The Hastings Trawler - 6 (June 2006)

EDITORIAL

‘It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.’

Info Panel Publisher Graham Frost Editor-in-Chief Francisco Ferrer i Guardia Production Editor Bobby Cramp Illustrators Lesley Prince, Richard Warren Tim Marrs Photographer Graham Frost Contributors Rich Cookson, Jan Goodey, Nadine Marroushi, Mike Matthews, Joy Melville, Pauline Melville, Ted Newcomen, David Padgham, Steve Peak, Eric Vast Advertising Bea Jarvis ✆ +44 — 07974457472

In 1945 The County of London Plan, explained by Carter and Goldfinger, stated ‘The plan deals imaginatively and boldly with the road structure; it can do this because the roads belong to the people and not to private interests, even though powerful private land-owning interests appear when new routes or road-widening is proposed.’ The great freedom won from our feudal overlords was the right to leave the village or town at any time and travel where we will. It seems this freedom is begrudged by so many who would have us travel as cattle do, at the whim of some public authority, or move only on routes of their choosing on transport that they ordain. The roads are needed and are vital to our social well-being, they need to be valued as a truly democratic conduit for the exchange of goods and opportunities for every one, from hitch-hiker to plutocrat.

Also, this month Nadine Marroushi discusses immigration while Trawler regular Ted Newcomen considers the fallout from the local elections. Remember, The Trawler welcomes all articles and comments and would love to receive your letters. (We also particularly welcome advertisers, subscribers and sponsors.)

IN THIS ISSUE May 2006, Vol II, Issue 5 ISSN 1745-3321

THE TALK OF THE OLD (AND NEW) TOWN A public arena for news, views, gossip and tittle-tattle about goings-on in Hastings, St Leonards-and beyond. 2-5 INFRASTRUCTURE: Jan Goodey looks at the anti-roads lobby challenging the proposed BexhillHastings Link Road.

6-7 IMMIGRATION: Nadine Marroushi considers the reality of the impact of asylum-seekers and refugees on local communities.

8-9

Graham Frost, Publisher

Published by Boulevard Books, 32 George St. Hastings TN34 3EA ✆ +44 (0)1424 436521 www.thehastingstrawler.co.uk editor@thehastingstrawler.co.uk Annual subscription £36.00 (UK) £46.00 (airmail RoW) Cover artwork The Spirit of Summer comes to Hastings © Tim Marrs Hastings-based Tim Marrs’ technique is one of the most influential styles in modern illustration, with a worldwide client list: www.timmarrs.co.uk Printed by: 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

Except where indicated otherwise, the copyright in all articles, photographs and illustrations remains with the author, photographer or artist. © 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.

Thoughts for the month: If you find mistakes in this publication, please remember they are there for a purpose. We publish something for everyone, and some people are always looking for mistakes! ‘‘Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; ... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.’

Frederick Douglass Marshal

www.tvhastings.org Hastings’ own (free) global-local internet tv channel Serving the community — and local democracy

PROFILE-Fred Judge: David Padgham assesses the life and legacy of Britain’s leading postcard pioneer.

10-14 CRIME: Mike Matthews recounts the tragic story of Tom Buffard, a Guestling labourer framed and hanged in 1831 in the wake of the ‘Captain Swing’ riots that rocked southern England. 15-17 POWER NETWORKS: Rich Cookson reports on how one local oligarchy, the Merchant Venturers, exerts political and economic influence.

18-19 WAR DIARY OF A SOLDIER: Ted Newcomen pieces together the human story of one Hastings man’s battle to survive the trenches.

20-21 THE A-BOMB AND ME the late Eric Vast’s recounts his brush with the Nazi ‘Atom’ bomb.

22-23 ARCHAEOLOGY: Steve Peak explores the history of the East Hill, the oldest mystery in the Hastings story 24-25 HASTINGS PEOPLE: Joy Melville speaks to Hastings-based singersongwriter Peter Donnelly 27-28 FICTION: ‘The Kidnappers’

by Pauline Melville.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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THE

HASTINGS TRAWLER THE TALK OF THE OLD (AND NEW) TOWN The Glums

A VERY BRITISH ELECTION

V

iewers of BBC South’s amateurish Noddy Hour, sorry I mean Politics Show, which was beamed live from Maggie’s Café above the Fish Market the other Sunday, would have enjoyed the sight of a glum-faced Michael Foster MP and ex-Council Leader Jeremy Birch claiming success at the recent local elections because ‘the Labour vote went up in Hastings’. Surely that’s carrying New Labour spin, smoke, and mirrors just a little bit too far? The poor dears just can’t help themselves — you are what you lixiviate (look it up, I had to).

Excuse me, gentlemen, but the last time I perused the rules, it’s the party that gets the most votes that actually wins the seat. Let’s hope these two will be refereeing at the World Cup when England scores 3 to Germany’s 4 — it’s the only way we are ever going to win the championship.

It remains to be seen whether the incoming Tories will heed the call to scrap the existing undemocratic Cabinet decision-making process in Hastings — I’m not holding my breath on this one.

New snouts in the trough make it very difficult to hear the cries for real democracy at a local level.

The upset in Hastings, which saw the Conservatives gain a clear working majority for the first time in many years was caused by a variety of factors. These included local campaigns by PART (Pensioners Against Rising Taxes) and HDA (Hastings Democratic Alliance), general disillusionment at grass-roots levels with an arrogant and mendacious 2

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Council which failed to listen to local residents, the government’s ongoing problems at a national level, and the never-ending bloodshed in Iraq.

It was a very British election — as usual people weren’t really voting for anything, it was mainly a protest ballot.

However, ‘Dave-Boy’ Cameron from Eton needn’t start measuring up for new carpets in Number 10 quite just yet.

Considering the ghastly two weeks the government suffered prior to the elections, I reckon they got off pretty lightly. I’m not sure what was worse — the Health Minister being booed by the nurses, ‘Big Ears’ at the Home Office claiming ‘it’s not my fault govn’r’ over the asylum/prisoners fiasco, or the Deputy PM smirking with his knock-off at the memorial service for dead British soldiers as they anticipated another game of ‘hide the chipolata’. Readers of The Sun newspaper will know exactly what I mean; the rest of you can use your imagination.

Personally, I don’t care what Mr Prescott gets up to, but when do our leaders find the hours or the energy? I thought it was a full-time job just screwing the electorate? There is clearly a time and a place for everything, and this just wasn’t appropriate.

If this was Saudi Arabia, for that particular show of disrespect, crass insensitivity and smug concupiscence (don’t put the dictionary away just yet), our Deputy Prime Minister would be publicly beheaded. Instead, he is rewarded by Mr Blair with pay, perks, and a pension while dumping all his responsibilities — nice work if you can get it! TN

Democracy at work

‘FIRST PAST THE POST’ SYSTEM CHEATS LOCAL RESIDENTS

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he recent local government elections serve to highlight how the so-called democratic ‘first past the post’ electoral system disenfranchises the majority of residents and is in reality a scam of outrageous proportions which would shame a banana republic. No wonder most Europeans look across the Channel and shake their heads in disbelief at a corrupt system which is well past its useby date.

Never mind the fact that Hastings voter turnout was so poor that 62.37% of the eligible electorate never even bothered to cast their ballot, those that did vote for the winning candidates are in reality the tail that wags a very recalcitrant dog.

The Conservative Party succeeded in taking control of Hastings Borough Council despite only getting 15.3% of the eligible vote — 84.7% of the electorate either didn’t vote or voted for other candidates.

Don’t blame the Tories, this electoral rip-off benefits all big parties with wellfinanced party machines that get out their core voters. New Labour did quite nicely too — they held on to Hollington ward with only 13.2% of the potential electorate behind them. 86.8% of the available voters either didn’t cast their ballot or voted for other candidates — is that democracy? Is it hell!

Small wonder that both the Conservative and Labour parties want to retain the current system. Both benefit from taking ‘buggins’ turn, secure in the

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knowledge that it’s only a question of time before they get their noses in the public trough.

Similarly, big business and the media also prefer the status quo. After all, you only have to deal with lobby, smooze, or even bribe two sides instead of dozens.

It’s an electoral system that makes fools of the majority of voters and produces policies which only have the support of a very few. Have you never wondered how it is that when a group of strangers get together to discuss politics they agree on more than they disagree, and yet the established parties would have all believe they are at each other throats in order to represent our wishes?

How do we get round this racket?

Easy! Various options for new and more democratic electoral systems are readily available and the idea of compulsory voting has also been floated providing, of course, we are allowed to tick a box which says ‘none of the above’. TN (see box on page 5)

Performance indicators

THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES

I

’m free! Free at last!’ Yes, one of the best things about ‘retiring’ from the real world of work was the certain knowledge that never again would I ever have to complete a quarterly report of performance indicators, targets, outputs, SRB returns or other similar tosh!

Yup, you heard it from me, it’s all tosh, absolute meaningless and mindless rubbish! And what’s even better, I can now actually admit to this fact instead of having to pretend that the gathering of statistics such as ‘the number of new fulltime jobs created by a project’ or whatever other useless figure was being collated and compared was ever actually worthwhile and meaningful.

Anybody involved with applications for project-funding knows full well that when it comes to completing the section for outputs — it’s more astrology than astronomy. It’s the sort of statistical manipulation that makes crystal therapy look like astrophysics The present government has an

obsession with targets and measurement that makes Stalinist Russia look positively amateurish. I could never quite work out how those Five-year plans always had the Soviets meeting all their targets for food production yet people were still starving. Outputs for steel manufacturing were regularly surpassed but there was never enough product to meet the needs of the construction industry. Now that the Iron Curtain is down and the truth revealed, we are told that the bureaucrats simply lied when filling in their annual returns. I’ll let you into a little secret, British bureaucrats are no different.

What I want to know is when are we going to come clean and own up to doing the same here? You can’t blame some poor Russian scribbler for telling a little white lie to keep himself and family out of the Gulag — but what’s our excuse? Is it all just a huge job creation scheme to keep the dim-witted sons and daughters of the middle-classes off the streets?

When was the last time you saw a government project (especially at a local authority level) that failed to meet its performance indicators, and even if it did what difference would it really make?

Truely, the emperor has no clothes!

I will put my hand up and admit that throughout most of my ‘career’ I too was stark naked — fudging figures to satisfy my boss or some even more distant person, probably located in the bowels of Whitehall. On the odd occasion that I questioned the process I would be met with accusations of being a ‘disloyal’ employee and sometimes even worse — a troublemaker!

It’s not just government, everyone is on this scam. Rail companies add minutes to the timetables so that punctuality ‘improves’. NHS patients are given ‘appointments’ 12 months in advance so that they no longer appear on a waiting list. Some schools omit the results from Special-needs kids when reporting to Ofsted.

Nobody is really fooled. You and I know what’s going on just by comparing the service/performance today with that

of last year, or last decade if you are a grumpy old git like me.

What’s even more worrying than this criminal manipulation of figures, is the cynicism and distrust of statistics that it breeds in all of us. I’m the first to admit that now I don’t believe a single figure or claim made by any government department. ‘Sexing-up’ is the name of the game — how they spin good figures out of bad, bury bad news, or simply ‘snow’ people under with the shear volume of information.

Don’t get me wrong, projects do need to have targets or at least something to aim for. But these need to be set by the local community which initiates the schemes and the employees who have to implement them, rather than some distant bureaucrat intent on pushing nebulous national goals to satisfy a political agenda. Qualitative results need to replace quantitative returns; the meaningful needs to replace the meaningless. Hastings Borough Council, Sea Space, and SEEDA — please note!

TN Unitlita

THE LAST WORD ON ENERGY (FOR THE MOMENT)

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egular readers of The Hastings Trawler will be familiar with our regular column on the fiasco involving gas/electicity supply company Utilita and its successor EDF Energy.

I won’t go back over old ground, but take note of a minor success which past customers of Utilita who swapped to go to a completely new supplier, instead of automatically transferring EDF Energy, may like to copy.

When you get your final bill from Utilita/EDF Energy, ring 0800-0969000 (London Energy — yet another company, but the one which is actually doing the billing) and complain vociferously about the shambles. Tell them nicely but firmly that although you realise it’s not their fault you are very unhappy about the service and surcharges. Inform them you will be reporting the issue to Energywatch (the

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

3

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Gas and Electricity Consumer Council) and that you will not be paying the final bill unless they look into the matter for you. Then request that they ring you back asap.

Chances are you will be offered a £50 rebate on your final bill. That’s probably the best deal you are going to get in the current shambles — take the money and run. TN Governance

DEMOCRACY — NOT DEAD, ONLY SLEEPING

A

loud chorus of ‘What do we want?

— Democracy! When do we want it? — Now!’ and calls for ‘Jeremy Birch’ to ‘get off his perch!’ startled shoppers in Hastings town centre during a sunny afternoon this April.

Curious local teenagers who had never seen a political demonstration before, asked what all the noise was about.

When they found out it was to protest at the lack of democracy and waste of public funds by Hastings Borough Council they also joined in —and they say British youth are apathetic and selfish — I think not!

The protest organisers, Hastings Democratic Alliance, were clearly pleased at the turnout of over 250 people, the biggest political demonstration in the town since the marches against Margaret Thatcher’s disastrous poll tax.

Finally arriving outside the Town Hall, the protestors were addressed by someone claiming to be the Queen and wearing a mask with a likeness to one of our beloved councillors. I wasn’t so sure, she looked more like Rosa Klebb to me — fans of early James Bond films will know exactly what I mean.

Hastings Borough Council will no doubt dismiss this highly public protest with their customary arrogance and assume that it’s just the usual Hastings nutters and ratbags. I include myself in that august body — along with parents and grandparents with children in tow, pensioners, the disabled, black-garbbed Goths, and dozens of others who made 4

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

the effort to turn up and make their displeasure known at the way our town is being mismanaged by the undemocratic Cabinet system of local government.

The two main aims of the march were to get local residents to sign a petition to have this mendacious Cabinet system replaced by a more democratically accountable committee and to make constituents think carefully about who they voted for at the recent local elections.

HDA describes itself as not being affiliated with any political party but as ‘an umbrella group for organisations and individuals across the town campaigning for local democracy’. Some people have suggested that there must be someone or some party behind it. I couldn’t tell one way or the other, and quite honestly I couldn’t care less anyway. Because whatever the truth, this town, indeed this entire nation is in desperate need of anyone who challenges the status quo of an arrogant and out-of-touch politicaleconomic elite that’s sleep-walked us all into a democracy-light elected dictatorship.

Lying to the electorate has become the norm in 21st century Britain. They say a fish rots from its head, so when the nation’s leading politicians mislead the public about reasons for going into an unnecessary and illegal war which costs thousands of innocent lives, then deceiving the electorate at the local level is only small beer. After all, nobody is getting killed in Hastings — it’s just our taxes that are bleeding into the gutter.

Most intelligent people can recognise the truth that local government is no longer about providing services for local people. It’s about raising revenue and rubber-stamping central government policy. It couldn’t be further away from the democratic process if it tried.

The patently undemocratic and unaccountable Cabinet system of local government allows the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ to dictate how our town is run. It sets ridiculous priorities, and steamrollers through wastefully expensive whiteelephant projects against the will of the vast majority of residents.

Five years ago they announced the town had over £400 million in regeneration money coming to it. This was a crass lie put about by local politicians desperate to hang on to power by promising us all jam tomorrow. We’ve only seen a fraction of this money — most of it wasted on expensive out-oftown consultants What have we actually seen achieved in those five years? Lets look at the catalogue of shame :— Almost half a million pounds of scarce taxpayers funds wasted on the defunct Stade Maritime Project with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Hundreds of thousands more wasted on the Pelham Place hotel project on land which the Council doesn’t even own and is supposed to be protected by a Trust for the permanent future use of all local residents.

Yet more money wasted on plans for the old Bathing Pool site in West St. Leonards and proposals for no less than six new ‘destination’ restaurants in the Hastings-Bexhill area.

A half-completed redevelopment at Marina Pavilion, which has run out of money. If they can’t even find the dosh to finish this piddling project, then where is the rest of the £400million coming from?

A complete botch-up of the Station Plaza redevelopment, which has been

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approved once and now is being completely revamped.

The handing over of the town’s regeneration and entire future to WasteO-Space (sorry, I meant Sea Space) — an unelected and unaccountable development company.

A massive £366,000 overspend on the town’s ‘flag-ship’ recycling scheme Spending another £100,000 on costly fencing to the Hastings Country Park while failing to come clean on how they propose to pay for it all, i.e. by introducing car parking charges for access to a local asset which should remain free to all local residents Huge pay-offs to ex-council

Ward Ashdown Baird Braybrooke Castle Central St.Leonards Conquest Gensing Hollington Maze Hill Old Hastings Ore Silverhill St.Helens

Tressell West St.Leonards Wishing Tree

employees and other whistle-blowers to prevent the truth about incompetence and malpractice coming out A total failure to lobby effectively to improve poor communication links with the rest of the country. Train services to London have been cut and the notoriously slow and dangerous A21 has actually had its length of dual carriageway reduced!

Public funds bleeding away into the pockets of out-of-town consultants, who are no better than expensive whores, paid to service councillor’s fantasies with our money. The other chief beneficiaries being the careers of those talentless yesmen and quislings who inhabit our Town Hall and other quangos.

The possibility of the Conquest Hospital being down-graded and even loosing its Accident and Emergency facility A complete failure to prevent Hastings retaining its title as the crime black-spot of South East England But let’s be fair, the last five years hasn’t been a complete failure. We do have a rejuvenated pier and a nice new railway station — it’s just that Hastings Borough Council actually had nothing to do with either project.

But the seafront has improved immeasurably — H.B.C’s ‘Grot Buster’

Campaign has been a huge success.

Trouble is, the council always had the powers to make landlords improve their property they were just too lazy and incompetent in the past to do anything about it! Sadly, Hastings Democratic Alliance was unsuccessful in unseating Councillor Klebb at the recent local elections. However, I am reliably informed that she stood up at the end of the count to make a rambling victory speech which left listeners totally bemused. Now remind me, which constituency does she actually represent?

Did someone say Barking? TN LINKS AND CONTACT DETAILS hastings.democracy@gmail.com www.hastingsdemocraticallinace.org.uk Tel. 01424-729424

Every time a politician says, ‘I believe in transparency’, there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

JM Barrie (Peter Pan 1928)

RESULTS – HASTINGS LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTION – MAY 2006 Councillor (Party) Total Total % of %age votes not cast eligible votes eligible or voted votes received votes for other candidates

Wilson (Con) Fawthrop (Con) Daniel (Lab) Armstrong (L-D) Birch (Lab)

4148 3407 3544 3916 3721

869 583 747 545 543

20.9 % 17.1 % 21.1 % 13.9 % 14.6 %

79.1 82.9 78.9 86.1 85.4

Martin (Con) Poulter (Con) Silverson (Lab) Waite (Con) Palmer (L-D) Tucker (Con) Springthorpe (Con) Bing (Con) Kramer (Lab) Chowney (Lab)

3760 3781 3764 3801 4026 3448 3267 3966 3117 3117

913 750 497 843 625 482 553 909 393 340

24.3 % 19.8 % 13.2 % 22.2 % 15.5 % 14 % 16.9 % 22.9 % 12.6% (combined) 10.9%

75.7 % 80.2 % 86.8 % 77.8 % 84.5 % 86 % 83.1 % 77.1 % 87.4 % 89.1%

Finch (Con) Roberts (Lab)

3592 3442

602 563

16.8 % 16.4 %

83.2 % 83.6 %

% % % % %

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

5

INFRASTRUCTURE — HASTINGS-BEXHILL LINK ROAD

The Link

by Jan Goodey

Before

After

FOLLOWING ON FROM LAST MONTH’S HISTORICAL AMBLE THROUGH HASTINGS ROADS AND TOLL-GATES, THIS MONTH, OUR REPORTER JAN GOODEY TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ANTI-ROADS LOBBY, AND SPECIFICALLY AT YER HASTINGS ALLIANCE, FIGHTING THE PROPOSED BEXHILL LINK ROAD (BHLR).

T

he anti-roads lobby scored big in the Nineties and for every scheme that went ahead twice as many were shelved. When we come to look back on those times — if we are granted that luxury 100 years from now say — these eco-warriors/swampys/radical greens, will surely have the same status as the Levellers or Suffragettes; pioneering grassroots activists who stood up and fought for a better social good — in this case stopping our planet fry with 25 per cent of global warming now down to cars.

The £48m BHLR threatens one of the finest valleys in East Sussex: Combe Haven which sits alongside a nationally important wildlife site, a Site of Special Scientific Interest no less, home to protected species such as badgers, bats, and dormice as well as wetland birds like redshank, lapwing and snipe. All to be driven out by construction of the bypass and concomitant 1,100 houses and out-oftown business park.

Taking a stand against all this the Hastings Alliance was originally set up in 2000, a coalition of the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England), Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000, 6

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Friends of the Brede Valley, Sussex Wildlife Trust and Wishing Tree Residents Association. It opposed the then Hastings bypass, which was rejected by the Government in July 2001. At the time, Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, got wind that a protest camp had been set up and that, along with environmental concerns, did for the road.

The Alliance sees the Bexhill Link Road, as the rejected Hastings western bypass in a different guise. Nick Bingham, chair of the Hastings Alliance, said: “In 2002, Stephen Byers endorsed the ‘Access to Hastings’ study conclusion that ‘it is neither practicable nor desirable to construct the Western Bypass in isolation’. The same argument should apply to the link road. We know from previous experience, such as the M25, that new roads fill up really quickly. We want to see some more imaginative schemes from the council which won’t cost so much to the taxpayer or the environment. If people care about getting the right solution to local problems, rather than expensive sticking plasters that don’t address the root causes, then we urge them to get

involved.”

Friends of the Earth Executive Director, Tony Juniper, has described the scheme as, “…one of the most damaging and unnecessary road proposals in the entire country. That is why so many environmental organisations have united against it.

This council should abandon this crazy scheme and investigate alternative ways of dealing with the area’s transport problems.”

Brenda Pollack, Friends of the Earth’s Regional Campaigns Coordinator, told The Trawler: “The route chosen will ruin a beautiful, unspoilt corner of Sussex and some nationally important parts of our heritage. Many people are unhappy about this road and we want them to voice their concerns to the government.”

If you ‘route walk’ the road, you see a number of important landmarks up for the chop: the listed building at Upper Wilting Farm, as well as Adam’s Farm and the Grade II listed buildings there. Jenny and Dick Yeo, Adams Farm owners, said: “We’ve lived here for 25 years and worked hard to conserve the landscape. We don’t want to see this beautiful, peaceful valley destroyed.

Our barn will be demolished by the road and English Heritage have said it would have a serious impact on our listed farm

INFRASTRUCTURE — HASTINGS-BEXHILL LINK ROAD

which is of national importance.”

East Sussex County Council has government backing for the project on the understanding that it will cut congestion in Bexhill and lead to economic regeneration. BHLR is part of a five point plan for the Regeneration of Hastings, developed

by Sea Space — a Task Group including East Sussex County Council and the Regional Development Agency (SEEDA).

Taking congestion first, it looks increasingly unlikely that the road will solve traffic jams as much of the existing traffic is local and would still need to access Hastings via other routes in residential areas. The main local air quality problem in Hastings and Bexhill is at Glyne Gap which Hastings Borough Council declared an air quality management area in 2003.

So as well as worsening the situation there, the bypass would simply transfer congestion/pollution from the A259 to other areas already affected by a record number of road deaths. In fact the new road could generate thousands of extra commuter trips every day, and so run counter to stated Government aims to reduce traffic. Once built, there would then be huge pressure for an Eastern Bypass around Hastings, which would cut a swathe right through the High Weald AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and destroy more ancient woodland.

With further disregard to Government regs — this time based around ensuring value for money — East Sussex County Council has failed to make a detailed assessment of alternative ways of solving local transport problems, such as workplace car parking charges, encouraging fewer cars on the school run, improving bus services along the A259 and looking at supporting new stations and a turn up and go train service between Bexhill and Ore. Oversights which aren’t that surprising when you look at recent council pronouncements which bring to mind the words ‘foot’ and ‘shot’: “The Combe Haven Valley is probably

the finest medium-sized valley in East Sussex, outside of areas of outstanding natural beauty. It is set within a highquality landscape of historic and wildlife interest and contains peaceful and remote countryside.”

Michael Paxman of the Wishing Tree Residents’ Association has said: “We oppose the road scheme largely because of the volume of traffic which the council’s figures confirm will shift to our area. This traffic transfer will also heavily affect Crowhurst Road and Queensway; in the light of the record of fatal accidents on Queensway any such transfer must be a cause for grave anxiety.”

So how about the case for regeneration? Well it seems that contrary to the developers’ wet dreams, research indicates that the BHLR does little for regional accessibility — and even with good local access, Hastings/Bexhill is not a particularly competitive location for current major economic projects compared with other parts of the South East. This is not to say that higher-skilled, betterpaid jobs could not go to Hastings/Bexhill: but if local people are to benefit, skills and opportunities need to develop in unison, organically.

Large-scale developments, just plonked on the doorstep, generate ‘incommuting’ from further afield, and yes, mostly by car. In other words the road would suck the lifeblood out of

Bexhill town centre, with local businesses shifting from deprived areas such as central St Leonards to the site of the new out-of-town business park planned for Worsham Farm.

In a recent gaffe, roads minister Steven Ladyman told The Hastings Observer (14/4/06) that a decision on the BHLR is forecast by the summer, and that building would start during 2007 — and finish two years later.

This flies against East Sussex County Council proclamations, which clearly state that the planning application will be submitted in autumn 2006, with an expected public enquiry to take place in 2007, followed by a ministerial decision.

Either way road-building could begin by 2008. If you’d like to pick up the reins from the road protestors of the last decade and play a part in any small way to stop this road and subsequent environmental catastrophe, then get in touch with any of the below. For sure, this is one road that ought to be stopped dead in its tracks.

LINKS AND CONTACT DETAILS Nick Bingham, Hastings Alliance: 07768 193900.

Michael Paxman, Wishing Tree Residents: 01424 428383.

Brenda Pollack, South East Friends of the Earth: 01273 766640. www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/transport/press_for_c hange/hastings

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

7

IMMIGRATION IN HASTINGS AND ST LEONARDS

Strangers in a strange land

by Nadine Marroushi

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mmigration in Britain is considered from two points of view. The pro argument is that immigration will boost the economy through taxes paid each year. The anti-immigration stance is that when the increase in population is considered, the economic advantages become negligible. So, how can we make sense of the rise in foreign immigration in Britain? The topic has too many facets to explore here, but some of the more prevalent issues will be discussed, particularly regarding the immigration of asylum seekers, starting with economic gain, employment, racism and social integration.

Though asylum claims have decreased, immigration has risen with 342,000 foreign immigrants entering the country ever year. Of the 75 per cent of asylum claims that are rejected, only 1 in 4 of the claimants are removed. These claimants then become part of the illegal and foreign immigrant community currently residing and working in Britain.

According to a report published by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), if illegal immigrants were given the permission to live and work here on a temporary basis they would pay more than £1bn in tax each year. This is then compared with the cost of deporting them, which would total an amount of 8

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

£4.7bn, and leave severe shortages of cleaners, care workers and hotel staff. The report goes on to say that migrants fill 90 per cent of low-paid jobs in London deemed too menial and hazardous for UK nationals. In addition, if all those claiming asylum were allowed to work here, they would generate £123m for the Treasury, which would pay for the essential under-funded institutions in Britain, like the NHS and universities.

Reports such as the one published by the IPPR — which try to prove the benefits of accepting asylum claims for economic reasons — are flawed.

MigrantWatch UK (MWUK), an independent organisation concerned with monitoring the influx of immigration in Britain and considering the consequent effects on the country, prove this. According to their research major studies in Canada and the United THE NEW COLOSSUS

NOT LIKE THE BRAZEN GIANT OF GREEK FAME, WITH CONQUERING LIMBS ASTRIDE FROM LAND TO LAND; HERE AT OUR SEA-WASHED, SUNSET GATES SHALL STAND A MIGHTY WOMAN WITH A TORCH, WHOSE FLAME IS THE IMPRISONED LIGHTNING, AND HER NAME MOTHER OF EXILES. FROM HER BEACON-HAND GLOWS WORLD-WIDE WELCOME; HER MILD EYES COMMAND

THE AIR-BRIDGED HARBOR THAT TWIN CITIES FRAME. “KEEP ANCIENT LANDS, YOUR STORIED POMP!” CRIES SHE

WITH SILENT LIPS. “GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE, THE WRETCHED REFUSE OF YOUR TEEMING SHORE. SEND THESE, THE HOMELESS, TEMPEST-TOST TO ME, I LIFT MY LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR!” EMMA LAZARUS

States have concluded that the benefit of immigration to the economy as a whole is positive, but very small. The impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per head is a small fraction of 1 per cent. In Britain, congestion costs probably wipe that out, since we are 12 times as crowded as the United States. It follows that the case for large scale immigration is a matter for decision on political and social grounds, but the economic case is fairly neutral.

Moreover, in response to reports like that published by the IPPR, MWUK further reject claims that Britain needs skilled workers from abroad. They argue

that an exchange of skilled workers is to everybody’s benefit, but it is not sufficient reason for net foreign immigration at the present level of 340,000 a year. It is essential that Britain trains and re-trains its national workforce. Immigration can never be a substitute for this. London would not collapse without foreign workers. The jobs being done by foreigners in London are being done by British people in the many parts of the country where there are few, if any, immigrants. What is happening is that Londoners are moving out of London as large numbers of immigrants arrive. Over the period 1999 – 2003 there has been a net international inflow of half a million people.

Furthermore, in regards to claims that Britain relies on foreign workers to do the jobs Britons do not want to, MWUK argue that the underlying issue is pay rates for the unskilled. At present, the difference between unskilled pay and benefits is so narrow that, for some, it is hardly worth working. That partly explains why we have 1.5 million unemployed and a further 2.2 million whom the government wishes to move from welfare to work.

From these reports it is clear that asylum-seeking claims need to be strictly assessed based solely on their fear of being persecuted in their own country for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. This is the definition of a refugee attained from the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. At the moment, however, there is much confusion between genuine asylum seekers and those attempting to enter the country for economic reasons.

Unfortunately, under the current system, some claimants are suffering from the consequences.

In an article written by Johan Hari in The Independent, he relates the case of Jules and her daughters, who are currently being kept in Yarl’s Wood — the detention centre for asylum seekers just outside London. Jules claimed asylum in Britain, because she was fleeing an abusive husband in her hometown, from whom she wanted to separate. Her husband did not take very well to Jules’

IMMIGRATION IN HASTINGS AND ST LEONARDS

services for the migrant community, which include asylum seekers and refugees. As CCDN explain there is currently a lack of services to integrate genuine refugees into the community.

According to CCDN there is undiscovered talent among the asylum seeker and refugee communities. Many are artists, writers, singers, performers and are qualified to MA and PhD level.

Jules, the asylum seeker referred to in the article by John Hari, was a very successful businesswoman in her country. Here she is a detainee. Refugees could, if given the chance, raise the quality of life in the local community. However, there are many obstacles in their way before this can become a reality. One of the obstacles is the lack of translation services for their qualifications. When they move to Britain many of their qualifications are not recognised, and so need translation; however, it is not done, because this costs money. Moreover, organisations like CCDN, who are actively involved with the refugee community and know their needs, have little say in where the funding goes. So, their needs are not met.

Another major lack of services in Hastings and St. Leonards for refugees is anti-racism organisations, specifically for young people in schools. When students

LINKS AND CONTACT DETAILS Amal Abbass-Saal, Chairwoman. Celebrating Cultural Diversity Network (CCDN), West Hill Road, St Leonards — 01424 424 080 — www.celebratingculturaldiversitynetwork.org Services provided: activities to integrate cultures in Hastings and St. Leonards (a calendar of events can be found on their website); an advocacy service; reading and writing letters in English for those who cannot speak the language well; a one-to-one psychotherapy session to those that have experienced trauma within families and relationships.

A current project of CCDN and Creative partnerships working with Elphinstone school giving children the opportunity to produce a radio show about diverse topics can be heard on the following link: http://www.elphinstone.e-sussex.sch.uk/6mc/index.html MigrantWatch UK: http://www.migrationwatchuk.co.uk/default.asp Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR): http://www.ippr.org.uk/pressreleases/?id=2041. http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=446. http://www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=445.

Link to a newspaper article about an attack on the mosque in St. Leonards: http://www.hastingstoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=479&ArticleID=1141674 Kids and Muslim Mothers (KAMM): Silchester Mews Community Resource Centre, 17a Silchester Mews,St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex TN38 0JB — Tel: 01424 717 770: http://www.hastingstrust.com/ht/web/charity/ht.nsf/page/silchestermews.html Services provided: Women teach Arabic and Qur’an lessons to children) Islamic Information Centre in St. Leonards: http://www.escis.org.uk/Entry/View/Islamic_Information_Centre/11436 National Asylum Support Services: http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/en/home/applying/national_asylum_support.html Asylum support: http://www.asylumsupport.info/nass.htm Joint Council for the Welfare of Migrants: http://www.jcwi.org.uk/.hub

are the victims of racism there is no official body for them to consult, and receive advice about steps that need to be taken to combat abuse.

One of the CCDN’s main aims is to challenge racial stereotyping in the local community. To do this they organised the Sankofa Festival, a celebration of World Music, which took place on the pier with a turnout of 3000 people — clear testimony to the desire for cultural integration.

Furthermore, to encourage social integration the CCDN are currently planning an exciting series of events for Refugee Week. Anyone and everyone is welcome, if they want to get in touch for more information they should do so. In addition they organise monthly bring-adish celebrations, provide letter-writing and reading services to those with difficulties communicating in English, one-to-one psychotherapy sessions for those who have suffered trauma in family and relationships, and they work with local schools to organise creative workshops for students. Their aim is to bring more understanding and tolerance of foreign cultures into the local community.

Ironically, it seems that many of the asylum-seekers and refugees have not come to a better life in Britain. Instead, they are caught up in the messy immigration situation where many people are confused about those who are genuinely escaping persecution, and those abusing the system. Britain has opened its doors to those fleeing their country as a result of persecution. At the same time, this has caused problems.

Assessing genuine asylum claims is proving difficult. Moreover, British nationals also suffer from a lack of services in the areas of employment, education, housing and health — which need to be addressed.

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

Refugees: Helios Gómez

Refugees: Helios Gómez

decision and threatened to murder her and the children. He had already stabbed Jules in the chest, and slashed her throat when she decided to seek refuge abroad.

However, her problems did not end when she arrived here. In spite of a judge granting her asylum, the Home Office appealed and for the last five months she has been imprisoned in Yarl’s Wood — and has been given no indication of when she can expect to leave.

Jules’ case exemplifies the confusion faced by asylum assessors. She is obviously fleeing persecution, but the counter-argument would question why Jules’s country is not offering her social services and a refuge centre for women.

Perhaps, this is something that should be developed with British aid. However, as a result of such objections, Jules’ is suffering from the traumatic experience of being kept in a detention centre.

Clearly, the journey for asylum seekers to be here is not an easy one.

To bring this situation closer to home, an organisation that gives a voice to the asylum seeker and refugee communities in Britain is the Celebrating Cultural Diversity Network (CCDN) in St. Leonards. The CCDN set up their organisation in response to a need in the local community to provide more

9

PROFILE— Fred Judge

FRED JUDGE — Postcard Pioneer

by David Padgham

F

RED JUDGE’S postcards were renowned throughout the country for the excellence of his photography, and he founded a profitable company.

To him this was only ‘bread and butter’ work and his real pleasure was in pioneering new techniques, making enlargements and art prints and competing in world-wide photographic salons, resulting in a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1915.

Fred was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire on 11 June 1872, the eldest of the five sons of Joseph Judge, corn dealer. After attending the local art school he took up engineering, and in

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1897 married Marion King; a daughter, Marjorie, was born a year later.

On a holiday in Hastings around 1900 Fred discovered our photogenic landscapes — the glens, the Old Town and sea, Wealden woodland. With support from his youngest brother, Thomas Wynn Judge, the young family moved here in 1902 and together they took over the business of ‘Photographic Chemist’ at 21a Wellington Place which had been founded by A. Brooker seven years earlier. This was the corner by Pelham Street and Harold Place, now the Halifax Estate Agency. There was a

growing demand for amateur photographic materials with the advent of Kodak roll film and pocket cameras; every tenth person in the country owned one by 1900. Judge advertised as adding to the existing developing and enlarging services his abilities as ‘landscape photographer and lanternist’. He was, at times, employed to provide illustrations for guide books, and was available to project ‘magic lantern’ slides at parties and functions. In 1904 he was also a ‘cinematographist’, though there is no record of his giving public performances.

A large part of the trade consisted of enlarging customers’ own negatives on to postcard backed paper which could be sent to friends with a halfpenny stamp. He advertised in the local press in August 1903 to supply ‘P.O.P. Postcards’ at 12 for sixpence (2@p). At this date there was no cheap commercial process for the massproduction of photographs, and the labour-intensive work involved ‘printing-out paper’ — also known as daylight paper. Prints had to be exposed one at a time in daylight, which in Fred’s case meant the windows of their flat two floors up above the shop. The result was a distinctive golden brown tone which is still easily recognisable. The other

Fred Judge

PROFILE — Fred Judge

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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PROFILE— Fred Judge

1903: Storm over the harbour, — one of Fred Judge’s earliest local prints on daylight paper.

1906: Hastings lifeboat ‘Charles Arkcoll’ at the rescue from the ‘Lugano’; Fred went off in another boat to capture the dramatic shot.

1907: Happy trippers risking a soaking.

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process used in these pioneer years was the standard bromide paper, exposed by gas-lamp or electric light to give usually a sepia tone; unless adequately fixed these tend to fade or go black with age.

The earliest postcard published from his own negatives is thought to date from a month later: a montage of five miniature views of ‘The great storm at Hastings Sep. 10-11 1903’, of which five or six examples are known to survive in collectors’ hands. In the ensuing century probably sixty thousand different viewcards followed from the firm. Hand-enlarged artistic prints were also produced for framing.

This use of direct photographic reproduction of views by Judge was innovative not only locally but nationally, due to labour costs and the problem of fading. The public until now had seemingly accepted that process-printed poorly coloured cards were the only ones available, and their cheapness had given rise to a craze for collecting as many as possible by exchange through the post. It became fashionable to look on these new Judges’ photo viewcards as works of art. Scenes of places visited on holiday were suddenly available to all, following in the long tradition of wealthier tourists at home or abroad who bought expensive whole-plate enlargements as souvenirs. It is still noticeable from the innumerable Judges’ cards in collectors’ hands that a large proportion were never posted, but placed directly into family albums to be appreciated when reminiscing.

There was very little local competition at first; only Angus Croyle of Norman Road, and Frederick Broderick of Ryde, Isle of Wight, are known to have retailed Hastings photographic views a few months earlier. Demand for Judges’ cards was such that hand printing could not cope, and the more popular views were sent off to Germany for mass-production by commercial printers, sometimes imaginatively coloured. The results were, of course,

PROFILE — Fred Judge

not comparable, and in 1908 a major innovation was the installation of the first ‘Exposing Machine’ manufactured

by Ellis Graber of Tunbridge Wells.

This printed front and back on reels of sensitised paper by gaslight, at a rate of over a thousand per hour. Improved models followed in rapid succession.

Specially sought were Judges’ local ‘event’ cards — storms, fires, heavy snowfalls, political rallies, social gatherings — the first and most famous being ‘Lightning’ featuring the exceptional electrical storms of 6 June 1904. These were still hand-printed and often on sale within a few hours.

Of his landscapes ‘Glory’ — looking over the Old Town from above All Saints Church through the mist — was a best-seller for fifty years. The firm became a limited company in 1910, while continued expansion saw the business moved to successively larger premises culminating in the present Bexhill Road works purposebuilt in 1927, designed by the same architects as the contemporary White Rock Pavilion. The household also moved several times; a newly-built house in St Helen’s Park Road, then after World War I, another in Filsham Valley near Fred’s beloved golf course, each home named ‘Wakefield’ in memory of Yorkshire origins.

Sales in Hastings presented no problems, with Judges’ own outlets and other shops keen to stock them.

Expansion to London and other tourist centres was only possible if agents there could be persuaded to sell the cards. A firm in Euston Road took on sales in 1909 of Judges’ new ‘London Series’. These achieved instant fame as many were taken by night — an art form just beginning to be discussed in trade journals, of which Fred Judge was a renowned pioneer.

Number 1 was ‘The Embankment by night’, and equally acclaimed were ‘A coffee stall at 2am’ and ‘The Embankment on a wet night’, all probably needing several minutes’ exposure — as Fred explained in a lantern lecture to the Royal

1905: Portraits were rarely taken, but the Mayor, Cllr. Eaton, was persuaded to pose with Rea’s ice-cream cart in Wellington Place.

1908: Lord Mayor of London, who lived at Marina, on his way to open the Buchanan Hospital.

1908: ‘First time round’ — Hastings Marathon.

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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PROFILE— Fred Judge

1909: Snow scene by night (possibly junction of Baldslow Road and Laton Road).

1909: Prints of darkness — London Embankment by night.

1906: Entente Cordiale fete in the Park, with volunteer fire brigades demonstrating.

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Photographic Society in 1925. At the same event he advised against using mercury as a toner for slides, as he had contracted a severe illness from contact with it in the early days!

Enlargements involving a wide range of techniques had been accepted in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society almost annually from as early as 1900 — before leaving Wakefield — and he was later honoured by the Society with a one-man show, and continued acceptances into World War II. He showed even more prints at the London Salon of Photography, and competed world-wide in Australia, Belgium, Norway, Spain, Tokyo — losing thirty prints in the earthquake of 1923. The New York Camera Club made him an Honorary Member and accorded a further one-man show, as did The Smithsonian in Washington.

On the outbreak of World War I Fred Judge, at 42, was not called for military service, but secured a War Department permit to continue taking photos — though the Eastbourne police did not accept it as genuine and he was briefly detained at Beachy Head! Materials and customers were, however, in short supply and few new cards appeared until the 1920s. Branches were then soon established in North Wales, the West of England and Whitby, but the coverage of local events ceased as the newspapers now carried photos, and appeared on the streets even more rapidly than rushed cards. Staff photographers were employed to tour the country leaving Fred and his brother to devote all their time to a continually expanding business, until the second World War caused a further halt.

In 1944, at the age of 72, Fred was still volunteering as a Fire Warden when he was severely shocked by bomb blast from which he never fully recovered.

Staff returning from military service took over the day-to-day running and Fred died at his home on 25 February 1950, though after several changes of entity the company name still thrives today.

Breeds’ barn today: Hastings-Guestling road

Photo © Paul Matthews

THE FRAMING OF THOMAS BUFFARD

The crime at Breeds’ Barn

by Mike Matthews

IN THE WAKE OF THE AGRARIAN DISTURBANCES THAT SWEPT SOUTHERN ENGLAND IN 1830 — THE CAPTAIN SWING RIOTS — THE LANDOWNERS AND MAGISTRATES OF SUSSEX AND KENT WERE DETERMINED TO SUPPRESS, RUTHLESSLY, POLITICAL DISSENT AND THE RADICAL-POPULAR MOVEMENT FOR REFORM. MIKE MATTHEWS REPORTS ON THE TRAGIC CASE OF THOMAS BUFFARD, AN INNOCENT GUESTLING LABOURER WHO WAS FRAMED AND HANGED IN 1831 FOR INCENDIARISM, A VICTIM OF CLASS JUSTICE. .B. Brett had briefly dwelt on agrarian rebellion was fuelled by bitter Buffard’s ill-fate in his class hatred and driven by a blind handwritten history of Hastings. He’d desire for revenge and reprisal. There followed the fire engines from was a strong element of rural Luddism Hastings to Guestling that August of attached to the rioting, threshing 1831, where Thomas Breeds’ farm machines which had begun to premises had been wilfully fired. Brett seriously displace manual labour, were had climbed the belfry of St Clement’s smashed in an almost frenzied ritual, Church to watch the fire’s progress. and huge numbers of barns and stacks He mentions a young labourer, were destroyed by gangs of Thomas Buffard, who was wrongly incendiarists. The violent outbreaks executed at Lewes for the crime — a gained a notorious reputation when miscarriage of justice only uncovered farmers started to receive incendiary after the real culprit confessed on his letters signed ‘Swing’, threatening consequences unless deathbed to having taken and worn alarming Buffard’s boots. During the Captain conditions improved and the Swing disturbances, following machines were dismantled. The name footprints to and from a blazing rick ‘Captain Swing’ became synonymous was a favoured method of tracking with the riots and came to symbolize down arsonists — few labourers could the whole rural resistance. Although this shadowy and feared leader had afford more than one pair of boots.

The Swing riots had swept across only a basis in myth, his the southern counties in 1830, after a insubstantiality was perhaps a more prolonged agricultural recession that potent force in the minds of the followed the close of the Napoleonic semi-literate fieldhands. He was just Wars. The economic distress and not available to be killed or captured.

Brett made one error. Buffard was hardship had become so acute that the traditional forbearance of the executed outside Horsham gaol and wretchedly oppressed and half-starved not at Lewes. Today he lies, forsaken, farm labourers finally snapped. This somewhere in Guestling churchyard;

T

if there ever was a headstone, its carved lettering has been ‘obliterated by wind and rain. In 1899 The Hastings Observer, for some obscure reason, added an appendage to Brett’s short notes: ‘This unfortunate miscarriage of justice is said to have been made even more horrible by the fact that the testimony which turned the scale of evidence against the unfortunate Buffard was given by the actual criminal himself.’ Why Buffard was so elaborately framed has never before been explained.

His trial was held at Lewes on 13 December, 1831. Strangely, there appears to be no mention of incriminating bootprints. But then a hard gravel pathway ran directly past a stack yard to the cottage where Tom lodged with a Mary and Edward Catt.

Because no prints were ever discovered, the real culprit had to devise other means of throwing suspicion on the unlucky lodger.

The barn was quickly re-built and can be found on the left-hand side of the Hastings to Guestling road, some distance before the White Hart.

Buffard was heard to raise the alarm, crying ‘fire’ at about 2 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, 21 August.

Almost before the proceedings began, Edward and Mary Catt sought to implicate Buffard. Allegations were made that a steel from a tinder-box had gone missing from their cottage.

Several days elapsed after the fire, before Catt brought this information to the attention of Breeds, underbailiff. He discovered the steel impressed in the gravel, close to a ruined lodge. Soon after the fire, Edward Catt had been examined by Battle magistrates as a main suspect.

He worked for Breeds and there were rumours of an argument over Catts’ efforts at haymaking. His wife, up to her neck in perjury, testified that Tom had arrived home after midnight, asking for the tinder-box. To Mary, this was unusual, after a late drinking session, Tom had always gone to bed in the dark. But on the night of the

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

15

Photo © Paul Matthews

THE FRAMING OF THOMAS BUFFARD

White Hart today: Hastings-Guestling road

fire he went into the washhouse and struck twice with the flint and steel.

Yet, strangely, the new candle had not been used and she had misplaced a bundle of matches in the morning.

When her husband returned that night, very late, he conveniently found Tom’s bedroom empty. He asked his wife for the missing

The Times 2 January, 1832 (page 2, column E) he execution of the unhappy man, Thomas Bufford at the late Lewes assizes of arson, in setting fire to a barn at Guestling, will take place at 12 o’clock this day, at Horsham. We learn that Bufford has conducted himself in a manner becoming his awful situation. It is painful to reflect that the terrible example made of persons convicted of the dreadful crime of arson appears to have little or no effect in checking the progress of incendiarism. Even while the Judges were holding the assizes at Lewes, property to the amount of £3,000, was consumed at only a few miles’ distance, and no later than Wednesday night last, agricultural buildings and produce to a large extent were wilfully fired at Gardner street, near Lewes. A plan had, we hear, been formed to burn the whole village, and which would have been effected but for the most prompt exertions in checking the progress of the flames. There are no less than ten men in custody on suspicion of being concerned in causing the fire.

Brighton Herald.

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tinder-box but then — and this is important evidence — ‘She told me to hold my tongue, for somebody was coming up the track. I stood still and heard the gate bang — the gate that goes from my garden to the farm. I heard somebody come from the gate to the back door and come in. He was very much out of breath. I cried ‘Hallo, Tom, is that you? He enquired

The Times, 3 January 1832 (page 2, column E) homas Bufford, the man convicted at the late assizes for this county of setting fire to a barn and other premises, at Guestling, the property of Mr Breeds, underwent the last sentence of the law in front of Horsham gaol on Saturday last.

From the time of his conviction until the period of his dissolution, he conducted himself with propriety and paid diligent attention to the exhortations of the gaol chaplain.

Although Bufford never made a full confession of the crime for which he suffered, he, on the other hand, never positively denied it, but cautiously abstained from entering into conversation respecting it. During the whole of his confinement, he did not appear to lose any bodily strength.

The chaplain remained with him until late on Friday evening, after which the unhappy culprit retired to bed, and slept several times during the night. He partook of the sacrament in the morning and, at five minutes before 12, he was conducted by a turnkey from the Infirmary into the gaoler’s house; he walked with a firm step, and when about to be

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for Ned Foster; and then he said, ‘The job is done.’ I didn’t know what he meant by this.’ Catt testified that at that moment he saw a flash come into his window and noticed a fire in the direction of Thomas Breeds’ premises.

Catt denied there had been a ‘breeze’ with the farmer about his being stood down from haymaking: ‘I never threatened him with revenge.’

However, his wife was forced to admit that:’Other men had been set upon his work. I can’t say if he had been dissatisfied at this. I can’t say that my husband had a fight with the prisoner, nor that he expressed a dislike to the prisoner and his father.’ ‘Can’t say sounds a useful tool in court.

Evidence was given that Catt and Buffard had stripped and fought it out pinioned, he took off his own neckerchief, unbuttoned his collar, and turned up the clothes from his wrists himself; during all this time, and till he reached the platform he did not utter a word. At 12, precisely, the procession reached the drop. The culprit walked up the steps without faltering, raising up his eyes once to the fatal beam.

After the reading of the first part of the Burial Service, Bufford, upon being asked by the executioner if he wished to say any thing, merely addressed these few words to the persons assembled — ‘Beware of had company, young men; keep yourselves sober — drunkenness has been the ruin of me.’ The cap being drawn over his face, the drop fell, and the unhappy man was launched into eternity. His convulsions were much greater than usual, for eight minute after his fall the muscles had not lost their action. After hanging the usual time, the body was taken down, placed in a decent coffin, and delivered to his relations, who were waiting to receive it. They conveyed it to Guestling for interment.

Sussex Advertiser.

THE FRAMING OF THOMAS BUFFARD

Photo © Paul Matthews

Collins, a Blockade quartermaster, had his skull smashed in and two smugglers were later found dead.

Hokkey Smithurst had a musket ball in his throat and was still clutching his bat which had been almost hacked to pieces by cutlasses. An informer, Charles Hill, and his girlfriend were taken into protective custody on board the Hyperion, Significantly, Roy Philp writes in his excellent history of the Coast Blockade: ‘Another man named Buffard was arrested in Pett and he offered to identify those members of the gang that came from around that area, being men unknown to Hills.’

Tom Buffard was questioned in the Galley Hill Martello tower where he admitted his involvement as a tub bearer. His deposition shows that he had been approached by James Catt while drinking in the White Hart at Guestling. He was called aside and invited to carry a pair of tubs. Tom set out with the brothers James and Edward Catt and three others. His deposition continues: ‘They went to Westfield and from thence across the Country through Crowhurst to the corner of a lane some little distance from Bexhill, where they fell in with a large company of men upwards of fifty in number, many of whom were armed with long bats.’

Guestling churchyard: Buffard’s final resting place

©2006 Mike Matthews Mike Matthews’ book ‘Captain Swing in Sussex and Kent: Rural Rebellion in 1830’ (ISBN 1904109036) will be published later this summer. He is also the author of ‘Alf Cobb: Mugsborough Rebel. The struggle for justice in Edwardian Hastings’(ISBN 1 904 109 11X). Both titles are published by The Hastings Press (www.hastingspress.co.uk).

Photo © Paul Matthews

in a field two months earlier. Catt was heard to say, ‘You are a damned rogue Tom, and so is your damned old father. You once informed against me when you were in the tower, and I will do for you one time or another.’ The witness, cross-examined, confirmed that Tom had been held in a [Martello] tower over ‘some smuggling business’. Had Buffard ‘fingered’ Catt as a member of a local smuggling gang? But why was he lodging in the same cottage as the Catts? Had he been lured into becoming their lodger so that the trap could be sprung? The motives that inspired Catt to gain a deadly revenge were never seriously scrutinised in court.

So what happened that night? Tom returned ‘very much in liquor’. He had been thrown out of a pub with a friend and had staggered home. As usual, he went straight to bed in the dark. Catt waited until Buffard was in a drunken sleep, put on his discarded boots, slipped out of the cottage and fired Breeds’ property. planting the steel close to the outbuildings, Mr Justice Alderson may have suspected that the prisoner had been well ‘stitched up’. But the Catts’ well rehearsed frame convinced the jury.

Alderson had cautioned them that the evidence was circumstantial that the prisoner had no motive, that the prisoner ought to have the benefit of any doubts in the minds of the jury.

Yet within minutes they had returned a guilty verdict Three years before, on January 3rd 1826,150 tubs of brandy were landed under the bluff known as Galley Hill, a mile from Bexhill. The Coastblockade men caught up with the smugglers at Sidley Green where a pitched battle ensued. Charles

Commemorative plaque on barn wall today

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

17

POWER NETWORKS

Wealth and efficiency:transporting slaves

Merchant Venturers

OLIGARCHICAL

POWER SPHERES EXIST WITHIN ALL ORGANISATIONS AND COMMUNITIES.

RECOGNISING AND

UNDERSTANDING THE

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF THESE ‘INVISIBLE’ POWER ELITES AND HOW THEY FUNCTION AND PURSUE THEIR OBJECTIVES IS IMPORTANT TO THE POLITICAL HEALTH OF A DEMOCRATIC AND PLURALIST SOCIETY.

RICH COOKSON EXAMINES THE ONE SUCH POWER ELITE, THE BRISTOL-BASED MERCHANT VENTURERS, AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS TODAY.

HISTORY OF

Cabot’s voyage across the Atlantic to ‘discover’ Newfoundland. The Society was officially established in 1552 to control, protect and promote trade in the city. During the 18th century its members made huge profits and amassed enormous fortunes from slavery, playing a key role in the trade that brought up to 20 million Africans across the Atlantic in conditions so cramped and unhygienic that half of a boat’s human cargo often died en route. In their defence, the Merchants point out: ‘The trade, although abhorrent to us today, was perfectly legal.’

The Merchants’ impact on Bristol was enormous: they set up Bristol University (which named its recentlybuilt Faculty Of Engineering Building in their honour), a navigation school which eventually became The University of the West o**f England, and Bristol’s first water supply company. They donated half of the Downs (Bristol’s largest park) to the city, paid for the world-famous Clifton Suspension Bridge to be built, and financed the Great Western Railway. ‘It ran Bristol,’ says the Society’s official spokesman, bluntly.

Writing in the Merchants’ newsletter, a former ‘master’ (or head) of the organisation, Andrew Densham, wrote: ‘We have much of which we are rightly proud in our history and in the exploits of our predecessors. Not only

did they enjoy the monopoly of the trade with the New World but, until the mid-19th century, they also effectively ran the city of Bristol as well. So the prestige we now enjoy is attributable to their achievements.’

The Society has also always had close ties with the Royal Family. It was given a royal charter by Edward VI in 1552, which was renewed by Elizabeth I, Charles I, Charles II and, most recently, Elizabeth II. It counts Prince Charles and Prince Phillip among its members. Prince Edward visited in February 2002; Princess Alexandra dropped in a few months earlier. The Society’s former Treasurer, Brigadier Hugh Pye, was a pallbearer at the Queen Mother’s funeral. Many Merchants have also received honours from the Queen.

The roots of the Merchants’ modern-day power lie in how they pick their members. To become a Merchant you have to be asked — but you stand little chance if you’re black or female. There are still no non-white Merchants. Margaret Thatcher is an honorary member and the first two full female members were appointed in 2003 — shortly after the Merchants faced media criticism over their apparent discrimination. You also have to be wealthy: only people with a proven track record of charitable giving are considered. The selection process is secret, although a

T

he 70 or so men who run the most powerful organisation in Bristol don’t like publicity. They count many of the city’s wealthiest businessmen in their ranks. They run, fund and influence many of the city’s charities. They sit on committees in both the City Council and University.

They are one of the biggest spenders in Bristol, with hundreds of millions of pounds at their disposal. The decisions made by the Merchant Venturers have shaped the city for five centuries, and continue to do so. But they refuse to reveal who most of their members are.

Now the Merchants have been granted permission by the government to set up a City Academy, one of 200 controversial new schools to be built and run with private partners. The £24m school will be paid for with £22m of taxpayers’ money and £2m raised privately. The Merchants will decide how and what the 1100-plus children there will be taught, what the school’s official religion will be, and how the school is run. So just who are these people, and why won’t they tell us who they are?

To appreciate the extent of the Society’s power, it’s helpful to understand its history. Its origins are unclear, but it seems to have emerged from a 14th century cabal of powerful traders in Bristol — probably the same people that financed John 18

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

Hastings Beach: Fred Judge

POWER NETWORKS

committee is said to be always looking out for new recruits. But you don’t know that you’re being considered for membership until you’ve been nominated by an existing member, discussed at a meeting and put to the vote. Only then are you informed and invited to join.

Merchants are largely drawn from the world of business. Three large local companies, Bristol Water, Wessex Water and Bristol and West have provided a huge number of members over the years. Other members either are or have been senior figures in powerful local firms: Rolls Royce, TV company HTV, local radio station GWR, British Aerospace, Imperial Tobacco, Avonmouth Docks…

Merchants also have a presence on almost every major cultural institution in the city and have enormous influence over bodies receiving public funds. The Society nominates ten members to sit on the University Of Bristol’s Court — the body that oversees the running of the University.

They also make up half of the Council committee that runs the Downs.

They also run a large number of charities — at the last count they controlled 12 charities and 40 trust funds, spending £7.5m a year in Bristol, including nursing homes for

hundreds of old people. They have also donated money and buildings to several homelessness projects in Bristol, including the Cold Weather Shelter, a youth housing scheme and The Big Issue magazine.

The Society is a major charitable funder — the most up-to-date figures about its own investment company reveal that it was worth almost £7m in 2002. They have given money to Bristol Cathedral, and several large local charities, including the Matthew (a reconstruction of John Cabot’s ship), the Bristol Old Vic theatre, and Bristol’s failed bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2008.

At the last count, the Merchant Venturers’ own charity has almost £4 million in the bank, but members administer numerous charitable trusts, worth ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’, according to a spokesman.

That makes them the one of the biggest spenders in the city.

Substantial amounts of money and time also go to supporting four private schools in the city.

The Merchants insist that they are a purely philanthropic organization don’t use their positions to further the Society’s or their own interests. But while they keep their membership secret, we can do little but take their word for it.

Investigations have revealed troubling connections between Merchants making decisions over how public money is spent. In the run-up to the Millennium celebrations, a company called Bristol Cultural Partnerships Development Ltd decided to set up a new tourist attraction in the city, called @Bristol.

Two Merchants Venturers were on BCPD’s board. Some £17 million of funding for the project came from the South West Regional Development Agency, the quango that that promotes enterprise and development — which counted another Merchant on its board. A fourth Merchant was @Bristol’s chairman until 2001 — and when he resigned he was replaced by a fifth…

Perhaps in an attempt to forestall criticism over its secrecy now the Society is spending tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on the City Academy, the Merchants recently named 15 people who make up its standing committee. But that made little difference, as all 15 had already been ‘outed’ by the media. Until the full list of all 70 or so members is published, so that the public knows exactly who belongs to this powerful, elite club, the perception will remain that the Merchants have something to hide.

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

19

WAR DIARY OF A SOLDIER

The war and Corporal Worsfield

of photographs from the late 1920’s, one showing George with his horses and another of his wife with some cows. There was also a Regimental swagger stick with the Royal Sussex crest on the knob and a pull-through for cleaning a Lee Enfield .303 rifle.

After George’s death, sometime in the late 1980s, his medals were donated to the Royal Sussex Regimental Museum and are now at the Redoubt in Eastbourne.

T

by Ted Newcomen WHEN TED

DISCOVERED THE

NESSIE ROSE PURCHASED A HOUSE IN HAROLD ROAD THEY 1917 WAR DIARY OF A CPL. A. WORSFOLD (ROYAL ENGINEERS).

TED NEWCOMEN

HAS PIECED TOGETHER SOME OF THE HUMAN STORY BEHIND ONE

AND

MAN'S BATTLE TO SURVIVE THE HORROR OF THE TRENCHES.

T

he dwelling had previously been owned by the soldier’s brother, widower George Worsfold, who was born in 1884, and at the time was probably aged about 90. Some people knew him by the nickname of ‘Twink’ because of his twinkling blue eyes.

The Worsfold family appeared to have come from Gloucestershire originally and then moved with their parents to the village of Wraysbury, Berkshire. According to military records at Kew, George Worsfold was also a regular soldier serving with the Royal Sussex Regiment before and during the Great War. In addition to receiving the WWI British War and Victory medals he was awarded the General Service Medal with clasp for serving in Afghanistan in 1919.

Apart from George and the writer of the war diary (whose first name is believed to be Albert), there were two other soldier siblings — Private John Worsfold (Reg.No. 15375) who served in France with 5th Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment and Driver Thomas Worsfold (Reg.No. T4/239129), who was with the 546 Company of the Army Service Corps at Old Park Camp in Canterbury, Kent.

20

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

L

egend has it that after leaving the army George Worsfold had worked as a ploughman on a Sussex farm where the farmer’s daughter (Mabel Ellen) had got herself pregnant by some ne’r do well. Her father promised George that he would set him up in a carting business in Hastings if he would marry the girl and take her off his hands.

Subsequently, George became a successful carter with a team of horses and it was said he was the only man who could get his animals up the hill to Ore village in a heavy snow.

When Ted and Nessie Rose completed the purchase of the Harold Road property, George moved to Hastings House, an old people’s home in the Old Town, taking with him only a knapsack of possessions. He left everything else behind, including furniture, clothes, and utensils. When asked if he wanted his stuff he replied, like the old soldier he was, that he had everything he needed with him and they could dispose of the rest as they wished.

Included in the items left behind was his brother’s war diary, a couple

he Soldiers’ Own Note Book and Diary for 1917 was a small book (about 2 inches by three inches) full of ‘useful information invaluable to every soldier at home or at the front’.

Published by Charles Letts and Co, the diary is bound in khaki coloured cloth and came with its own pencil held in the spine. At the time the diary cost one shilling to buy — a more expensive version, for officers, was bound in leather and sold for two shillings. Copies were available from the HQ of the YMCA in London, in YMCA Institutes at various military camps, and from leading stationers and booksellers.

The official foreword to the dairy mentions that 1917 was the first full year’s edition of a pocket-sized

WAR DIARY OF A SOLDIER

chronicle to be carried by soldiers and ran to 40,000 copies. It also noted that ‘a diary kept by a soldier on active service will certainly form one of the most valued mementoes of a man’s life’.

Apart from the usual sections divided up into days, weeks, and months, the contents include: military definitions, abbreviations, and vocabulary (including soldier’s slang such as the word Yob — ‘one who is easily fooled’); distinguishing flags and lamps; instructions on setting up a field kitchen; penetration performance of rifle bullets through different materials; useful knots; British military orders and medals; types of weaponry; badges of rank; a French-Belgian-English currency converter; hints for judging distances; finding directions by day or night; first aid instructions; bugle calls; semaphore signalling; Morse Code; basic French vocabulary; and other tips for soldiers in the field including a useful page headed ‘Memo of things lent’. Cpl Worsfold’s records ‘a pair of white woollen gloves lent to Bdr. Mainwaring’ The frontispiece has a simple map of northern France, Belgium, Holland, and the German border areas. The back two pages show the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and bordering countries.

T

he diary begins on 1st January 1917 with the then Private A. Worsfold’s departure from Calais for leave in England to see his family in Wraysbury, near Windsor, followed by visits to London theatres such as the Chiswick Empire, the Hippodrome to see a review called ‘Flying Colours’, and then trips to ‘various boozers’. Two weeks later, his leave over, he was back with his unit on the Franco-Belgian border.

Less than a week later he describes the start of heavy German shelling, which would be mentioned on and off weekly — and frequently daily, for the next eight months. The

following week he is in the thick of heavy action.

Private Worsfold appears to be attached to the 38th Divisional Signal Company Royal Engineers, and was mainly involved in laying and repairing communication cables between trenches, dug-outs, and command posts.

According to the diary, February and March 1917 are very ‘hectic’ months. A wide variety of events are recorded from playing rugby and football matches, to heavy German shelling, gas alarms, the firing of S.O.S. signals as the enemy attacks, planes being shot down, getting a hair-cut, laying wires in the snow and rain, soldiers being killed or wounded, and attending subsequent burials. Days without activity are clearly so rare that they even get a special mention with entries such as ‘Front quiet all day’.

In March, Albert records putting up his corporal’s stripes, and in April he mentions the Allies success at the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadians, and the award of decorations to his fellow soldiers.

The names of officers previously mentioned in the dairy later reappear among the casualties listed by Albert, who himself did not come through unscathed. On July 24 the entry describes his being ‘hit in the eye with earth from an exploding shell’. Some days have no entries in the pages — in fact the last three weeks of April are

Hastings horse-whisperer: George Worsefold

entirely blank, as is much of May. Early June sees renewed action. The entry for Sunday June 3 (Trinity Sunday), reads ‘Worst experience under fire. Gas shelling Elverdinghe very heavy in afternoon. Brig. Gen. 115th Div. wounded at Chateau’.

Two days later he records ‘German shelling very heavily around Chateau.

‘Cardiff City’ made successful raid — brought back 3 prisoners’. The next day has ‘Fritz shelling C and B (GOK). Went to 2 O.P.s with Lt. Noble. Prince of Wales visited Chateau’, and the following day’s entry says ‘3am our artillery straffing Fritz with gas shells. Heavy firing by us below Ypres attack in progress.

Tanks in action started at 3.10 am’.

On the 18th June Cpl Worsfold records leaving Chateau Elverdinghe for the relative respite of the wagon lines, but later on even they are shelled. A week later he mentions taking a hot bath as a long-range German gun continues to lob munitions into the area!

O

n July 31, 1917, General Haig launched the long-awaited Third Ypres offensive which continued until the 6th November, and was later to become known as the Battle of Passchendale.

On the day of the attack, Cpl. Worsfold records ‘3am 38th Div. Captured Pilkem Ridge and went as far as Steenbeek River. Rain in

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

21

MEMORIES

FROM 1938 ONWARDS, WHEN NUCLEAR FISSION WAS FIRST DEMONSTRATED IN GERMANY, THE NAZIS BURNED AND KILLED HUNDREDS OF PRISONERS OF WAR DEVELOPING AND TESTING BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR BOMBS IN THURINGIA AND ON THE ISLAND OF RÜGEN IN THE BALTIC. HITLER WAS DESPERATE TO WIN THE RACE FOR THE ATOMIC BOMB AND TIP THE WAR IN HIS FAVOUR BY DRIVING BACK THE RED ARMY IN THE EAST AND THE EIGHTH ARMY IN NORTH AFRICA. THE LATE ERIC VAST RECORDED HIS HISTORIC BRUSH WITH THE GERMAN ATOM BOMB FOR THE VITAL SPARK, THE MAGAZINE OF THE HASTINGS ELECTRONICS AND RADIO CLUB.

Sketch of Nazi nuclear (dirty) bomb

Cairo, the bomb — and me

ne day, about the time that Mr. Churchill was having his Triumph in Tripoli, my unit in Cairo received two visitors. One was my chief and the other a Squadron Leader, who, it appeared had been appointed to the Captured Enemy Aircraft Unit.

As my unit had been studying — and sending back to the UK — reports on a new Identification Friend or Foe system he had decided to pay us a visit.

After being given a tour round the unit he was quite content to let us continue as before, but asked that any reports be

sent to the UK, via his own office in Cairo. This seemed a perfect excuse for me to be able to visit GHQ, where his office was, and promised to be worthwhile as he seemed to be a ‘clued up’ sort of bloke.

On one of these visit I mentioned to him that the professor of physics at the Hebrew University, like most of us, was getting very excited about the atom bomb we were hearing about, and that he had expressed some doubts as to whether it would go BANG or just fizzle out like a damp squib. The

War diary (continued)

records his 23rd birthday after being relieved from front line duties. A couple of weeks later the entry says ‘Lance Cpl. Evans and myself decorated with M.M. by Lt. Col. Clennan DSO at the Yser Canal Bank at Ypres’.

On Monday September 10 you can feel the relief as he writes ‘Came out of action at Ypres after 13 months’.

From mid-September to the end of the year only three days have any written comments, the rest is entirely blank Inevitably, the diary records very little about Cpl. Worsfold as a person. It’s about the everyday events of an ordinary man trying to survive in the most appalling conditions. But on the ‘Memoranda’ page there maybe just a tiny insight into his thoughts about the war. He has recorded in pencil the names and official positions of three leading British Politicians: R.E.Prothero

O

afternoon’. The next day, a very faint pencil entry in the diary reads ‘All communications down forward. Spr. Evans and myself went up and put them through under terrible fire and wet through, late when we returned.

Recommended for Military Medal’.

Military histories note that ‘although casualties were fewer than on the Somme, the weather and ground conditions were the worst that British soldiers have ever been expected to endure. The British barrage had churned up the waterlogged ground of Flanders into a morass in which movement was scarcely possible, and the August rains compounded this blunder’. The slaughter was appalling. In the space of about three and a half weeks the British lost over 10,000 killed, 50,000 wounded, and another 7,406 missing (presumed killed).

On the August 14, Cpl. Worsfold 22

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

Squadron Leader assured me that he knew quite a bit about it and that it would, most certainly go off with quite a big BANG! Sometime later I was attending an RAF party for a chap being posted back to the UK. It was the usual type of RAF bash; the gin flowed like water, mainly being consumed by rather stocky WRAF females with apparently hollow legs and little reaction to large quantities of alcohol. I found my friend in a corner somewhat worse for wear. We talked and he assured me that he had indeed worked at Oakridge, USA, for two years and he began to tell me more of the atom bomb. The more he told me of it’s enormous size and capability the more I tended to disbelieve him. This, of Eric Vast, born in London on the 7 September 1907, was educated at Glensford and won a scholarship to London University where he completed a BSc at the age of 21, the youngest ever to do so at the time. After graduating he worked for Western Electric. On the outbreak of WWII he joined the Royal Corps of Signals and served in Egypt with the ‘Spy Radio Manufacturing Unit’, rising to the rank of Major. After the war he joined the J Arthur Rank organisation, before moving on to Associated Redifusion as Chief Engineer, and then to Thames Television where he worked until his retirement.

(President of the Board of Agriculture), Neville Chamberlain (Director General of National Service) in charge of army conscription, and Philip Snowden, MP for Blackburn — a renowned teetotaller, religious revivalist, and radical socialist who opposed the war by supporting conscientious objectors. In brackets, after this last name, Cpl.Worsfold has written the words ‘Peace crank’.

course, egged him on to further revelations. One thing that I had not known was that an atomic pile of one ton only yields enough special material to cover a five pence piece, and you need around ten kilos to produce a bomb. On all their production sites the Americans spent some $2,000bn. I knew that it was quite unusual for a Britisher to be ‘on site’ as the Americans had got rid of the British Liaison Officer very early in the project, and that it was now ‘all American’, except for a few very high grade Jewish-German scientists. They were still hoping to keep the bomb an American monopoly. One has to wonder how the Squadron Leader had come to be accepted, but at the time I was just pleased to have a ‘bomb expert’ on hand.

Based next to our camp was the smallest unit in the Middle Eastern Forces. It consisted of a Medical Major, a CQMS laboratory assistant and a corporal driver responsible for a mobile laboratory. Their job was to follow the army and test the desert wells for purity. I knew of our neighbours, but had never met them.

One evening I was working late and the orderly room serpent stuck his head round my office door and said that the Major from the camp next door would like to see me. The Major was duly shown in, carrying a large cardboard box which he deposited on my desk. ‘I think this is more in your line’ he said ‘Sorry can’t stop, I found them in the desert’, with which he fled from the office. I unpacked the box and found two beautiful pieces of German equipment, complete with spares and instruction books. The equipment was for measuring high levels of radioactivity. No simple Geiger counter this, but based on the gold leaf electroscope.

I was puzzled as to what they were doing in the desert and who might be interested in them, I was also wishing I could keep them, or at least one of them, myself. These were real precision instruments. After a little

North African theatre of operations

MEMORIES

thought I decided to phone the Squadron Leader and ask him if I could pay him a visit to show him something that would surprise him. I repacked the box and called for my driver. On arriving at GHQ I repeated the performance of the medical Major with startling results. ‘God help us’, said the Squadron Leader, ‘either they’re about to start on us, or we are on them. These are important I’d better get them off to the UK. immediately’.

I learned later that they did go off to the UK that very night, transported in a relay of Spitfires and arrived in the UK some twelve hours later. Such a feat must have taken very high level orders, not only in Cairo but also in the UK. and it is possible that Air Marshal Tedder himself was involved.

The big question is: what were these sophisticated pieces of equipment doing in the desert? At that time atom bombs were to be used on areas of vast population, I don’t think anyone had considered using them against armies in the field. How far advanced the Germans were is difficult to say; they could have had two years start on the Americans. After the war Albert Speers, Hitler’s architect, claimed that the scientists working for the German war machine had convinced Hitler that an atom bomb would take many more years of development before it was ready for production. He also said that they had not really tried in their development work. However, after the war an atomic pile was uncovered in the Black Forest. Indeed, they had some 1,200 tons of uranium, the basic

starting material, captured from the Belgians, who were mining it in the Congo at the start of the war.

The Germans were not lacking in the brains department, and one of their scientist, Hahn, had been among the first to spot the necessary reactions required to bring about an atomic explosion. Towards the end of the war lots of development work was carried out underground, out of the way of conventional bombing, so perhaps there is still some hidden works that are waiting to be found.

There is still another fact to be considered; although the yield of the special metal require to produce a bomb is very low per ton of raw material, it also produces a high quantity of very nasty radio-active waste. Perhaps their idea was to spread this, by means of conventional explosion, and thus disable the Eighth Army with radiation sickness. The fighting in Tunisia was controlled by the surrounding terrain and mountains and use of radio-active material in the narrow corridors of advance would have been devastating.

Whatever it was that I stumbled on, it was important. The RAF always claimed the monopoly on bombs and rockets. Jones, their head of intelligence was high up in Churchill’s favour. Perhaps my friendly Squadron Leader was Jones’ man in the Middle East. I suppose that somewhere there is an official record of the find and what followed, but I never heard another thing about it, but I had had my moment of glory and my brush with the Atom.

HERC:http://g4cus.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

23

Hastings, 1910

ARCHAEOLOGY

The folks that lived on the hill

by Steve Peak

A

t present, little is known for certain about the 40-acre hilltop that dominates the town. But anyone who has been at its highest point to watch the sun set over the far-off Downs will have sensed there is something special there.

The first significant historical survey of the East Hill is taking place this September. Dave McOmish, senior field surveyor of English Heritage, will try to find out more of the long lost saga. Rather than carrying out an archaeological dig, Mr McOmish will spend about a week on site using the latest electronic equipment, including a theodolite. He will be concentrating on the higher half of the hilltop, the probable hill fort, from the embankment beside Rocklands to where the large flat area starts, 500 yards to the west. This is a scheduled Ancient Monument. His report should be finished in the new year of 2007.

Mr McOmish will also be studying the results of a new three-week archaeological and historic survey of the whole of the Country Park.

Archaeology South-East, a division of the University College London Field 24

THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

WAS

IT AN IRON

SIGNAL STATION? OF THESE?

THIS

AGE HILL FORT? A ROMAN A SAXON CEMETERY? ALL

AUTUMN WE SHOULD FIND

OUT MUCH MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE

EAST HILL. STEVE PEAK

REPORTS ON ONE OF

THE BIGGEST AND OLDEST MYSTERIES IN THE STORY OF

Archaeology Unit, for Hastings Council, carried out the survey in May this year, and it should give a fresh view of the whole of landscape to the east of Hastings, as far along the coast as Fairlight Cove, and inland to North’s Seat.

Overseeing the East Hill survey is East Sussex County Council archaeologist Andrew Woodcock. He said: ‘This will undoubtedly provide new and exciting results. No one has really looked at the East Hill before in detail.’

Mr Woodcock believes the East Hill is an Iron Age hill fort, dating from about 5-600 BC. He says Mr McOmish himself was very excited when he carried out an initial inspection of the hill recently and saw what he believed were the earthworks of a prehistoric field system, probably also dating from the Iron Age. The slight ridges and furrows that can be seen on parts of the hill are the remains of the hedges and ditches of these fields.

Helping in both surveys will be the Hastings Area Archaeological Research Group (HAARG). Its chairman,

HASTINGS.

David Padgham, is the author of its 2004 publication The Archaeology and History of Hastings Country Park, currently the definitive guide to the area.

The Country Park is the legacy of powerful local landowners. In the 18th and early 19th centuries several thousand acres of land in and around Hastings were acquired by the closelyrelated Collier and Milward families.

They were among the most influential people in the town’s establishment.

While Hastings expanded through the 19th century, the then-owners of these estates, the Milwards, were so wealthy that they did not feel the need to sell off for development their most attractive property: today’s Country Park, plus most of the West Hill.

Not that they ever really owned all of it. For many centuries both the East and West Hills had been common land — ground upon which anyone walk, graze sheep or collect firewood. In the Old English dialect this was ‘menesse’ land, the name still used today for the Minnis Rock, the rock outcrop with three small caves at the bottom of Barley Lane.

From late Victorian times Hastings Council bought chunks of the Milward’s best land — at high prices — to keep it as the public open space it had always been, whatever the legal finesse of the ‘ownership’. The Collier/Milward families had obtained land that had been used by ordinary people — Hastings ratepayers — since time immemorial and then forced them to pay to carry on doing so. It was another example of the power of the establishment in local politics.

The East Hill has always had a unique place in the long history of Hastings. From its highest point, more than 300 feet above sea level, one can see west across Hastings and St Leonards to Beachy Head and Firle Beacon near Lewes, and east to the French coast around Boulogne.

The settlement on the hill is probably older than the town of Hastings itself. Hastings seems to have come into existence a couple of centuries before the Norman Conquest. Its location is uncertain; either in the Bourne or Priory Valleys, or where the Pier is today. It is quite possible there was some form of harbour in Roman times in the Priory Valley, where today’s shopping centre is, giving access to the Roman iron workings at Beauport.

But the East Hill settlement is older than that. Half a millennium before the Roman invasion of Britain, the ‘Iron Age’ aborigines of the eastern Weald devoted much labour and many resources into creating a large dedicated open space on the top of today’s East Hill. This was a type of settlement seen across all southern England. It was labelled a ‘fort’ by Victorian archaeologists because they liked to portray all pre-Victorian lifestyles as being as militaristic and aggressive as they were, in order to justify Britain’s 19th century worldwide imperialism.

But in reality it seems that the indigenous people of pre-Roman Britain were not divided into conflicting groups, constantly fighting

East Hill and Old Town

ARCHAEOLOGY

each other for territory. Instead, they may well have seem themselves as tribal groups of neighbours on pieces of land which they were only temporarily using, not owning. This is likely to be where the tradition of common ownership of much of the East Hill originated.

Iron Age people were also leading more ecologically sound lives than we do today, which explains why they left so few remains. They seem to have been in tune with the landscape, not reshaping it, as all successive lifestyles have tried to do.

Because of this, we know little about the cultural and societal role of these so-called ‘forts’. Neighbours occasionally fall out with each other, so the forts may have been defensive structures in emergencies. They may have been lived in, and (or) they may have been trading centres — we just do not know.

The one role which the hill certainly played was that that today we would over-simplify as ‘religious’.

The fort’s prominent hilltop position, close to the land, seas and skies, where one could see and be seen for miles, was a place where preChristian people could relate to each other and their environment in ways which are beyond the understanding of today’s global consumer capitalism. We are even worse than the Victorians!

Like the British invaders destroying most of the ancient aboriginal way of life in 19th century Australia, the Romans wiped away the native life of England 2,000 years ago.

Historical rumour has it that the Romans set up a signalling station on

the East Hill, presumably to help their vessels find the harbour for the iron trade. On the top of the hill is a compound, a near-rectangular small field surrounded by a hedge and embankment, which was said to be the location of the signal station. But most historians now think the compound — now the barbecue area — is not old enough for that.

The compound was known as St George’s Churchyard for many centuries. But the allotments that were inside it until the 1960s uncovered no human remains, and the soil was too shallow to hold graves, so the compound’s origins are unknown. The hill itself was known as St George’s Hill at least as early as 1540, but for how long we do not know. The title ‘East Hill’ was taken up at the end of the 18th century, possibly to help the emerging tourist trade (it was the hill on the east side of the town, with the West Hill to westward).

There is no record of a St George’s church having existed in Hastings. The title may come from the manorial church at Brede, as Hastings came under the manor of Brede from about 1400. Before that, we do not know what the East Hill was called.

No remains of a church have been found on the East Hill, although much of it has been lost as the sea eats into it.

The tantalising remains of what appeared to be Saxon burials were found where the top of the lift is today, but little is known for sure.

These are just some of the many mysteries surrounding the East Hill.

This year’s two surveys should help lift the curtain on them.

Details of HAARG are on www.1066.net/haarg.

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

25

TOWN PLANNING — (1940s style)

Model of the upper- and lower-road levels proposed for Hastings town centre after WWII. The model was exhibited by borough engineers, as reported in Popular Mechanics Magazine of April 1947. Streets were planned on two levels, with stores and pedestrians on the lower level and vehicles on the top deck. Buses and delivery vehicles would move between decks.The model was — and may still be — in existence in the late 70s.

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THE HASTINGS TRAWLER|May ‘06

HASTINGS PEOPLE

The minstrel, the blues and the sea

by Joy Melville HASTINGS-BASED SINGER-SONGWRITER AND MUSICIAN PETER O’DONNELL SPEAKS TO JOY MELVILLE ABOUT HIS LIFE ON THE ROAD, HIS MUSIC — AND WHY HASTINGS IS ‘HIS KIND OF TOWN’.

A

smoky wine bar in west London, clink of glasses, buzz of conversation . . . It’s tough, even for a highly-experienced musician like Peter O’Donnell, to make an impact.

But he does, singing a mixture of sixties’ songs and accompanying himself on the guitar: the clapping starts; a young couple gets up to dance; and someone calls out, ‘Give us one of your own songs, Peter’. He smiles, his striking, aquiline features shadowy under the dim lights. The tradition of the troubador goes on and we are lucky the travelling musician is still with us.

Peter first started writing songs when he was at school. ‘I base them on my own life’, he says. ‘I am an open book when it comes to songs’.

His working life has been that of music. His father was a long-distance lorry driver and the family, with five children, was poor. Peter remembers sitting in his father’s truck when he was eight listening to ‘What a day for a daydream’. ‘I fell in love with the blues’ he says, ‘and everything I write and sing about has a blues edge to it’.

Peter may have acquired his stage presence from watching his father who was also a very good magician and stage hypnotist. Neither of his parents were particularly musical, but his father bought him a guitar when

he was about nine and he got his first electric guitar about 12. He taught himself the piano. ‘It became clear that’s what I wanted to do,’ he says.

He lost no time about it. ‘When I was 15 I was living in Somerset and doing gigs around the local area in folk clubs and bars. I’d do James Taylor’s music plus a few Dylan songs. I had to do all sorts of part-time work in between’.

The life of a travelling musician is hard and its very transience would send a chill down the spine of a salaried worker. As Peter says, ‘When you are on your own, there is no cushion, there is just you.’

The first band he formed was called Tuesday, later renamed Casino. ‘It was a combination of five guys, trying to find anything for work’, he says. ‘We did a lot of gigs up in the valleys in Wales. I was the guitar player but when the lead singer left, I took over. I really couldn’t sing in those days, but I was determined to do it’. The band got a management team that arranged for them to be a support act to any major acts coming down to the west country.

Peter was 19 when the band signed its first record deal with Pye. ‘We had no equipment, no PA system’, he recalls. ‘We knocked on the financial director’s door and said we were the

new act and he asked us in to a party that was going on, introducing us to Tommy Steele. When everyone had gone we were still hanging around and he said, “Who the bloody hell are you?” And we stood there and said, we are the new band and we want to promote our record and we’d like an advance for musical equipment. He said he would see to it, adding “and now get the hell out”.’

‘The song we did was called Crazy and it was the biggest selling record for one week at that time. It should have featured on the TV show Top of the Pops, only the BBC had a strike that week’. The Gods have never smiled that kindly on Peter.

The band was on the road for some eight years: Holland, Germany, France, Italy, you name it. ‘I love to play live’, says Peter. ‘I think those years were the happiest time of my life’. But he left the band on getting an unexpected call to go to Hollywood, where a new American band was looking for a male vocalist.

That didn’t work out, but Peter was to spend five years in the States, two of them working as an actor-musician in Hollywood and then a final three years in New York where he studied at the Julliard School of Music.

It was a crazy time. He was being managed by the biggest rock agent in the city, who represented icons like Alice Cooper and took him to meet people like Eric Clapton — introducing Peter as Britain’s new rock and blues guitar player. In addition, a film director wanted Peter to play the part of Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, in a film to be made in that country. ‘I remember on my 30th birthday a chauffeur coming round with a bottle of champagne from the director. There I was, just me in my New York loft, sitting alone there with a magnum of champagne’.

All good possibilities come to an end. Creative people, whether actors, musicians, singers, writers, are on a constant see-saw as far as work in concerned. Peter then spent a year in

May ‘06 | THE HASTINGS TRAWLER

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Celebrating cultural diversity (Sankofa Festival, Hastings Pier)

PHOTO GALLERY

Paris promoting a single of his and appearing on the major French radio and TV music shows. He was also no stranger to busking. ‘There is a bar near Notre Dame’, he says ‘that has been going for years and all the painters, artists, philosophers, chess players and street musicians come in.

You would be in that bar and working out your music with your friends. The gendarmes locked us up once but you could make a lot of money, and there would be a nice hotel at the end of the evening, a good meal and money left over. It was a way of life reflected in a song I wrote, Shakespeare’s Blues.’

Marrying in his thirties, Peter had to decide how to play music without constantly going abroad. He formed another band, called Prime Numbers, and with his wife playing keyboard, specialised in playing at weddings, parties and performing at the major hotels and venues in London and the home counties — although there were occasional forays to Egypt, Norway, Germany and Switzerland.

Collaborating with lyricist Rod Trott, in 2002 Peter wrote the successful song The Boy from Memphis to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. He also 28

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flew to Las Vegas and passed an audition there. ‘Something may come of it, at some point . . .’ he says.

Returning to England he had to come to terms with the breakdown of his 15 year old marriage. He lost heart, though wryly admits that ‘You have to perform to cheer up other people.’ Some friends took him to Hastings and, taking an immediate liking to it, he decided to buy a house only yards from the sea. ‘I am a Pisces,’ he says, ‘always happier near the water. The sea has taken me through a difficult year. And I really enjoy the artistic environment that surrounds the town. There are so many painters, writers, musicians, a gang like myself. I feel at home’.

However he admits that ‘one of the times I was most nervous in my whole career was singing in the Horse and Groom in St Leonards. I had slowly become treated as one of the locals and eventually I played a special night for them. Confidence is a strange thing’.

So what of the future? ‘It’s very hard’, he says, ‘for a 50 year old guy to get signed unless someone understands the music and promotes the artist in the right areas. But some of the most profound stuff I wrote

after the breakup of my marriage was heard by the Head of the Performing Rights Society and he has selected 14 of the songs for his company to represent, hopefully placing them with major artists. And by the end of this year I hope to have the Peter O’Donnell Blues Band, playing traditional music as well as rock swinging blues, and I’ll be doing exactly what I want to do.’

Nevertheless, Peter is a realist. ‘I wrote Expectations, I Have None’, he says. ‘I don’t expect too much from life and anything that comes along is a bonus’. But he talks enthusiastically about his new song, Waiting for the Sun, with its backing video, which he’ll be recording in Hastings in April. Will it do well? He laughs. ‘I remain forever optimistic,’ he says.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters to the Editor Losing the plot — and the money From ‘Old Cynic’, Battle Dear Sir: One lesson which has never been forgotten by governments since William the Conqueror. — Divide and rule! How does it work, its easy. Take any simple job and divide by two or more. In Robertson Street/Cambridge Road there was an old building due for re-use. Don’t let us buy it and bring it back into use. Let us play the heritage card. We will say it must be restored in its existing Victorian style and then get a Quango to organize it. If it goes wrong it will be them to blame.

Enter Sea Space (or waste-of-space, depending on your viewpoint). This is an association of ourselves and our pals which is multi-funded to hire even more ‘consultants’ etc. So off they go, lots of signs and publicity with an acceptable costing with their builder on board. Nobody can query the need or the happening. Anyone asking questions is always directed to some other part of the conglomerate. No one person will admit to being in sole charge and fully responsible. So they look at dividing the building into office units in the usual way, the internal structures being at right-angles to the pavement. Like most terraced houses, etc. The fact that the Victorians built it with the structural walls going the other way was overlooked. Never mind, we can put in temporary horizontal braces like the example below. Then at 2 o’clock in the morning bits fell off!

Good! That got rid of the token ‘heritage’ business. Now we can get some extra £200,000 and create an ordinary modern building, we don’t have to buy those expensive ‘heritage’ windows we used across the road. We are certain that one of our consultant architects can design some pretty glass

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panels and balconies which don’t do any thing useful. We can make a short cut through to the other road. Pity the step front edges are loose and stick up a bit; if anyone falls we are insured — and then we can close it and make it a chief executives car park. This will enable us to spend more money on road marking, etc. The vandals can amuse themselves by poking the lights out, when they are not trying to play the ceiling battens like a xylophone.

The battens will rot away as they are not an external timber — still they are from a renewable resource, so we have played the ‘green’ card. Who are these people who are unable to lead from the front like the Colliers of the 18th Century, Lang of 1859 and Sidney Little of the 1930s ? I cannot name one of today’s planners. What is the building to be used for? Offices for what ? Another department or agency or dare I say Quango !

Old Cynic

Down that road madness lies From Anonymous, Hastings Dear Sir: With reference to your piece in the March issue of The Trawler [Talk of the Town, p 5], I can offer some further information about the highlypriced house for sale in Lower Park Road. Yes you are right: for a while in the 1980s the house was owned by Peter Knight of ‘Steeleye Span’. Its current occupier, however, is a local solicitor. It is obviously a very impressive house, but the particular reason for the extremely high price tag in this instance is that I understand the house is being sold with planning permission for the orchard at the rear of the house to be bulldozed and a new house (or possibly two) to be built over it. I apologise for remaining anonymous, but I don’t want to be identified as the source of this information. You may, however, be able to check its accuracy with the Planning Department or the estate agents selling the house. I feel so strongly that this is such an awful thing to do to the land, that it ought to be made more widely known — especially as the owner obviously isn’t short of a bob or two and can’t really need all that money.

That is, however, an endemic problem

with the rich: they seem to lose sight of what they actually need and just seem to want more and more. Anonymous Iraq war and July bombings From Maya Evans, Hastings Dear Sir: On Thursday May 11, the British Government published two documents about the 7 July bombings in London last year. Previous to that one of the documents had been leaked to The Observer on April 2. The headline front-page story was ‘Official: Iraq war led to July bombings’. It said: ‘Initial drafts of the government’s account into the bombings, which have been revealed to The Observer, state that Iraq was a key “contributing factor”. The references to Britain’s involvement in Iraq are contained in a section examining what inspired the “radicalisation” of the four British suicide bombers, Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay.’ It continued ‘The findings will prove highly embarrassing to Tony Blair, who has maintained that the decision to go to war against Iraq would make Britain safer.’ However, upon the official publication of the documents any findings that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a key 'contributing factor' has been censored by Number 10. Instead they conform to the Government’s agenda for discussing the July atrocities: blame ‘preachers of hatred’ and ‘extremism’ and ‘lack of integration’ within the British Muslim communities; avoid connecting the attacks with any aspect of British foreign policy. This ought to be a huge story. Everyone knows about the draft narrative — it was front page Observer story. It ought to be a frontpage story, and Parliament ought to be demanding an explanation for the reversal of opinion.

Maya Evans