of heaven. The oath remains valid for Freemasons who entered the Craft prior to that date.

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assisting at the administering of any oath or engagement, purporting or intending to bind the person taking the same to commit any treason or murder, shall, on conviction thereof by due course of law, be adjudged guilty of felony.

— Unlawful Oaths Act 1812 All persons who shall conspire, confederate and agree to murder any person, whether he be a subject of Her Majesty or not, and whether he be within the Queens dominions or not, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall be liable to imprisonment for any term not more than ten years.

— Offences Against the Person Act 1861

I

n fact, Freemasonry, being an arm of the Establishment, has been able to circumvent or ignore the law of the land relating to secret societies and conspiracy for two hundred years now. Masonic lodges were specifically exempted from the Unlawful Societies Act 1799 by the intervention of the Fourth Duke of Atholl and the Earl of Moira. They were equally able to ignore other repressive statutes and legislation directed against the nascent working-class and radical organisations: the Seditious Meetings Act 1817 and the Promissory Oaths Act 1868 which specifically provided that any society requiring members to take an oath when they join shall substitute a declaration for an oath.

Every Masonic lodge is required, however, to submit an annual return of the names, addresses and occupations of its subscribing members to the Clerk of the Peace for the county in which the lodge is held.

This information is not available to the general public nor is it, apparently, collated by central government. The fact that most Clerks of the Peace are likely to be Freemasons themselves will help ensure the information remains among friends.

A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY?

A

lthough most of the laws relating to the taking of oaths

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were cleared from the Statute Books with the Criminal Law Act 1967 the Masonic oaths even though they have for the most part, since 1964, been abbreviated for the benefit of the squeamish to the euphemistic “ever bearing in mind the ancient penalty” are clearly in contravention of the conspiracy laws so beloved of the English judiciary for use against the organised working class.

The prime justification for the use of the conspiracy laws is that it enables the law to intervene at an early stage before a contemplated crime has actually been committed. Lord Diplock defined conspiracy thus: [T]he offence lies not in the overt acts themselves, but in an inferred anterior agreement to commit them, There can be little doubt that a sacred promise to countenance and agree to premeditated ritual mutilation and murder falls within the category of an agreement to commit a crime.

In his summing up in the conspiracy trial of the Shrewsbury Three in 1974, Mr Justice Mais directed the jury to consider the following: …conspirators do not publish their agreement or design. The whole object of conspiracy is something secret, and so it is necessary to see whether the surrounding circumstances and facts as found by you are such that you can infer a conspiracy and that an accused was part of that conspiracy. I must tell you that conspiracy, generally speaking, is a matter of inference. It is seldom expressed in words still less in writing, and it can be inferred from conduct, by the words and actions of those concerned, Now it is not necessary that all conspirators, or the accused here, should join the conspiracy at one and the same time. It is not necessary that they should all join at the beginning, or that they all originated the idea. They neednt all know the smallest detail but there must be knowledge of the general scheme, a man, as I say, who joins a conspiracy after its formation, who lends his aid to it knowingly, in furtherance of its objects, is just as guilty as the man who

was there at the beginning. He can even join during the implementation of the conspiracy.

Also, the permeation of the entire legal profession by Freemasonry from the Lord Chancellor’s Office to the most far-flung provincial lawyer and JP or Sheriff the conspiracy makers and arbiters themselves will no doubt ensure that Freemasonry remains a locked secret.

One consequence of the 1998 Select Committee’s report was a survey of the English and Welsh courts, which drew a response from 96 per cent of judges and 87 per cent of magistrates.

Five per cent of judges and magistrates admitted they were Freemasons while 89 per cent of judges and 80 per cent of magistrates said they had no links with the organisation. After months of standoff between parliament, Grand Lodge and among Ministers themselves, a register of Masonic judges was introduced. It was the first such register to cover any group of civil servants or other state employees; it also made the declaration of Masonic status compulsory for all newly-appointed judges. Needless to say, those Freemasons, lawyers and judges who subsequently cried ‘discrimination’ or defended freemasonry in the judiciary on the grounds that privacy must be protected against unjustifiable interference — all conveniently ignore the conflict of interest which Freemasonry imposes on its members.

In other words, although so far only five per cent of over 5,000 judges have admitted they are Freemasons (64 declined to answer); this translates into no less than 247 judges who are known to have taken an oath demanding a higher degree of observance than their own judicial oath i.e. to support their brother Freemasons to the detriment of others.

In November 1998 a Welsh barrister wrote to The Times: After 30 years at the Bar, it is my view that the influence of Freemasonry in the law is insidious and overwhelming. By

FREEMASONRY

contrast my own ‘religious beliefs, political views or sexual preferences'’are manifest for all to see. The liberty of the ordinary individual is too important to be left to a judiciary with secrets to hide.

WHO’S WHO?

I

n national affairs of State and business there is little doubt that Freemasonry provides a serious instrument of influence for the relatively small number of people who wield real political and economic power in Britain today: cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, senior police officers and leading members of the armed services, executives of local authorities, judges, magistrates, journalists, prominent churchmen, industrialists and trade union leaders.

It is not only in national affairs that Freemasons can exert their influence.

The extent to which Freemasonry can exert a powerful grip on the life of a community has been illustrated by the investigations carried out in the 1970s by local radical papers such as Rebecca and Tameside Eye. Journalists from both papers obtained membership lists for Masonic Lodges in their respective areas. The investigation into the Abergavenny Freemasons showed just how ubiquitous and pervasive Freemasonry can be within the power structure of local politics, commerce and privilege.

Abergavenny is a quiet market town with a population of about 10,000 and one Masonic lodge with about 170 members. At the time of the investigation in the late 1970s many of the Tories on the Conservativecontrolled, 16-seat council were Freemasons, including solicitors and the managers of the three High Street Banks, the Town Clerk, the Deputy Town Clerk, the Borough Treasurer, the Housing Manager, the Clerk to the Magistrates, the owners of the Abergavenny Chronicle, the Master of the Talybont Hunt, the head of the Abergavenny police force, three sergeants and a detective constable, 17 shopkeepers and 16 local

businessmen. If Abergavenny could be said to have an Establishment it was to be found at the monthly meetings of the local St Johns Lodge. The Tameside Eye investigation into the sixty lodges in the Greater Manchester area showed a similar picture of a cohesive and all-pervasive network underpinning vested interest and privilege.

It would be interesting to see what a similar investigation into Hastings Thornton Lodge 5556 threw up.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

F

reemasonry claims for itself the status of a private, exclusively male club whose members are dedicated to the ideals of universal brotherhood and morality which finds its principal expression in its charitable works. But in the UK, as opposed to Craft Freemasonry in the US, the main benefactors of Masonic charities are: the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institute (which owns a block of a hundred flats at Harewood Court, Hove), the Royal Masonic Institute for Girls, the RMI for Boys and the Royal Masonic Hospital. The Queen is patron of all with the exception of the hospital.

Because they were seen as primarily self-serving institutions — falling more into the category of Friendly Societies — in the late 1970s the Masonic charities faced the possibility of losing their registered Charity status. And so, following the recommendations of the Bagnall Report in 1978, the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) Board of Benevolence became in 1981, the independent Grand Charity, with its own President, Council and Committee.

Commander Higham, the then Grand Secretary, authorised the transfer that year of the assets of the Fund of Benevolence which at the time stood at £2,496,961 to the newly registered Grand Charity, the only registered Masonic charity which does not mention a specific purpose in its

articles of association (e.g. for relief of distressed dependants of Freemasons).

In fact the stated aims of the Grand Charity are sufficiently vague as to cast serious doubt as to its claims to be a charity. The monies at its disposal can now be distributed to: such charitable institutions, objects or purposes as the council shall have at its absolute discretion determine. The assets of the Grand Charity at the end of 1981 stood at £2,638,447 while its income for the year was £834,589, including over £500,000 in contributions from the Craft and £250,000 in dividends and interest from stocks and bonds (Distillers, Imperial Group, Marks and Spencers, Rank Hovis McDougall, etc.).

For the year ended 30 November 2004, total income was £7.02m with income from lodges standing at £1.86m. The Grand Charity also received a total of £965,400 from legacies and donations., the balance being provided from investment income. Expenditure for the year 2003-2004 was £5.7m of which £2.742m went to Masonic charities and individual Freemasons and £2.31m to charities in the wider community.

In November 2005 it was discovered that the Midlands-based Leamington Fund chaired by Michael Price, the provincial grandmaster of Warwickshire freemasons responsible for 200 lodges and about 6,500 masons, made a donation of £93,000 to the Conservative party. No public records exist for the Leamington Fund, which is an ‘unincorporated association’ and, as such, can make donations without revealing who is behind them.

INTERNATIONAL LINKS

F

or many years the Grand Lodge of England disavowed the European Grand Orient Lodge because of their alleged permeation by freethinkers and revolutionaries. It may not be entirely coincidental that the Grand Lodge of England finally

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

25

FREEMASONRY

recognised the Grand Orient of Italy in 1972 at the height of extreme rightwing machinations in both the UK and Italy (in Italy these being most closely linked with the Italian Grand Lodge and the secret lodges P1 and P2), thus bringing Italy back into full membership of the international Masonic community after 110 years in the wilderness.

The principal architect of this historic rapprochement was the then Grand Master of the Grand Orient, Lino Salvini, an extreme right winger, a neo-fascist in fact, who immediately set about involving the Masonic movement in a series of financial and political intrigues which included moves to sabotage the proposed amalgamation of the three main Italian trade unions. These maneoeuvres had the financial backing of Fiat and the Italian employers’ federation, which donate in the region of 100 million lire a year to Masonic coffers.

It is equally interesting that within 24 hours of the discovery of the hanged body of Roberto Calvi on 17 June 1982 — a death which occurred in an almost ritualistic setting under the arches of Blackfriars Bridge with the tidal waters of the River Thames lapping at his feet (P2 members were known as the Black Brothers) — the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, Armando Corona, made a hurried trip to London accompanied by his Grand Secretary, De Stefano, to discuss Calvi’s death with officials of the Grand Lodge in England.

Calvi’s escape to England had been organised by fellow P2 member and neo-fascist financier Flavio Carboni, and the man who safehoused Calvi in London was a London-based Freemason by the name of Michael Morris. Carboni is currently (October 2005) being tried in Rome, with three others, for Calvi’s murder.

WHOSE CONSPIRACY? As long as you know what the agreement is, then you are a conspirator. You 26

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needn’t necessarily know your fellow conspirators, nor need you always be active in the conspiracy. All you need to know is the agreement. It can be effected by a wink or a nod, without a word being exchanged. It need have no particular time limit, no particular form, no boundaries.” — Mr Justice James (later Lord James) summing up in the 1971 trial ‘Regina v Greenfield’.

F

reemasonry is not a conspiracy in itself, nor is it the repository of any hidden secret or arcane knowledge. Neither is Freemasonry attractive to fascists of the old or new variety, who view it with hostility, seeing in it the hidden hand of Bolshevik subversion and a tool of ‘international finance capital’ (a coded reference to the Jewish world conspiracy which they profess to see all around them). Politically speaking, Freemasonry is a vehicle for the extremists of the centre.

For the majority of Freemasons the Craft permits them to get away from their wives on a regular basis and rationalise it to themselves and others in a good and worthy cause. The Minister at London’s City Temple, the Reverend Leonard Griffith, explained his misogyny to Masonic researcher James Dewar: I think there is a man’s world and I think every man needs to get into that world occasionally and Masonry is perhaps one expression of this. Certainly, in the Churches I’ve always been depressed by the fact that there seems to be a much larger proportion of women than men. I like to be with men and perhaps that’s one reason why I enjoy attending a meeting of the Masonic Lodge.

CONCLUSIONS

W

hat inference can we draw concerning the covert power and influence which Freemasonry may exercise among its members?

There are, after all, many secret, semisecret and exclusive societies and clubs either contending for power or

warding off attempts by outsiders to undermine their own position in the great pecking order.

Success in an authoritarian and competitive society as in totalitarian societies depends on knowing more about the opposition and their plans, together with the ability to monopolise that information and use it intelligently. ‘Conspiracy’, as Carl Oglesby affirms, ‘is standard practice among all power groups, occult or otherwise. What they fail to recognise is that ultimately secrets are more dangerous to those who hoard them than to those excluded from the information cycle.’

Freemasonry is all things to men.

Freemasons argue that the Craft consists of enlightened and disinterested persons who cherish humanitarian and charitable goals and who combine co-operatively to realise mutual aspirations. In reality Freemasonry cannot but provide a conduit for the bribery, corruption and subornation that are endemic in any system of privilege. The secrecy and exclusiveness of the Craft creates an unbridgeable gap between the Masonic view of the world and those outside the brotherhood, who, in effect, do not exist for Freemasons, except inasmuch as they aid or hinder their political or career ambitions.

Count Windischgratz, an astute observer of human nature and the activities of secret societies, wrote in 1788: [T]hey are likely to encourage habits of mind and behaviour destructive of attention to the ordinary moral and social duties. The danger of degeneration from the high ideals of a secret brotherhood will always be present because of the difficulties of reconciling the secret obligations to the society with the outside world. Claims to use the opportunities of secret organisations for the preparation of the regeneration of the world are always to be regarded as dubious, given men’s ordinary weaknesses.

FREEMASONRY

T

he claim by Freemasons that the Craft provides brotherhood is equally fictitious. The exclusiveness of the inner circles of the Higher degrees and the hierarchical structure of the Grand Lodge itself based on rank, patronage, preferment, precedence and wealth have more in common with the Mafia and the Union Corse than with a universal brotherhood.

Although Freemasons do constitute a powerful pressure group because of their positions in society it would of course be very wrong and misleading to see them as some sort of omnipotent cabal controlling the course of human affairs.

Freemasons, like the Roman Catholic Catenian Association, MI5, the CIA, the Russian FSU, Opus Dei, the editorial board of The Economist or any other exclusive group, have as much idea as anyone else as to what is going on in the world. What Freemasonry can provide is an organised and efficient sociometric network capable of defending and extending the influence of those who already wield power.

The problem with finding evidence of criminal manipulation of the Craft

by Freemasons — as within any cohesive and tenacious combination or friendship circle — is like fumbling for something solid in a sea of tapioca pudding. Also, most conspiracy theories are invariably so loosely defined that all evidence which does not tie in with the thesis is usually dismissed as part of the cover-up, but the law is quite specific.

In his summing up in the Shrewsbury Three conspiracy trial in 1974, Mr Justice Mais told the jury: [A conspiracy] is seldom expressed in words, still less in writing, and it can be inferred from the conduct, by the words and by the acts of those concerned…

The one solid conclusion we can reach is that Freemasons do constitute an important political, social and business pressure group and have the potential, at least, to exert a powerful

influence at national and international as well as local level. The entire problem with Freemasonry is that it is an unaccountable means of influence — but not the only one!

The relationship between the members of the Establishment is symbiotic and mutually supportive, and the Craft — at least up until the late 1990s when its membership started to fall — provided a parallel power structure linking financial, administrative, judicial, military and other power elites whose vision of a healthy world order depends on strong Masonic alliances among rightthinking men. Unlike the past, people

© Peter Macdiarmid

who seek power and influence in Blair’s Britain no longer turn to the lodges, they turn to the Labour Party instead.

For those who believe in an open and accountable society it is important to be able to identify the power-wielders and backroom policymakers in our local communities. Mason-spotting is one such way of going about this. Lodge meetings and Masonic functions are usually advertised in the local papers, while the more important events in the Masonic calendar are covered regularly in the newspapers such as Daily Telegraph.

Freemasons themselves can be easily identified

going to and from the Masonic Hall, restaurant, hotel or pub where the lodge or function is being held by their dark suits and small cases in which they carry their regalia and jewels. Apart from the regular lodge meetings, Freemasons also celebrate certain saints’ days and attend special lodge functions on or close to those days: St John the Evangelist, 27 December (1st Sunday after Christmas); St George’s Day, 23 April (1st Wednesday after); St John the Baptist, 24 June. St Barbara, St Thomas and the Four Crowned Martyrs are among other saints with particular significance to members of the Craft.

The photographer working with the Welsh investigative magazine Rebecca showed great initiative when she managed to smuggle herself into the annual meeting of the South Wales Provinces Eastern Division Grand Lodge while it was in full session and take photographs. She was grabbed by the Lodge Tyler a Masonic bouncer whose function is to guard the lodge while in session (historically the role of the Tyler included organising and carrying out the ritual murder of Masonic traitors and apostates) but she managed to throw the camera to a waiting colleague and save the film.

As there is no publicly available register of the membership of this particular secret society and it is unlikely the Clerks of the Peace will agree to make their lists available for inspection, then only actions such as the above are likely to identify the membership of one of the central pillars of privilege in clandestine Britain. Only by opening their books to inspection will the many ‘misconceptions’ surrounding freemasonry be cleared up and remove the suspicion of a devotion to advancing members’ interests in secret — unless, of course, that is the whole point in the first place.

Stuart Christie Stuart Christie’s ‘Granny Made Me An Anarchist’ is published by Scribner (Simon & Schuster), in paperback, at £7.99 (ISBN 0743263561)

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

27

FOOD

The olive groves of Mani

by John Barker

I

N THE Southern Peleponnese many people are gearing up for this year’s olive harvest: farmers, their families; mill-owners; teams of pickers. The ground around the base of the trees is being cleared, while mill-owners clean their machinery, and test it out.

In the area I know well, it will be a bumper harvest, the first for four years. Alternative years have always had a smaller output, but last year was exceptionally poor, as was the ‘good’ year of 2003-4. Frosts, unprecedented in this area, on the edge of the Mani peninsula and some 80km from Kalamata, caused severe damage despite the toughness of olive trees.

The first picking in early to midNovember, will be of eating-olives.

Here they are called bourakles, and are of the type known as Kalamata olives. As a generic name it has little to do with the area any more, but here, that’s exactly what they are.

Some farmers specialize in these, but mostly they are just for the house. The speciality here is that the olive is given a cut, and after the usual long soak in brine to remove the bitterness, is then preserved in a vinegar and olive oil mix.

Then picking for olives for oil begins in earnest. This olive, called the 28

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

Kalamon, is different both in size and colour. The Kalamon also determines methods of picking. Trees are vigorously pruned during picking and the olives from the cut branches providing much of each year’s yield.

These used to be beaten on slatted tables called donkeys; now, most pickers have a vacuum machine through which the branch is pulled, and which sucks off only the olives.

The rest of the fruit must be combed.

Beating is not so common here.

Neither are other mechanical aids used in other places on other types which, with the Kalamon, tend to bring down too many leaves and branches. What matters is not to bruise the fruit, and then to get it to the mill as fast as possible once enough trees have been picked.

There are no large estates here. Two to four thousand trees is large-scale.

Some families have just enough to produce oil for the house for the next two years, say 300 litres.

Others, of intermediate size, will have a surplus which will be an important part of their income, and the income of the local economy as a whole. Olive mills, too, are family affairs. They process the oil for 10 per cent of what is produced. The traditional mill, direct developments

from the pre-electric period, mashes the olives with stone wheels then squeezes out the oil through woven mats with hydraulic pressure applied from below. These are labourintensive, and those that have survived in this area have only done so because of a ready supply of Albanian labour. They do, however, generate more income for the area and, compared to the modern centrifugal method, produce more flavour.

The EU, however, encourages the centrifugal method, and subsidises those who switch to it. This is because this method produces a more uniform product, and one which makes the oil look clearer. The real problem that can occur with the mat method is the farmer who has not picked his crop properly — however well the mats are shaken after each press — the taste is likely to contaminate the next farmer’s oil. The centrifugal method would also appear to extract slightly more oil per kilo of olives and is thus attractive to farmers. But it is noteworthy that in many cases what they intend for their own homes, they will take to the old-style mill. This is because the centrifugal method and the heat of the water it uses, it is argued, destroys some of the volatile flavour compounds, aerates the oil, and separates the Glucosides too quickly.

This question of the heat raises the key issue about the valuation of olive oil — the labelling and the criteria used on that labelling. In most instances, ‘Cold Pressed’ is a misnomer. The other criteria is ‘Extra Virgin’. This means only that the oil must have less than one-per-cent acidity. This ought to say something about the quality of the oil. It is to keep the acidity low that the olives should be in the mill before they have sat around in sacks or on the ground, and that they are as unbruised as possible in the picking. However, for one thing, it is only one measure of quality and says nothing about purity or taste. For another, inferior oil can have its acidity-level reduced. A crude

FOOD

method involves caustic soda and earth filters. Rape seed oil, with its characteristic sterols removed, is very difficult to detect in olive oil.

This year’s harvest should produce a much better income than usual. The trees are unusually full, and the price of oil should be much higher this year owing to last year’s exceptional frosts in Spain, the world’s largest producer.

But the farmers here, despite the purity and high quality of their oil (a quality recognized in Mort Rosenblum’s comprehensive The Olive: A Noble Fruit), will see little of this increase. There is neither any local nor national capability to

compete with Italian conglomerates in marketing. This means that there is an oligopoly of buyers and sellers for the world market. A large proportion of Greek oil is sold through merchants, to Italy, which specialises in the blending of oils. The buying up of the more common international labels by Unilever and Ferruzzi weakens still further the bargaining power of the producer. Farmers who can afford to wait before they sell may get a better price. but it will be within the parameters of the commercial setup. One demand has been for country-of-origin labelling, but this has been vigorously opposed by the

Olive oil - the facts MANI OLIVE OIL PRODUCTION

M

ani olive oil comes directly from farmers in the Mani penninsula of the southern Peleponnese, Greece. Until recently, most of this oil has gone to Italy and been packaged there. Slowly, however, the superb quality of the oil from this region is being recognised. For example, Mort Rosenbloom in his definitive book Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit points out that ‘it is difficult to find outside the region’, while rating it as one of the finest in the world. The olives used for the olive oil are of the Koroneiki variety. Many of the trees are upwards of a hundred years old, and expertise in cultivation is passed down through families.

Picking the olives takes place between November and February.

EXTRA VIRGIN

it is this pruning skill which has meant that little or no fertiliser is used. These farmers are well aware that the best oil contains a negligible level of acidity, and for this reason the sacks of olives are taken to the press every three days or so during the picking season so that acidity does not form. The oil they produce is as a matter of course ‘Extra Virgin’, that is to say it has less than one per cent acidity. This level of acidity, although it is the criteria by which ‘Extra Virgin’ is defined, is not, however, a complete guide to the quality of the oil and it is well known that there are mixing tricks whereby acidity levels can be reduced with products other than olives. This oil is pure. It has not been either refined or mixed with anything else, and has a good vitamin content in addition to the more wellknown healthy attributes of olive oil.

The olives are hand picked which OLD PRESSED means they are not bruised by falling to the ground. In the process of Most importantly, this oil is pressed picking, the trees are well-pruned and in the traditional manner on mats in

C

large companies in Italy where the produce of Tunisia, Spain and Greece may appear in various blends (this is not to say that the blending is without skill) all of which appear as ‘Made in Italy’. This both increases the Italian reputation and thus perpetuates their marketing dominance; it puts them in line for export subsidies outside the EU. The lack of quality-valuation or olive oil journalism of any kind, also perpetuates the situation. This means that the consumer, who is supposed to be king and queen in this day and age, is likely to be the one with no clothes on. a press. The only thing that has changed in the last century is that the press is now hydraulic. Most presses in southern Europe do not use this method but instead use a modern centrifugal extraction process in which the olive paste is heated up to a high temperature.

This new method is attractive to farmers because they get more oil per weight of olives.

Fortunately, however, the farmers from whom Classic Mani Olive Oil buys its oil, still use the old method because they know that it tastes better. It is noticeable that farmers who take some to one type of factory and some to another always keep oil from the traditional method for their own domestic use. Classic Mani Olive Oil, therefore, is genuinely cold-pressed, meaning that the vitamin content is not lost in the heating process, and that oil is extracted only from the best part of the olive. These small mat presses are part of the community and is one reason why the time between picking and pressing is kept to a minimum, which is so important in keeping down the level of acidity and keeps the taste special to the oil of the region. www.manioliveoil.com harrier@easynet.co.uk

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

29

FICTION

The Rocker on the Hill

by Pauline Melville

I

first saw the car on the A259 to Hastings. It overtook me at speed on the long stretch of road by the sea wall at Dymchurch. How could I not notice it? I was the motor of my fantasies, a white Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. I am a car fetishist. I cursed my own little customized Renault Clio for not being fast enough to keep up with it. I had been driving slowly anyway because I was still puzzling over something odd that had happened earlier that morning. I was driving home from my night shift at the petrol station by Dover docks. A morning mist still hung over the motorway. Suddenly I saw some movement ahead of me on the road which made me brake slightly. As I came closer I saw that there were between eight and ten men running across the empty motorway. Some had their shoulders hunched and were half-bent in a crouching run. As my car drew near they scattered in random directions and dived for cover at the side of the road. It was a strange incongruous war-time sight.

A quarter of an hour later when I had turned off the motorway and on to the A259 I realised what I had seen.

Of course. Illegal immigrants. They must have come in that morning on one of the lorries. Just as I was figuring this out the Porsche roared past me and I was distracted by the heavenly vision of the shining white convertible. The morning mists had cleared. The day was clear and sunny.

The Porsche shimmered in the road ahead of me before disappearing around a curve.

Two weeks later I spotted the same car in Morrison’s car park. It sat there like a movie star. I left a note for the owner on the windscreen. The car 30

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

park is a pick-up place for car buffs. I did my shopping and bought a coffee in The Blue Jazz Company. When I got back to the car someone had left an answering note under my righthand windscreen wiper. It said ‘Wait’.

So I did.

‘Oooooh. Someone’s been watching me.”’

A man in his fifties with dyed black hair sprayed rigid in an Elvis pompadour laughed as he tapped on my car window. I recognised Harry Vince the ageing rocker who lived in the mansion on the hill. His glory days were long past. Until recently he had been putting on a blonde wig and doing impersonations of Rod Stewart at The White Rock Hotel. I saw him there once.

He was introduced with the tinny bang of a drum and the hiss of cymbals as he stepped on to the tiny cramped stage. His face was a cracked mask of orange makeup. In fact, his

impersonation was good but the club shut anyway. The council decided that the pink neon sign outside was not compatible with the historic requirements of the Old Town.

Unexpectedly and despite having no apparent means of support, Harry Vince moved into an enormous detached white house on the cliffs outside town. The building had three tiers of galleries with thin metal railings around the outside. It was like an ocean going liner from the jazz age that had carelessly docked on the side of the hill. Originally it had been known locally as ‘Hotel Fly-Blown’ but it had remained unoccupied and neglected since its closure. People wondered how he could afford to buy it. They assumed an old hit record had been re-issued and produced some royalties.

We introduced ourselves and went to Chang’s Golden Dragon restaurant to eat some of their dripping mahoganny-coloured spare ribs. I am not gay. But I am a car fetishist. All I really wanted was a lunch date with the owner of a white Cabriolet. We talked. We discovered a mutual

FICTION

passion for classic cars. That must have been what encouraged him to confide in me. He boasted casually about how he had taken a thousand tabs of ecstasy in his career and how he had delivered a baby with his own hands on a slip road of the M25 motorway. He told me that he was a devoted fan of Fred Astaire movies and had seen each of them more than a hundred times. Every night he watched video versions of them. One scene he had managed to put on a loop so that it just repeatedly endlessly for three hours.

I listened. All I really wanted was a ride in his Porsche. Then, as I had been hoping, he asked: ‘Do you want to see my other cars?’

‘Please.’

As we walked up the wide expanse of steps at the front of his mansion I noticed the cracks in the paint and that the windows were covered in grime. We went in. The parquet flooring of the old hotel lobby was covered in dust. Two tubs stood inside on either side of the door each containing a shrivelled dead palm tree.

The house seemed oddly deserted.

Most of the downstairs rooms were empty apart from mattresses and pieces of foam rubber on the floors.

Some renovation work appeared to be going on. A building worker stood in one of the doorways. Our entrance caught him by surprise and he remained motionless and silent as we passed. He had beautiful grey eyes.

His wide Slav cheekbones were coated with plaster dust which gave him the appearance of being half statue, half man. One frowning look from Harry Vince sent the man scurrying away out of sight.

‘Come and meet Molly May the wife.’ Said Harry genially.

Harry and his wife seemed to inhabit just one vast room upstairs. In it was a giant bed and television with video attachments. There was a cinema-sized screen covering one wall and under the window were the trappings of a recording studio and sound system. Sorting through a pile

of glamorous spangled second-hand clothes on the floor was Molly May. She was plump as a mushroom and wore her black hair pulled tightly back and shining like the painted hair of a Russian doll. Her fuschia purple lipstick had frayed into the cracks around her mouth. She wore black and even from a distance smelled of stale sweat and gave off an aura of unholy sex. She was swathed in jet beads and silver bangles which tinkled like a tambourine when she moved.

‘This is us. Molly May and me.

She’s getting ready for a car-boot sale.

She doesn’t have to but she likes it.

That’s what we do these days, isn’t it, doll? A bit of buying and selling.’ He winked out of some long-standing habit. She nodded in my direction but did not smile. She just continued sorting the clothes into piles.

I drew breath. Through the window at the back I could see four beautiful cars lined up: a grey Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a red 1968 Lotus Elan; a green Bristol 408 Coupe Auto and another white Cabriolet, this time a VW Gold GTI. I was astonished.

Between them they must have cost a fortune. He saw the envy in my eyes and grinned: ‘Come down and have a closer look.’

The back of the house had an extra basement area that was built right into the side of the hill without being visible from the front. I wandered around the cars inspecting each one: ‘How on earth can you afford all this?’ I could not help asking.

‘Like I say. A bit of buying and selling.’ He was looking at me as though weighing up whether or not to take me further into his confidence. I was touching the Aston Martin lasciviously. Suddenly, he took my arm: ‘I’m going to show you something.’

He went to the padlocked doors of the large basement built into the hillside and unlocked them. As soon as the doors were opened I was engulfed by a rush of fetid air. The broad shaft of light from outside

showed tightly packed grey lumpen shapes on the floor. Some fifty men were sleeping in there on rectangular foam mattresses. Near the door was a stinking dustbin which they must have been using as a toilet. Some of the men, caught in the light from the opened doors, began to sit up shielding their eyes from the brightness. Two at least that I saw were Chinese. Those others who were visible looked as if they were from Eastern Europe somewhere.

Harry shut the doors again quickly and bent to fasten the padlock. The old rock and roller looked up at me impishly, eyebrows raised as if to query my response: ‘Get it? A bit of buying and selling.

I buy them from my contact in Albania. I sell them to a gangmaster near Tonbridge. He organises the farm-workers, potato-pickers and so on. Now I’m going to offer you a deal because I can see you love these cars like I do. I wouldn’t mind some help occasionally picking these guys up from Dover. Give me a hand with that and I’ll pay you, of course, and let you drive any one of my cars whenever you like.’

On the way back to Morrison’s car park where I’d left my sad little Renault he demonstrated the miniature karioke machine he had fitted into the front of the Porsche.

He pressed a button and the opening bars of ‘Maggie May’ filled the car.

The backing fiddle sounded like leather squeaking on a glass window.

Harry Vince, coiffured head nodding from side to side, opened the roof of his car to the glorious sunshine and gave me the full benefit of his husky Rod Stewart voice: ‘Wake up Maggie, I think I’ve got something to say to you.’ ©2005 Pauline Melville Pauline Melville is the author of ‘Shape-Shifter’ (1990), a collection of short stories which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book) and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her first novel, ‘The Ventriloquist’s Tale’ (1997), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent collection of stories is ‘The Migration of Ghosts’ (1998).

January ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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LETTERS

From Michael Foster, MP for Rye and Hastings Dear Sir Arctic Star/ Russian Arctic Defence Medal I understand that you are running an article in The Hastings Trawler featuring a veteran by the name of Basil Rose.

It would seem that this relates to the issue of the Russian Arctic Defence Medal which the Russian Government suggested at one time, would be provided to those who served on allied Arctic convoys.

As you may know, the background to this issue is that when medals came to be awarded at the end of the Second World War, a particular medal was granted which recognised service in the Atlantic and on convoys to North Russia. That was the Atlantic Star.

However, to be eligible for the Star, certain service criteria had to be met (mainly that there had to be a six month period of service) and not all those who served therefore qualified.

At the time, these proposals were approved by the King who explicitly stated that no further medals should be

instituted for Second World War service. Successive governments have taken the decision not to overrule that view.

Our current Labour Government has reviewed the situation in 2003 and 2004 and have said they will continue to consider the best way forward.

However the six month qualifying service requirement has been reviewed independently on many occasions and the recommendation has always been to retain it. It is important, of course, that a decision is reached which the armed forces themselves find acceptable.

The Government have however sought a compromise in the granting of Arctic Emblem which would be available to all Arctic veterans. I appreciate that it is not the same as a medal (although it can be worn alongside existing medals) but it isstill a recognition of the bravery of these men and the suffering they endured Turning to the issue of the Russian Arctic Defence Medal, I understand it was suggested by the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs that an Arctic Defence Medal would be awarded to

WHICH WAY DO OUR MPS VOTE? Have you ever wondered which way our local M.P.s have been voting lately?

Readers may find the following of some interest — it makes you despair of democracy and wonder why you both to vote at all!

MF = Michael Foster (Labour — Hastings and Rye) GB = Greg Barker (Conservative — Bexhill and Battle) ● Terrorism Bill (9.11.05) MPs voted on a government proposal to extend the maximum period for police detention of a terrorist suspect without charge to 90 days. The government was defeated, with 49 Labour MPs rebelling.

MF — For GB — Against ● Terror bill ‘intent’ amendment (2.11.05.) An amendment to the government’s terror bill. Opposition and rebel MPs voted for the amendment MF — Against GB — For ● ID Cards Bill — 3rd reading (18.10.05) A government bill to introduce identity cards. 25 rebel Labour MPs opposed the bill’s third reading, and others voted for opposition amendments MF — For GB — Against ● ID Cards Bill – 2nd reading (28.6.05.) MPs voted to give the ID Cards Bill a second reading. 20 Labour rebels voted against the government MF — For GB — Against ● Prevention of Terrorism Bill – 3rd reading (28.2.05.) MPs voted on an amendment to make all control orders at the discretion of a judge. Rebels voted in favour. Amendment was defeated and the bill given its 3rd reading MF — Against GB — For ● Hunting Ban (15.9.04) The government reintroduced a bill to ban foxhunting and hare coursing. MPs voted 356 to 166 in favour of the ban MF — For GB — Against ● Higher Education Funding Bill (27.1.04) MPs voted on a second reading of the government bill which included plans for variable student tuition fees. Rebels voted against MF — For GB — Against

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THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|January ‘06

all veterans of the allied arctic convoys.

This is a battle decoration and the rules on the acceptance and wearing of foreign medals therefore apply.

In addition, at the end of the Second World War, the Allied countries agreed that medals would not be exchanged, which would mean that it would be unlikely that such a medal could be accepted.

Notwithstanding however, the Government stressed that if a formal proposal was made, they would consider it carefully and discuss it with relevant groups.

Indeed, active consideration was given by the Government as to how the current rules could be got round in advance of a proposal being made by the Russians. I am sorry to say that in December of last year, the Russian authorities made it known that they were no longer considering conferring this medal on foreign war veterans (having never, in any case, made a formal proposal).

I hope the above is helpful in setting out the current situation on both these issues

Michael Foster DL MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

● Amendment to government Iraq motion (18.3.03) MPs debating the Iraq crisis voted on an anti-war amendment. Rebels voted in favour. Motion was defeated MF — No vote GB — Against ● Anti-war amendment in the Iraq debate (26.2.03) MPs voted on an amendment tabled by Chris Smith & Douglas Hogg. Rebels voted in favour.

Amendment was not carried MF — Against GB — No vote ● All-elected Lords (4.2.03) Motion to introduce a fully elected House of Lords. MPs given a free vote.

MF — No vote GB — Against

● UN Resolution 1441 (25.11.02) Lib-Dem amendment limiting justification for war with Iraq without further UN sanction. Rebels voted for the amendment MF — Against GB — Against ● Emergency Iraq debate (24.9.02) Procedural motion to adjourn the house following emergency recall. Rebels voted against. Motion was lost MF — No vote GB — No vote ● Opposition to single faith schools (6.2.02.) Rebel amendment to require faith schools to take 25% of pupils from other backgrounds MF — Against GB — Against ● Home Office anti-terrorism legislation (21.11.01.) Vote on the controversial bill giving the government the right to detain foreign terrorists without trial. Rebels voted against. Motion was passed MF — For GB — No vote ● International action against terrorism (1.11.01) Rebel vote against government’s backing for airstrikes on Afghanistan. Rebels voted for.

Motion was lost MF — Against GB — Against ● Transport select committee appointments (16.6.01.) Government motion proposing the removal of Gwyneth Dunwoody from the Transport Committee. Rebels voted no. Motion was defeated MF — For GB — Against